The One Decent Thing

Four Years Ago

Through the rain-specked windshield he was as indistinct as a ghost, a gray shadow bathed in the sickly orange of the street light over the bus stop. I’d planned to get a burger, maybe a root beer and some fries if I had a few quarters in the center console of my car, and go home. It’d been a long day, a fucking long, boring, awful day at the superstore where I had a shitty stocking job that barely paid my rent, and I was so done. Even the weather was messing with me. Rain this late in May wasn’t normal, but they were predicting a cold-ass summer.

I’d just made a left after waiting forever at the light, of-fucking-course, with my greasy burger almost in sight, when I saw him.

Sebastian Peach. Silly name for a weird guy, and shit, I’d made sure he knew my opinions on his name, and his clothes, and everything else when we were in high school. But it’d been almost a year since I graduated, and real life had kicked me in the face enough times since then that I couldn’t remember why fucking with him had seemed like fun. Why make life worse for people when life itself was good at doing that all on its own?

He’d been two years behind me, though, and had to still be stuck in that crappy school. It was the end of his junior year.

So what was he doing sitting at a bus stop at nearly ten in the evening with the rain starting to come down — and was that a duffel bag by his feet?

I crossed a lane and pulled over, jerking to a stop about fifteen feet past the bus stop. A glance over my shoulder showed no bus coming, and no other cars in the way. I put it in reverse, backed up until my passenger window was right in front of him, and rolled the window down.

Sebastian was looking shifty, leaning over and holding onto the strap of his duffel like he was ready to run. I didn’t really blame him. He was maybe a buck twenty soaking wet, dressed like the gay, nerdy hipster kid he was, and honestly looked like he might as well have had the words easy prey stamped on his forehead.

Leaning over, I called out, “Hey, Sebastian!” He jumped, hefted the duffel bag, and stood, poised to make a break for it. “Sebastian, it’s me. Aidan.” How could he not recognize me? We hadn’t seen each other in a while, but I’d clocked him from across two lanes in the rain.

“I know,” he said tightly. My heart sank a little. Right. He wasn’t ready to run because he didn’t know who I was, he was ready to run because he did. “Just keep driving, okay? Don’t — just don’t.”

His voice cracked on the last word, and his face was crumpled like he was about to cry, or had already cried, or both.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” I said, and I actually meant it.

Sebastian frowned. A car drove by in a whoosh of tires on wet asphalt. “I’m fine.”

“Dude, you’re at a bus stop with a bag, in the rain, like, too late at night on a school night.” Which made me sound like a total asshole since I was only nineteen, but whatever. “At the very least you need a ride somewhere. I can drive you home. Your phone run out of battery or something?”

“Someone’s coming to get me.” He shifted his grip on the bag’s straps, and he didn’t look me in the face. “You should go.”

I thought about it for a second; I even took my foot off the brake. But then I slammed it back down again. There was something really off about the whole situation. If his mom or somebody was coming to pick him up, why hadn’t he said so? And if he wasn’t catching the bus, why was he at the bus stop instead of inside the taco place a couple of blocks down, where it was dry and warm and there were people around? He only had on a thin-looking purple hoodie — with rainbows on the sleeves, of course — and a pair of skinny jeans, and he looked cold and miserable. Dirty-blond hair flopped around his face in limp, rain-damp waves and hung into his eyes.

I pulled up the parking brake and got out of the car. As I rounded the front, Sebastian started backing away, dragging his bag with him like it was too heavy for him to lift.

My hands went up in the universal okay, okay gesture, and I stopped. “Seriously.” I put as much sincerity as I could into my voice. “Seriously, dude, something isn’t right. I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight if I leave you here. You can use my phone if you want?”

His brows drew together, and his lips quivered a little, and oh, fuck, if he started crying I had no idea what I was going to do next. I didn’t give a shit that he was a guy. I would’ve been at least as panicked and confused if he were a girl.

I was opening my mouth to try to say…something. You’re okay, or Please don’t, or something equally dumb. Instead, he burst out with, “I’m not a fucking kid!”

“Okay?”

“I mean, I’m turning eighteen in less than a year! I’m not a fucking kid, and I need to be able to have a life, and just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I can’t go out in public, you know? Like there’s something wrong with me, and they’re embarrassed when people see me and know I’m their son! I am so fucking over this. I’m done!”

By the end of his tirade, there were a couple of tears trickling down Sebastian’s face from his glassy blue eyes. The drizzle was coming down enough by now that I thought I could get away with ignoring them and pretending I hadn’t noticed, since his face was damp anyway.

I wasn’t sure what to say. Yeah, it sucked when parents were controlling, and having parents who tried to control you because they didn’t even like you? That had to be…well, I wouldn’t know. Mine didn’t care enough either way. So if what he said was true, I didn’t really blame him for taking off and running away from home, which it looked like he was doing.

But. I was just old enough that he sounded like a kid to me, a bratty kid who couldn’t wait to live life on his own terms and resented his parents for trying to make him follow their rules. He could be exaggerating. A lot. He could have been about to walk out of the house wearing glittery rainbow pants on his way to a job interview at a funeral home, and his mom said his clothes weren’t really appropriate, and it escalated from there…he could even be basically making this all up, his version of events that didn’t match reality.

Or, again, he was maybe telling the truth, and his parents were assholes. It didn’t matter, because either way, here he was alone.

Waiting for someone to pick him up. The alarm bells in my head started up again.

“Who’d you say was coming to get you again?”

His jaw set and he stared down at the sidewalk. I just stood there, silently waiting him out. I didn’t know Sebastian all that well, but I’d teased him enough at school that I knew he was never, ever able to keep his mouth shut, even when he really should have. Say something to piss him off, and then wait. He’d fill the silence and dig himself even deeper.

Fuck, I’d really been a douchebag. But at least right now I knew how to handle him.