Page 36 of Everything's Better With You
“Les—”
“I want to know it’s going to be okay, that I’m going to have the time with you.”
Joe’s eyes blurred for a minute and he blinked them to clear his vision. This was new for him. Or at least, he hadn’t allowed himself to really think about whether someone would want him to stay. He was always on the move—that was the career he’d chosen, the life he’d chosen.
“I’m here, Leslie. You can settle. As for what kind of time we have together, that remains to be seen. Now, let’s go find me a car so I can sneak away occasionally and visit some smokin-hot upperclassman living off campus.” Joe winked at Leslie.
“Smokin’ hot.” Leslie rolled his eyes.
Joe raised his eyebrows. “God, don’t you know?”
Leslie shrugged and shook his head, kicking at something on the floor as his cheeks burned red. “Stop it.”
“It’s true. Now. Unless you plan on hanging out here at Higdon with me and my new buddy, it’s the only way I’ll see you other than at games, and there we have to be all rivalrous, or rivaly, or however you would say that.”
“Your new buddy?”
“Hmmm? Oh yeah—”
“Hey Joe? Are you done with the—Oh! Hey, Coach Payton. Outstanding to see you.”
Apparently Matty was determined to wear as little as possible in the dorm as he was now in a pair of gray sweat shorts and no shirt with a pair of pink Crocs on his feet.
“If I’m interrupting—”
“Not at all. Coach Payton is taking me to the car dealership. I need more than pedestrian transportation.”
“Oh, right,” Matty said, pointing to Joe’s feet. “That’s funny. Dude, you should totally get something with all-wheel drive or front wheel, you know, for the weather.”
“I got this,” Leslie said, gesturing for Joe to go ahead of him. “Thank you…”
Matty offered his hand and gave Les a complicated two-handed shake. “How funny! The football coach and the cheerleading coach going to drive.” He did a little air-steering and then laughed his way out of the apartment. “You know, because they, like, drive the other team…get it?” But he was already gone before Joe could even begin to question what the hell he was talking about.
“He seems friendly.”
Les said friendly like someone describing a slimy fish complete with a nose wrinkle.
“Yeah. He offered me coffee the first morning.”
Les turned on him. “Now wait a minute, I—”
“Relax, Coach. He doesn’t know my morning preference either.”
Joe grinned as he pushed open the front doors, laughing as Leslie muttered under his breath.
“That’s fine, make fun. Keep it up, though, and I won’t invite you over for my mom’s cooking.”
Les’s smile evaporated as if he realized what he’d just said, and that threw Joe even more than just him saying it.
“I’m sorry,” Leslie offered, reaching for Joe’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to bring up a painful topic.”
“It’s okay. It’s been a long time. I can talk about her now.”
Unlike Agnes who doted on her boys, Jenna Judd was content to be a dance mom to a point, but whichever man was in her life at the time usually took precedence. When Joe returned home after college graduation, which she hadn’t attended, he found her living with the latest in a string of con men, and sick. Within three years, she was gone. Ovarian cancer. It took Joe a long time to be able to handle any sort of mom stuff. He’d wanted to move in and take care of her, but she told him to take the first of many traveling jobs, notto stick around where he wasn’t needed. He was with her at the end, but he’d been bitter. She’d chosen her latest boyfriend over him as her caretaker, just as she’d done most of his life, when all he’d wanted to do was take care of her. His best hadn’t been good enough for even his own mother.
When she died, Joe had wanted to call Les with a yearning he didn’t understand at the time. Later he came to realize that it was because Leslie was the most nurturing person he’d ever met, and the most solid and dependable. Joe could call him anytime and Leslie would genuinely be interested in what he had to say.
He’d been the perfectunboyfriend then. What if he could be the perfect boyfriend now?
