25. Jeremy

Jeremy felt like he could have sat on that couch and talked to Davis for hours, a snoring dog somehow the white noise machine Jeremy didn’t know he needed. He did need to get back to the city, back to his life, back to where people were neatly slotted into their roles in his life. Friends, coworkers, et cetera. Davis, in the past two weeks, had apparently defied any categorization of friendship in Jeremy’s taxonomy.

The moment Jeremy closed his car door after he gingerly sat down in the driver’s seat and waved to Davis, who was standing on his porch, Mary Anne seated next to him, looking like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, he began to panic a bit. Because something had happened between the men, somewhere between Jeremy’s injury and their conversation on the couch. A rumble that foretold of something, like the moment when you knew a subway train was arriving, the way that the entire station would shake and heads would snap up.

Damn the lack of cell phone reception. He needed to run this past Foster. Which was annoying in its own way, because nothing fluffed Foster’s feathers and caused him to preen like being needed for advice. Jeremy pushed his hybrid car as fast as it could go up the last hill before he got to coast down seven miles of warning signs about the steep grade.

“Come on, come on, come on.” Jeremy had been out to the national forest enough times now that he knew the exact moment that cell phone reception would come back, the moment the screen on his car would begin to light up with text messages that his friends had sent and work emails he could probably get away with ignoring. It was right as he began to see the growing urban sprawl of Denver and the constant construction on the highways, the reminder that over the past few years, the beauty and quiet of the Front Range had become less and less of a secret to his fellow millennials who had left the coasts in search of houses and places to raise families. As he crested the top, he punched the screen that connected his phone to his car, searching for Foster’s number.

“Yellooo,” Foster drawled.

“Help!” Jeremy whined.

He could almost imagine the way that Foster’s face would twist into a sly grin. There was nothing that Foster loved more than giving advice to his friends, even if he was pretty garbage at it most of the time. “Did you call for your friend or Uncle Foster?”

“I’m not calling you that—” Jeremy replied through gritted teeth but was cut off by Foster.

“Listen, I’ve known you for the better part of four years, and it counts double because you let me crash on your couch for the first three months of lockdown. We work out together three to four times a week. We’re basically a platonic married couple at this point. I know your whine.” He heard Foster take a sip of something, probably a mai tai or a daiquiri. Though he worked at a brewery, he tended to not drink beer unless he was drinking his sister’s recipes.

“Fine, I need advice.”

“Comic sans or papyrus. The only fonts you should use.”

“Not design advice,” Jeremy said, his finger hovering over the end call button. He should call Phoebe instead. She’d know what to do, having finally acted on her long-time crush. But, Jeremy reminded himself, he didn’t have a crush. Because you didn’t get crushes on straight men you worked with who were just being nice to you. Even if that niceness came with surprisingly tender hands and a gentle touch on a scraped knee. And an expertly wrapped bandage around both his wrists. As if to remind him, Jeremy’s wrist gave an uncomfortable twinge as he switched lanes.

“Oh,” Foster said, playing along. “Is it boy advice?”

“You’re still straight, right?”

“Last time I checked, which was about thirty minutes ago, yep.”

“Ew.” Jeremy pulled a face in his car. “And single, right?”

A short pause. “Er…yeah. Single.”

“You’ve never thought about, like, making a pass at me, right?” Jeremy rolled his eyes, feeling stupid for even asking the question.

“Nah, man. Like, you’re objectively attractive, but ladies are where it’s at for me.”

“And, like, we’re friendly and give hugs, but you’ve never, like, caressed another man’s hand?”

“Not even when Dec got those sexy-ass hand tattoos.” Foster laughed. “I think there’s an unspoken rule of places on the body that you don’t touch or caress, in your words, unless you’re sending out signals.”

“What about, like, in an emergency? Like, say, your hand is bruised and someone has to wrap it? And then you have to check the bandage?” Jeremy could feel himself scraping at the bottom of the barrel of excuses.

“Nope. I think then you’re even more clinical. Oh, but, in Hallmark movies, there’s always the moment when one character gets sick and then the other has to take care of them.” Foster paused, and Jeremy knew that a lightbulb had gone off in his head. “Who is this about?”

“No one. It’s hypothetical.”

“Hush. I know everyone you know down in the city, and Dec is seeing Phoebe now— finally— and Ryan is very straight and very taken. You haven’t hired anyone new at the museum, and there hasn’t been a new spin instructor in the past four months, and you swore off apps for a while and haven’t been on any dates, because you would have told me.” Foster, when he got his mind on something, was like a squirrel who was convinced he could find the nut he buried. And, occasionally, and unfortunately for Jeremy, sometimes squirrel-Foster found that nut. “It’s that forest guy.”

“His name is Davis,” Jeremy said, worried his voice would give him away.

It did. “You like him?”

“That’s not a question. I can’t like him. I don’t mix business and pleasure. Plus, he’s not my type?”

“What, is he unintelligent?” Foster had shifted to being a cat now, playing with its prey.

“No, he’s incredibly knowledgeable about the national forest’s ecology and its history…”

“Is he mean?”

“No, he’s absurdly nice and welcoming. He made me leave with leftovers today…” Jeremy eyed the stack of plastic containers that Davis had loaded into his car, saying that he had made too much lasagne anyway and that Jeremy should rest his wrist and not do too much chopping. It was a flimsy excuse, but Jeremy, who had apparently become a pushover, took all the food with a grateful smile.

“Is he unattractive?”

Jeremy turned up his AC. “No, he’s not. Objectively speaking.”

“Bring him to my birthday party next week. I want to meet this mystery man.”

“I’m not bringing him around everyone. Between you and Emmy, it’ll be like hyenas around a baby gazelle.”

“I’m taking that as a compliment. Wait. Isn’t it a Saturday?” Foster wondered. “It is, because tomorrow is Sunday, and that’s the day that the direct flight to Iceland leaves…” his voice trailed off. “Why are you working on the weekend?”

“He invited me to go mountain biking,” Jeremy groaned. “And I thought that my spin class experience would translate over.”

“You fucking idiot,” Foster cackled. “You fell, didn’t you?”

“Hard.”

“And not just off the bike, huh?”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Don’t keep Uncle Foster waiting. I want details!” Jeremy hung up and knocked his head against the steering wheel.

Fuck.

He did have a crush on Davis.

And what was worse? He was not sure anymore that it was unrequited.