“Did you buy the pasta that you don’t have to boil ahead of time?”

No. Again, Simon didn’t answer.

“I hope you were a better surgeon than you are a cook.”

Simon’s first response was to freeze up. To tell Trevor to fuck off. He was the best surgeon there was. That’s not what came out when he opened his mouth, though. No, it was a laugh. A second later Trevor was laughing too. Both men were pushing their plates away from them, as they continued laughing.

And just like that, the tension didn’t bear down on Simon anymore. For the first time in a while, he felt good.

For the first time in a month, if he was being honest.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Since the lasagna didn’t work out so well, they ordered pizza. It was the only food they could get delivered, and then they’d started a movie and watched things blow up.

Trevor was more aware than he should be of Simon sitting on the other side of the couch. He realized he had his feet on Simon’s coffee table and immediately put them down on the floor like Simon’s. It was kind of an asshole move to kick his feet up at someone else’s house like that.

“Its okay. This isn’t the furniture I’m keeping anyway.” Simon called him out on what he’d been thinking.

He almost teased Simon about his need for the best of everything but he didn’t. Instead, Trevor watched the credits on the screen and said, “I should go.” But he didn’t move. The couch dipped. Simon must be changing positions, but Trevor didn’t look at him. He didn’t want to go. For the first time in a month, he didn’t feel alone, and he wanted that feeling to stay.

“My ex-wife is now engaged to an old colleague of mine. She told me when I went into the city.”

Trevor couldn’t help but look his way at that. It was a reminder, the fact that Simon had an ex-wife. When he did turn, he saw Simon relaxed, his head against the back of the couch, but turned toward Trevor, looking at him. There was pain in his wide, gray eyes, and that made Trevor feel the same. He’d gotten too close. For the first time in his life he’d gotten close enough to a man to care, even if it was only friendship, yet that couldn’t be true, either. Because he was hurt at Simon’s pain over his ex wife.

That could be considered a friendship thing, though, couldn’t it? People didn’t want to see their friends hurt. Since being sober, half of the time he felt confused about his feelings because they weren’t dull anymore. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s strange, because on the one hand, I’m okay with it. I want her happy. I love her. She’s a good friend to me and she’s a good person. We don’t belong together. I know that as well as she does. I could never give her what she wants. School and work were always more important to me than Heather was. When we were married, she wanted a baby so badly—a little part of us, she would say. It didn’t happen, and then we found out it likely never would. It wrecked her. Broke her, and...I was thankful... I was thankful, because how could I be the surgeon I needed to be if we had a child? What kind of man feels that way?”

Christ, he wanted to reach out for Simon. Wanted so bad to reach out and touch him. “We all feel things we sometimes shouldn’t. We all make mistakes. It makes us human. I’ve stolen money from my own mother for drugs. I sold Blake’s mountain bike without his permission for drugs. If we’re all held accountable for our mistakes in the past, I’m fucked.”

“But that’s the thing.” Simon closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “You’re changing. You’re making amends. I’m not. I would still choose my career over being married to Heather. I still wouldn’t give her a baby, even if I could. Above anything else, I want my hand to work the way it should. There is nothing I would choose over being a heart surgeon, and I look at men like Alan. Men that can marry, that make their wives happy, raise children and not put their career over them, and it baffles my mind. My brain doesn’t work that way. That’s what makes me wrong.”

In that moment, Trevor wasn’t sure he’d ever felt closer to another human being. They were so different in so many ways...but so similar in others. “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t consider giving up. That I don’t miss it. That I don’t think about how much easier it would be to disappear, leave Mom and Blake behind and spend my life drinking and partying it away.” That was a truth he’d never told another soul. There were times he didn’t know if he wanted to stay clean.

“But you don’t. That’s the difference, Trevor. You don’t. You do the right thing because you know how to love people.”