Page 2 of Trevor Takes Care

Unfortunate, since Trevor thought the quietly ferocious bear was worth a look or two.

The man’s eyes seemed light from a distance but were probably hazel brown since statistically, most eyes were some shade of brown. He had dark hair with visible grays. In Trevor’s time living with his grandmother, he had seen that hair tied back, then short, and then starting to get long again. Lockdown hair; Trevor was forgiving about that. It was neatly trimmed again now, which Trevor personally preferred since it showed the gray to advantage and looked nice with the man’s short beard. Above the pepper-with-a-hint-of-salt beard were some marks, acne scars, probably, and maybe the odd zit if the man was like Trevor and sometimes got them beneath his face mask. He had to be in his forties, but despite how close in age he must have been to her, he seemed to scare Nancy a little.

But what didn’t scare Nancy a little? The man hadn’t actually done anything intimidating to her that Trevor knew about. The opposite, in fact.

A storm in January had knocked down one of the big trees down near the entrance to the street and the top of the tree had landed on Nancy’s property, blocking the gate in the fence separating her front yard and her backyard. When the weather had cleared for a few hours, Mulberry’s quietest resident had come out with a chainsaw and safety gear and cut that part of the tree into smaller parts. He’d dragged those to the edge of Nancy’s yard, into the area that was probably town property, but possibly attached to the house around the corner and on Peacock.

Then, like a cowboy in one of the awful Westerns Trevor’s grandma sometimes watched because his grandpa had loved them, he’d disappeared back into his house without a word, chainsaw in one hand, safety goggles dangling from the other.

Intimidated or not, Nancy had put a bottle of wine into his mailbox to thank him. Trevor had made up reasons to keep an eye on that mailbox until the storms had returned and driven him back inside. The next time he’d ventured out to look, the bottle had been gone.

Trevor had described the whole event in detail to Sky on the phone as it was happening, with Sky laughing warmly at him for a lot of it.

Trevor had no life, he was aware. It could only partially be blamed on lockdown. But though he had the occasional daydream about getting his hands on that body, he wasn’t obsessing over the man. He was just oddly fond of him. Hot Neighbor noticed things, even if he didn’t say anything, and he’d help, even if he apparently didn’t want to talk about it. He was also very probably the only other adult queer on the street, even if he didn’t want to talk about that either. Or talk in general.

Trevor had peeped nipple piercings through the guy’s shirt. It didn’t mean the guy was gay, but it also didn’tnotmean it.

He and Trevor’s sole interaction thus far had been when the guy had come home once with a face mask stuck in his shirt collar. He had gone to get his mail and noticed Trevor as Trevor had stood up from dealing with the flowerbeds. Trevor had smiled and gestured to remind the guy the mask was there, since he’d probably thought he’d removed it.

Hot Neighbor had frowned, grabbed the face mask and his mail, given Trevor a curt nod, and then, well, Trevor would like to say the man hadn’t scurried back into his house but… he had moved pretty quickly.

However, if Trevor’s grandmother happened to catch him, she’d get a short greeting.

“G.G.!” she’d call,notmaking Trevor jealous, and G.G. would turn and acknowledge her.

G.G., Trevor thought without any real resentment, even though the first several times his grandma had said it, Trevor had heardGigiwith g’s so soft they might as well have been made of clouds, as if the possible grump in the big house had a name more suited to a spoiled poodle than the actual spoiled poodle in the neighborhood.

G.G. was currently dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and blue check flannel, canvas bags in each hand and a long box under one arm. Whatever was in the bags had some weight to it. He hefted them as he turned to make sure the garage door closed, probably barely noticing the strain as it carried through his arms to his chest and made his shirt ride up. Not enough to glimpse any skin, but pulling the fabric taut for one riveting moment.

His eyes came up as he turned. Trevor, startled, didn’t think to glance away in time.

Stop staring, Trevor told himself, dimly aware of the suddenly burning heat of the morning sun on his cheeks and the back of his neck and his bare head. But the fierce gaze hadn’t left him.

Trevor’s mouth went dry, his limbs jittery.

Then his grandma hollered, “Good morning, G.G.!” in a voice that could be heard all the way over on Peacock, and Trevor jerked his gaze down to spend a life-saving moment futzing with the bags—life-saving until he saw what he was wearing. He held in a sigh at the sight of his oldInuyashat-shirt. The details of the design hopefully wouldn’t have been visible at a distance, and the long-sleeved button down he’d worn with it might have hidden most of the images anyway.

“Margaret,” G.G. acknowledged Trevor’s grandmother, his voice husky. From disuse, Trevor imagined. He looked up.

G.G. was already on his way to his front door, his back to Trevor’s nerdy, ogling ass, the heavy canvas bags smacking against his thighs. Not at all like a hermit crab scuttling away… but also exactly like that.

Trevor’s brain might be broken along with his ability to interact with others. He gave himself a mental shake for comparing poor G.G. to both a crab and a poodle, then returned his attention to the others.

Nancy must have brought the last of her groceries out of the car, because she was heading inside as well. Trevor’s grandmother clucked her tongue, muttered something about strengths some women didn’t know they had, then held out the hand not holding tightly to her cane, indicating that she was exhausted.

Trevor hurried over to help her walk along the brick path to the house.

“Nancy seems lonely. Desperate for conversation,” his grandma said thoughtfully. “I wanted to cheer her up.”

She had started the conversation, but Trevor knew better than to say that. His grandma might know it already andwantTrevor to comment. She was getting a bit sly and wicked as time went on. Or possibly she always had been and Trevor hadn’t noticed, or she trusted Trevor with that side of herself now that he was an adult and they were roommates. She’d been a widow for five years, and maybe that and everything else going on in the world had led her to decide to have a little fun with people in the nicest possible way.

Trevor nodded along and only looked back down the street when they reached the porch. G.G.’s front door was closed. The plain front yard offered no clues about the homeowner inside. Neither did the high wooden fence around the backyard. A wide window at the front of the house probably looked into a living room, but peering into windows was a line not to be crossed. Idle thoughts and fantasies born of boredom were one thing, but Trevor wasn’t a creep.

“I might take a nap before lunch,” his grandma remarked, bringing Trevor’s full attention back to her.

“Oh yeah?” Trevor asked as if surprised by this announcement. “That sounds good. I have work to do anyway, so I’ll be fine.”

The pat on his arm and the way she said, “Say hello to Sky for me,” suggested she wasn’t entirely fooled, but they both carried on happily in silent agreement to not discuss her health or the predictable routine of their days.

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