Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 7

him.
    "I used to live around here," I told him.
    "Yeah?" He beamed, and his smile was just as big and sure as the rest of him. He was very close to me, I noticed; life and strength radiated from him and I soaked them in, hoping I could hold on to them after he was gone.
    He sat me down on the giant brown sectional with a gentle push on my shoulder.
    "Yeah, when I was a kid. There was no school over here back then. It was all sand and Joshua trees."
    "This place is that new, huh?" He sat beside me, rubbing his hands together. Even sitting, he was half a head taller than me and half again as broad. "My agent wasn't lyin' then."
    "Nope." I stared at the side of his face. "When did you move here?"
    His mouth twitched. "Just this year," he said. "From Ohio." He looked down, then over at me. "Needed a change, you know?"
    "Hmm, yeah."
    He shifted, and his mouth twitched again.
    "Is everything okay?" My voice wavered; I coughed to clear it.
    "Yeah…" His eyes left my face and traveled the length of my body, slowly and reluctantly. He lost control of the expression on his face, and his eyes flashed with lust and shame, back and forth. I put my hand on his forearm and squeezed his wrist. He wrested it away from me. His eyes flashed with something. It looked like anger, or maybe frustration. It happened too fast for me to tell.
    "You must be hungry," he said. His tone was flat, and cold.
    He stood and disappeared into the kitchen before I could speak. I sat for a moment before going after him, hoping I hadn't made a mistake. I'd already made too many big mistakes.
    He was looking into his freezer, moving things around with his hands. I sat in one of the chairs at the table and folded my hands in my lap. He pulled out a pizza and set about putting it in the oven.
    "So…" I fidgeted. "Ohio, huh?"
    He paused and turned to look at me.
    "Yeah," he said. He opened the oven door. "My whole life."
    "Were you a fireman there, too?"
    "Mmm." He set the temperature. "Just house fires every few years, though, nothing like this." He cut his eyes at me. "I've…I've never seen anything like this."
    He paced in front of the stove for a while, not looking at me. Then he walked over and sat down at the other end of the table, his expression forcefully neutral.
    "Got any family around here?"
    "No," he said.
    We sat in heavy silence. His giant frame seemed to have swollen; his shoulders were locked in a stoic position and shoved back like he was a king. He kept looking right through me with a flat expression, and it gave the impression that he held me in some sort of contempt. It was odd to behold after how concerned he'd been at the hospital. I kicked myself again for my earlier presumption.
    The oven beeped, and he went over to get the pizza, his feet thumping on the tile. He set it on the table along with some plates and a knife.
    "I hope you like sausage," he said. "It was all I had-"
    "It's great, Michael." I stared at him until his eyes actually focused on mine. "Really. I appreciate all this." I swallowed. "More than you know."
    We gazed into each other's eyes, and the anxiety between us melted away. He smiled, not as brightly as before, but warmly. I was comforted, and I realized how lucky I was that someone had taken it upon themselves to help me when I had no place to go, even if he was a bit prickly.
    And you don't even deserve it, do you?
    I thought about my house and all of the memories there, of my art. And of Cale. Suddenly, I wasn't hungry anymore.
    "What's the matter?"
    "It's nothing," I muttered.
    "You can tell me, you know," he said. "It's not like I'm weak or useless or something. I could help you. I can ."
    "I don't fucking want to, okay?"
    I didn't mean for it to sound so harsh, and I immediately wished I could take it back.
    "I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean-"
    "I understand," he said. And he really did. I could see it in his eyes. The man confused the hell out of me; one moment it seemed like he was mad at me, and the next he was so understanding that I wondered why I had ever felt uncomfortable. Or maybe it was me, and I was just being too sensitive. Maybe people who'd been traumatically displaced all acted like this.
    I didn't know.
    He walked around the table and took my hand. He pulled me to my feet, and the feel of his enormous hands in mine was both comforting and a little arousing.
    "C'mon," he said.
    I followed him down a hallway and into a bedroom. It was very obviously a guest room; the bedding looked as