Page 51 of Fear
“Where did you put my bottle?”
“The w-whiskey?”
Jake didn’t answer for a second. “Yeah.”
“In the second shelf from the refrigerator, where you u-usually store it.”
The sound of the cupboard opening again and a couple cans of peaches being moved. “Ah. Thanks.”
Tobias waited for the sound of liquid pouring, maybe the freezer opening so Jake could get some ice, but nothing happened for a long second. Then the peach cans were shifted around again, a glass was returned, and Jake left the kitchen.
Tobias smiled, expecting him to come into the living room, to sit and turn on the TV, or open his laptop. But all he did was walk close, put his hand against Tobias’s forehead for a couple seconds, sigh in relief, and then turn away again. At the threshold of the living room, Jake stopped to say over his shoulder, “If you want breakfast, there’s cereal or . . . you know, whatever, help yourself,” before he disappeared down the hall, and his bedroom door clunked shut.
Tobias didn’t realize he was staring after Jake until he had to blink his eyes several times because they felt painful and dry. He rubbed at his face, and then tried to focus on the book in his lap again, but it wasn’t as easy as it had been.
THERE WAS ONLY SO MUCH time that Jake could spend in his room before admitting to his own cowardice. As he lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling, he wondered exactly how long that was.
He thought that the situation would get better when Tobias did, when he could move around on his own and Jake could give him his space again, but somehow it was worse when he could walk into a room and Tobias was there, looking at him, expecting things from him that he was becoming more and more convinced were impossible for Jake Hawthorne to provide.
Certain thoughts gnawed at him. Chief among them was worrying whether Tobias really was getting better, whether the current improvement in his health was just a temporary thing. But right up there, where it maybe should have been from that first fucking night, was sex.
Jake was honest with himself: he thought about sex a lot. He was twenty, hot, and liked pretty much anyone with a willing smile and a set of hips.
Thinking about sex had never before made him feel physically ill.
Jake wasn’t an idiot, even if he often acted like it. He could see the signs. He knew that they meant Tobias was pretty fucking messed up (had been messed up, and one day someone was going to pay for that).
What he didn’t know, and what circled in his head like an abandoned dog, was how much of this was his fault and only getting worse because of what Jake had done.
When Jake had him close, Tobias had seemed as happy as he ever was, as happy as Jake was. But how much of that was an illusion, Tobias interpreting what Jake wanted and trying to give it to him? How could Jake trust himself ever again when he couldn’t read Tobias’s reactions and know they were genuine?
He couldn’t. He couldn’t trust himself with Tobias, because everything he did was a long line of mistakes, stupidities, and probably borderline molestations.
But staying in his room for the rest of his life, counting the bumps in the plaster of the ceiling, wouldn’t undo any of that or make him a better person. He would suck it up, go out there, and do better.
Any minute now.
IT WAS, AT LEAST, STILL Thursday when Jake finally got up again and dragged himself out of his room. He wandered into the kitchen first—thought about a drink, decided against it—and felt his heart sink. There was no evidence that Tobias had made himself breakfast or anything since he’d seen him that morning. Granted, there might not have been. Cereal only took a bowl and a spoon. Tobias could easily have eaten and put everything away again so perfectly Jake couldn’t notice. But, then again, he could also have not eaten. Jake was starting to suspect that if he didn’t watch Tobias, if he didn’t see him eat and drink, it might not have happened at all.
Tobias was still in the living room, reading. He was pale and his wrists were far too thin, but he looked a thousand times better than he had that weekend. Jake took a cup out of the cupboard, and Tobias’s head twitched in his direction before he stopped himself and huddled closer to the book.
“Hey, Toby.” Jake walked into the living room and leaned on the armrest of the couch. Tobias jumped when he spoke, but his face brightened as he looked up at Jake, like he might have smiled if he got any kind of encouragement. “How are you feeling?”
“Much better, Jake.”
“You eat anything?” While I was wallowing in my room?
Tobias looked away. “Y-yes. C-cereal.”
Jake felt something in him relax. Tobias should have probably been eating every couple of hours, given how much energy his body had to be expending to recover, but at least he had eaten. That was progress.
“Probably about dinnertime now, though. What do you think of spaghetti?”
Tobias closed the book quickly and straightened. Jake moved off the arm of the couch when it looked like Tobias would get close enough to touch him. Tobias didn’t need any of that shit.
Briefly, Tobias looked lost, staring at Jake’s face like he had forgotten why he put down his book. Then his eyes dropped to his hands, wrapped around each other. “C-can I help?”
Hanging out with Tobias in the kitchen, close enough to touch, bump into, feel his breath on his skin, sounded wonderful and was one of the last things that Jake wanted. But looking at the hesitant, fragile look in his face, Jake couldn’t tell Tobias no. He didn’t have a good reason to say it, either. After all, Jake’s issues weren’t Tobias’s fault.
