Chapter 14
ANTHONY
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Instead of calling out to ask who’s at my door, or to tell them to just come in, I pause the video I’m working on and get up from my desk chair to answer it in person.
Just as I’m expecting, West is standing at my door looking so distraught it’s like he’s about to crawl out of his own skin.
“I’m sorry,” he says before my door has fully swung open. “I know you said to come over at eight, and it’s way later than that, but I—” he cuts himself off, already turning like he’s going to walk away. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
“Why not?” I ask, and he pauses mid-turn.
The myriad of emotions that cross his features is staggering, and I step back, wordlessly motioning for him to come in.
He hesitates, but after a quick look down the hall in both directions, he steps into my room and closes the door behind him.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats as I flip the lock.
“Why are you sorry?”
“For coming over when I’m a mess.” He uses his thumb to crack the knuckles of his fingers one by one, but I can’t tell if he’s doing it consciously, or if it’s part of his fidgeting. “And for showing up hours after you said you’d be around.”
“I said I’d be in my room at eight, not that you had to show up at eight.” I motion for him to follow me into my room so we’re not hovering by the door. “And I told you to come over if you didn’t want to be alone.”
“Yeah, but offering and actually dealing with me being in your space are two different things.”
“I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t mean it.
” I smooth a lock of my damp hair back from my forehead.
My hair might be naturally straight, but it’s thick and has a mind of its own when I let it air dry, and it’s been falling in my face since I got out of the shower.
“One thing you should know about me is that I don’t make idle offers,” I tell him.
“If I say something, I mean it. And I always keep my word.”
He blows out a breath and rakes his hand through his hair. The blond strands are damp and disheveled, and the faint scent of soap and shampoo tells me he also took a shower after I left his room.
But it’s not just his freshly washed appearance that’s off.
His cheeks are flushed pink, but it doesn’t look like he’s blushing, more like he’s overheating or worked up, and he keeps shifting from foot to foot like he physically can’t stand still.
He also can’t seem to focus on anything, and keeps looking between me and different points in my room, his eyes darting around it in quick bursts.
I’m not surprised he’s so out of sorts, and I figured he’d spiral after I left his room. I just wasn’t sure if he’d do it alone or if he’d take me up on my offer and come over.
And as much as I don’t want to admit it, not even to myself, I like that his first instinct was to come to me to help him instead of going to one of his other friends or being alone.
Of course, now I have to decide how much help I want to be.
I could tell him that I’m the one he’s been texting with and put him out of his misery, but he made it pretty obvious that he doesn’t want to know.
He had multiple opportunities to turn around and see my face while I was having fun with him in his room earlier, and he closed his eyes without any prompting from me when I lifted my mask to kiss him.
He could have seen who I am if he wanted, and he chose not to, so who am I to tell him when he’s made it clear he doesn’t want to know?
A hint of a smile tilts his lips. “Most of the time, people are just being polite when they say stuff like that.”
“I don’t play those games,” I tell him. “If I say something, I mean it. If I ask a question, I want to know the answer. It’s that simple.”
“I wish more people were like that.” He shoves his hands deep in his pockets. “I can’t even count how many times I’ve gotten in trouble because I misinterpreted someone’s intentions and just took them at their word.”
“Like I said, you don’t have to worry about that with me. If I say it, I mean it.”
He stares at me for a few moments, his expression unreadable, then he drops his eyes to the floor.
“I don’t think I’m in the right headspace to work on our project.
” His voice is so soft he’s almost mumbling.
“And I’m not great company right now. I just can’t be alone because I’ll end up doing something stupid. ”
“Like what?”
He lets out a little laugh that’s devoid of humor.
“Like text someone I shouldn’t. Do something reckless that I’ll regret later.
Get wasted and end up with another hangover in the morning.
” He shoots me a wry smile. “And those are only the first three that I thought of. There’s at least a dozen other dumb things I could do if I was left to my own devices tonight. ”
“Well, we don’t want that.” I gesture toward my sitting area, then my bed. “Pick a place to park it and make yourself comfortable.”
He flicks his gaze to my bed and visibly swallows as a little more color floods his cheeks, then he quickly looks away and heads over to the sitting area.
“Did I interrupt anything?” he asks as he perches on the edge of my couch.
I sit on the middle cushion so there’s only about a foot of space between us. “Nothing important.”
“I’m sorry.” He slumps and sort of melts into the couch. “I didn’t have a plan for when I actually got here. I just needed to get out of my room, and the next thing I knew, I was knocking on your door, and here I am.”
“I’m going to make a rule.” I wait for him to look at me again before continuing. “No apologizing for shit that’s not your fault or doesn’t require an apology.”
“Yeah, I’m bad for that. I’m—” He winces.
“You were about to apologize again, weren’t you?”
He nods sheepishly. “Like I said, I’m bad for that.”
“Why do you do it?”
He shrugs. “Habit, mostly. I learned pretty young that apologizing for stuff that isn’t my fault or doesn’t really need an apology is an easy way to avoid confrontation and de-escalate things.”
“It also shifts responsibility onto you,” I point out. “Every time you apologize for something someone else does, you’re taking ownership of their actions instead of letting them deal with the consequences themselves.”
“Yeah, I know.” He absently toys with one of the drawstrings on his hoodie. “But everything always ends up being my fault anyway, so why not avoid the yelling and just nip things in the bud?” He furrows his brow. “Is that how it’s said? Or is it nip it in the butt?”
“It’s bud,” I tell him. “With a D.”
“Does that make more sense than saying nip it in the butt?” He looks so confused it’s kind of adorable.
“I mean, do either of those actually make sense? Like, nip means bite, right? So you’re biting something’s bud?
But then again, saying that you’re biting something’s butt doesn’t make it any better.
That actually opens up a whole other can of worms.” He shakes his head.
“Great, now I’m also wondering what cans of worms people are talking about when they say that. ”
“Nip it in the bud just means to suppress or destroy something early,” I tell him, a smile tipping the corners of my lips at how confused he looks.
“Before it has a chance to take hold and become a problem. Like cutting off the bud of a flower before it can bloom. And the can of worms thing just means that whatever is about to happen is going to be complex and messy, like how fishermen used to get literal cans of worms and they’d be all tangled up and in a big clump when they opened them. ”
“And now I have that visual in my head. Gross.” He wrinkles his nose. “Idioms are weird.”
“They are.”
“How did you know what they mean?” he asks. “I feel like most people just say these things and have no idea where they came from.”
“My dad and I have this thing where we do trivia and try to outdo each other with our knowledge of random facts,” I tell him. “He’s got history down, but I can usually get him when it comes to language since English isn’t his first language.”
“It’s not?” he asks, looking surprised.
“He spoke Italian at home. He learned English at the same time and spoke it at school and with everyone else, so he’s fluent in both, but he doesn’t really have a deep understanding of how English evolved because it was technically his second language.”
“Do you speak Italian?”
I nod.
“Are you fluent?”
“The people I speak to in Italian think so,” I say in Italian.
“I know people say that French is the sexiest language, but it has nothing on Italian.” His cheeks flame bright pink, but he doesn’t look away or drop his gaze like he usually does when he says something that could be interpreted as flirty.
I have no idea if West knows that I’m not straight.
I don’t purposely hide it, and I’ll tell someone if they ask me point-blank, but I don’t advertise it.
And since no one at school really talks about my non-existent sex life, and they either assume I’m straight and just picky as fuck, or I’m ace like Rath.
And no one has ever talked about West not being straight because, for the most part, he’s really good at hiding his attraction to men. From what I’ve seen over the years, he only ever seems to drop his guard around me.
I don’t know if that’s because I’ve been messing with him and doing Schrodinger’s flirting with him since freshman year, or if there’s something about me in particular that disrupts his usual facade, but I don’t hate it.
In fact, I fucking love that I’m the only guy he can’t keep up his charade with, same with knowing I affect him so much he can’t control his reactions when he’s become an expert at pretending when he’s with others.
“So, if I wanted to seduce you, all I’d have to do is read my to-do list in Italian and you’d melt into a puddle at my feet?” I ask teasingly.