Chapter 2
“No.” Will paused. “Well, I don’t think so.”
“That’s means odds are good, doesn’t it?”
“Just let him put an air mattress in your spare room for a few weeks? Please? Mold isn’t healthy and he’s freaking out, which means Charlene is upset, and I need my free babysitters happy. They’re the only ones we can afford.”
Tom liked to help people, a trait of which Will was taking shameless advantage. He also liked having his own space, but he figured he could put up with a roommate for a short spell. “Yeah, okay, I’ll give you three weeks.”
“Thanks, Tom. I really appreciate it. When can he come over?”
“Tomorrow.” He had some cleaning to do if anyone was going to be in the spare room. It was a small space to begin with, and he had a habit of dumping junk in there when he didn’t want to deal with it. “Say, six?”
“Great. He won’t have a lot of stuff. Dad and Charlene are letting him put most of it in their garage.”
“You might want to tell him not to get larger than a queen-sized air mattress.” He wasn’t sure a king would fit in his spare room, which was really just a den. It didn’t even have a window
“Got it. Thanks, I owe you.”
“Damn right you do. Now I have to clean.”
“I hate to ask and run, but we have a reservation and I haven’t even showered. There may still be spit-up in my hair.”
Gross. Why anyone wanted such a helpless creature that made terrible messes, Tom didn’t know. “Go make yourself presentable. I expect you to buy the beer next time I visit.”
“Got it. Thanks again.” With that, Will hung up.
Tom grabbed his jar of simmer sauce and went back to making dinner. If he had to tackle that spare room, he’d need a fortifying meal first.
* * * *
Twenty-four hours later, the apartment was presentable, the spare room cleaned, and his building’s dumpsters a bit fuller for the effort. Let it never be said that Tom Rawling turned his back on a friend in need. Or a friend’s stepbrother, as the case may be.
At exactly six o’clock, someone knocked on his door. And he’d just gotten to sit down, too. Well, nothing for it except to get up and welcome Alex.
He swung the door open and said, “Hi.”
Josiah, Will’s dad, gave him a wide smile and reached out for a hearty handshake, the only kind he knew how to give. “Tom, always good to see you.”
“Thank you,” said a quiet voice. “I shouldn’t be here long. I just need to get my security deposit back and find a new place.”
Tom looked beyond Josiah and Charlene to see his guest. Alex was a timid guy on the skinnier side of average, though to be fair, anyone appeared shy and scrawny next to Josiah. He smoothed a floppy lock of brown hair behind his ears, and since it was already in place, Tom assumed this was a nervous habit.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Come in. The spare room is small, but there’s no mold. It’s the open door right there.”
“Thank God for no mold.” Alex took a boxed air mattress into the spare room and wasted no time setting it up.
Charlene, a hugger if Tom had ever met one, went in for an embrace. “This is so kind of you. We can’t drive him to work and back every day, not if we’re going to be at work on time ourselves.”
As Tom recalled, Alex was two or three years younger than him and Will, so twenty-three or twenty-four. Old enough that it was sad his mom needed to take care of him this much, anyway.
He didn’t say that. He said, “Glad I can help.”
She leaned in so Alex wouldn’t hear, though the motor of the air pump probably did a good job covering her voice. “He doesn’t socialize much. If you could get him to go out, even just to a bar, it would be a minor miracle.”
Josiah shook his head. “We talked about this, Charlene. Alex doesn’t want to be treated like a charity case and it’s not fair to ask Tom to drag him around.”
She sighed. “Sorry. Josiah’s right. I just…” She trailed off, out of words.
“I don’t think he’d like my usual bar anyway,” said Tom.
“Is it a gay bar? That would be fantastic!”
So, Alex was gay or bi, then. In Tom’s experience, straight guys’ mothers didn’t usually think they should be spending a lot of time in gay bars.