Love is Always Write Anthology Bonus Volume

call someone you trust."
    Daren shook his head. "I'll wait."
    "You don't trust anyone?"
    "No."
    "Do you trust me?"
    Daren peered at him as if looking at an odd insect. "Do you know who I am?"
    "You are Daren who is nineteen or Jeff Smith who is twenty-two, if I look at your driver's license. Should I know who you are?"
    "No." Daren whispered, his eyes drifting shut again.
    Sebastian put his phone into Daren's hand before pulling his old roommate's prescription bottle out of the trash and sprinting for the door.
    Sebastian fought with himself the whole drive. A question like the one Daren asked made it quite obvious that Daren was somebody somewhere to someone. He scratched 'rent boy' off the list but started wondering just who Daren was and if maybe it would be safer for all involved, including himself, if he just turned the other way and kept driving until he hit the first police station. Instead, he turned right into the still mostly empty drug store parking lot.
    He grabbed a cart and headed for the pharmacy station at the back wall. He managed to luck out with the pharmacist. She looked half asleep, undertrained, and her English seemed a bit sporadic. Normally, this would have him tearing his hair out, but instead, she just looked at the empty bottle, pressed a few buttons on the computer, and told him to come back in half an hour.
    Sebastian began walking the aisles. He grabbed cheap towels and pillows that were on sale, bottles of bleach, bathroom scrub, and rubbing alcohol, sports bandages, spare rubber gloves, a thermometer, generic pain killers. Then Gatorade, liquid meals, ice packs. He grabbed a couple of T-shirts meant for the extra-jumbo sized tourist, which would fit like a hospital gown on Daren. He got laundry detergent and chicken broth from the small grocery section. He found a folding shower bench next to the antibacterial soap and antibiotic wound cream. Then he passed by a shelf of single-use items meant for cleaning more intimate parts of the anatomy. He sighed, prayed he wouldn't have to use them, and grabbed a few.
    His roommate's name came over the intercom, asking him to come to the pharmacy window. The pharmacist handed him the filled bottle of antibiotics, and Sebastian was suddenly grateful for his roommate's legendary stupidity and laziness. He'd paid for the refill in advance and never used it.
    The girl at the checkout gave him a bit of an eye as she rang up his items. Sebastian hoped that it was early or late enough that she wouldn't remember him exactly if anyone came asking around. Not that Sebastian thought anyone would be coming, but the paranoia of his house guest was obviously catching.
    By the time he was lugging the bags up his front walk, he started to wonder if there would be some mob hit-man or government assassin waiting on the other side of his door. He pushed the door open very carefully, peeking his head around first. He didn't see anyone in the front room. The place didn't look like it'd been tossed or anything, but it hadn't exactly been tidy to begin with.
    "Hello?" he called out tentatively. When the house remained still he let himself the rest of the way in. Daren was still passed out by the look of it. Sebastian tried to put the bags down quietly, but Daren startled awake and tried to scramble across the bed again. And again, he didn't get far.
    "Just me. Sorry. How are you feeling?"
    "Cold. It hurts."
    "What hurts?"
    "Everything."
    "In a way, that's good." Sebastian fished out the Tylenol, antibiotics and a thermometer. He stuck the thermometer in Daren's less swollen ear. "One-oh-two point eight," he read off, after it beeped. "That's not good. If I give you some pills, do you think you'd be able to swallow them?"
    Daren swallowed a few times as if testing his throat; then he nodded. "Good." He pressed the pain killers between Daren's lips and then the antibiotics before holding the straw up. Daren took a deep drink before sinking into himself.
    Sebastian resisted the urge to reach out and just pet Daren's head for a bit. Instead he put the water aside.
    "I'm going to take your blood pressure again. I'm still worried about it."
    Daren tried to hold his arm out but cringed in pain. "I'll take care of that," Sebastian murmured, He moved Daren into place and wrapped the cuff around his arm.
    "How did you get this?" There was an odd knot of scar tissue in the middle of Daren's forearm.
    "Ripped out an IV. The anti-malaria drugs were making me hallucinate. I thought