Nate

I saw Brian’s name and my first reaction to the text was excited. I could literally feel my heart pounding inside my chest at the thought of seeing him again. But then that feeling quickly switched to dread and seeped down into my stomach.

It had been amazing seeing him at the Fourth of July barbecue at my neighbor Hank and Jason’s house after so many years. It was like going back in time. Like I was in high school again and nothing bad had ever happened. My parents were still alive and I was still in college working on my bachelor’s.

But the reality of my life now was very different. I was going absolutely nowhere. Or at least that’s the way it felt. I was stuck in a group home for abandoned omegas and children; I had no money and no job. Plus, I was still waiting to hear back about my disability payments. Even though I didn’t want any more handouts, I was broke. I was twenty years old and I literally didn’t have a cent to my name. I wanted to be able to take care of myself, but everywhere I turned I kept running into nothing but bad luck.

My phone vibrated in my hand again.

I sat there on my bed with my thumb hovering over the screen, trying to decide if I should text Brian back. I wanted to see him so badly. I missed his sexy smile and the way he made me feel so safe just by being near. He had been my best friend since I was three years old and he was very protective of me even before he came into his alpha status. That’s just the kind of person he was.

As we grew up we spent almost every waking moment together, until my parents moved us across the country in my sophomore year of high school. After that Brian and I texted and emailed, but even that dwindled after a while.

Especially after the accident.

But, as much as I wanted to see Brian again, leaving my room was really hard. Sometimes I could handle being out in the common area with all the other omegas and kids, but most of the time I just wanted to be alone. And going out into the world was even harder. I knew people stared at the way I walked, and it just felt easier to stay in bed most of the day.

I smiled at Brian’s persistence. He’d always been like that—there to make me smile when I felt like crap. Always looking at me with bright, dazzling eyes that made me feel like I was the only other person he could see. The only one he cared about. But now things were so different. I wasn’t sure there was anyone in the world that could make my life better now. Even him. And I wasn’t sure he’d still look at me the way he used to if he knew what was wrong with me now.

I laughed out loud and opened the text app. Brian knew how to sway me. I just hoped I could put on a happy face for him. I wanted so badly for things to be okay again. I wanted this horrible feeling inside me to go away. But no matter what I did, the feeling always seemed to be there. The knowledge that something was wrong with me. That I was broken and could never be fixed.

I jumped off the top bunk and landed on my good foot, then headed out of the room and down the hall. As I approached the common room I heard little kid music playing, as well as chattering and laughter. I stood in the doorway for a second and watched Daniel leading some kids around with plastic instruments. They were dancing and playing along to the music and following right behind him like he was the pied piper. It was adorable.

My eyes glazed over as I watched them skip around the room. I knew that all those smiling faces were alone in the world, just like me. And my omega instinct was to play with them and comfort them and let them know how much they mattered. But I didn’t have the energy. I barely had enough to smile.

I walked around the perimeter of the room, hoping to avoid having to talk to Daniel. He was a really awesome guy, he worked at The Sunnyside Home and spent lots of time with the kids, but I always felt like I had to put on an act for him. Like being anti-social and not smiling for everyone was wrong. I knew I should come out and hang with the little kids, that it would probably make me feel better.

But there’s a big difference in knowing what would help and actually doing it.

The thing is, it all sounded good until I was surrounded by a bunch of happy people, then came to the crashing realization that I wasn’t one of them. That maybe I was never going to be happy again. Sometimes I’d look around and wonder why these kids were all so happy anyway. This was a group home for the unwanted. Little kids and guys like me who were broke and homeless and had nowhere else to go. What was so happy about that?

“Where are you headed, Nate?” I heard from behind me. I turned and saw Daniel’s warm smile and kind of hated myself for how much it bugged me.

“I’m going over to a friend’s house,” I said, hoping that would be enough, but then forced myself to continue. “My friend Brian.”

“Oh, yeah, Hank and Jason’s neighbor. Okay, have a good time!”

I waved and ducked through the doorway. I knew he was a genuinely nice person, but for some reason it occasionally rubbed me the wrong way. Like right now.

I got on my bike and took off for Brian’s. He didn’t live too far away from The Sunnyside Home, so I got there in less than the time I’d texted him. Even with my crappy bike I could get around okay. Not anything like I used to be able to—back when I had two whole legs—but I’d spent so much of my life on a bike that peddling and swerving in and out of traffic was like second nature to me.

I pulled up onto Brian’s lawn and set my bike down, then walked up the stairs to the door. I hoped Brian wasn’t watching out the window because going up stairs was still hard for me. I wasn’t sure if I was ever gonna get the hang of it.

“Hey!” Brian said, opening the door just as I was about to knock. I almost lost my breath when I saw his eyes. They were so bright and shiny and beautiful, and full of excitement … to see me. I’d dreamed about those eyes so many times over the last year and I thought I was still dreaming when I ran into him at the barbecue last weekend. When he grabbed me and hugged me for a really long time and looked at me like he wanted to start up right where we left off when my parent’s moved away.

I just hoped that look wouldn’t go away when Brian found out about what was wrong with my leg and everything. I hadn’t been the same person since the accident and I was scared of what would happen if he found out.

“Hey,” I said back. “Did you see me coming up the stairs or something?”

“Nah, I was sitting on the couch and I heard the creaky porch. This house is super old.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, letting out a sigh of relief. “It looks awesome, though.”

“It is. Come inside and I’ll show you around.”

I walked in and my eyes wandered around the huge living room. I immediately felt a little bit better being in Brian’s home. I knew he shared it, but his amazing cedar-wood scent was strong and it calmed me as I looked around. There was dark hardwood molding everywhere—around all the doors and windows, as well as where the walls met the ceiling. “Wow that’s an awesome built-in,” I said, gesturing at a huge cupboard and shelf unit that took up half of one wall.

“Yeah, there’s lots of stuff like that all through the house.”

“Craftsman.”

“Yeah,” Brian said. “You know about that stuff?”

“I took an intro to architecture class my first semester.”

“Cool. Is that what you’re studying?” he asked.

“Nah, I haven’t gone back. I had to leave my second semester, and there’s no money for college now.”

“Oh.” I looked up at Brian and saw a flash of sadness, but I didn’t want him to feel sorry for me. The last thing I wanted was pity, especially from him. Not that I knew exactly what I wanted, though. I’d always felt that maybe he had the same thoughts about me as I’d had about him. But nothing ever happened between us. We were just friends, that’s all.

But as I glanced away I wondered if he knew how close I came to kissing him the night before I left.

“It’s just as well,” I said with a laugh. “I don’t think college is for me.”

“Really?” Brian asked. The conversation was starting to make me uncomfortable, so I decided my only recourse was to distract him. “Yeah, I don’t know. What about the rest of the house? I really want to see the detailing.” He guided me from the living room into the dining room through a doorway with huge sliding pocket doors. “Wow, these are awesome,” I said, sliding the doors back and forth a few times. “Original wood.”

“Yeah, the place is in great shape.”

We made our way into a kitchen with one whole wall of french windows and a double door. There was a nook with a well-worn wooden table that had a corner booth surrounding it. The cupboards and trim and everything were all done in the same dark hardwood that was in the rest of the house. “So your neighbor owns both of these houses?”

“Yeah, they were in his family. He inherited them.”

“Must be nice,” I said, then cringed a little at my tone. I didn’t mean to sound bitter about my own family situation, but it was hard. My parents had only been dead a year. Some people would probably say that was plenty of time to move on, but it all still seemed like yesterday. When I had a real life instead of one where I was living off the government … and was completely alone.

“So,” Brian said after a moment. He could obviously tell it was a sore subject. “What happened to your parent’s house? They moved back to Portville, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I decided to transfer to Portville State after my first semester and my parents said they’d move back here. They missed Portville and my dad’s company said he could work out of this office. So they bought a house and I was gonna live there with them for my second semester. But then when the accident happened everything had to be sold to pay off bills.”

“Everything?” he asked.

“Yeah, the cars, the house, the TVs … everything.”

“Even your BMC?”

“Yeah, that bike was a few years old, but it was still worth, like, two grand. And since my dad bought it, technically it was his property. I hoped maybe there would be something left after everything was paid off, but no such luck.”

“Damn, Nate. I’m sorry. That really sucks.”

“That’s okay,” I said, forcing myself to give him a smile. “The people at The Sunnyside Home gave me one. It’s nothing fancy, but it works.”

When I looked into Brian’s eyes again my heart sank. I didn’t think it was going to be this hard to be happy around him, especially after how amazing it was to see him at the barbecue. But my happiness seemed to be so fleeting these days. It would only last for seconds before I crashed back down into sadness again.

All I wanted was to be able to relax and smile and let everything go. I wanted to be happy, I really did, but it felt so hard. Like it was actual work to feel good now, instead of something that just happened. It sucked because it was painful forcing myself to smile, but it was also painful seeing the look in Brian’s eyes when I didn’t put on an act. I knew there was no way he could handle the real me if I showed it to him, so I kept up with the charade.

“Hey, you can stay here anytime you want. The couch is really comfortable. Or …” Brian stopped short and I glanced at him.

“Or what?”

“Or you could crash with me,” Brian said with a twinkle in his eyes. “I mean, I know we’re not kids anymore, but we used to crash in each other’s beds all the time.”

“Yeah, we did,” I said, feeling the beginnings of a genuine smile curl up on the sides of my mouth. I held Brian’s stare for a long moment and I could feel a tiny sliver of hope bubbling up inside me. Hope that this was a sign—that things would start to get better for me with Brian around. But just as the feeling started to grow it was immediately dashed by the realization that Brian didn’t know the whole truth about me … and I was too scared to tell him.

“Let me show you my room,” Brian said, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward a doorway. “It’s upstairs.”

I froze right where I was standing. I didn’t want to say no to him, but I also didn’t want Brian to see me go up a long flight of stairs. And even worse, struggle to come back down. The limp was one thing, but the fact that I could never seem to get my bad leg to bend in the right direction when I was coming down the stairs was humiliating.

Just then one of Brian’s roommates came into the kitchen. “Hey, Brian. Shane and I were gonna head over to Collins Park. You wanna go?”

“Hey, Alex. You remember Nate from Hank’s barbecue?” Brian said to his roommate.

“Yeah, hey, Nate,” he said, giving me a little wave.

“Hey.”

“Shane is actually home for once?” Brian asked, then looked back at me. “He’s one of our other roommates. He’s hardly ever here. He says he’s off studying somewhere, but I’m not so sure about that.” Then he wagged his eyebrows a few times and Alex laughed.

“No doubt. I’d like to think he’s getting a little somethin’ somthin,’ but, I don’t know. The kid is pretty nerdy.”

“Hey,” Brian said with a laugh. “Nerds need love too.”

“Ha ha ha. You guys are hilarious.” I turned to see another guy enter the kitchen and figured it had to be Shane. I was pretty sure he was an omega by his size and demeanor, and Alex seemed about as alpha as you could get. Shane grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge, then turned back, looking at both Brian and me. “You all ready to swim? It’s so nice outside today.”

“Oh,” I said in a panic. “I didn’t bring a suit.” I was hoping that would get me out of having to take my clothes off in front of anyone, but especially in front of Brian.

“That’s cool,” Brian said. “It’s that clothing optional beach I was telling you about. You can wear whatever you want.”

“Yeah, preferably nothing,” Alex said with a grin as he glanced at his friends, but then got serious when he looked back at me. “I mean, if you want. It’s totally optional, man. No pressure. But we did finally crack this tough nut.” Alex gestured at Shane with a nod. “It took him weeks to get up the balls to … show us his—”

“Hey, you don’t need to tell him all my embarrassing secrets. I’m Shane, by the way,” he said, holding his hand out to me. “Don’t let Alex bug you. He thinks he’s funny, but I’m pretty sure he’s the only one that feels that way.”

“Nice to meet you. I don’t know, though,” I said, searching my mind for an excuse to not have to go to a place where I would be expected to take my shoes off. “I’m not really a fan of sand.”

“Really?” Brian asked. He looked like he was about to say something else but stopped, and I knew why. He’d been there every summer of my childhood when either his parents or mine took us to the beach. We would play in the sand and in the cold pacific ocean all day long until we got called in for dinner.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess it bugs me now.”

“Well, that’s cool,” Shane said. “I’ve got a big blanket we can all sit on. And Holden said he’ll stop by around noon with The Treat Boat. That’s his ice cream boat that he takes up and down the river. He always gives us freebies, we just have to wade out to meet him.”

“Sounds fun … but I don’t know—”

“Come on, Nate,” Brian said with a smile. “It’ll be fun.”

My heart melted a little in a way that only happened when Brian looked at me. When he smiled at me and his whole face lit up. I was so scared of him finding out about my leg, but, when I really thought about it, I was more scared of being alone again. It had been a whole year for me of getting passed around from one place to another and never feeling settled, and I was tired of it.

Neither of my parents had any brothers or sisters, and my grandparents were all dead, so I had no family to turn to when my parent’s house was sold and their bank accounts were emptied.

There was really no place for me to go and no one to be with except for the people at The Sunnyside Home. I was glad to have a place to stay, and Daniel was nice, but I didn’t feel anything special there. Not the way I felt when I was with Brian. When I was with him I felt like I was finally back home again. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go to the beach with you.”