Page 22 of Good Friends
Porter closed his eyes and willed back the prickle of tears.
Dammit, why does life have to be so complicated?
If it wasn’t, maybe Dane would still be there.
Fuck.
He drew in a long, deep breath and held it for a moment before slowly letting it out.
He couldn’t live his life waiting for things to happen that might never come to pass.
He’d hoped his parents and family would accept him—nope.
He’d hoped forDane—and that brought a permanent pain he’d never be able to excise from his soul.
He’d hoped and waited for Gavin—look where that got him?
Opening his eyes, he stared at the phone again. Then he clicked the link in the e-mail, scrolled through the contract to the signature box, and used his finger to scribble some semblance of his name before hittingsend.
After shutting off his truck, he unlocked the building and headed inside to start his day. He’d have to call Tom, the GM, if he didn’t come in this morning, so he could talk to him about this. Put in his notice.
Yesterday, Porter had skimmed through rental listings for the Sarasota area. He’d be paying a little more a month, at least, than he was now for a place of the same size. But if he got a storage unit and shoved his shit in there, he could snag himself a studio apartment on the cheap to get him by for a year and save even more money that way.
Between his boost in pay and saving all that money a month, maybe he could save up a down payment for a house by this time next year. Finally put down roots of his own.
It’s like I jinxed myself hoping it could be with Gav.
By lunchtime he’d had the talk with Tom, who understood his rationale and harbored no hard feelings. Instead of staying there to eat, Porter headed home, which was only fifteen minutes away.
He needed to be alone.
I can’t undo this.
He hated moving, and it would suck even harder doing it by himself.
Not alone-alone, because he had friends he could call for the heavy-lifting part of it.
But not moving withGavin?
Thatsucked.
Especially after a year of looking forward to doing just that. Even through Gavin’s silence, Porter had convinced himself he’d be moving in with Gavin and they’d be permanent, and life would be…well, perfect.
Expectations had broken his heart before. At least Gavin was alive and well, even if Porter had no fucking clue what went wrong between them.
Staying here in Lakeland would be masochistic in a bad way. There were so many memories in this house of him and Gavin together that every time he turned around he saw him in his mind.
The IKEA trips.
Playing with him in the spare room, or in bed.
Chilling out together sprawled across the couch in the living room.
Eating at the table together.
Cooking in the kitchen together.
So much of his life here in Lakeland was filled with Gavin. Most of it was.
