Chapter Five
The question leaked out before I even had a chance to think better of it.
Now, I’m kicking myself in the ass for asking Gannett if he wanted to stay at my place.
Fuck. I haven’t cohabitated with anyone other than my son in well over a decade, and even when I did live with someone, Trista was hardly ever home.
Whether that was because she was keeping someone else’s bed warm, or if she was actually going on overnight trips with friends is still up for debate.
A debate I give zero fucks about, frankly.
I never gave a shit about her cheating, not after the first few times.
Not after I was sure she never loved me at all.
She only loved the idea of the life she thought I could provide for her.
If anything, the cheating was a godsend.
The pressure was off me to perform, if she was seeking sex with other men.
Then, fourteen years ago, she left altogether, thank fuck.
Anyway, having Gannett here, in the next room over, and with the paper thin walls of this apartment?
Yeah, I definitely didn’t think that through.
All I knew was that he needed a place to stay, and I wasn’t about to let him go stay on that freezing cold houseboat of his on the dead-of-winter December ocean.
Granted, I think it’s been a while since I’ve had any of my night terrors—but then again, I haven’t let anyone foreign in my safe place either.
Once Trista and I split, I made the two-bedroom apartment above the pub—which used to be a place where folks who were too drunk to go home could sleep it off for the night—my home.
I haven’t trusted anyone else to come up here.
Well, besides Taryn, obviously. He was used to the one-off time I’d wake up yelling, drenched in sweat, ready for a fight.
He knew to throw some noise cancelling headphones on and leave me to fight my demons on my own—lest he get unintentionally injured trying to wake me up.
“Yeah, dude,” Gannett sighs, stepping out of Taryn’s former bedroom, “First thing I need to do tomorrow is buy some new clothes. These pants”—he plucks at the material of my gray sleep pants I let him borrow, since all his clothes had been in a heap on the floor when the sprinklers went off—“are way too fuckin’ tight.
The boys? They’re choking. Are you sure these are yours?
Your thighs look so much meatier when you’re in your jeans. Fuckin’ things are oak trunks.”
My brows zip together. “You’ve checked out my thighs?”
He scoffs. “Don’t have to, man. Those fuckin’ things are all up in my face!”
“They’re really not,” I tell him. Pretty sure I would know if his face were in my thighs. Pretty sure I don’t need that mental imagery either. Not if I plan on making it out of this roommate situation unscathed.
Fuck, this is going to be such an epic test of my self-control.
“How the fuck not?! Look at these gams!” he exclaims, openly reaching for one of my legs with grabby hands, now that there’s no bar separating our bodies. I swiftly and forcefully swat his hand away, and he looks affronted. He has no idea the move is just as much for his protection as my own.
“Rule number one of staying here? No touching. Do not fuckin’ touch me.”
“Ooo-kay,” he drawls, backing off with his hands raised defensively. “Didn’t realize you had leprosy…”
“I don’t have leprosy,” I huff. “I have boundary issues, according to Brooks.”
“Alright, well that’s a slap to the face.
I’ve been coming to your bar for how many years now?
With as many hours as I’ve spent there yakking your ear off, I’m pretty sure you know my entire life.
Yet you don’t even give me a sliver of your backstory, and you talk to my brother-in-law about your boundary issues? ”
I sigh, scrubbing a hand down my face. “I shouldn’t have even opened my damn mouth,” I mutter to myself, sidestepping him to get into the kitchen.
Whiney fuck is getting his panties in a knot over me not engaging in enough heart-to-hearts at the pub.
I didn’t even mean to give him as much as I did tonight. It just slipped out.
Quite frankly, my backstory is only doled out on a need-to-know basis.
The only one, so far, that’s needed to know is Evan, and even he got the tiniest of little glimpses.
That’s right before I fuckin’ spiraled out and felt like I was being held underwater with no air.
It was like living out one of my night terrors in the middle of the day.
Fucked me up big. So big, I still can’t even bring myself to try to properly apologize to Evan by having a calm, rational man-to-man with him.
Outside of inevitably seeing him at my job, I’ve made it a point to avoid him as much as possible whenever he’s back in town.
I know what Brooks had told me, back when I was still getting therapy from him.
I know I need to confront Evan in order to help alleviate the weight of all the shame and guilt I felt about what I did.
But that’s what I tried to do the night of the cookout, and look where that got me?
An overnight trip to a psych unit and a shit-ton of crippling fear which has made it impossible to re-establish therapy with anyone else, since continuing treatment with Brooks would now be a conflict of interest, since he married Evan.
“You want anything to eat? I’m going to make myself supper,” I tell Gannett, trying to shake myself out of my self-loathing spiral.
“You eat supper after your shifts? Why don’t you ever eat while you’re down at the bar?”
“A man can only survive so long on pub fare,” I sigh. “You want anything or not?”
“What’s on the menu?” he asks, setting some weird looking pine bough with a red Christmas bulb dangling from it on my coffee table.
Leave it to Gannett to think some lame looking holiday decor was worth saving and bringing with him.
Whatever, if it saves him from making more comments about how impersonal and cold my apartment is, I’ll let him have his sad-looking tree.
I shrug. “Got some marinated chicken I need to cook up.” I take a look in my fridge. “Asparagus is about to turn, if I don’t get on it soon. Pretty sure I have some wild rice I can whip up too.”
“Shut. Up,” he gasps. “I thought you were just going to toss some spaghetti in a pot or something. You seriously know how to cook more complex stuff?”
I blink at him. “Uh, yeah? Who the fuck do you think taught Taryn? Trista? That’s laughable.”
“Well, who taught you? You, like, go to school for it or something?”
“No?” I scoff. “The fuck is with the twenty questions? I’m self-taught, man.
I used to be an athlete. I had to know how to stick to a prescribed diet.
Sure as hell couldn’t count on Marlin to feed me.
That asshole used to let me starve for days…
” I purse my lips, but it’s too late. Another admission snuck out without warning.
“Wait. Your old man didn’t feed you?” Gannett frowns. “What the fuck, dude? That’s, like, basic parenting. You feed your kids, you clothe them, you house them. What the hell else didn’t he do?”
“He didn’t do a lot of things,” I grunt, my molars grinding. “We’re not talking about this. Rule number two of staying here? No bringing up Marlin.”
Gannett’s lips thin into a line, and he nods. “Noted. Ok. No touching and no discussing douchebags, even though you were the one that brought him up.”
I roll my eyes. “The puppy is trainable,” I state instead, hoping to navigate the conversation into safer waters.
“Oh, fuck off,” Gannett mutters. “I’d punch you right now if it wasn’t for that no touching thing.”
“Obedient, too,” I snark.
He chuckles. “You’re such a fucking dick!”
“A dick who is providing you a warm place to stay and who’s about to cook your supper so you can stuff your cakepipe. So, how about you show some appreciation instead?”
The humor in his expression fades into something—softer.
“Seriously, thank you for saving my ass. I promise, I’ll be a good roommate.
Might take me a bit to get used to being quiet when I get up in the morning again, but I’ll try.
I haven’t had to in a while. You know, living alone and all…
” He looks down at his feet, shoulders slumping defeatedly.
Swallowing hard, I accept his gratitude—it’s so rare that an asshole such as myself gets something genuine like that. “You’re welcome.”
And I’ll try not to wake you with my middle-of-the-night journeys back into the past, I mentally promise him back.
I cook us both supper while he roams around my space, muttering to himself as he marvels about being allowed in my sanctuary.
He grins, wiping the dust off some of the old pictures I have hung of Taryn playing little league.
A few times, he tries to ask personal questions, ones I don’t feel comfortable answering, so I have to keep coming up with creative ways to shut him out.
I’m on top of my shit when it comes to shutting down interrogations into my past.
Letting anyone in is something I’ve naively done before, and only wound up hurt in the end. Never again.
Finally, we sit down to eat, which is a whole new level of torture.
Listening to his moaning has my traitorous dick stirring to life.
It doesn’t have a clue that the sounds he’s making are simply over a home-cooked meal.
Looks like I’ll be taking a cold shower before bed tonight, since jerking off without getting caught is an impossibility in an apartment as poorly sound-proofed and small as mine.
Fuck me. Why did I do this to myself?
“Ooomph! Stop!” I curl up in the corner of the basement, fearful of another kick to the ribs like one I just got.
“What the fuck did I tell you, boy?!” Marlin spits, rage in his bloodshot eyes.
“Th-that if I ever talked back to you… I w-would get h-hurt.”
Another sharp blow from his steel-toed boot lands, this one right to the stomach.