1 Chapter 1
A bouquet of flowers. Could there be anything more trite and useless? Tom wondered how many resources had been used to grow the massive bouquet currently crowding him against the elevator wall. Enough to feed a hungry family, no doubt. It was all so stupid and wasteful.
The flower bearer exited on the third floor, which meant Tom got to travel the remaining two levels without greenery tickling his shoulder. Of course, Flower Guy was probably in a happy relationship, judging by his grin. Women loved flowers and poetry and all that useless gesture crap.
Turned out, guys did too. And to think, when he first came out, he figured he could stop worrying about all the romance clichés.
But Tom wasn’t bitter about it. Not at all. Breakups happened, and the fact that his ex had called him emotionally constipated, and the ex before had called him repressed, well, those were just men who didn’t get him.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Shelby, his neighbor across the hall, was accepting her own armful of roses, along with a teddy bear. Because every grown woman needed a teddy bear. Did they have to start kissing so enthusiastically in the hall?
Okay, maybe he was just slightly bitter. Valentine’s Day meant the entire world was conspiring to remind him that he was both single and not able to provide the kind of romance everyone else was apparently looking for.
He’d tried pushing himself to be someone he wasn’t in order to make himself a more appealing prospect, but he might as well have tried to change his eye color or the shape of his nose. And what was this clichéd romance business other than a meaningless act, anyway? He’d rather be alone. Just without all the reminders of happy coupledom and his own shortcomings all around him.
His apartment was an oasis free of Hallmark sentiments, and he reached it none too soon. If he was forced to see another person fawning over a gift which required no thought or real effort, he was going to start making comments which were bound to make him unpopular with his neighbors. These guys had partners, or at least dates, and they weren’t even trying. And sure, changing the oil in his boyfriend’s car wasn’t the stuff romance movies were made about, but it meant he cared enough to keep track of when the task needed doing, and take care of a chore he knew his man didn’t like. Didn’t that count for something?
Damn it, there he went with the bitterness again. It’d been three weeks since the breakup, which was seven days over his allotted wallowing period and high time to start moving on. He was going to make himself dinner, then crash on the couch and find a movie to watch that contained no romance whatsoever.
He was well into the first stage of this plan when his phone rang. Will, the screen read. His oldest friend was a call worth taking, so he washed the raw chicken off his hands and picked up.
“Hey.”
“Hey, did I catch you at a bad time?” asked Will.
“Nah, it’s fine. Just making dinner, but there’s no rush.” Will had a three-month-old daughter, so he made time to talk when he could, which wasn’t often recently. Tom’s dinner could wait.
“We need to catch up.”
They’d been friends since preschool, which made it easy for Tom to tell that catching up wasn’t the point of the call. Besides, he was pretty sure Will would’ve gotten his dad and stepmom to watch the baby so he could take his wife out to dinner. Romantic gestures came more naturally to Will.
“Yeah, but why are you calling?”
Will chuckled. “Can’t pull one over on you, can I?”
“Nope. What’s up?”
“I need to ask a favor.”
“If you locked your keys in your car again, there are closer people you can call.” That was why Tom had to move. There was only so much business for locksmiths, and his small hometown already had the bases covered.
He could picture Will’s eyes rolling. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“Not planning to, no. What’s the favor?”
“You remember Alex?”
Tom thought for a moment. “The hot soccer player from high school?” That guy had made changing for P.E. an exercise in not staring, as much as he might want to. Which, in retrospect, probably should’ve clued him in to his gayness.
Will, meanwhile, just sounded puzzled. “Why would I care about…never mind. I mean my stepbrother.”
Oh, thatAlex. “I remember him spending most of your dad’s wedding barbeque hiding behind a camera.” That had been two years earlier and was Tom’s only interaction, if you could call it one, with the guy
“Yeah. He has anxiety issues, Charlene says. Then she gets offended if anyone calls her son names, which I get. He’s not a bad guy, but pretty odd. Anyway, here’s the thing: he needs a place to stay. His building has a mold problem, and the owner doesn’t want to deal with it, but agreed to let Alex out of his lease early.”
It wasn’t very far to their hometown. “And he’s not going to stay with your dad and Charlene because?”
“Because he doesn’t drive and a twenty-mile commute makes for a long walk.”
“I guess it would.”
“Look, he’s trying to find a new place, but the anxiety stuff…I don’t get the particulars, but it makes things hard for him sometimes.”
“Is it going to make mylife difficult?” asked Tom.
