“Things are good,” Sebastian said softly, not really asking.
“Mostly,” he agreed. “There’s bumps, you know. I think there’s going to be more.”
“Like what?”
“Like this.” Callahan gestured around his apartment with a despondent chuckle. “He doesn’t have all this.”
“He doesn’t want it,” Sebastian interjected. “Or I’d have never made the suggestion in the first place.”
“We’re just from different worlds.”
“What’s that stupid bird and the fish story?” Sebastian scrunched his brows in thought.
“I don’t know?”
“I can’t remember it, but it’s appropriate. They can love each other, but where would they live or something,” Sebastian said.
“We could live here,” Callahan remarked.
“That’s not the point, but are you saying you’d let him move in with you?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. It’s all new, and neither of us even wanted this. It just happened. I’m trying to let it keep happening.” Callahan leaned back and covered his eyes with his hands. “He’s not Rhys.”
“Thank God for that.”
“No kidding.”
A silence settled between them, and Callahan listened to the water stream in the shower from the other room.
“Have you talked to Daniella?” he finally asked.
“Briefly. We met with lawyers earlier in the week.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Callahan dropped his hands onto his lap and leveled a sharp look at his best friend.
“You said you were with Jace.”
“I can do more than one thing at a time. I know I don’t want to own this business I inherited, but I have been running it successfully for a year. I’m not incapable.”
“I didn’t mean to imply you were,” Sebastian said.
“Don’t think that just because I’m seeing him that I don’t have time for you.” Callahan swallowed back the parts of that sentence he didn’t dare verbalize, his fears and his worries. He’d known Sebastian most of his life, and he would continue to know Sebastian. Long after Rhys and long after Derrick, and probably long after Jace.
The shower turned off.
“I want this,” Sebastian said. “I’m more sure of it than anything in my life.”
“Okay.”
“Rhys is furious.”
“It’s not his divorce,” Callan said, “not his life.”
“His name,” Sebastian sighed.
“Yours too.”
“Maybe I should change it, since he won’t.”
