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I laugh suddenly. “Want me to?”

“Hmm.” His mouth twists and eyes shift like he’s mulling it over. “Nah. That’s more of the sixth date sorta thing.”

I’m still snickering when he finds the washcloth in the water and climbs to his feet. Standing between my legs, rivulets of water cascading down his lean, muscular form, Rowan turns his ass to me and does the job himself. I keep my legs spread to the sides of the tub, and I lean back against the slope. When Rowan is through, I coax him back down so he’s lying against me, his back to my front, and his head on my shoulder.

Hugging him tight, I kiss the side of his head and tell him I love him, not because I need to hear it back, but because I need him to know I'm still in this. I’ve still got him.

26

Rowan

Not sure how long we’ve been soaking in this tub like a milky gay soup, but it’s hard for me to move when Tommy whispers in my ear that it’s time to get out. I feel weak, and empty, and pathetic. Also, wet. Tommy gets me standing, and water spills from my body like rainfall.

“Gonna wipe me down like at the car wash now?” I’m trying to be cheeky, like that’ll make up for how monumentally useless I am.

“Now, we’re gonna get in the shower,” Tommy answers, holding onto my arm while he steps out of the tub and onto the bath mat. From there, he’s able to reach his arm into the shower stall and crank the water on.

“Am I not pruny enough?”

Smiling, he says, “I’ve bathed my nephew enough time to know that when you’re real filthy, you got to do an extra rinse off afterward.”

Shit.“Was I really that bad?”

He holds my arms, smile drifting to something more thoughtful. “Well, I did find you sleeping under the bed with all the dust bunnies and cobwebs.”

A shock of humiliation settles in my chest, pinching my heart and stirring a pressure behind my eyes. “I was under the bed?”

“You don’t remember that?”

Delving into my memory, I come up short. I remember Davis, and I remember…that woman. Remember the first panic attack and ending up somewhere I’d never been before. Remember ordering an Uber and hoping someone would pick me up before my phone died. Then it gets even more hazy and fragmented, like waking up from a dream and not really knowing what happened. I don’t even remember Tommy showing up, just that I woke up, and he was there, telling me it was bathtime.

“Did you take anything, Row?” he whispers. “You can tell me. I won’t judge you or nothing.”

“I don’t know. I don’t really have anything to take. Sometimes, I take Benadryl to sleep when I’m really upset and trying not to do something stupid. Maybe I took some of that?”

Tommy wraps me in his arms, hugging me like we’ve been apart for too long. Then he takes me into the steaming shower stall, adjusts the temp, and hugs me under the rain head with the same fervor. Not much rinsing, just a lot of hugging.

“I think you just wanted an excuse to keep me naked longer,” I murmur beside his ear.

“Caught me,” he murmurs back.

“Fucking gay boy.”

This is the first time I’ve really been in this bathroom. Sure,I’ve passed through it a few times when I’ve babysat the kids and had to go searching the whole house to find them, but I never lingered longer than a glance. It always felt off-limits. Bedrooms that aren’t mine, bathrooms that aren’t mine, a house that’s not mine… Last thing I want to do is overstep, start taking shit that’s not mine and encroaching on spaces I’ve got no business being in. I kind of remember Xia telling me this is my home, but she probably just meant the garage.

Yet, here I am, brushing my teeth at Matt and Xia’s double sinks next to Tommy, like we’re playing house or something. Fucking weird, but I like it. I like being clean too. I like wearing clean clothes and seeing Tommy wearing my clean clothes. His ass looks amazing in my joggers, probably because they’re half a size too small on him.

We tidy up the bathroom as best we can and leave the wet towels in a laundry basket, then Tommy takes my hand and holds it while we leave this bathroom that suddenly feels like a sanctum. Walking through the hall is jarring. New scents and new sounds, like I’m a newborn having to adjust to life outside the womb, and it feels like too much.

Too much family.

Olive and Lena are playing dolls in the living room while Matt’s got a hockey game on, and Xia is giving bites of baby food to Bruno in his high chair between cleaning up the dining table.

“Oh, good!” she exclaims as soon as she spots us coming out of the hallway. “Come here. Pick a seat. Both of you. I’ve got plates in the oven.”

I don’t know why she’s being so nice. She’s always nice, but still. It’s not like someone died. I’m just a giant baby who can’t handle his emotions well enough to keep the people around me from freaking out. It’s clear that I scared Tommy, and that’s the only reason he’s here on a school night, tending to me like I’m an invalid.

Still hand in hand, Tommy guides me to the table, because my legs are still sort of stiff from going unused for multiple days. We sit next to each other, chairs pushed up close, and when Xia brings us two plates of meat loaf and extra buttery mashed potatoes, Tommy moves his hand from mine to my thigh.