Chapter Two

 

 

“I LIKE the goatee, pappi, but you look skinny. You not eating enough!”

Joel rolled his eyes at his sister—all big boobs, long stomach, and inviting hips. “You should talk, mammi, what? You stuff your bra with apples to keep that tummy so small?”

Melody Martinez laughed and ruffled her little brother’s hair. It was late Sunday night, their mother was in bed, and they had lingered so long over dessert to catch up that they had done the dessert dishes and then just broken out the pie and sat, each of them with a fork, and finished it off.

“No, I been working out, mammi,” Joel said now through a forkful of pie. “That’s where I met Ian.”

“Your psycho roommate?” Melody took her own. Pecan, it was their favorite. Since neither of them planned to stay for actual Thanksgiving, their mother had chosen to go all out for the four days before they both boarded planes and left Denver, Joel for Sacramento and Melody for Los Angeles.

“He’s not psycho, Mel,” Joel said seriously. “He’s just focused.”

“Yeah, psychos is focused you know! He probably stalking you at that gym!”

Joel shook his head, remembering the first time he’d seen Ian Cooper. “The only thing Ian stalks at the gym is bodily injury!”

Mel laughed, but Joel couldn’t.

Ian had been so helpless under that barbell.

 

Joel’s co-worker had introduced Joel to the family gym, and Joel was grateful. There was an eclectic mix of people there—hardcore weight-lifters with tattoos and motorcycles, toned business women working the machines, spry elderly people enjoying the yoga and arthritis classes, and even children running around the ball pit in the day-care. Joel, who had grown up in a Hispanic neighborhood in South Denver, had been reassured by the diversity. It felt like a real community, and not just a place to be stalked by gym bunnies.

Those girls had never really appealed to Joel anyway.

And the bulletin board added to the community, everything from free puppies to offers to carpool and, Joel hoped, roommates.

When he’d first come to the city, he’d ended up in one of those prairie-dog apartment warrens, the kind where every apartment was the shape of a cracker tin and you could tell what your neighbor was doing upstairs whether you liked it or not. Joel might have toughed it out in one of those until he could afford to rent or buy a house, but he wanted to ride his bike to work. Since he had to move anyway, he was looking for something with… well, character. He’d driven around the city in his little hybrid, and he’d seen the neighborhoods with the Victorian-era houses. Some were high-toned, some were run-down, and some were in between, but they had seemed… eclectic. Interesting. They had character, and Joel was in a strange city on his second job. His first job had been in a cubicle; he’d made sure this one was in a big, open-air office with people who knew what the others looked like. He wanted character.

Then the first chuffing sound penetrated Joel’s involvement with the bulletin board. He swung around to see a lanky man, shirtless, being crushed under a barbell that looked seriously overloaded for such a slender frame.

Joel dropped his duffel bag and hurried over to rescue the poor bastard, and as he pulled the barbell up and rested it in the cradle, he was treated to an upside-down version of that sweet, goofy grin that would dominate the next five months of his life.

“Thanks, mate. That ’bout buggered me.” The man was in his mid-twenties, like Joel, and his curly blonde hair was a spiky, sweaty, halo all over his long skull. Joel would learn that, with the exception of the sweat, it always looked like that.

“Well, you need to make sure you always have a spotter,” Joel told him seriously.

“Yeah, mate, if I must. Here, you want the job?”

Joel was going to say no—he’d actually been on the way out of the gym—but that smile appeared, and it was so winsome and so trusting that Joel found himself standing over Ian and helping him with what appeared to be a ridiculous amount of weight.

After a couple of sets, he had to admit that the weight wasn’t ridiculous. The strength in that long, rangy frame was the outstanding thing.

“Thanks, mate,” Ian panted when he was done. He sat up and rubbed his face with a towel. “I was lucky you came along. What were you looking at over there?” He jerked his head in the direction of the bulletin board, and Joel looked over and grimaced.

“A roommate,” he sighed. “I want to live someplace interesting, but I don’t have enough money for interesting. Just cheap.”

The young man blinked, and his head went through a series of bird-like movements that Joel had come to associate with Ian thinking on the fly.

“A roommate, you say?”

“Yeah, a roommate. Why? You know someone who lives in a cool house downtown who wouldn’t mind a broke computer programmer in their spare room?”

That grin again—except without the goofiness, it was full-on blinding. “Yeah, mate, me!” The young man had extended a long-fingered, bony-knuckled hand. “I’m Ian Cooper, and I’ve got a cool top-floor and a spare bedroom.”

 

“So just like that, he offers you a room?” Mel was very carefully wiping the bottom of the pie tin with a manicured finger.

Joel shrugged and grinned at his big sister. Mel was a buyer for a department store in L.A. On most days, she was one hundred percent Vogue, one hundred percent of the time. But during holidays, for family, she wore ratty sweats and piled her hair on the top of her head and ate whatever she wanted. In return, Joel wore his accent in his voice like a badge of honor, and together, they could be themselves.

“I think he just doesn’t like living alone,” he told her honestly. Ian certainly didn’t need the money.

 

Somebody’s phone was ringing, and Joel couldn’t find the damn thing. With a sigh, he started picking through the disaster in the living room. He’d just moved in the day before, and although Ian had made a good-faith effort to clean up, Joel had found him, a pile of dirty clothes in his lap, typing feverishly after about an hour of housecleaning. The man said he got distracted by his work, but until that moment, Joel thought it was probably just a charming personality quirk, not an impediment toward health, living quality, and good hygiene.

With a grunt Joel tripped over a free weight and landed on all fours in a pile of blankets that smelled like sex and beer. The ringing got louder, and Joel reached under the oxblood leather couch to be rewarded by the tiny cell phone buzzing in the palm of his hand.

“Jesus, Ian,” he griped, “don’t you have a house phone?”

“What?” Ian looked up from his room blankly and then turned back to the paper he was typing—something about imaginary numbers and Riemannian geometry, and Joel was damned if he could follow half of what Ian said when he was talking about it.

Joel rolled his eyes and sat on the floor, leaning against the couch, to answer the phone.

“Hello. Ian Cooper?” The voice was educated, older than thirty, and female.

“No, I’m sorry. This is his roommate.”

There was a subtle pause. “Roommate?”

“Yeah, roommate.” As if! “What can I do for you?”

“This is Florence Kohl from U.C. Davis. I was just calling to remind Dr. Cooper that he has a lecture tomorrow.”

“Does he know where it is?” Joel asked, looking around the spacious top-floor apartment a little desperately for a pen and paper. He’d already started a grocery list in his head: laundry hampers, vacuum cleaner bags, Swiffer, sponges, dish soap. He added “pen and paper” to it now, so he didn’t have to make the next list in his head.

“Oh yes.” Florence laughed appreciatively. “Just get him to the campus around ten o’clock, and he’ll probably show up by ten-thirty.”

The nice woman with (presumably) Ian’s paycheck in the palm of her hand rang off, and Joel took a deep breath and looked around. The apartment was gorgeous: oxblood leather furniture, hardwood floors, cream area rugs and a burgundy accent with white trim. And it was huge; the rent was a steal. The fact that it currently looked like a thrift store clearinghouse because of the sheer volume of clothes on the floor, in the corners, on the couches, and over the coffee table, and that it smelled like a monkey’s ass notwithstanding, the situation had potential.

But first, there had to be some semblance of order. That was okay. Joel was good at order.

“Ian,” he said, standing up and dusting off his hands, “buddy, you have a lecture to give tomorrow.”

The effect on Ian was electric. He stood up abruptly, left his computer, and started running around his room, rifling through clothes, throwing items from the pile on the bed onto the pile on the floor, and digging through stuff in the pile on the floor and tossing it to the lone basket at the foot of the bed.

“Oh fuck,” he was muttering. “I don’t have anything to wear!”

Joel had to suppress a laugh. “Then what is all this shit on the floor?” he asked with good nature, and Ian sent him a panicked look from his wild-blue eyes.

“It’s not funny, mate. All this shit, it’s wrinkled! I’ve got to do laundry! I’ve got to find a laundromat! Jesus, I’ve got to get quarters!”

He was so distraught that Joel couldn’t laugh anymore. “Ian… Ian… Ian!”

Ian stopped so abruptly that he tripped over a dress shoe and fell sprawling on (what else?) a pile of clothes. Joel was over to him before he could pick himself up, crouching down to see if he would live.

“Ian. pop… buddy… you okay?”

Ian blinked up at him like a startled child. “I’m fine,” he said softly, and a troubled version of that smile appeared. “I hadn’t meant for you to see me lose my nut quite so soon. I’m sorry. I just- I completely forgot….”

Joel looked carefully at his roommate, saw the bloodshot eyes and the dark bags, and recalled that Ian hadn’t slept the night before, he’d been so intent on his work. Joel took a deep breath, snagged a paper and a pen off the clutter that was Ian’s desk, and sat down to put his tidy mind to work.

“All right, Ee. Here. This is a list of shit we need. I can pay you back for my half…”

“No worries,” Ian assured carelessly, and Joel had rolled his eyes. He’d pay the guy back. He didn’t like being in someone’s debt. “No, really!” Ian assured him. “You’re helping me out of a jam here. Let me pay, right?”

“Ian, it’s no big deal,” Joel laughed, and he was surprised when Ian’s long-fingered hand wrapped around his wrist and stopped him from writing. Joel looked up and met those spring-blue eyes. They were intent and laser focused, and Joel’s breath had caught in his chest.

“It’s a very big deal,” Ian said seriously. “You didn’t sign up to be my keeper. I’ve made a piss-poor showing here. I appreciate it.”

There was something naked in his eyes, something stripped bare. Ian was afraid of what Joel would think of him.

Joel tried a tentative smile, although there was still something in his chest that wanted him not to breathe. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t doing anything else.” This was true. Christ, when was the last time he had a date?

“Well, if I get in the way of you getting laid, let me know, right, mate?” Ian grinned, and Joel blushed for no good reason he could think of.

“Whatever. Look, man, just get this stuff.” He had a thought. “Do not stop, do not pass go, do not get anything but what’s on that list.”

“What about some takeout for dinner?”

“And dinner. And by the time you get back, I’ll have clothes ready to go in the washer, and we can go together.”

Ian blessed him then with the widest, sweetest, most grateful smile. “Well, if I must do laundry, I couldn’t ask for better company.”

 

“So,” Melody said seriously while washing out the pie tin, “you keep his life for him, and he pays for dinner. Sounds like you’re his houseboy or something!”

Joel had to roll his eyes. “Not even that glamorous. And it’s not like that. He just… he loses track of the world so thoroughly, you know? All those clothes on the floor? It was just easier for him to go out and buy new clothes than it was to find what he needed in what he already had. I went through and organized, and he had, like, three pairs of the same jeans!”

Melody laughed for a minute and then looked at him thoughtfully. “Doesn’t that get old though? You know, keeping someone’s life for them?”

Joel shrugged. “He’s kept it up since I organized it. And trust me, he’s got his own life. In fact, I think he fucks anything with a pulse!”

“Oooh… lots of hot women coming in and out of your pad?”

Joel flushed. “Like I said, …um, anything with a pulse.”

Melody turned to him in titillation, her well-crafted eyebrows reaching her hairline and her mouth making a little moue. “Really. An equal opportunity kind of guy?”

Joel’s blush intensified. “Yeah, um, I can’t say much for his taste, though.”

 

The boy with the unbuttoned jeans and bare chest was pretty, Joel would give him that. The kid’s hair was tousled, carefully streaked, and his little heart-shaped face and brown eyes were truly charming.

Joel would have been more impressed if he hadn’t found the boy rifling through Ian’s pants and palming his credit card.

Christo! Joel had to shake his head. On the nights that Joel worked late, he would sometimes find Ian gone when he got home. In the morning there would be a stranger doing a red-faced walk of shame out of Ian’s room. Usually the stranger was female, but not today.

“Hey, you, what the fuck you think you doing, punto? You get the hell away from shit that don’t belong to you!” Joel’s accent—the product of being brought up in a mostly Spanish-speaking home—only came out when he was back at home or really, really pissed off.

The kid started guiltily and dropped the jeans and wallet, scattering the credit cards on the (clean!) floor. “Hey, baby, don’t get mad at me because your boy got takeout last night!”

It was probably the ingratiating smile on the kid’s face, but in about two seconds, Joel had him pinned to the pretty purple wall with his forearm at a slender, corded throat. “I could give a shit what he sleeps with, as long as it doesn’t take him on the twinkie express when it’s done.”

“Yeah?” the kid hissed. “What’re you gonna do? For all you know he liked what he got!”

Joel rolled his eyes. “Yeah? For all you know, he thinks you someone dead who was doing some sexy math in his dreams.”

In less than a minute Joel had hustled the kid out onto the landing and slammed the door in his face, ignoring his cry of, “But I don’t even have my shoes!” Then, in as quiet a huff as he could manage, he tiptoed into Ian’s room. He tried to ignore Ian’s sprawled, naked body on top of the covers as he began to quietly pick up the clothes on the floor he knew for certain weren’t Ee’s.

“Mmmmm,” Ian groaned, just as Joel was about to close the door and let him sleep, “Joel? S’that you?”

“Yeah, popp, uh, Ee. What you… what do you want?”

“What’re you doing?”

“Saturday chores?” Joel tried, and Ian sat up sleepily. God, his chest and abs really were cut! And his… never mind. Joel wasn’t going to look at that. It was huge, but he wasn’t gonna look.

“Saturday?” Ian murmured. “Don’t we usually get breakfast on Saturdays?”

Joel resisted the temptation to say something catty, like Well, yeah, did you want to take your Friday Night Special too? And instead concentrated on the fact that Ian seemed to have forgotten about Twink Lightfingers who was standing half-naked on the landing.

“Yeah, Ee,” he said with a sigh, “but first I’ve got to take out the trash.”

Later, over pancakes at IHOP (because it was Ian’s favorite, that’s why) Joel read him the riot act.

“For Christ’s sake, Ian, he was stealing your cash! I hope you at least wore a raincoat, you feel me?”

Ian blinked. “Why would I want a raincoat, Joel? I was having sex.”

Joel put his face in his hands, closed his eyes tight, and prayed that when he looked up and opened them Ian would be kidding.

He wasn’t.

“A condom, Ian, I hope you used a condom!” Oh God, he was not having this conversation with a twenty-something bisexual college professor. It was not possible.

“Why would I?” Ian asked seriously. He looked anxious. It was as though he understood he’d done something wrong, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was. “It’s not like either one of us can get pregnant, right?”

“Disease, Ee?” Joel realized he was on the verge of tears. How had this man managed to live on his own and be this innocent? “You know, HIV, herpes, shit that’ll make your dick fall off?”

Ian’s eyes were suddenly saucer-shaped, and his mouth was wide open. Oh yes, now the light bulb was on. “Oh, well, shit, mate, I never thought about that! I just….” He cocked his head, something suddenly occurring to him. “And how would you know about that? I didn’t know you swung that way, do you?”

Joel shook his head. “I want to Catholic school, where they teach you everything with a healthy dose of ‘God will hate you if you do that, but if you want God to hate you go ahead’. Or maybe that was Sister Margaret.” Joel tried a laugh, but Ian was looking more and more distraught, so he tried some kindness instead. “Look, Ee, we’ll get you tested. It’ll be no big deal.”

“Do you believe that?” Ian asked suddenly, a pinch around his eyes. “You don’t believe that God hates me, do you?”

Oh crap. Heaven save Joel from literal mathematical geniuses. “No,” he said softly, trying to do anything to take that pinched look from those Easter-sky eyes. “I think as long as you care about the person, and you’re being good to each other, God’s all fine with it. But that’s why this worries the hell out of me, Ian. You don’t even like these people. I mean hell, I don’t think you even remember that kid’s name!”

“Benji,” Ian supplied helpfully, and it was all Joel could do to not make gagging motions with his fingers.

“Yeah, whatever, it’s like when I’m not there, you wander out and bring back a warm body. You deserve better than that, Ee. What you’re doing is dangerous, and you could get hurt, and I don’t want that to happen.”

Ian shrugged and looked away. “I don’t know, mate. I used to be okay, but now… you’re not there. It gets lonely in the place, right?”

Joel did laugh now. “Jesus, Ian! Get a cat!”

That lost look went away, and Ian looked across the table and grinned back at him. “That’s an idea. I like cats.”

They were sitting near a window, and Joel found himself fascinated by the way the light hit that halo of curly blond hair and brought out the reddish hints in Ian’s eyelashes. He stopped himself and thought of a way to keep Ian safe.

“Okay, then, you look for a cat, and I’ll promise to call when I’m going to be late, deal?”

The look on Ian’s face transcended “pleased” and bordered on “sublimely happy”.

“Right, mate. If I must!”

 

Joel and Melody made it to the couch, each one sitting on the end and tangling their legs companionably in the middle. Melody was channel surfing with the sound off, listening avidly to Joel’s latest story, and when he was finished, she leaned her head back sleepily. Joel was pretty tired himself, but, well, he missed his big sister. They’d bickered, like most children, but he’d always loved knowing she had his back—bullies at school, his first broken heart (a girl from public school their father hadn’t approved of)—she was Joel’s own personal pit bull, and really, until Ian, his best friend.

“Honey, that’s sweet and all, but really, don’t you think you got enough to take care of with this Ian person? You really want a cat?”

Joel felt his expression go soft and a little dreamy. He couldn’t help it—he knew how it must look, but…

“Ee actually takes care of the cat,” he said truthfully. “Ian feeds it, and he’s the one who took it to the vet when we first got it.”

Melody snorted, her eyes half closed in sleep. They’d talked until nearly one in the morning. “So he can’t take care of himself, but he can take care of the cat? How’s that work?”

Joel shrugged. “I think he thinks the cat’s more important.”

 

A week after their little sex-ed discussion, Joel came home to find a little tin of high-priced cat food on the landing.

The thing eating out of it and snarling through spittle-covered whiskers barely passed for a cat.

“Ian?” Joel called, jostling his bike and his backpack over his shoulders and hoping they could co-exist for just a few more steps. He’d just come from work and was wearing his bike shorts. “Ian?” Gingerly he reached over to open the door (Ian rarely remembered to lock it) and swung a leg over the threshold. The cat—a dark brown short-haired behemoth with pale tortoise-shell stripes on its side—stuck out a massive paw and clawed his bare ankle.

“Ian!” Joel screamed, not wanting to kick this new development off a three-story landing and not wanting to lose any more blood, either.

Ian popped out of his room—shirtless, as usual—and trotted over to help Joel through the door.

“He got you? Why would he get you?”

Joel glared at the cat who looked at him and growled some more. “Because I interfered with his evil plan to rain destruction down on mankind,” he said sourly, and the freaky thing licked its whiskers and damned near smiled.

Ian laughed, and now that Joel was safely inside, he sank to his haunches and scratched delicately under the cat’s chin. The feline monstrosity had the balls to purr.

“Hullo, you manky bastard,” Ian murmured. “You giving Joel a hard time? You can’t, you know. He was here first.”

Joel looked at the cat in a mixture of humor and horror. “Well, it’s nice to know I rate!”

Ian’s grin appeared again, and Joel wondered why the cat suddenly looked more like a cat and less like a refugee from a zoo. “Rate? Brother, you’re more important to me than Riemann!”

Joel had to blink. Wow—Riemann was like the guy’s god—or at least the subject of his latest paper. Joel took a big breath and realized most of his irritation with the animal was gone. All that was left was his perpetual good humor.

“Jesus, Ian! I said get a cat —I didn’t say to just let one wander up to the house.”

Ian turned that sunny smile up at Joel one more time, and although he refused to admit it, Joel’s heart stuttered in his chest. “I don’t know, brother. That’s sort of how I got you, isn’t it?”

Joel’s mouth went sober. He met Ian’s gaze and flushed, and Manky Bastard (as the female cat would forevermore be known) sank her pointy, street-cat teeth into the ball of Ian’s thumb.

Ian shouted and stood, and the little opportunist took that moment to run inside the apartment and sit, snarling, in the corner of the bathroom between the toilet and the tub. Joel, still a little dizzy from that long look he’d shared with Ian, went out and got cat litter, a box, and a pooper-scooper, and they put it where the cat seemed to want to stay. Ian had already bought enough food to last the damned cat a year. (They still hadn’t gone through even half the Fancy Feast under the counter.)

Joel made two appointments the next day: one for the cat, which Ian kept, and one for Ian, because his thumb turned blue and doubled in size. Joel took Ian to that one. While they were there, he made Ian take a blood test too.

The results were negative, and Ian had promised to go back after the window period was over. “Well, if I must!” Whenever he said that, Joel had no doubt he’d do it.

 

Melody seemed to have gotten her second wind. She sat up on the couch and was staring avidly at Joel’s face. Joel wondered if she could see something he couldn’t.

“So now you gots a cat?” she asked, her face soft in the glow from the television. Joel had no doubt his sister could be hard as nails when she was driving a bargain or running her staff, but with him, she was all Little Mommy.

Joel nodded and grimaced. “You should see Ian with her. He brushes her, feeds her shit that cost more than my food, and she thinks he put fish in the damn ocean. But she’s sick. I think she’s just old.” He shuddered. “I hope she’s okay. Ian really loves her.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Melody’s voice went up at the end of that, and Joel found himself sitting up and looking at her funny.

“What was that for, mammi? It sounds like you thinking something you shouldn’t!”

Melody shook her head. “I’ll tell you when I’m ready, little brother. So, you think he’ll take care of the cat when he can’t take care of himself?”

“I know he will,” Joel answered softly. That was one story he didn’t want to tell Melody. For some reason it just hurt too much.

 

Joel had been gone for a two-day seminar. He’d asked Ian repeatedly, “You going to be okay, Ian? You going to be okay?” But he had to go—what, he was going to tell work he was going to turn down free training because his roommate was a flake?

He got back to find a mound of open, empty cat food tins on the floor, and Ian sitting shirtless on the couch. (He was always shirtless. The man would have clients come over to get their taxes done, and he’d meet them in cargo shorts, flip-flops, and sweat.)

He was eating cat food out of the tin, and he was stinking drunk.

“Ian?” Joel asked, dropping his luggage on the floor inside the door. “Ian, what the hell? You said you’d meet me at the airport! I had to take a cab!”

“I’m sorry, mate,” Ian said, sounding more than distraught. “I was gonna.” He nodded solemnly. “I was gonna… but I woke up this morning, and there was nothing in the fridge but beer. And cat food. There was lots of cat food. So first I drank the beer, and then, when I threw up, I ate the cat food!” He sniffled a little, sounding pathetic, and then he had what looked to be an attack of clarity.

“What kind of asshole lets a friend down like that?” he asked himself cruelly, and he sniffled again.

Joel stared at him in blank horror.

“Jesus, Ian,” he said softly, walking to the refrigerator and feeling lost. “There’s corndogs in the freezer, you know that, right?”

Ian started to giggle softly, and he put the cat food down on the floor next to the couch. “Thank God, mate. I thought I was going to have to puke again!”

Joel told himself it was anger as he threw the corndogs on the plate and broke out a can of corn to nuke with them. Jesus. He and Mel had been fixing themselves dinner since the third grade; you’d think a certifiable genius with an IQ of 170 would be able to fix his own goddamned lunch, would be able to….

Joel turned to Ian, who was sitting on the couch looking so dejected that Joel’s heart lurched.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, not even trying to meet Joel’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m a pain in the ass. I know I am. I- I’m up all night and I never wear clothes and… I just… when you’re not here, all I am is the stuff in my head. I’ve got curves and hyperboles and Riemann and Gauss and they’re sayin’ shit and the world looks clear but time… it just passes, and I don’t see it. How come I know mathematical theory, but I can’t count to sixty? What kind of right is that? And the only thing that makes me more than the shit in my head is doing something for Bastard or…” Ian swallowed, hard, “or when you’re here. You’re the only one who makes me… real.”

Joel realized that helpless tears were running down Ian’s face. Oh God. He hadn’t even said a word—not one goddamned word—and here he’d gone and made Ian cry.

The microwave dinged in the silence between them, and Joel grabbed a towel and brought the plate over, not forgetting the fork for the corn and the ketchup.

Ian took a bite of corndog and seemed to pull himself together, smiling that sunshine smile through his muddle-headed misery, and Joel wanted to do something, stroke his face, pet his wild hair, do something that would reassure him.

He thumped him heartily on the thigh and hoped that worked okay. “Look, Ee,” he said softly. “I’m mad at you because you’re my friend here. I come home, and you’re falling apart. How’s that supposed to make me feel? I can take care of you for you, but you can’t take care of yourself for me? C’mon, Ian, I worry about you.”

“I was just fine before you came along, I swear!” Ian nodded eagerly. “I pay bills. I’ve got money. I make it to my lectures.” He smiled for a moment, shaken out of his despondency. “You should see me give a lecture, mate. I sound… smart, you know?”

Joel nodded seriously, because he actually had seen Ian lecture one day, when Ian hadn’t known he was there. Ian had been poised and intelligent, and even funny, but that man was hard to see in the lost soul Joel was feeding now. Something in Ian’s handsome, sweet-natured face haunted him. Ian may have stayed alive, he may have made it through school across an ocean and into a job, and he may even have managed to pay the bills (he was, after all, an accountant), but whatever he had been before Joel got there, Ian had obviously not been “just fine.” No amount of thinking about teaching the guy to take care of himself would ever assure Joel that he would be “just fine” without Joel, himself, personally, to help in the task, and he just didn’t want to think any further than that.

Instead, he cleaned up the cat tins, helped Ian into the shower, and then pulled out a T-shirt and some jockeys for the guy. When Ian was dressed, Joel made absolutely sure he lay down in bed. He slept for sixteen hours, and Joel thought he’d probably been up for the seventy-two before that. He woke up apologetic and sheepish and more than ready to accept any crap that Joel wanted to ladle out for him being (his words) a manky arse, but Joel didn’t want to bring up the incident again.

“Just do me a favor, Ee. Feed yourself, okay?”

“Right, mate!” And then, to make it a promise, “If I must.”