Chapter Twenty-One #3
“You do.” But that didn’t feel like enough. Trenton wanted to offer something, even if it was just some nice words, but he had no practice with that sort of thing. “You do have me.”
It was a long night. He should have just gone to sleep, but the house felt too big without Hilary, and he found himself wandering through the rooms as if he might find the man in one of them by accident.
He did sleep for a portion of the night, but it was choppy and unrestful.
At around four in the morning, he gave up and found some projects for himself.
One was fixing the toilet that had a tendency to keep running after flushing.
The other was to fix the hinge on a closet door that groaned wretchedly every time it was opened or shut.
Hilary was very pleased with the fixes. “I’m going to keep you on retainer,” he said the next morning, barely getting the door open before he had his arms full of his new roommate.
It was fun to spend the day in bed, waking to eat and read a little before falling back asleep. But he was still glad when Hilary came home a week or so later to announce he’d been moved to days. “I had to switch to med surge though.”
“Is that bad?”
Hilary had been an ICU nurse for as long as he’d known him.
“It’s busy. My patient ratio will go up a lot, and it’s harder to take shifts off because the unit’s always running on a shortage.”
So it was worse. “I’m sorry.”
Hilary ruffled his hair. “At least it’s not psych.”
Hilary did seem to have more energy after that.
After a short while in his new position, his sleep schedule had become like clockwork.
For both of them, actually. Trenton found that in being Hilary’s bedtime police he’d also successfully upgraded his own, so he was sleeping mostly normally for the first time he could remember.
The resting helped with his focus, and he might even have become a little cleverer.
Or maybe that was just what Hilary said whenever he was annoyed.
“What a clever fellow,” he’d say, or, “Check out this clever fellow.”
There were a lot of lazy days. Many slow walks and casual reading sessions on the new shag carpet.
They also had a “date” once a week. That was what Hilary called them.
“Let’s have a date,” he’d say when he woke up, and over breakfast they’d figure out a plan or a place to visit.
Trenton worried sometimes about expenses.
He had one of Hilary’s credit cards to use for things like buying groceries or household items, and always there was some guilt until about a month in when Hilary sat him down at the table and opened his banking app.
“You’re a math whiz, right? Why don’t you look at some numbers and tell me how last month’s budget compares to this one. ”
The results surprised Trenton, and it wasn’t just a one-off. He looked over six months of expenses before he was ready to admit to the pattern.
“It turns out that eating at home, even when you’ve got an extra mouth to feed, is cheaper than having nearly all your meals out. Who would have thought?” Hilary was laying the sarcasm on extra thick just in case his darling roommate was deaf as well as stupid.
“But all that eating out was because of me,” Trenton argued. “Because I was working at the restaurant. If you hadn’t been coming to see me, then—”
“For fuck’s sake, Trenton. I save over a third of every paycheck. Can you stop it? Why do you think I go to work?”
“To pay the mortgage?”
It was a trick question, apparently.
“For my big handsome hostage to spend my money, that’s why. I’m doing my part in earning it, so it’s up to you to do yours in spending it. Though if it’s going to be this difficult, maybe you need to pick up that Italian sports car hobby after all.”
Trenton thought he might cry. He had the lump in his throat and was staring hard at the table.
Hilary took his hand. “Why are you upset? Do you want to go back to work that badly?”
“No.” He had never missed work. Not for a day.
Not for an hour. He was happy like this.
Waking up and cooking and watering the plants Hilary kept bringing home for him and getting through all the books on the shelves.
He’d started running, an exercise he’d never thought to try, especially in winter, but the park near the house with all its bare trees was starkly beautiful and every time he came back in from out of the cold he looked around himself at the cozy house and felt, for once, glad to just be alive. “I love it here.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Hilary’s voice had softened. He always spoke quietly when he sensed any upset, as if even a normal speaking voice might put him over the edge.
When Trenton didn’t answer, Hilary took hold of both hands together and pulled them into his lap, an alarmingly effective tactic. “Trent—”
“I might wake up.”
Hilary didn’t laugh. Actually, he seemed to grow more serious. “Try not to.” He brought the hand up to his face and pressed it there, as if he might mold the shape to his face. “Stay with me for as long as you can.”