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His arm circles my waist, pulling me against his side as he presses a kiss against my temple.
“I’d still rather have grown up on your beach,” he says, and guess having a nice home doesn’t mean much when the people in it aren’t there for you.
When I don’t respond, he turns to face me, the question forming in his furrowed brow long before he voices it.
“Is everything okay? I mean, I know you’re stressed out about the eviction thing and all, but we don’t have to do this if you aren’t up for it tonight,” he says.
I pull back, momentarily confused, and I hesitate to answer. Why would he bring up the eviction warning? Was he not the one responsible for making that payment? Do I have this all wrong, and it was Sander?
“What?” He asks.
“Did you pay my mortgage?” I ask, utterly confused and wondering if maybe there was a mistake at the bank, and I still owe them.
“No…?” he responds.
“You’re being serious?” I ask, needing to be sure.
“Babe, I didn’t make any payments. I’d love to, and wish you’d let me, but I didn’t,” he says, and damn it, I believe him.
“Why?” he asks, placing his hand on my elbow and turning me to face him.
I study his eyes, wondering if he’d actually lie to me in an attempt to preserve what we have now. Or am I only questioning his integrity because I’m worried that if push came to shove, I would lie to save myself? Have I really come to a point where I would stoop so low?
“Keaton?” he asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
“I went to the bank this morning, but everything was already taken care of,” I say, assessing his reaction.
“It was paid?” he asks.
“Yeah, in full,” I clarify.
“Like, the whole thing? Or just what you’re late?” His questions sound legitimate enough, and the quizzical set of his features leads me to further believe that he isn’t the culprit.
“Just what I was late on, but still, that was over six grand,” I say and watch his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.
“Damn,” he says, shaking his head. “Like I said, babe, I absolutely would have, and am kind of jealous of whoever did, but I didn’t.”
“Okay,” I say, accepting his word and letting him pull me in for a quick hug.
“Any idea who it may have been?” he asks, leading me up the front steps.
“The only other person who knows is Sander, but I don’t think it was him,” I say.
“Really?” he asks, as if to say, would you put it past him? Which, no, I wouldn’t.
“I may have yelled at him yesterday,” I say, twisting my hands together in front of me.
“Why? What happened?”
I take notice of the way that Bodhi doesn’t automatically assume — at least verbally — that Sander must have done something to deserve it. Even if he did, Bodhi hasn’t once acted like an overbearing boyfriend. The whole encounter with Mateo aside. He knows Sander and I are friends, and he isn’t threatened by that.
“Just the usual. He wasn’t taking the hint, kept trying to offer to help, and I may have blown up a tiny bit,” I say.
“Tiny, huh?” he says, bumping his shoulder into mine.
“Teensy.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” he says, smirking.
