Touch Me (boyxboy)

21. I Think I Might Be Your Mate

Joel

"He fired me! The bastard actually fired me! For saving his ass! I can't believe I even did that? And for what? The arrogant, stuck up, son of a.."

"ME!" I shouted at Mark to stop his rant. "You did it for me, not Casper."

"Yeah, well I wish I hadn't," Mark grumbled.

Mark sat down on the edge of my bed and fiddled with my phone charger cable, a scowl still on his face.

He'd interrupted my nap, and I wasn't happy. I would have told him off about it if it wasn't for the fact I felt a little guilty. Ok, a lot guilty.

You see, this job actually meant a lot to Mark. His mum was quite ill. Something happened to her a while ago and since then she suffered from anxiety and depression. There were weeks when she didn't even leave the house.

His dad worked shifts as a nurse at the local hospital. He's quite senior in his role, and the pay wasn't too bad, but he often had to turn down shifts to look after his wife.

I knew that Mark was giving most of the money he earnt at the manor to his dad to help with the bills.

"I'm sorry," I muttered to Mark. "Do you want me to have a word with Casper, see if I can get you your job back?"

Mark laughed, but there was no humour in it.

"Really, go and talk to the guy who you're supposed to be avoiding? If you ask him for a favour he could ask for a favour back, and where might that lead? The least you can do is let me feel like I helped in some way by dropping those dishes. If you go putting yourself in harms way because of it, what would have been the point?"

Ok, Mark gave a good argument, but that still didn't make the guilt go away, and that was why two hours later I found myself standing outside Casper's room.

I took a few breaths to try to calm the slight tremor in my body, before knocking on his door.

He probably wasn't in his room.

That's probably not his footsteps I could hear coming to the door.

That's probably not him opening the..

"Cub?!" Casper looked nothing but shocked to see me stood outside his door.

I ignored this and stuck to my carefully worded script.

"Hi, have you got a minute, there's something I need to ask you?"

"Sure," he said, opening the door fully and stepping back to let me in.

I walked past him, keeping my expression blank and ignoring the slightly amused smirk on his face.

He closed the door and walked over to his couch, sitting down and patting the seat next to him.

I smiled at him nervously, then glanced around before grabbing a chair, and pulling it over towards him so I was sat in front of him, but a comfortable distance away.

His eyebrow twitched, but thankfully he didn't seem too offended by my blatant attempt to keep my distance.

He remained silent so I took this to mean he was waiting for me to start.

I cleared my throat quietly.

"Errm, well, you know yesterday, in the dining room, when that waiter dropped the dishes, and the wine spilt on Nathan?"

I don't know why I turned that into a question. Of course he remembered! Why was this so hard?

"Erm, yeah," Casper said mockingly, clearly agreeing with me that it was a stupid question.