Free The Current Between Us by Kindle Alexander

forced to spend the evening with him. What a whipping! “Yeah, really, no… Not interested, Rhonny.”
    “ Look, let me snap his picture tomorrow in class. I’ll text it to you. Will you please not shoot it down without a look at him? He’s hot, Trent, and you two would be super-hot together. The girls would die when you two walked by. You know all my friends want to go out with you; they don’t care you’re gay. They want to be the one to change you,” Rhonny said it all while turning and walking out the kitchen toward her basement apartment. She sauntered away with a little swagger she did when she thought she was funny. She’d made those absurd remarks before, but they never failed to catch him off guard. He chuckled at her silly friends, who were all ten years younger than him. Mere babes in the woods compared to his “old man” status, especially counting the last four years.
     
    ****
     
    After three hours of running totals, checking and double checking his numbers, Trent felt like the latest electrical proposal to hit his desk was finally done. The only problem, the basic, everyday bid shouldn’t have taken this long to work out. He knew this information like the back of his hand, yet hours passed while he got all the way through it.
    The catch in his spine as he stretched out his back couldn ’t be a good sign. He labored for hours over this proposal, finding mistake after mistake in his numbers. The job would be big, but not the biggest he’d ever done and certainly not the hardest. The contractor also used him exclusively, so how hard should this have been?
    Over the years, he ’d sat at this old desk in this old worn out leather chair for more hours than he could count, working on his business. For the first time in his adult life a sense of restless unease washed over him, making him tired. The fatigue ran deep in his bones, clouding his ability to think straight. With a shove of his palms against the edge of his desk, he rolled back about a foot and rubbed his hands over his face, before pushing them through his short hair. On a huff of his breath, he picked up his laptop and his numbers-filled scratch paper to finish this proposal in the comfort of his bed. He’d sat there long enough for one night.
    His house was small, maybe fifteen hundred square feet, and he made his way through the garage, then the house, flipping off the lights and making sure all the doors were locked on his way back to his bedroom. Like every night, he looked in on the kids through the crack in their doors and both were sleeping soundly. His room sat right across the hall from theirs and he quietly pushed the door closed until only a crack remained, just like theirs. Over the years, he ’d trained himself to be a light sleeper, wanting to be able to hear if they needed him in the night.
    Trent laid his laptop on the nightstand before straightening the bed covers where they remained a mess from kids the night before, and then he flipped the covers back, readying them for sleep. He tossed his remote control in the middle of the bed and undressed. After a quick shower, Trent dried himself quickly and pulled on his Sponge Bob pajama pants, the ones Em had given him for Christmas, and finally made his way back to his bed.
    Trent dropped down heavily on the bed, sitting on its edge. He looked at the laptop, and released a big sigh. His hands came to rest between his legs as he decided unsettled might be a better word to describe what went on inside him. He would chalk it all up to Em’s birthday, but this year, for some reason, it seemed a little harder to bear. He missed his sister. He missed their time together and he missed her as his friend.
    If he were b eing honest with himself, it also didn’t help he couldn’t get his mind off how totally hot Gage Synclair was in real life. Dear God, could the man look any better? Hell, he knew the answer to the question: No freakin’ way!
    Embarrassment stained his cheeks and