Shit.
If he was a client at the insurance company where I worked, I’d know what to do. But he was standing in no-man's-land. He’d never been my friend, but he wasn’t an enemy. He’d gotten screwed over too in all this.
Deciding that doing nothing was better than starting a conversation, I just nodded and headed into the kitchen. I clearly wasn’t brisk enough since he got up to follow me. Was he blind to my lack of response or did I need better signals?
Ignore and evade were still the best options, so I kept quiet as I looked for my phone. Finding it didn’t help any. He’d plugged it in for me.
“It fell out of your pocket earlier. When I picked it up, I realized it was dying.” Forest’s voice was impossible to ignore.
Turning, I forced my face to stay neutral. I’d had years of practice, so the mask fell into place like a second skin. “Thanks.”
For some reason, he pushed for more conversation.
“I hope I didn’t invade your privacy when I covered you up. I called up about the phone, but you didn’t hear me. When I saw you sleeping, I realized how chilly it was upstairs.” He shrugged. “Too many years taking care of people, I guess. I couldn’t walk away.”
Was he bored or just admitting he had no boundaries?
Either would be bad because I didn’t need to be constantly tripping over him. “I appreciate it. Must have been colder than I thought.”
Brushing off the possibly creepy behavior, depending on how someone looked at it, I headed over to check the phone. Fifty percent, and I’d slept a hell of a lot longer than I’d expected. Since it was now a lot closer to dinner than the lunch I’d never gotten around to eating, I walked over to the pantry and grabbed some pasta.
Spaghetti wasn’t the most creative meal, but it was cheap and didn’t look cheap. Unlike mac and cheese. For some reason dressing up pasta with cheese sauce made you look poor, but putting a bit of tomatoes on spaghetti made you look functional.
They were both meals I could eat for days, but I’d learned the hard way that there were only so many days in a row I could bring in mac and cheese before someone would question how my life was going.
“I was going to make spaghetti carbonara for dinner. There’s plenty if you want some?” There was no judgment in his voice, and I wasn’t even sure he cared what I was eating. Was he being polite or silently judging?
Knowing he was my father’s friend, I wanted to immediately say judging, but this was Forest…
“I’m good, but thanks.” Neither of us needed to give the impression we were friends.
If I relented and let him stay, or if he could even tell the asshole that I’d been nice, it would be a sign of weakness. Besides, I paid my portion of the insurance and property taxes and I shouldn’t have to share.
Right?
The kid I’d used to be who was always lurking in the back of my head pointed out I was an asshole and I should share, but he was the one who’d gotten us kicked out, so I just shoved him back in the corner. Eventually, me and a therapist were going to have fun unpacking my head, but that had to wait until I could afford to do more than just the basics.
Hell, just saving up to take my two weeks at the cabin had taken months. I wasn’t going to give that up just so someone could tell me what I already knew.
Forest nodded and seemed to take my refusal well because he smiled and headed over to the coffee maker while I started making dinner. I’d have preferred if he’d gone back to his spot on the couch, but evidently, that was too much to ask because after he poured his cup, he sat down at the table.
We were going to chat.
Lovely.
“I’m sorry to hear that things went badly with your family.” Forest paused. I had a feeling I was supposed to say something, but filling up the pot with water gave me an excuse not to look at him.
Unfortunately, that just made him keep going.
“Your father always seemed…rigid with some ideas, but I would never have thought he’d kick you out.” For the moment, Forest seemed content to dance around the subject of my sexuality. I appreciated it but that didn’t make it any easier to talk to him.
“Like you said, he has rigid ideas about some things.” Having a pervert for a son was one of those things.
“Are you doing okay?” There was another slight pause before he decided to just keep going. “I wish I’d have been there to help when everything happened, but are you doing okay now? Is there anything—”
I had to jump in before his questions got any more personal. “I’m fine. I’ve got a good job and a good apartment. Things are going fine.”
That was technically true.
I wasn’t living out of my car anymore and I had a steady job that would one day lead to more instead of the three part-time jobs I’d initially had. I’d started paying off debt and had even upped my grocery budget recently. Things weren’t perfect, but they weren’t as bad as they had been.
Moving the pot over to the stove, I fought the urge to look over at him and see what he was doing. The old Forest would have taken that as an opening to talk, and I was pretty sure the new Forest wasn’t that different.
Which was frustrating in a way.
The old Forest saw me as a kid who was so painfully shy he couldn’t function in groups. I didn’t want Forest thinking about me at all, but if he did, I didn’t want him to see the past every time he looked at me. Not that I wanted him thinking about me to begin with. That wasn’t the goal. But if…
Fuck.
I was pathetic.
Watching the water, I fervently hoped that the old adage about a watched pot not boiling wasn’t true because I didn’t have anywhere else to look. It felt like the polite interrogation couldn’t get more awkward.
I was wrong.
“You know, if there’s ever anything you need to talk about, I’m here for you. I know how hard it can be to grow up gay.” He was so fucking polite it was frustrating.
But the understanding tone in his voice made it really clear that in his eyes, I was still the same weird kid who he’d needed to protect and coax out of his shell. In all the daydreams and fantasies I’d had about what life would be like when I met him again as an adult, this wasn’t it.
Fate seemed to have a fucked-up sense of humor when it came to my life.
Chapter 3
Forest
The past couple of days hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped—but he hadn’t thrown anything at me or lost his mind again, so it hadn’t gone that bad. He’d just become a master at avoiding me. Even eating had become a rushed affair. Whenever possible, he just took his food upstairs.
It was…disheartening.
I wanted him to know I was there for him and that he didn’t have to go through things alone. My parents hadn’t cared one way or the other when I’d come out, so I didn’t have any firsthand experience with his situation, but I’d heard the horror stories about what could happen from friends.
Was he really doing okay?
His words said yes, but everything else said he was going through a rough time. When I’d gone upstairs the other day to tell him about his phone, he’d looked utterly exhausted. The bone-weary kind where it ate at your soul. I’d seen that look on faces around the world for many different reasons, but it never got easier to ignore.