was gone and it was too late, I wanted to wrap him up in my arms and tell him that everything was going to be okay.
“Boo!”
“Shit!” I jumped at the voice standing behind my couch as adrenaline flooded my body and twisted around to see the evil smile on Foster’s face. “Fuck you, man. Fuck you.”
I don’t think he heard me over the sound of his howling laughter.
“Oh, you should have seen your face,” he said as he stepped over the back of the couch and collapsed on the cushion next to me.
I glared at him as my body slowly returned to normal and slapped his leg in retaliation. “You almost gave me a heart attack, asshole.”
“Worth it,” he said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I thought you heard me come in, but when you didn’t say anything, I knew I had to do it. So, what’s up with you?”
“That’s why you came over? To scare the shit out of me and then ask what’s up?”
Foster shrugged. “I was bored. Thought I’d pop on over and bug you. I know you’d miss me if I didn’t,” he said, fluttering his eyelashes at me.
I looked at him, my thoughts immediately returning to Miller. For all his teasing, Foster was very practical, never let his anger cloud his judgment, and had a high degree of emotional intelligence. I trusted him explicitly and valued his advice. If he could come to the same conclusions I did, I’d know I was on the right track. And if I were reaching, he wouldn’t be shy in letting me know I was off the mark.
“Can I run something by you?”
Foster, sensing the seriousness of my question, sobered up and turned to give me his full attention. “Shoot.”
I sighed, lifting my hand and running it through my hair. “It’s about Miller—”
“Who?”
Right. Foster hadn’t stuck around to meet him because I’d been razzing him about his crush and his new pants.
“He’s Lee’s friend who joined our game Saturday night,” I explained. “I think you passed them going down the stairs after you left my apartment.”
“Maybe?” Foster squinted as he tried to remember. “If he was the one hiding behind Lee, I didn’t get a good look at him. Dark hair?”
“That would be Miller,” I confirmed.
“Was he an asshole or something?” Foster asked, getting ahead of me. “Just because he’s Lee’s friend doesn’t mean you have to allow him back.”
“It’s not that,” I said before Foster could continue. “He was great, really connected well with the group. It’s what happened after the game was over that’s bothering me.” I spent the next few minutes walking Foster through everything that had happened between the end of the game and me waiting in my bedroom while Lee and Miller made their exit.
Foster was already nodding as I finished the story. “Are you thinking it was a consent violation? Red probably just forgot about Miller in the moment since this has always been a safe space for him.”
I grimaced, seeing it both ways. “I already thought of that, and I’m on the fence. On the one hand, yes, they exposed a non-consenting bystander to their kink, but on the other, all Red did was call Nate Daddy a couple of times. It’s not like Red talked back and Nate put him in the corner to think about what he’d done.”
“Well, if it’s not the possible consent violation, then what is bothering you?” he asked, getting to the heart of the issue. “I mean, making you leave the living room before he’d come out of the bathroom is unusual, but maybe he was embarrassed by his knee-jerk reaction. A lot of vanilla people get uncomfortable when first exposed to someone’s kink.”
“He wasn’t embarrassed,” I said, picturing Miller’s expression.
“Then what was he?” Foster challenged.
I looked away, going through the scene again just to be sure before I confided in him.
“He was scared.” I turned back to Foster and repeated my statement. “He was terrified, Foster.”
He stared at me as he processed what I’d said. I stared back, wondering if his brain would tell him the same thing mine had told me. A small part of me hoped it would so I would know I wasn't imagining things, but the part of me that already cared about Miller hoped I was wrong.
Foster finally smiled, but it was a sad one. “Daddy Carson to the rescue?”
Fuck. And there it was.
“You think he’s a little,” he said, nothing in his voice saying he doubted me.