Page 36 of Stand By Me

Clay snorted despite the ache in his chest.

"It's not a completely inaccurate description," he admitted, but he was pretty sure it was clear in his voice that Troy's words hit the mark.

"I used to write for a living," Troy reminded him in that dry tone of his. "Anyway, he overreacted, then he crossed a line, and he's been regretting it ever since. A lot. And from what he told me, he apologized a lot, too. If he hadn't used up his grand gesture last year on me, you'd have probably already gotten one, too."

Clay groaned. "No, thank you. Keep him away from any cameras."

Then he glanced towards Ben's bedroom. Only a few minutes ago he'd been sitting here, thinking about how many times he'd tried to make amends to no avail. And here he was now, on the other side, refusing to take an offered hand from a person he considered family.

He sighed. "Okay."

"What?"

Clay cleared his throat and tried one more time, a little louder.

"Okay. You're right. And you know I take no joy in admitting that," he added, trying to break the tension.

Troy snorted. "So you'll talk to him?"

"Yeah. Not today, because I can't deal with it now, but I will." Clay stared down at his hand. "I want to make it work for both of us, and we need to have a conversation for that to happen."

There was silence on the other end of the call for a while—Clay probably surprised Troy with that admission as much as he surprised himself—but then Troy cleared his throat.

"He knows he's at fault here for more than just that one shitty thing he said."

Clay rubbed his nose again. "Yeah. I'm not perfect, either, though, so I guess it's time to move forward in a different way."

Once again there was a bit of silence on Troy's end and then, "That went easier than I thought it would."

"What can I say?" Clay glanced towards Ben's room. "You caught me at the right time."

He sagged further into his seat. Maybe he wasn't able to fix everything, but this thing with Jake? That he could fix.

Soon.

Tonight, he was where he needed to be. Everything else had to wait.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

There were no new texts waiting for Mario in the morning when he woke up. The last message from Clay was from close to midnight, when Ben was still sleeping soundly and Clay planned to nap on the couch.

Mario was about to text him to ask for an update, when he figured he might as well text Ben directly, as long as he did it without letting it slip that he was aware of what had happened last night.

Just woke up and don't feel like getting up. You?

It sounded like hundreds of texts they'd sent each other over the years, so Mario figured it was fine. He hit send.

The reply came right away.

Head hurts like if I had a bad hangover. Which would actually be preferable to the night I had :/

Mario sent a question mark and bit his lower lip, waiting. Predictably, a string of texts came in, one after the other.

I overdid it at work and they went all overprotective, 'you're too weak to drive' etc, so I called mom to pick me up

Who did she send? Ugh, yeah, you can guess

I should've walked home instead but didn't want to make a scene

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