I knew I was being pushy, and I knew it was doubly unfair since I’d been so close-mouthed about myself earlier. But something about the haunted look in Gus’s eyes prodded me on. He shook his head again, this time shooting me a look that was almost, but not quite, a glare.
I rolled my eyes. “Kid, I can’t help you if I don’t know what the problem is.”
No question about whether it was a glare now. His hand flew across the page. “I’m not a kid. You can stop calling me that.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Oh. And how old are you?” He shot me a dark look. “Can’t remember, can you?”
“I don’t feel like a kid,” Gus wrote defiantly. I didn’t know until that moment that it was possible to write defiantly, but it was. “I think I’m in my twenties. That’s what I looked like, in the mirror.”
“You look like you’ve been keelhauled,” I countered. Did he look like he was in his twenties? Maybe I’d become such a recluse I couldn’t tell anymore. “Anyway, unless you’re over thirty, you’re still a kid to me.”
That was pushing it a bit, considering I’d only turned thirty this year. But I was trying to prove a point.
Gus looked like he was considering sticking his tongue out at me, but he contented himself with writing, “Fine, Dad.”
As soon as the words were out of his pen, his cheeks went pink. I wondered what he was thinking about, and then wondered why I cared so much, and then wondered if I’d spent so much time wondering that I’d let the silence between us stretch out for too long, and had to resist the urge to bang my head against the table in frustration.
Just when I was about to excuse myself so I could go jump off the cliff at the edge of my property, Gus picked up his pen again.
“I kept having bad dreams. That’s what I was going to say. People chasing me. Trying to hurt me. I don’t remember the details, but they were very unpleasant.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “I’m sorry.”
Gus kept writing, his hand moving furiously across the page. “It’s okay. I’ll figure it out, and I’ll be out of your hair soon. I promise.” He shot me a quick, formal smile, and wrote, “Thanks for dinner,” before pushing his chair back and standing up.
I didn’t know if he was in a rush to get away from me in particular or was just tired of being upright, but either way, as soon as he was on his feet, he wobbled and looked like he was about to fall.
I jumped up and steadied him, my hands moving to his shoulder and hip without thought.
“Careful.” It came out rougher than I meant it to.
Gus’s cheeks went pink again, and I pulled my hands back.
Could he smell it on me, how attracted to him I was? I wanted to look away but worried that would just make it more obvious. The look Gus gave me was unreadable, but I made myself hold his eyes until he stepped back, nodded awkwardly, and left.
I thought about calling out, to apologize or ask where he was going. But I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for, other than just being creepy, which would probably just make things weirder. And it wasn’t like he was going to leave. He’d explicitly said he didn’t want to.
Stop obsessing, I told myself sternly.
This was a weird situation, sure, but it wasn’t going to last. One, two more days tops, and Gus would be gone, and my life would go back to the quiet, sad existence it always had been. The existence I deserved.
But as I lay in bed that night, my mind couldn’t help drifting back to Gus. Maybe it was knowing that he was halfway down the hall, but I couldn’t stop picturing him. Wondering if he was back in bed, sleeping. Would he still be wearing those clothes, or might he have taken them off, finally?
Exactly the kind of creepy thought I was trying not to have, but it had been so damn long since I’d interacted with anyone I might have been interested in. There was a reason I hired women and old men for all the jobs I needed done. And having a flesh-and-blood beautiful man in the house was more intoxicating than all the porn I’d consumed in the last seven years put together.