13. Ryan #2
Catastrophic, even.
Bailey—for the first time ever, cracks. “Look, I can’t manage all of this, all right?
Especially if I have to show my face on the internet.
From now on, you’re in charge of content, Mal’s in charge of public relations, and I’ll deal with the website and costs.
That means you’re on duty tonight to make sure he posts something good.
We need those subscribers, and we need them soon. Fair?”
It is fair. More than fair.
It’s simple really. All I have to do is show up at Mal’s shitty apartment and tell him to forget last night ever happened. Don’t worry about it. Didn’t mean anything. All the same bullshit I’ve been telling myself for years.
We can move on. And if he needs me to say I can keep this strictly professional, I’ll agree. And if he doesn’t—then I’ll say it myself. This was a one-time thing, and Malcolm Walsh is not my future. He never was.
I show up at Mal’s place without calling or texting first. I figure I have a better chance of being allowed in if I catch him off guard. Best case scenario—we’ll end up friends again, but I’m not holding my breath.
He continued his petty ignoring me bullshit all day today, and I had no reason to believe he’d answer a call or return a text, so here I am with pre-written content and a shit ton of determination to put last night behind us.
Only thing is, he’s shirtless. He’s got the dog in one hand, his phone in the other, and he’s wearing charcoal gray sweats. His hair is wet and slicked back from his face. He looks like a goddamn athletic wear model.
His nipples up close and in person are striking.
On the videos, they’ve caught my eye, but in the flesh, they’re a rosy brown, and they don’t lie flat on his chest like some men’s do.
No, of course not. His form tiny, perfect, bite-sized mounds directly in the middle of his lightly hairy pecs.
I immediately want to cover them with pasties.
Fortunately, he’s too confused by my showing up to notice the lingering look of what I’m guessing is pure longing I give those nipples.
“Did Bailey send you? Or did you come on your own?”
“Bailey,” I tell him.
“Awesome,” he says in a tone completely lacking awe. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“She thinks you do, and she put me in charge of content.”
“Yeah, I heard. It was in the group text .”
Ignoring the tone, I ask, “Can I come in?”
He sighs. “Do you want to?”
“Look,” I say. “My patience is limited, and we need to start making money, so yes. I’m here, I’d like to come in.”
He makes a noise that usually prefaces something like, “unbelievable,” but he does let me inside and closes the door .
“I’m filming in the bedroom.” He walks past me in that direction.
Since we’re alone, I don’t see any reason to not speak bluntly. “What the hell is wrong with you? And I don’t just mean today.”
He waves off the question and disappears around a corner. I follow him.
“Don’t blow me off, asshole. You were acting fine when you left last night. What happened? Gay panic?”
He barks a laugh.
“Laugh it up, but it’s fucking rude as shit to act how you acted last night with me and then treat me like I don’t exist today.”
He whirls to face me. “Is it? Is it kinda like trusting someone to be there for you a certain way and then finding out they had something else in mind all along?”
My head rears back. “No. Actually, it’s not. It’s more like being used and tossed aside because you got bored or changed your mind again. It’s like feeling disposable.”
His jaw sets, and a muscle in his cheek twitches. “Sorry,” he somehow manages to force from his mouth.
I don’t like this feeling. The constant uncertainty.
The desperate wish for this to be a simple case of boy loves boy who loves him back, but that was never us, and it won’t ever be.
It hurts, and I fucking hate it. Why I keep coming back for more is a mystery, except maybe it’s like getting tattooed.
You get addicted to the burn. The permanent marks that prove who you are to yourself and the world.
Is it a badge of honor? A sign of strength? Or a cry for help?
“Don’t worry about it,” I mumble. “Let’s just forget about it and move on, minus the hostile ten years in between. Can we do that?” I honestly don’t know if I can, but if he’s willing to try, I am, too .
He frowns, an odd stillness coming over him. “Can I tell you what happened when I left last night? Before you move on?”
“I was there. I already know what happened.”
“No, I mean after I left.”
I narrow my eyes. “Okay.”
He sits down on the edge of his bed, putting Stephanie on the mattress next to him.
She snuggles into this side, pressing against his hip and promptly falling asleep.
He glances at me, sees I’m not moving from the spot I’ve staked out in the doorway, and looks down.
“I was actually pretty happy when I left. I mean, I wasn’t ready to leave, but I could tell you needed your space. ”
I didn’t need space. I was afraid to ask him to stay. Afraid of the way he’d look at me when the sun came up. Or whether he’d still want to look at me at all. Big difference.
“I wanted to talk about it more, you know? Tell somebody you and I were… Anyway, the first person I thought about telling was my dad. And then I remembered you and I were brothers for what? Twelve years?”
“Thirteen,” I whisper.
“Yeah, right. Thirteen. And I used to ask him all these crazy questions about sex—like no filter, you know?”
I don’t say anything, but it’s true that he lacks a filter—or at least, he used to.
“And I didn’t want him thinking you and I were like—inappropriate way too young, and I figured he might think that, because I think we kinda were. You know?”
“No we weren’t,” I say, surprised he thinks so.
He wipes at his nose and sniffs before bracing both hands on the mattress and tilting forward slightly. “I think I was. Not on the outside, but like—in my head.”
Malcolm looks and sounds totally unlike himself—incredibly small and uncertain.
Troubled, even. I tread lightly. He was in therapy a lot as a kid, dealing with his mom’s death.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he still sees someone.
I know losing her was hard for him, and he was no fan of talking about it.
I know his dad took good care of him, and my mom loved him a lot, but he had a lot of nightmares and was prone to losing his temper over small things.
The way he turned on me was an extreme example, but neither of our parents would call him an easy kid.
“Can I just say something happened a few times before my mom died that made me a little more aware of sex than I probably should have been?” he says softly.
I swallow hard. “Yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll leave it there, then.”
“Okay,” I say, barely above a whisper.
“Thanks. Anyway, it wasn’t gay panic or whatever—it was holy shit, he’s my stepbrother, and I decided a long time ago it was wrong.
Like really, really wrong to look at you like that.
But you don’t look the same, and you’re basically a stranger now.
” He laughs softly. “Which is weak, but that’s all I’ve got.
Momentary lapse of judgement or whatever. ”
“So last night was wrong,” I say, just to clarify.
He meets my eyes and asks, “Don’t you think?”
“Sure,” I say weakly, the bullied kid in me raising his hand to agree with Mal’s assessment that I’m both a freak and a pervert. It’s only sort of okay because I think he’s saying something similar about himself.
We’re quiet awhile before he looks over at me and asks, “Did I freak you out?”
“Last night?”
He shakes his head. “Just now.”
If I’m being honest … I nod.
“I’m not as fucked up as it might sound. I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of psycho. Or like… damaged .”
“I don’t,” I say.
“What do you think? ”
I’ve got no clue what to say. I don’t even know where to be right now. Like, does he want me here? Am I too close? Too far away?
What I think, however, is that I might not be the one who broke him, but he sure as fuck broke me. And everyone’s damaged. “Maybe I should go.”
He frowns. “Don’t do that. Please. I’m sorry I was weird today.”
“You gonna be weird tomorrow too?”
“No promises,” he says.
I take a deep breath and think through my next move. “You want help with filming?”
“I was about to do the shower thing we talked about.”
I gesture at the dog. “You think she’d let me bathe her while you’re in there?”
He laughs, and the sound surprises me. “Why? You don’t think you can contain a four pound, pissed off Yorkie?”
I raise my brows.
“I’m kidding,” he says. “She loves baths.” Malcolm scoops up Stephanie and hands her to me. For all her hair, she’s surprisingly bony, and she looks at me with wide, searching eyes, licking the air between our faces.
“Look at you all naked,” I say because she’s not wearing the bow or a collar.
Her head lurches forward like she wants to smell me closer.
Malcolm goes into the bathroom, then comes back out with a bottle for me. “Her shampoo. It doesn’t take much. You can use the kitchen sink. Make sure the water’s not too hot, okay?”
Stephanie looks between the two of us, and Mal gives her ear a scratch. “I’ll see you in a minute,” he says, looking from her to me. I can’t tell who he’s talking to.
He returns to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. I go into the kitchen to do my first dog bath. I can say a lot about how great cats are, but one of the best things about them is they’re more or less self-cleaning. The only time I ever had to wash Bud was right after I took him in.
But it turns out Mal was right. Stephanie likes baths, and she’s easy to clean.
Of all the shitty things this apartment has, the spray nozzle on the sink isn’t one of them.
It’s the perfect strength to wash out the suds and not knock her on her skinny ass.
I let her shake it out once I’m done, and she looks pitiful.