Dealing with his parents while doing the walk of shame? It didn’t bear thinking about. Except this didn’t really fit the bill. For once, he didn’t feel shitty about how the night turned out. He had Leanne’s number, even if he didn’t know her last name or what she did for a living. Better, he knew how she tasted, he’d seen her face when she came, and he understood she had a complicated relationship with her mother.

That was a lot to unpack from a single night.

It was too soon to text her, and for once, he had no desire to sleep until noon. In fact, he couldn’t recall the last time he was up this early. Sometimes when he helped Titus out, he kept weird hours because Titus’s dog, Doris, liked her breakfast early, and she didn’t eat as well with the automatic dish. But otherwise? He lived like a vampire, staying awake through the night trying to keep his brain busy so it wouldn’t hound him. With varying degrees of success.

Even his “apartment” was depressing. His parents had intended to remodel the basement completely, but when they figured out he’d be staying there indefinitely, they just sort of…stopped working on it. Because why bother, right? It didn’t matter if the floor was painted cement or if pipes showed here and there. All his furniture had been banished from the nicer part of the house—an old brown plaid love seat, a clunky TV his grandfather had bought, resin side tables, and a two-chair dinette set he rarely used. The bathroom was unfinished too, wide open to the laundry area, and the kitchenette was a hot plate and a mini fridge.

“You won’t bother cooking for yourself, what do you need a proper kitchen for? If you want to eat with us, come upstairs,” his mom had said.

In fact, he did like cooking. Not that anyone was interested. His dad only grunted, ignoring him in favor of a hunting and fishing magazine. That was another way that Trev couldn’t compete with Tanner. His relatives saw nothing wrong with shooting animals, but the one time he went along, he’d hurled at seeing the deer thrashing on her side, eyes wide and terrified. Shit, that memory haunted him to this day, along with the awful noises she’d made. Tanner slit the doe’s throat, finishing her off without hesitation, and their old man clapped him on the shoulder and spent the next month bragging to all his buddies what a natural hunter his oldest boy was. Nobody was asking Trev, but he privately thought it was fucking worrisome how fast Tanner was with a knife. But he was a surgeon, after all.

God, my family sucks.