“Is there anything I can do?” I ask.
“You might want to come home and sort through what’s salvageable, though I’m not sure how much there will be. The sprinkler system we use has a chemical fire retardant in it, which is why I get so flustered about it going off,” he hums. “You’re also going to need to find a place to set yourself up while we get this mess taken care of. I can get you some cash tonight if you need a hotel until the insurance picks this up.”
“Oh, no way, man,” I tell him. “I imagine the set back will hurt enough. I’m not taking your money. I’ll figure something out. Be there in a few, I’m at Portside.”
“I’m so sorry,” he apologizes again. “The fire marshal says, at first glance, it looks electrical.”
“No worries. Shit happens, right?” I say calmly. Truthfully, I’m not materialistic, so my possessions are the least of my worries. I’m just glad my girls weren’t there when it happened. Their safety means more to me than anything money can buy.
“What’s going on?” Gordy asks, genuine concern etched into his expression.
“Oh, fire at the store I guess. Just my luck, right? I gotta go home and grab what I can. Looks like I’ll be living out of the houseboat for a bit,” I sigh. “That’ll be fun. Heater’s been busted in that thing for a while now.”
Without missing a beat, Gordy stuns me for a second time tonight by asking, “I’ve got a spare bedroom. Why don’t you just stay at my place?”
Chapter Five
The question leaked out before I even had a chance to think better of it. Now, I’m kicking myself in the ass for asking Gannett if he wanted to stay at my place. Fuck. I haven’t cohabitated with anyone other than my son in well over a decade, and even when Ididlive with someone, Trista was hardly ever home. Whether that was because she was keeping someone else’s bed warm, or if she was actually going on overnight trips with friends is still up for debate.
A debate I give zero fucks about, frankly. I never gave a shit about her cheating, not after the first few times. Not after I was sure she never loved me at all. She only loved the idea of the life she thought I could provide for her. If anything, the cheating was a godsend. The pressure was off me to perform, if she was seeking sex with other men.
Then, fourteen years ago, she left altogether, thank fuck.
Anyway, having Gannett here, in the next room over, and with the paper thin walls of this apartment? Yeah, I definitely didn’t think that through. All I knew was that he needed a place to stay, and I wasn’tabout to let him go stay on that freezing cold houseboat of his on the dead-of-winter December ocean. Granted, I think it’s been a while since I’ve had any of my night terrors—but then again, I haven’t let anyone foreign in my safe place either.
Once Trista and I split, I made the two-bedroom apartment above the pub—which used to be a place where folks who were too drunk to go home could sleep it off for the night—my home. I haven’t trusted anyone else to come up here. Well, besides Taryn, obviously. He was used to the one-off time I’d wake up yelling, drenched in sweat, ready for a fight. He knew to throw some noise cancelling headphones on and leave me to fight my demons on my own—lest he get unintentionally injured trying to wake me up.
“Yeah, dude,” Gannett sighs, stepping out of Taryn’s former bedroom, “First thing I need to do tomorrow is buy some new clothes. These pants”—he plucks at the material of my gray sleep pants I let him borrow, since all his clothes had been in a heap on the floor when the sprinklers went off—“are way too fuckin’ tight. The boys? They’re choking. Are you sure these are yours? Your thighs look so much meatier when you’re in your jeans. Fuckin’ things are oak trunks.”
My brows zip together. “You’ve checked out my thighs?”
He scoffs. “Don’t have to, man. Those fuckin’ things are all up in my face!”
“They’re really not,” I tell him. Pretty sure I would know if his face were in my thighs. Pretty sure I don’t need that mental imagery either. Not if I plan on making it out of this roommate situation unscathed.
Fuck, this is going to be such an epic test of my self-control.
“How the fuck not?! Look at these gams!” he exclaims, openly reaching for one of my legs with grabby hands, now that there’s no bar separating our bodies. I swiftly and forcefully swat his hand away,and he looks affronted. He has no idea the move is just as much for his protection as my own.
“Rule number one of staying here? No touching.Do notfuckin’ touch me.”
“Ooo-kay,” he drawls, backing off with his hands raised defensively. “Didn’t realize you had leprosy…”
“I don’t have leprosy,” I huff. “I have boundary issues, according to Brooks.”
“Alright, well that’s a slap to the face. I’ve been coming to your bar for how many years now? With as many hours as I’ve spent there yakking your ear off, I’m pretty sure you know my entire life. Yet you don’t even give me a sliver of your backstory, and you talk to my brother-in-law about yourboundary issues?”
I sigh, scrubbing a hand down my face. “I shouldn’t have even opened my damn mouth,” I mutter to myself, sidestepping him to get into the kitchen. Whiney fuck is getting his panties in a knot over me not engaging in enough heart-to-hearts at the pub. I didn’t even mean to give him as much as I did tonight. It just slipped out.
Quite frankly, my backstory is only doled out on a need-to-know basis. The only one, so far, that’s needed to know is Evan, and even he got the tiniest of little glimpses. That’s right before I fuckin’ spiraled out and felt like I was being held underwater with no air. It was like living out one of my night terrors in the middle of the day. Fucked me up big. So big, I still can’t even bring myself to try to properly apologize to Evan by having a calm, rational man-to-man with him. Outside of inevitably seeing him at my job, I’ve made it a point to avoid him as much as possible whenever he’s back in town.
I know what Brooks had told me, back when I was still getting therapy from him. I know I need to confront Evan in order to help alleviate the weight of all the shame and guilt I felt about what Idid. But that’s what I tried to do the night of the cookout, and look where that got me? An overnight trip to a psych unit and a shit-ton of crippling fear which has made it impossible to re-establish therapy with anyone else, since continuing treatment with Brooks would now be a conflict of interest, since he married Evan.
“You want anything to eat? I’m going to make myself supper,” I tell Gannett, trying to shake myself out of my self-loathing spiral.
“You eat supperafteryour shifts? Why don’t you ever eat while you’re down at the bar?”
“A man can only survive so long on pub fare,” I sigh. “You want anything or not?”
