Page 48 of Stand By Me

Clay took another sip of his tea to give himself a moment.

Fuck. He was a grown man, on his way towards forty. Why was it still so hard to let himself lean on someone?

Then he thought of that moment with Mario at the restaurant, the easy way Mario had taken over, and how good it felt.

"I'll try," Clay finally said, staring at his mug.

There was a stretch of silence, and then…

"Fine, I'll take that." Jake slid down until he was half-lying on the couch in a familiar way Clay had seen hundreds of times in the past. "Let's start now. Tell me everything that's been going on with you."

Oh, boy, that was going to take a while.

On the other hand, Clay had nowhere else to be.

He shifted into a more comfortable position.

"Okay, so…"

* * *

Clay hadn't planned on visiting his mom this week, but he was terrible at saying no to her, so when she texted to invite him over for dinner Thursday night and he hadn't had anything planned, he agreed. Ben should be at work, which was a relief, especially since Mario was going to tell him about the two of them the next day. Angering Ben on the eve of that conversation wouldn't help matters at all, and Clay and Mario already needed all the luck they could get.

Luck didn't seem to be on Clay's side tonight, however, because as soon as Mom let Clay in, he saw Ben there, sitting on the couch in the living room.

"His boss made him cut his hours," she whispered as she tugged his jacket out of his hands as if he couldn't hang it himself. "Don't ask about work."

Great. There went the one topic that could bring up a whiff of a smile out of Ben while in his presence.

"Hi," Clay greeted him, and when Ben responded in kind but didn't even turn towards him, Clay followed his mom to the kitchen and moved to the sink to wash his hands.

"How is he doing? Did he have any problems?"

Clay had asked her the same thing in various texts throughout the week, and thankfully, the answers so far had all been the same—Ben was fine.

"No problems that I'm aware of," Mom said now, reaching for pasta in the cabinet next to the sink. She'd bribed Clay to come over tonight with her macaroni and cheese, one thing she knew he couldn't resist. "But he could be fainting every day and I wouldn't know."

"Hey, hey." Clay pulled her into a hug. She was only tall enough to fit under his chin for a long time now, but it hadn't always been the case. Clay remembered trying to comfort her as best he could after his and Ben's father had left, and she'd never said no to a hug, not even when he was still shorter than her. "They said it happened because he was working too much," he reminded her as he inhaled the familiar scent of her mint shampoo. "And now they're regulating his hours. He's going to be fine."

She sagged into his arms. "I hope you're right. This boy doesn't know how to stop."

"That sounds like someone else I know," he teased, hoping to improve her mood a bit.

"Does it?" She pulled back to raise his eyebrows at him. "Is it you?"

He snorted. "It is not, and you know it. You've increased your shifts again, have you?"

She waved him off, turning back to the stove. "Temporarily. Nadine called in sick, and we're short-staffed as it is."

"Sure." He made his disbelief clear in his voice but let it go for now. She had cut her hours by a lot comparing to how much she'd used to work. The rest was her choice.

He pulled his phone out for a quick check as he took a seat at the table. He and Mario had been texting a lot, anything from random things at work to long discussions about the best shows on television in recent years. It had been nice, even when their opinions differed. Mario was quick and funny, and knew a bunch of trivia Clay had never even heard of.

"Put the damn thing away, Clay," his mom warned. "You know the rule."

No phones at the table unless you need to call 911. She'd come up with that the moment he and Ben had gotten theirs and nothing had changed over the years.

"We're not eating yet," he pointed out but put the phone away at the small shelf beneath the window sill right next to where he was sitting. He'd let Mario know earlier that he was coming here but hadn't received a response yet, so he wanted to keep it close. With any luck, he'd be able to check it from time to time without his mom knowing.

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