“I could have been tweezing my ball hair in here,” Daniel said, not bothering to turn around.
“And I would have helped.” Casey came to stand next to him. “Well, hello, butch king, you got a hot date at the Cracker Barrel later?”
Daniel groaned and covered his face with his hands. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“No, sweetheart.” Casey put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “What’s bad is someone using all the hot water. This is just sad.”
He huffed out a breath and sat on the edge of his bed. “You remember how I said I was talking to that guy? Well, he’s flying me out to spend the week with him, and he wants me to meet his parents. I have no idea what to pack.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a second.” Casey ran back to the open door. “Brody! Get in here, Daniel’s got a man jetting him around the country,” he yelled into the quiet house.
Crossing his arms, Daniel gave Casey an unimpressed look. “It’s not like that.”
“What’s happening?” Brody said, entering the room, his sweats slung low on his hips and his headphones resting on the back of his neck.
“Okay.” Casey clapped. “Tell us everything.”
“There’s not much to tell,” Daniel said with a shrug. “I’ve been talking to this guy, Jensen, since he was here for a conference. Tonight, he asked if I would come spend the week with him and booked me a flight for the morning.”
“Are you sure it’s safe? How well do you know this guy?” Brody asked, a frown on his face.
“Oh my God, shut up and stop being a buzzkill, Brody. This is so exciting,” Casey said.
Daniel bit at his bottom lip and looked down at his abysmal clothing options. “He wants me to meet his parents. What the fuck does one wear to meet someone’s parents?”
“Well, certainly not that,” Casey said, pointing to the bed. “What’s wrong with what you usually wear?”
“I want them to like me.”
That comment earned him a world-class side-eye from Brody before he lumbered to Daniel’s closet. “They’re going to like you. And if they don’t, that’s their problem, and it won’t be because of your clothes.” He turned toward Casey, who had joined him at the closet. “What do you think about this?”
“Definitely.” Casey nodded. “And this one too. What about that green blouse I bought last week? I think it’d fit him.”
“I have a couple button-ups that are too small for me,” Brody commented.
Not for the first time that night, Daniel’s throat got thicker, and he had to work to swallow down the emotions threatening to break through. He was fucking terrified of meeting Jensen’s parents and making a bad impression. That was his burden though. It certainly wasn’t his roommates’ problem. But here they were, abandoning everything they were doing and helpinghim. More surprisingly, Casey hadn’t mentioned him using up all the hot water again, a sin that usually got at least a day of constant passive-aggressive comments out of him.
Daniel couldn’t deny it was nice to have the two of them fret over him. They basically packed his entire suitcase themselves, though he put his foot down at them going through his underwear. It might have been the first time he allowed anyone to do something for him.
But Casey and Brody didn’t think hecouldn’tdo it; they were just offering their assistance without Daniel even asking for it. And they seemed happy doing it, throwing around jokes and compliments like it wasn’t a huge imposition to scrape Daniel and his spiraling fears off the bedroom floor. A small voice in his head said maybe it wasn’t an imposition. Maybe his roommates wanted to do nice things for him. Maybe Daniel just never let them. Maybe Daniel was the reason there was distance between them.
He wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse. On one hand, he wanted to have a close friendship with them. He was so envious of their easy comradery and wished he could sit in the living room and create moments that would become inside jokes or lead to traditions.
Now he realized he could have had all that with them. It was a sour taste in his mouth to chew on the idea that he’d excluded himself. With the two of them fighting over which cologne he should take, Casey wrapped up in one of Daniel’s scarfs and Brody wearing the only hat Daniel owned, he decided he would stop closing them out.
If his fucked-up, unsatisfying life was going to change at all, he needed to start doing things differently. So he was going to spend the rest of his night with his roommates, then he was going to fly across the country to be with the man he could very well fall in love with and happily meet his parents. But he wasdefinitely not going to do that wearing the stale cologne Brody was advocating for.
13
Airports were the worst.
They were simultaneously rigorously organized and horrendously disorganized, and everyone seemed to lose any sense of situational awareness the moment they entered the doors.
Point proven, Jensen thought with distaste as yet another person shoulder checked him. They weren’t even looking at him as they walked past, so he couldn’t scowl at them properly.
In the twenty minutes he’d been camped out at the security exit near the baggage claim, he’d nearly been ran over by a teenager’s suitcase, narrowly missed being coughed on, and had three people actually run into him. He was very, very close to losing his cool. But it was all worth it because, ten minutes ago, Daniel’s plane had landed. Any moment now, he’d have Daniel in his arms, and he would suffer through just about anything to get that.
As he took a deep breath to calm the crawling feeling spreading across his skin, another group of people made their way down the long glass hallway that spit out into the airport’s foyer. A blond head of hair instantly caught his attention, and his heart went into overdrive.
