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backdrifterHe was still going to the support group, though. They were mostly gay, since most straight men were not eager to talk about such things, even with other men. Most of them had been victimized when they were children, and discussed how it impacted their adult lives. A few, like him, had been raped as adults by adults, and he felt closer to them.
The counselor’s name was Jonas, the epitome of handsome-but-milquetoast in a man, with short, brown bedhead hair, eyes of indeterminate color, and a clean-shaven tanned complexion. Jonas had strong arms and shoulders, and he often saw Terrence, the shyest of them, eyeing him when he thought Jonas wasn’t looking. He would never tell Jonas of his affections, Respa could tell.
Terrence stood about five eight, a frail-looking man with dark cocoa skin and startlingly green eyes, all the starker against his skin color. He shaved his hair into a close-cropped frohawk, and heavy but small silver loops dangled from his earlobes. He wore v-neck t-shirts and tailored vests over them, and thick black plastic glasses were constantly being pushed up his nose. He was soft-spoken, obviously sweet, and sometimes one had to lean in to hear every word he said, which made him lean back.
His story was that he’d gone to his first gay club recently, despite his reservations about going. He wasn’t a social butterfly, despite his appearance that suggested otherwise. He liked to stay in Saturday nights, watching fluff movies that wouldn’t move him too deeply, sometimes inviting over a solitary friend to watch them with him. But a few of his friends had pressured him into coming, and so he went.
He’d soon lost them in the crowd, and he’d felt hands all over his body from different directions, freaking him out. A man twice his size had pulled him out, clearly drunk, and pushed him up against the wall. While Terrence had not been raped by the textbook definition that involved penetration, for a man of his quiet personality, a hand invading his pants and jerking him off to ejaculation counted just as much. Terrence had fled home as soon as the man had let him escape, where he’d dived immediately into bed and stayed there for the rest of the weekend, ignoring all phone calls.
Respa tried to make friends with Terrence, and at first he succeeded, but his own natural waspishness and temper soon undid his work. Terrence became afraid of him, and this only served to depress him. Jonas told him not to worry about it, but worry he did. Was he incapable of making and keeping friends? Olga had been his friend for years, but Olga was also a strong woman who’d known him in all his times of trouble, who’d seen him in his weakest moments, and above all didn’t put up with his bullshit. God, he missed her.
Terrence never seemed to be around when he told the group about his early teenage years, and although that was, of course, a lousy way of winning someone’s friendship back—of course, he knew that—he couldn’t help but think that if Terrence perhaps saw that he was more than a walking explosion, he might not leave the room when he saw Respa coming toward him, might not look at him with such worry in his eyes.
Respa told Jonas, quietly, after everyone had left, that Olga had moved to Westchester, and that he had no place to go. He pointed at the tiny Jansport and the bigger duffel bag next to it; his worldly possessions. All his connections on the street had long since disintegrated, did he know of any shelters where a guy could go and not get killed?
“You’re not going to any shelters,” Jonas said, shaking his head firmly. “They’re a dangerous place for a young man like you. I have a futon in my apartment in Brooklyn, if you don’t mind sleeping close to the floor.”
“What? Oh, no, not at all!” Respa actually smiled, gasp-laughing at his good luck. “Your futon sounds like the best thing ever.”
“It’s okay,” Jonas said with a grin, leaning back on the desk. “It’s just until you find a place with some friends, anyway, so don’t worry about it.”
“Ha ha. Right,” he chuckled, hoping he didn’t sound as nervous about that as he felt.
Jonas was a neat man who lived in Carroll Gardens, in a second floor apartment that was sparsely furnished. In daytime, natural light flooded the front room, and at night, the whole place was lit with a soothing orange glow, thanks to well-chosen colored lampshades and low-watt lightbulbs.
Jonas himself divided his days between counseling, cleaning, and the gym. He went out to a tame gay bar (as tame as a gay bar could be, anyway) to socialize on Saturday nights, and since Respa had already said, flat out, that he would never go to any gay bar, Jonas told him he was free to stay in those nights and watch movies on-demand.
Though the apartment was nice, as was its tenant, the pressure of Jonas’s words—“ until you find a place with some friends”—weighed on him before he’d even crossed the threshold.
He ran through a mental list of people he knew as he lay on the futon that first night. Monica was his dealer—no, his former dealer—not his friend. He hadn’t seen Tanya since she’d been arrested six years ago, and she was not the sort of person who forgave another for hiding behind a dumpster while the police dragged her off.
And Ryan…
He wouldn’t think about Ryan. He wouldn’t let himself, not here in a strange apartment, not now.
Oh, Ryan.
“Your hair is a mess,” Jonas was saying, looking askance at his mop. It was the morning of a counseling session, and Respa had been living with him for a week. “Do you ever wash it?”
“I run water through it,” he replied, fishing an apple out of Jonas’s fridge. This fresh fruit in the fridge thing was a sweet deal. “Sometimes I put some handsoap in it.”
“That’s not how you take care of hair,” Jonas groaned, laughing. “Ugh! I was wondering why my shampoo wasn’t being used up faster.”
“Well, I don’t know what it looks like clean, and I’m not in the mood to find out,” Respa said, grumbling. “It looks okay the way it is.”
“It looks like a greasy bird’s nest.”
“Gee, thanks!” he snorted, taking a bite out of his apple.
“I’m not trying to be mean, you know, I’m just being honest. Just go wash it and see, and if you hate it I’ll rub some Crisco into your hair, and it’ll be just like it was.” He pulled a face to show how he felt about doing such a thing.
“Nuh-uh, not on a day when there’s counseling. That’s like my social life now, and I’m not taking the chance that I’ll be going in there and looking like who knows what.”
“Chicken.”
“Excuse me?” Another bite. Mouthfuls of food never stopped him from talking, not ever.
“I dare you to wash and condition your hair. Right now.”
“Pay me.” He put the apple down, narrowing his eyes.
Jonas lifted his hips to reach into his pocket, and slapped a dollar bill on the table. “If you take that dollar, you have to wash your hair.”
Even a dollar bill sounded good, at this point. He could always find ways to get his hair dirty afterward, he thought to himself, and he grabbed the bill, crumpling it up and shoving it in his own pocket.
“Fine. I accept your challenge, master.”
“Very good, grasshopper,” Jonas said, poker-faced, and Respa only rolled his eyes and snorted as he walked away.
On the F train back into Manhattan on the way to the support group, he felt nervous. Everyone was staring at him, he was sure of it. What did he do to his hair? they must have been asking themselves, exchanging whispers every time he looked away. “I feel so stupid,” he muttered to Jonas sitting next to him.
“You look fine,” Jonas assured him. Shampoo and conditioner had tamed Respa’s hair into a mass of black silk, likely from having a low “tolerance” to cleaning solutions of any kind, and Jonas had given him a hairband to tie it back and out of his face. He wasn’t sure if he felt more or less girly with his hair in a ponytail. It made him nervous.
“I’m never doing this again,” he told Jonas, but Jonas only chuckled.
Respa picked up a beanie from one of those random accessory vendors with folding tables before they went into the building in midtown where the support group met, and pulled it over his hair self-consciously. “Never again,” he reminded himself and Jonas.
He looked for Terrence as Jonas left him for the front of the room, and found the small man already sitting in the corner, watching Jonas’s every move. He took the opportunity to sit next to him, and Terrence jumped at the sight of him.
“You scared the bejesus out of me,” Terrence said, laughing too long and too loud. Nervous. Scared. “I didn’t notice you there.”
“I saw you looking at Jonas again,” Respa commented, leaning forward to prop his elbow on his knee, and his chin on his fist. “You must really like him, huh?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, but he looked down demurely. He adored Jonas.
“Everybody knows you’re basically in love with Jonas,” Respa told him with a grin. “You’re really obvious, do you know that? I’m surprised Jonas hasn’t noticed yet, but it’s probably because he’s an oblivious, nice kind of guy. Either that or he’s too classy to bring it up.”
“I’m really that obvious, huh?” Terrence whispered, more to himself than to Respa.
“You know, if you came with me tonight like a friend, I could get you into his apartment.” He was hatching his plan even as he spoke. He would do Terrence a ‘favor,’ maybe get the two of them hooked up or something, and then Terrence would owe him one. One like a couch to crash on, perhaps, and Terrence was way more of a pushover than Jonas. Jonas was in control of life; life happened to Terrence.
“You could do that for me?” Terrence said, wide-eyed. “But I mean, what would I do?” His eyes glazed over, probably contemplating his options. Respa could practically see the sex fantasies playing out in his head when Terrence shook his head, and it made him smirk.
“Just talk to him,” Respa suggested. “Compliment him on his apartment, maybe, he spends a lot of time making it nice.”
“Tonight?”
“If you want,” Respa said, although his tone suggested that tonight was definitely the best night.
“Okay,” Terrence agreed, looking both tense and hopeful at the same time.
Jonas agreed that Terrence could come over for dinner, and offered to cook. “Smoked fish with brown rice and squash,” he said, eyes unfocusing as he imagined the steaming dish. “Terrence, are you a vegetarian?”
“Uh, no,” Terrence squeaked, although Respa suspected that even if he had been, Terrence would have eaten a cow alive for Jonas’s sake.
“Good, because I already bought the fish,” Jonas said, beaming. Terrence melted.
Respa felt a weird disconnect as Jonas served him his plate, taking the time to ladle sauce along the length of the cut of fish, as though it was for a cookbook photoshoot. The plate of food in front of him meant good living, middle class living.
He imagined what this dinner would be like if he were in Jonas’s place, and he let out a bitter, mental laugh. The only place that had ever been his, and his alone, had been a burnt-out shell of an apartment, scheduled for demolishment mere months after he found it. Electricity and water had long since been shut off, and the giant rats and roaches had taken the original tenants’ places in hordes, but it had been his. In place of a tasteful table from Pier 1, there would have been a cardboard box turned on its top, with the three of them crowding around it on the floor, if they’d dared to come. Plates would have been paper, shoplifted from Duane Reade, and the food would have been a single order of Chinese food split three ways—a splurge for him at eight dollars for the whole dish.
He was brought back to the present with Jonas’s call to “Dig in!” Terrence looked more interested in Jonas than the food, but he ate as though God himself had cooked the meal, revering every bite. It was almost cute. Jonas, of course, was either very good at acting, or honestly oblivious.
After the meal, Jonas browsed his rather large DVD collection, and selected The 40 Year Old Virgin. “I admit I love this movie,” Jonas said as he popped it in. “Steve Carrell is the funniest.”
“The funniest,” Terrence agreed, looking dreamily at what he probably saw as the man of his dreams. Jonas could have suggested they spend the night murdering babies and setting the corpses aflame, and Terrence would have only nodded his agreement.
The movie, unfortunately, was a poor choice for someone like Terrence. Every time one of the characters began to spout sexual terms, steam practically rose from the man’s face, he was so embarrassed. He was too dark for a blush to show up, but his body language said everything. Besides the fact that he was still likely timid about sex after his encounter at the club, he was sandwiched between the man he wanted to have do nasty things to him, and the man he was scared of, that he just wanted to go away.
“Well, Terrence, it was good to have you over,” Jonas said, smiling beatifically as he held his hand out for Terrence to shake. “Come on over more often, this was a fun night.” Terrence took the hand, looking for all the world like a fair maiden confronted with her prince. The adoration he felt for Jonas was almost like an odor, and the room was rank with it.
Five minutes later, when Respa went to close the curtains in the front room where the futon was, he spotted Terrence still staring at the building. They made eye contact briefly, both looking rather surprised, with Respa still clutching the curtains, and then Terrence broke into a run down the block. Respa shook his head, closed the curtains, and turned to pull out the futon.
“Terrence is in love with you, you know,” Respa said as he went about it, Jonas appearing from the kitchen with a beer in hand.
“Oh, I know,” he said, oddly nonchalant about it.
“You know? Do you also know he was standing outside the building for the past five minutes, staring at your window?” He pulled the closet door open, and stuck a hand in the dark little crevice, searching by touch for the stack of poorly-folded blankets he knew he’d tossed in there last night.
“I didn’t know that, but…” He sighed, and took a hard chug of his beer. “I’ve made it my policy to never date anyone in my support group. What my group members do amongst themselves is their business as consenting adults, but I’m a professional. I have to be. It would be like dating an employee, if I were the boss at an office. Do you understand?”
“Well, sure, but I think you should confront him about that, don’t you?” he said. “Shit!” The blankets tumbled out in an avalanche of fleece and wool, hitting him in the face before hitting the floor. He cursed inwardly, as well; Terrence would owe him nothing if Jonas did nothing, or if he openly told Terrence that he wasn’t interested for his stupid “professional reasons.” And then he would have to find another shell of an apartment building, though these days they seemed harder to find.
“I guess, but what if that makes him uncomfortable?” He twirled the beer bottle, rotating his wrist to swish the liquid around.
“He’s not a child. He can handle it.”
“I’d just rather not.” He took one last gulp of the beer, though not finishing it, and headed back toward the bedroom. “Good night, Respa.”
“Good night,” he grumbled in return, throwing blankets into place. There was only one solution he could see now: Alcohol.
The counselor’s name was Jonas, the epitome of handsome-but-milquetoast in a man, with short, brown bedhead hair, eyes of indeterminate color, and a clean-shaven tanned complexion. Jonas had strong arms and shoulders, and he often saw Terrence, the shyest of them, eyeing him when he thought Jonas wasn’t looking. He would never tell Jonas of his affections, Respa could tell.
Terrence stood about five eight, a frail-looking man with dark cocoa skin and startlingly green eyes, all the starker against his skin color. He shaved his hair into a close-cropped frohawk, and heavy but small silver loops dangled from his earlobes. He wore v-neck t-shirts and tailored vests over them, and thick black plastic glasses were constantly being pushed up his nose. He was soft-spoken, obviously sweet, and sometimes one had to lean in to hear every word he said, which made him lean back.
His story was that he’d gone to his first gay club recently, despite his reservations about going. He wasn’t a social butterfly, despite his appearance that suggested otherwise. He liked to stay in Saturday nights, watching fluff movies that wouldn’t move him too deeply, sometimes inviting over a solitary friend to watch them with him. But a few of his friends had pressured him into coming, and so he went.
He’d soon lost them in the crowd, and he’d felt hands all over his body from different directions, freaking him out. A man twice his size had pulled him out, clearly drunk, and pushed him up against the wall. While Terrence had not been raped by the textbook definition that involved penetration, for a man of his quiet personality, a hand invading his pants and jerking him off to ejaculation counted just as much. Terrence had fled home as soon as the man had let him escape, where he’d dived immediately into bed and stayed there for the rest of the weekend, ignoring all phone calls.
Respa tried to make friends with Terrence, and at first he succeeded, but his own natural waspishness and temper soon undid his work. Terrence became afraid of him, and this only served to depress him. Jonas told him not to worry about it, but worry he did. Was he incapable of making and keeping friends? Olga had been his friend for years, but Olga was also a strong woman who’d known him in all his times of trouble, who’d seen him in his weakest moments, and above all didn’t put up with his bullshit. God, he missed her.
Terrence never seemed to be around when he told the group about his early teenage years, and although that was, of course, a lousy way of winning someone’s friendship back—of course, he knew that—he couldn’t help but think that if Terrence perhaps saw that he was more than a walking explosion, he might not leave the room when he saw Respa coming toward him, might not look at him with such worry in his eyes.
Respa told Jonas, quietly, after everyone had left, that Olga had moved to Westchester, and that he had no place to go. He pointed at the tiny Jansport and the bigger duffel bag next to it; his worldly possessions. All his connections on the street had long since disintegrated, did he know of any shelters where a guy could go and not get killed?
“You’re not going to any shelters,” Jonas said, shaking his head firmly. “They’re a dangerous place for a young man like you. I have a futon in my apartment in Brooklyn, if you don’t mind sleeping close to the floor.”
“What? Oh, no, not at all!” Respa actually smiled, gasp-laughing at his good luck. “Your futon sounds like the best thing ever.”
“It’s okay,” Jonas said with a grin, leaning back on the desk. “It’s just until you find a place with some friends, anyway, so don’t worry about it.”
“Ha ha. Right,” he chuckled, hoping he didn’t sound as nervous about that as he felt.
Jonas was a neat man who lived in Carroll Gardens, in a second floor apartment that was sparsely furnished. In daytime, natural light flooded the front room, and at night, the whole place was lit with a soothing orange glow, thanks to well-chosen colored lampshades and low-watt lightbulbs.
Jonas himself divided his days between counseling, cleaning, and the gym. He went out to a tame gay bar (as tame as a gay bar could be, anyway) to socialize on Saturday nights, and since Respa had already said, flat out, that he would never go to any gay bar, Jonas told him he was free to stay in those nights and watch movies on-demand.
Though the apartment was nice, as was its tenant, the pressure of Jonas’s words—“ until you find a place with some friends”—weighed on him before he’d even crossed the threshold.
He ran through a mental list of people he knew as he lay on the futon that first night. Monica was his dealer—no, his former dealer—not his friend. He hadn’t seen Tanya since she’d been arrested six years ago, and she was not the sort of person who forgave another for hiding behind a dumpster while the police dragged her off.
And Ryan…
He wouldn’t think about Ryan. He wouldn’t let himself, not here in a strange apartment, not now.
Oh, Ryan.
“Your hair is a mess,” Jonas was saying, looking askance at his mop. It was the morning of a counseling session, and Respa had been living with him for a week. “Do you ever wash it?”
“I run water through it,” he replied, fishing an apple out of Jonas’s fridge. This fresh fruit in the fridge thing was a sweet deal. “Sometimes I put some handsoap in it.”
“That’s not how you take care of hair,” Jonas groaned, laughing. “Ugh! I was wondering why my shampoo wasn’t being used up faster.”
“Well, I don’t know what it looks like clean, and I’m not in the mood to find out,” Respa said, grumbling. “It looks okay the way it is.”
“It looks like a greasy bird’s nest.”
“Gee, thanks!” he snorted, taking a bite out of his apple.
“I’m not trying to be mean, you know, I’m just being honest. Just go wash it and see, and if you hate it I’ll rub some Crisco into your hair, and it’ll be just like it was.” He pulled a face to show how he felt about doing such a thing.
“Nuh-uh, not on a day when there’s counseling. That’s like my social life now, and I’m not taking the chance that I’ll be going in there and looking like who knows what.”
“Chicken.”
“Excuse me?” Another bite. Mouthfuls of food never stopped him from talking, not ever.
“I dare you to wash and condition your hair. Right now.”
“Pay me.” He put the apple down, narrowing his eyes.
Jonas lifted his hips to reach into his pocket, and slapped a dollar bill on the table. “If you take that dollar, you have to wash your hair.”
Even a dollar bill sounded good, at this point. He could always find ways to get his hair dirty afterward, he thought to himself, and he grabbed the bill, crumpling it up and shoving it in his own pocket.
“Fine. I accept your challenge, master.”
“Very good, grasshopper,” Jonas said, poker-faced, and Respa only rolled his eyes and snorted as he walked away.
On the F train back into Manhattan on the way to the support group, he felt nervous. Everyone was staring at him, he was sure of it. What did he do to his hair? they must have been asking themselves, exchanging whispers every time he looked away. “I feel so stupid,” he muttered to Jonas sitting next to him.
“You look fine,” Jonas assured him. Shampoo and conditioner had tamed Respa’s hair into a mass of black silk, likely from having a low “tolerance” to cleaning solutions of any kind, and Jonas had given him a hairband to tie it back and out of his face. He wasn’t sure if he felt more or less girly with his hair in a ponytail. It made him nervous.
“I’m never doing this again,” he told Jonas, but Jonas only chuckled.
Respa picked up a beanie from one of those random accessory vendors with folding tables before they went into the building in midtown where the support group met, and pulled it over his hair self-consciously. “Never again,” he reminded himself and Jonas.
He looked for Terrence as Jonas left him for the front of the room, and found the small man already sitting in the corner, watching Jonas’s every move. He took the opportunity to sit next to him, and Terrence jumped at the sight of him.
“You scared the bejesus out of me,” Terrence said, laughing too long and too loud. Nervous. Scared. “I didn’t notice you there.”
“I saw you looking at Jonas again,” Respa commented, leaning forward to prop his elbow on his knee, and his chin on his fist. “You must really like him, huh?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, but he looked down demurely. He adored Jonas.
“Everybody knows you’re basically in love with Jonas,” Respa told him with a grin. “You’re really obvious, do you know that? I’m surprised Jonas hasn’t noticed yet, but it’s probably because he’s an oblivious, nice kind of guy. Either that or he’s too classy to bring it up.”
“I’m really that obvious, huh?” Terrence whispered, more to himself than to Respa.
“You know, if you came with me tonight like a friend, I could get you into his apartment.” He was hatching his plan even as he spoke. He would do Terrence a ‘favor,’ maybe get the two of them hooked up or something, and then Terrence would owe him one. One like a couch to crash on, perhaps, and Terrence was way more of a pushover than Jonas. Jonas was in control of life; life happened to Terrence.
“You could do that for me?” Terrence said, wide-eyed. “But I mean, what would I do?” His eyes glazed over, probably contemplating his options. Respa could practically see the sex fantasies playing out in his head when Terrence shook his head, and it made him smirk.
“Just talk to him,” Respa suggested. “Compliment him on his apartment, maybe, he spends a lot of time making it nice.”
“Tonight?”
“If you want,” Respa said, although his tone suggested that tonight was definitely the best night.
“Okay,” Terrence agreed, looking both tense and hopeful at the same time.
Jonas agreed that Terrence could come over for dinner, and offered to cook. “Smoked fish with brown rice and squash,” he said, eyes unfocusing as he imagined the steaming dish. “Terrence, are you a vegetarian?”
“Uh, no,” Terrence squeaked, although Respa suspected that even if he had been, Terrence would have eaten a cow alive for Jonas’s sake.
“Good, because I already bought the fish,” Jonas said, beaming. Terrence melted.
Respa felt a weird disconnect as Jonas served him his plate, taking the time to ladle sauce along the length of the cut of fish, as though it was for a cookbook photoshoot. The plate of food in front of him meant good living, middle class living.
He imagined what this dinner would be like if he were in Jonas’s place, and he let out a bitter, mental laugh. The only place that had ever been his, and his alone, had been a burnt-out shell of an apartment, scheduled for demolishment mere months after he found it. Electricity and water had long since been shut off, and the giant rats and roaches had taken the original tenants’ places in hordes, but it had been his. In place of a tasteful table from Pier 1, there would have been a cardboard box turned on its top, with the three of them crowding around it on the floor, if they’d dared to come. Plates would have been paper, shoplifted from Duane Reade, and the food would have been a single order of Chinese food split three ways—a splurge for him at eight dollars for the whole dish.
He was brought back to the present with Jonas’s call to “Dig in!” Terrence looked more interested in Jonas than the food, but he ate as though God himself had cooked the meal, revering every bite. It was almost cute. Jonas, of course, was either very good at acting, or honestly oblivious.
After the meal, Jonas browsed his rather large DVD collection, and selected The 40 Year Old Virgin. “I admit I love this movie,” Jonas said as he popped it in. “Steve Carrell is the funniest.”
“The funniest,” Terrence agreed, looking dreamily at what he probably saw as the man of his dreams. Jonas could have suggested they spend the night murdering babies and setting the corpses aflame, and Terrence would have only nodded his agreement.
The movie, unfortunately, was a poor choice for someone like Terrence. Every time one of the characters began to spout sexual terms, steam practically rose from the man’s face, he was so embarrassed. He was too dark for a blush to show up, but his body language said everything. Besides the fact that he was still likely timid about sex after his encounter at the club, he was sandwiched between the man he wanted to have do nasty things to him, and the man he was scared of, that he just wanted to go away.
“Well, Terrence, it was good to have you over,” Jonas said, smiling beatifically as he held his hand out for Terrence to shake. “Come on over more often, this was a fun night.” Terrence took the hand, looking for all the world like a fair maiden confronted with her prince. The adoration he felt for Jonas was almost like an odor, and the room was rank with it.
Five minutes later, when Respa went to close the curtains in the front room where the futon was, he spotted Terrence still staring at the building. They made eye contact briefly, both looking rather surprised, with Respa still clutching the curtains, and then Terrence broke into a run down the block. Respa shook his head, closed the curtains, and turned to pull out the futon.
“Terrence is in love with you, you know,” Respa said as he went about it, Jonas appearing from the kitchen with a beer in hand.
“Oh, I know,” he said, oddly nonchalant about it.
“You know? Do you also know he was standing outside the building for the past five minutes, staring at your window?” He pulled the closet door open, and stuck a hand in the dark little crevice, searching by touch for the stack of poorly-folded blankets he knew he’d tossed in there last night.
“I didn’t know that, but…” He sighed, and took a hard chug of his beer. “I’ve made it my policy to never date anyone in my support group. What my group members do amongst themselves is their business as consenting adults, but I’m a professional. I have to be. It would be like dating an employee, if I were the boss at an office. Do you understand?”
“Well, sure, but I think you should confront him about that, don’t you?” he said. “Shit!” The blankets tumbled out in an avalanche of fleece and wool, hitting him in the face before hitting the floor. He cursed inwardly, as well; Terrence would owe him nothing if Jonas did nothing, or if he openly told Terrence that he wasn’t interested for his stupid “professional reasons.” And then he would have to find another shell of an apartment building, though these days they seemed harder to find.
“I guess, but what if that makes him uncomfortable?” He twirled the beer bottle, rotating his wrist to swish the liquid around.
“He’s not a child. He can handle it.”
“I’d just rather not.” He took one last gulp of the beer, though not finishing it, and headed back toward the bedroom. “Good night, Respa.”
“Good night,” he grumbled in return, throwing blankets into place. There was only one solution he could see now: Alcohol.