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“Weston,” I say, propping up an arm on the doorframe. “What can I do for you?”
West arches a brow slowly. His lips twitch ever so slightly.
“Raleigh,” he says. “Do you want me to answer that out here where your neighbors might hear?”
About fourteen potential answers leap to mind, and I step back quickly, gesturing him in before my neighbors get a show. Goddamn sweatpants. This was a terrible idea.
If he happens to look down, he’s going to know how not-cool I’m feeling right now. West takes his time surveying the room, sliding his hands into his pockets. He looks… uncomfortable.
“I like your house,” he says.
“Thanks, but it’s my parents’,” I say. My face warms.
“Are they, ah, here?” West asks, his eyes widening a tiny fraction. I shake my head and some of the tension seeps out of his shoulders. He watches my face carefully. “Why does that make you uncomfortable?” he asks.
“I’m twenty-four years old,” I say. I wasn’t uncomfortable until he made me say it out loud.
“And?”
“And I’m living with my parents,” I spit out. Like it’s not obvious why that’s embarrassing.
“Okay,” says West slowly, his head tilting slightly. “Is that a problem?”
“It’s not what you’d call an achievement.”
West looks at me for a long, long moment. The silence stretches out between us and it crosses my mind to tell him to leave before he speaks again.
“I owe you an apology,” he says quietly.
“For what?” I ask. He doesn’t answer right away, but I’m onto his game. I wait him out.
“For not calling,” he says, coming toward me slowly. “For not trying harder to see you this week. Did you think I was ghosting you?”
“It crossed my mind.”
He stops just out of arm’s reach. “Then I’m sorry for that, too. I was working long hours, but that’s not really why I stayed away.”
“Then why?” A large part of me wants to walk away now before he can answer and go lock myself in my room so I can go back to being rejected in privacy. If he’s here to dump me in person, it’ll suck, but damn it, I’ll live. Baby steps.
“Part of it is Callie,” he says.
“Because of your friendship with her brother,” I say. West nods.
“Part of it is my family,” he continues. “They’re not exactly fans of my ‘alternative lifestyle.’”
“Do people still use that phrase?” I ask.
“They do,” West says, shrugging. “If they talk about it at all, which they mostly don’t. At least, not to me. They’d prefer I stay as far in the closet as possible. Actually, they like to pretend there is no closet.”
“That sucks.”
He laughs a little, scrubbing at his jaw with his knuckles. “It really does. But that’s not the main reason I stayed away this week.” He looks up at me, all his shields gone. “I don’t think this can work.”
My stomach bottoms out. I knew it.
“The three of us,” he says, gesturing in a way I interpret to mean himself and Callie and me. “It’s too far out of the norm. You know what I mean?”
I shrug, keeping my eyes averted, my face flaming. He’s dragging this out and I don’t know why.
