Page 9 of Sean's Sunshine
“I don’t have to pee right now,” he said gently. “I’ll let you know.” Billy had more than drilled into him that he still needed help getting up and down, emphasizing that Randy had zero filters and really did not care one way or another about seeing another person naked. Sean had nodded his head at the time, not understanding, but now that he’d met the kid, he got it. Wieners were, apparently, no big deal for Randy. Sean suppressed a smile at the thought. “What do you want to watch?” he asked.
“You’ve gotallthe streaming services?” Randy asked excitedly. He looked around as though somebody might be listening in at the window of Sean’s small neat duplex. “Even Disney+?”
Sean fought against a smile. “Yeah. Disney+.”
“So we can watchAladdin? Because that’s my favorite!”
Sean’s grumpy old heart twisted in his chest. He’d been expecting Marvel or Star Wars or something—he was on board—but… butAladdin? That was for, well, little kids!
But then, the look on this giant kid’s face was not exactly adult.
“Knock yourself out,” he said. For the first two days after he’d arrived home, he’d been king of the remote control, and he was over it. He’d tried his damnedest, but he couldn’t get Billy to confess to any preferences of his own. It was almost as though that whole “second in command parent” thing had precluded the guy from having anylikesof his own, and, like much of Billy, it drove Sean to distraction.
The guy was crisp, military, and for someone who claimed he was going to be an engineer, damned good at the whole nursing thing when Sean was, admittedly, not the best of patients. But he was not exactly forthcoming about himself in any way.
Or he hadn’t been until the emergency work call had come up—the reason Randy was there in the first place. After that call arrived, they’d begun forging a tentative relationship. It didn’t mean Sean wasn’t over being king of the remote—and it didn’t mean he was comfortable with what Billy was doing that day either—but it did mean Sean felt a little more connected to his temporary roommate.
Sean just wished there’d been another way to break the ice than knowing that body—that glorious Adonis body—and those cynical, hurt eyes were out somewhere getting hard use by a stranger.
Billy had a scene.
SEAN HADbeen watching an action flick in the recliner when Billy had picked up his cell phone the day after the make-you-a-frittata breakfast.
“Yo, Dex! What’s up, man?”
Sean cocked his head—since he’d just done his exercises and couldn’t move much else in his body—to listen. Dex was, he knew, Billy’s boss and Henry’s brother. How that all happened he had no idea… and didn’t really care at this point. He’d thrown it all in a box in his mind, neatly labeled it Jackson’s Porn Mess, and left it the hell alone.
What mattered here was that Billy hadthoughthe wasn’t going to be doing any scenes until Sean was better and Billy had moved out, the better for the two of them to never intersect again, and that had been fine with Sean.
Billy listened for a moment and then grimaced. “Oh no!” he’d muttered. “Hell. That’s no good. Yeah, I can film it, but, you know, two days late. I’ve been eating like a horse.”
He listened to the voice on the line and chuckled. “Civilian life for me means an extra egg white. Pathetic and sad, yes, but still looking forward to it.”
Some more listening, and then Sean felt himself the object of some side-eye. “No, this gig’s okay. No, no—he’s a shitty patient, but you know me. Not exactly Florence Fucking Nightingale, right?”
There was a beat, and then Billy’s mouth twisted with an honest-to-God smile.
“No, Dex, I don’t know if that was her real middle name, because like you I’m not getting my degree in humanities.” Dex said something else, and Billy chuckled, then sobered. “Actually, man—yeah. I need somebody to come watch my patient while I’m working. Please tell me not everybody from the flophouse is busy that day?” He grimaced. “Randy? Okay. Yeah. Well, no, you’re right. Randy’s a good kid. He’s calmed down alot.Okay, good. Yeah, I’ll see you in three days. No problem, man. We’re good.”
He hit End Call, and Sean turned his attention back to the television before Billy could notice he was listening.
Apparently, he fooled nobody.
“You heard?” Billy asked.
Sean swallowed, unsure why this should bother him. He didn’t evenknowthis guy, except for the last two days he’d been a crisp, no-bullshit, pain-in-his-ass drill sergeant who had kept him fed, bathed, and yes, even kept his ass wiped, and Sean was indebted to him. What did this kid owe him? Obviously not anything personal—all Sean’s attempts at conversation had been rebuffed. Sean’s mother had called every day, and Billy had given her a professional-quality update and then kept her visits down to fifteen minutes, thank heavens. Billy knew Sean’s brother’s name, his brother’s wife’s name, and his sisters’ names, but every time Sean tried to call Billy “Guillermo,” Billy looked at him like he was violating his privacy.
The truth was, Billy didn’t owe himsquatin terms of loyalty or conversation or personal information, but still…. Sean was curious. And he felt the tiniest bit possessive. This was his boy, after all, right?
What does that even mean?
Sean shook off the obnoxious little voice. Dammit, he wanted to know, that was all.
“You have to shoot a scene anyway?” he asked.
“Yeah. Turns out their new guy needed a scene, and the guy he was supposed to film with broke his wrist BMXing, and he’s going to be high as a kite for a week or so while they wait for the swelling from the surgery to go down so they can set it. Poor kid—I think the whole reason he’s working this job is to buy more equipment for his bike. He’s pretty well-ranked in the sport, or at least he was, you know, before he broke his wrist.”
Sean sucked air in through his teeth, able to feel sympathy for this unknown kid who’d had a personal setback and a painful injury, but unable to figure out his feelings for Billy, the guy who was oh-so casually going to go have sex with a random stranger in BMX guy’s place.
