Page 35 of Fear
Jake took it easy for a little while longer. He settled on the floor with his back to the sofa to flip through the TV Guide, just to see if anything looked like it might be safe for them, before tossing it back onto the coffee table and twisting around to look at Tobias.
“Hey, Tobias . . . do you think you’d be okay here if I went for a run around the block?”
Jake exhaled in relief when Tobias didn’t immediately panic, break down, cry, or have some kind of spontaneous heart attack. The only sign of his rising anxiety was the tension in his arms and the way he turned his head, looking but not looking into Jake’s face. “A ru—whatever you want, Jake.”
“Hey.” Jake rested a hand on Tobias’s sock-covered ankle and squeezed gently. “Yeah, a run. You can ask questions, it’s okay.”
Tobias took a slow shaky breath and carefully put the book on the coffee table. “You’d l-leave?”
“Yeah. Not for long, though. Quick run, maybe around the block a couple times to get out some energy.”
“You’d c-c-come back?”
Jake leaned in and rested his chin on his arm. “Always, Tobias. Always. Will you be okay or should I give it a few more days?”
Tobias nodded, though he still wasn’t looking at him. “You’ll come back. I’ll be f-fine. Th-th-thank you for asking me.”
“No problem, Tobias. I want you to be okay.”
Jake ran harder and faster than usual, and the whole time around the block he felt a tightness constricting his chest that had nothing to do with getting back into exercise. But when he came back, out of breath and covered in a fine sheen of sweat, Tobias was still in the same place. The look of happiness on his face when he saw Jake—quickly eclipsing the panic Jake glimpsed the moment he stepped in—made the idea of leaving all the easier.
Jake drank a glass of water, chatting with Tobias and relishing the feeling of having someone to come home to (and not just someone but Toby), and then left for another run.
He went for six laps in all, and by the last one, when he walked through the door and Tobias’s face showed nothing but happiness, expectation, and relief. Between that and the endorphins, Jake felt pretty damn good too.
IN THE FLOOD OF PAPERWORK, the last time he saw Dad, then drinking like a fish that Roger had to yank out of the water, and the nerve-wracking days after getting Tobias out and realizing just how over his head he was—it had slipped Jake’s mind how much Tobias loved books and how fast he could read them. On Tuesday, when he looked over to the couch where Tobias was opening up another book, he realized that Tobias had definitely read that book before.
He’d seen Tobias reading the textbook earlier that week too, as it was one of the eight books on Jake’s cheap bookshelf. Tobias had slowly worked his way through each one, his hands on the pages careful, hesitant, and eager in a way that he knew Tobias didn’t want him to notice. But it still filled Jake with a cautious hope each time he saw Tobias relaxed with a book in his lap.
He sat down next to Tobias, trying to keep his eyes off the book, but it must not have worked, because Tobias’s face shut down a little and he slid the book off his lap and to the coffee table.
“So, what’s the verdict?” Jake asked. When Tobias just looked blank, he rephrased. “Just as good as your first time through?”
Tobias nodded. “It’s pretty comprehensive, if a little simplistic. There’s a lot of stuff they didn’t . . . I hadn’t known about before.”
“Yeah, like what?”
“Just . . . a lot of the overview about the Civil War and . . . everything. There were some zombie issues after Gettysburg, I read about it in a journal, but I had no idea. There’s a lot that’s new, but I can fit other things into it, you know? I’ve never read just a textbook about history before.”
Jake snorted. “Yeah, well, you get way too much of it in school. But you’ve read that one before, right?”
Tobias nodded again. “Yeah. I’m skimming this time.”
“You think there’s some things you missed?” Jake thought books were okay, but he’d rather watch any car-chase, shoot-’em-up movie on TV. He could try, though. They’d been able to talk about a book for hours when they were kids, but that was when he had wanted to talk to Tobias so badly that he would have done anything to give them something to share. Now, like with so many things, he felt lost.
Tobias shook his head firmly. “I have a pretty good grasp of the information.” He hesitated, glanced up, and then down again. His hands were limp, palms up in his lap. “I don’t know how useful the information is for hunting. I mean, it could be useful if there are ghosts left over from the old battles, or if some of the older massacres were caused by a vampire nest or something like that, but it’s hard to pull modern-day connections without other, more hunting-oriented resources.” He looked up, catching Jake’s confusion, and his shoulders hunched tighter. “I mean, I know you know better, I can do a-anything you need to, I just—”
Jake put his hand over Tobias’s. “Hey, I didn’t ask you how it was for research. I asked to see if you . . . liked it. I mean, not for research, but just . . . damn, how many times have you read this one?”
Tobias’s hand tightened in his and then loosened almost immediately. Jake thought it had been an automatic reaction, but his fingers squeezed Tobias’s in response anyway. He liked touching Tobias. And he still hated those little fearful flinches.
“Just twice,” Tobias whispered.
“Twice!” Jake started back, and Tobias cringed. Jake swore silently at himself and tried to point at the shelf more casually, at X-Men: Days of Future Past. “What about that one?”
“Three times.”
Jake pointed at Huckleberry Finn. “And that one?”
