Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 74298 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74298 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
“It hasn’t been too bad without me around, right?” Tristan asked, the same strange half-sad expression on his face.
“Are you kidding me? It sucked. Jason and Miller aren’t half as fast as you are with window casings and baseboards, and nobody can do customs like you.”
“Miller’s learning pretty quick, though,” Tris said.
“You learned faster.”
He snorted. “I won’t deny that,” Tris said. He sipped on his beer, watching me, his gorgeous eyes glinting in front of the campfire. “And outside of work?”
I shifted in my camping chair, shrugging a shoulder. “Had fuck-all to do outside of work,” I said. The truth was that I’d basically done nothing but work while Tristan was gone. Anytime I was at home, all I could focus on were all of the repairs Dad had wanted me to do to the house before he died, and all of the things that I’d left sitting there for the last year since he’d been gone.
In my work life, I was on top of everything. I finished projects early, for fuck’s sake. But in my own house that Dad had left me, I was stuck. I didn’t want to touch a thing. Sure, the dining room wallpaper was dated and yellowing, but I’d known that wallpaper since I was born. How could I change it now?
“No wild nights out?” Tris said with a soft smile.
“I have gone to Red’s Tavern a few times,” I offered. “But who cares? I’m just glad you’re back,” I told him, taking a sip of my beer.
Tristan looked down at the fire, unsatisfied with my answer, somehow.
There it was again. The weirdness that he’d had back at his place.
“All right, pipe up. What the hell’s with you?” I asked. “One-Hundo Policy, Tris.”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, but he still wouldn’t look me in the eyes. “It’s just… weird to be back. You know?”
“Sure,” I said, still watching him warily. The One-Hundo Policy was an agreement we’d made long ago to always be one hundred percent honest with each other, all of the time. No secrets and no guessing games, because we both agreed we hated that shit. It was something we’d come up with one night early in our friendship, when Tristan had been too embarrassed to tell me that he’d drunkenly gone home with a girl and then puked on her bedspread before they could hook up. When he’d finally told me, I’d been relieved, for God’s sake. It was just a silly embarrassing story, not something much worse.
And I knew Tristan had experienced much worse. Back when he was a teenager, he’d struggled with too much partying and drug use for a few years. He’d been a black sheep in his family, and as a teen, his mental health had been ignored. He’d been clean ever since I met him—since he moved out here to Kansas at age eighteen. But Tristan’s past still lingered at the corners of my mind. I worried about him. I always wanted him to feel completely comfortable telling me anything.
The One-Hundo Policy was one of the pillars of our friendship. And I could tell that right now, there was obviously something he was holding back.
We were silent for a few beats, the sound of the crackling fire filling the air. He was using the toe of his hiking boot to draw little shapes in the dirt in front of him.
“Tris,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Your parents didn’t say something horrible to you when you visited home, did they?”
He furrowed his brow, his beautiful grey-green eyes going downcast to look at the fire. “No. Of course not.”
“And your brothers and sister?”
“No, no,” Tristan said, shaking his head. “It was the opposite, actually. My family welcomed me with open arms. I thought that I might still feel like the odd man out, visiting home for a whole month, but they were so loving. I couldn’t believe it, actually.”
A wave of relief passed over me. “Thank God,” I said. “They accept you and trust you now. Is that what you were so afraid to tell me?”
He brought his lower lip into his mouth, chewing on it mindlessly as he stared at the fire. He looked so lost in thought, and I fought back every urge I had to lean over and press my own mouth to his, to kiss him and comfort him and make sure he knew I was always here.
Not that I could do that. Not that he’d want it.
Tristan and I were just friends. Coworkers. And he was straight, so my little fantasies were my own to deal with.
“It’s just strange, you know?” he said. “For so long, I thought my family back in Colorado would reject me. And then I actually went home for longer than a few days, and I felt like I was truly loved. It was surreal, even if it was incredible. Because I realized that for so long, I was assuming the wrong things about them. I assumed they thought I was the same fuck-up failure I was when I was a teenager.”