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“I’ll call Sanna and tell her you’re being mean to me.” Fat lot of good it would do given that Oliver’s wife was likely to just laugh at Lee and tell him to get laid because “feeling another human’s touch is important for your sanity, Lee, and I’m not volunteering my husband”, to which Lee would ask who the hell had been crazy enough to hand her a therapist licence. Sanna was great.
“Like she’d believe you over me,” Oliver said.
“Hey, she likes me.”
“Wonder why,” Oliver grumbled, then bumped their knees together. “Hey, I’m glad it’s not what you thought it was.”
“Me too.” Lee sent Alex another look, and yeah, he really was glad it had been a misunderstanding and that Alex was maybe kind of all right, after all. None of that made it a good idea for Lee to let his guard down and indulge in lingering glances, though, because sooner or later, Alex might catch him staring and then what?
Safer to stay at a distance.
4
Somehow, Alex had expected Lee to be a slob. As it turned out, Lee was the very opposite—his side of the room was meticulous, and each night, he laid out his clothes for the next day in neatly folded stacks. When Alex asked about it, Lee stilled, one hand flat on top of the most recent pile he’d prepared.
“Force of habit, I guess,” he said slowly. “Used to do it for my sisters all the time, and now I just find it saves me mental energy in the morning, not having to think about what I’m going to wear.”
It was a puzzle piece that aligned with how Lee talked to his sisters almost daily, and while Alex wasn’t actively trying to listen in, he couldn’t help but overhear the occasional conversational snippet. Lee’s sisters seemed to treat him like a parent more than a brother, running their grades past him and venting their respective frustrations about teachers and homework, and professors and deadlines. They also sought his advice on everything, from disagreements with friends to new haircuts to boys, boys, boys. More than once, Alex had found himself biting down on a smile, reading on his bed while Lee tried to explain the finer details of male behaviour to one of his sisters.
Yeah, good luck with that.
“You’ll make a great dad one day,” Alex finally commented one evening, after Lee had ended a call with his youngest sister Shelly—based on what Alex had caught, she must have spent a considerable amount of time ranting about a boy who’d promised he’d text and, three days later, still hadn’t.
Lee snorted as he set the phone on the bedside table. “Think I’ve got my hands full with these two for now.”
His mum wasn’t the caring type, wasn’t that what he’d said? No dad in the picture, as far as Alex could tell.
“I take it your parents weren’t around much?” he asked carefully.
“My sperm donor didn’t stick around long enough to leave his name, much less a return address.” Lee’s dark eyes narrowed, his voice carrying the faintest hint of a challenge. “So, no. All I know is he was Italian—which narrows it down to maybe ten million daddy candidates if you exclude all Italian men who are currently above the age of ninety and below the age of thirty. Not quiteyourfamily tree situation, is it?”
Alex closed his book and met Lee’s frown with a smile. “Not quite. Let’s just say that any muttering of illegitimacy would be an affront to the very fabric of our family tapestry.”
“Is that a direct quote or are you paraphrasing?”
“Translating the displeased twitch of an upper lip into actual words.”
Alex could see the precise moment Lee’s amusement won over whatever expectations he’d held about Alex’s reaction. “How very insolent of you.”
“That’s me—the rebel sheep of the family.”Hardly. Since it wasn’t often Lee volunteered personal information, Alex decided to prod for just a little bit more. “What about your sisters’ dad? Or dads, I guess.”
“He hung around for a bit before he decided my mum was simply too nuts for him.” Bitterness seeped into Lee’s voice. His attention slid away from Alex to the open balcony door, warm evening air wafting into the room. “Fair enough. But if you can’t handle it, what the hell makes you think it’s fine to leave three kids with a person like that?”
All right, that had been rather more information than Alex had bargained for—not that he minded, he just wasn’t quite sure how to respond. “How old were you?”
“Eight. Got lucky that our grandma was around for a few more years so that by the time she died, I could—” Lee cut himself off, gaze sharpening on Alex’s face. “Never mind.”
“You could…?” Alex prompted, and Lee shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter.” Lee’s tone put an effective stop to the conversation. Fine, Alex could take a hint. Even more so, he was also able to make an educated guess based on the tidbits of information Lee had let slip about his disengaged mum, how he’d been the one to lay out his sisters’ clothes for the next day, and the way they treated him like a father figure. But why had Lee offered that opening about his grandmother in the first place if he had no intention of following through?
“If you say so,” Alex agreed neutrally, shoving a pillow under his chest as he opened his book back up.
“I do.” Lee reached for his ebook reader, and that was another difference to sharing with Jeff—Alex didn’t have to defend the fact that he preferred books to wasting time on a phone or tablet. Bonus, his thrillers weren’t embellished with a jarring soundtrack courtesy of Tik Tok.
For a minute, it was quiet in the room.
“I didn’t take you for a thriller kind of person,” Lee commented.
