Page 19 of Winning You

“Do you want me to make a call?” Bronx finally asked. “Or see if Adele knows someone who knows someone?”

“And make me look even more incapable of handling my own shit? Thank you, but I’ll pass.” He bit his lip, then said, “I think I’m just tired. Our DnD group let in this new guy, and, uh…well.” He hesitated. “He was nice, until he wasn’t.”

“Who is he?” Bronx growled.

Lucas scoffed. “Bruh, no. We’re not going to act like you can go find him, okay? He was just really fucking mean. He used the r-word when he was talking about me on the phone because I was hand-flapping during the campaign.”

Bronx touched the back of his wrist. It felt like an absent gesture. “Fuck him.”

Lucas burst into laughter. “I mean, no thank you? But yeah. I just…I don’t know. I always feel like the freak, and then Gage ends up not hanging out with the people we know because they were shitty, and I hate that he loses friends because of me.”

“Don’t you think Gage would have walked away from friends like that if they say that about anyone? Even some random anonymous person online?”

That…was fair. Lucas hadn’t thought of it that way. And he knew the answer. “Yeah. But I still feel like shit about it.”

“He probably doesn’t think twice about it, and he’d probably be annoyed you were feeling some kind of guilt over it.”

That was true. Gage still wasn’t himself, but Lucas knew it had nothing to do with friend groups or DnD drama.

“Just tell me it gets better.”

“It gets better,” Bronx promised. “Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes it takes half a lifetime. Sometimes less.”

“That’s going to take sooo looong,” he whined.

Bronx nudged him gently. “Maybe. But once it does happen, it makes the shitty years easy to forget.”

“Like my childhood?” Lucas said. It was a little mean, he knew. But he still had tiny pockets of resentment about everything.

Bronx sighed. “Only the parts you were gone. I won’t ever let myself forget the mistakes I made.”

And there was the guilt. Fuck. “Dad, I didn’t mean?—”

“I know,” Bronx said softly. He put his arm around Lucas and tucked him into a tight hold. “But it is what it is. I love you, and I won’t stop being sorry.”

“We have this now,” Lucas said quietly.

And that had never been more true.

They did.

“Want me to come up?” Gage asked when he pulled in front of Lucas’s building.

He frowned in the direction of his best friend’s voice. “Uh…do you want to come up?”

Gage was quiet for a second. “I kind of want to go to my place and rot in my bed until my shift tomorrow night. But if you need company?—”

“Oh. Dude, no. I’m so good. I needed dad hugs, and I got them. But ifyouneed me?—”

“I want to talk soon,” Gage said. The tone in his voice was new. Lucas felt like he was standing at the edge of something important.

“Anytime. I mean that literally. I will cancel the entire fucking world if I have to.”

Gage laughed softly. “I know I haven’t been super chatty about shit. I know I’ve been holding it all in. My dad’s freaking out about it because he can tell, and I think if I don’t tell someone, I’m going to burst.”

“When?” Lucas had never had much chill. He tapped his fingers and rocked gently from side to side. “I will lose it if you can’t tell me when.”

“Friday,” Gage said. “I have three days off, and I’m probably going to need the whole night to tell you everything that went down when I was at school.”