Toby’s more confused now than ever. He’s known so little about Denver in the past three years. The guy isn’t Toby’s best friend, and probably never will be. They click, but maybe not that strongly. Hell, Toby can’t even explain ten significant likes or dislikes that Denver has. Frankly, they’re acquaintances more than friends. They pass in time and place, but they share no involvement with each other in the process. None. Nada. Zilch. He knows next to nothing about the nutritionist, besides what King shares with Toby, which is also limited.
Quiet settles within the living room for a few seconds. Eventually, Denver shakes his head. His skin is already pale, but now it seems to become bleached. Nervous, shaking his head in slow motion, he says to Toby, “Look, I didn’t mean to say that.”
This is an unbelievable evening, Toby thinks, seeing tears begin to bubble at the corners of the man’s pale blue eyes. “But you did,” he whispers, nodding. “You meant every word of it, and you can’t do a take back.”
Denver’s head falls and he looks at the floor, probably crying. He whispers, “It’s hard for me to see you sometimes, particularly when you were with Blue. I try to stay away from you to tell you the truth, except this time. My head and heart got the best of me.”
This weekend was entirely planned from start to finish, wasn’t it? Toby thinks. The way the two of us bumped into each other at Cup of Beans, the house-sitting job, and Denver coming home early from his trip to Denver. Toby climbs off the sofa, crosses the living room, and stands in front of Denver. He reaches his right arm and hand forward and grasps Denver’s left hand, clutching it within his own, gently squeezing the appendage. “You didn’t even go to Denver, did you?”
Denver shakes his head, still looking at the floor. “I didn’t.”
“Where did you stay last night?”
Denver lifts his head. Tears roll out of his eyes and down his cheeks. His face is red now, not of embarrassment, Toby thinks, but of endearment. “King’s place. He doesn’t use it since he stays in the efficiency above the gym. I have a key and made myself at home with his brother. King said I could use it anytime I needed or wanted to, with or without his brother there.”
This is the strangest situation Toby has ever been in. How bizarre. How muddled. Yet, he gently strums the back of Denver’s hand with his thumb, caressing the digit along two knuckles, and says, “You know, Denver, you could have just asked me out on a date instead of going through all this. I would have said yes.”
A semi-smile appears on the red’s face and an infiltrating twinkle brims his eyes of fresh life. “You would have said yes?”
“I would have,” Toby confesses, closes in on the man, and places his free palm against the strange man’s chest, over a pec, and gives it a masculine rub, which proves his affections, and a beginning to their night alone.