Unforgotten (Forgiven)

dishevelled, and more gorgeous than he’d been ten minutes ago. “I’m all right.”
“You’re bloody mad. Come inside.”
I waved my half-smoked fag. “Can’t. I’m protecting your lungs.”
“Protect your own. Come inside.”
The command lacing his tone caught me off guard. I waited for my hackles to rise, but nothing happened. He went back inside, and I stubbed my smoke out and followed him as if we were tied together by invisible string.
I washed my hands. He passed me a towel and gestured to a plastic tray on the countertop. “From my mum’s old cats. You can use them for yours if you want. We’ll pick up some proper litter in the morning, and some blue bowls if you’re a gender traditionalist.”
I peered at the tray. A set of pink plastic bowls were stacked inside, along with a sparkly fuchsia collar he’d have to pay me not to fasten around Grey’s elegant neck. “I don’t conform to much. And thanks. I think he’ll like them.”
“What’s his name?”
“Grey.”
“You put a lot of thought into that, huh?”
“Yup.”
Gus chuckled and opened the fridge. He slid a beer across the counter to me and opened one for himself. “Should probably put the kettle on, but this feels like the end of a rager.”
He wasn’t wrong. With my scratchy eyes and dry throat, aching muscles and churning stomach, I felt like I’d been on the piss all night, not snoozing on Gus’s couch. I couldn’t help but wonder what he’d been up to, though. How long he’d been home, and what had kept him out. His phone had buzzed and beeped all day. Every so often I’d spotted him tapping at his screen with a lazy grin, tongue caught between his teeth, and figured he was having a gay old time on Grindr, so it had been no surprise when he hadn’t come home.
And none of my business, but now he was right in front of me, questions burned a path to my tongue.
I swallowed them down and opened my beer. Cool, hoppy fizz hit my tongue, and I realised it was the first booze I’d drunk since we’d played out this exact scene yesterday. Huh. Maybe I was ill.
Or perhaps I was so abstracted by Gus’s sex life that I’d forgotten to blunt my senses.
I drank the beer. All of it, while Gus watched, sipping at his own. My shoulder ached. I rubbed at it, absently kneading the muscles.
“Can I ask you something?” Gus’s gentle voice broke the silence.
“If you like.”
“What did Keane mean when he said prison? I’ve never heard that about you before, and Luke’s never mentioned it.”
I didn’t want to think about what he had heard about me, but Keane’s rhetoric had been so wildly off base, I couldn’t help but smile. “Honestly?”
“No, lie to me, dude. I live for it.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”
“What does?”
I didn’t want to think about that either. I slumped forward and dumped my elbows on the kitchen counter. “He was talking shit. I got arrested for thumping his son—”
“Shane?”
“Yeah, that’s the knobhead, but they never charged me because they had him on camera hitting me first, and he was the one with an ounce of weed in his pocket.”
“Your weed?”
“Maybe.”
Gus rolled his eyes. “Okay, forget I asked. I was just checking I wasn’t missing something super important.”
“Would it have made a difference to you if I had been inside?”
“As in, would I have let you stay in my house? Course I would. You’re family.”
Family. Wow. I guess we were if we counted our siblings cohabiting as legally binding, which made the obsession I was developing with his damn-fucking forearms all the more weird. “Then why does it matter?”
“Because I like to have my facts in order before I run my mouth.”
“We’re very different people.”
Gus gifted me another grin. “Trust me, mate. I know.”

Gus
I’d forgotten how clever Billy was with his big words and complicated sentences that often had me googling when he wasn’t looking. He’d been the year above me at school, so we’d never shared a class, but I remembered him winning everything at primary school: sports, academics, art. He was one of those kids who was good at everything, unlike me who had got by on my ability to run faster and harder than everyone else.
Everyone except him.
I was bigger than him these days, but somehow found it easier to remember him as a child than I did the man I’d kissed in the alleyway outside the pub five years ago. Kissed him once, twice, three times before I’d pushed him against the wall and slid my hands—
Stop it.
But as hard as I tried, the images kept coming, bombarding me as I watched him press the new roof membrane into place with the same broom he’d probably used ten years ago. Regret hit me too. I’d pushed him away that night, for once letting my head rule my dick, and despite being drunk as a skunk, I remembered the hurt in his eyes, fleeting and sharp, before he’d smirked and sauntered away. He’d wanted it, he’d wanted me, and he never spoke to me again. Never looked my way until I found him in my house fifteen days ago.
Now we were in an odd state of flux, caught between two boys who had known each other forever, and two souls who didn’t know each other at all. We were strangers, really, so why did having him in my life feel so normal? Why did it feel as if he’d always been here? It hadn’t been that way when Luke had come home, or even Mia. But with Billy it was easy. Natural. At least, on the surface.
“Do you ever do any work?” Billy came to a stop in front of me, nudging my feet with the broom. “Every time I look up you’re staring into space.”
“I’m a dreamer.”
“You’re a lazy git.”
Billy’s usual malevolence was absent. I met his gaze and found myself hypnotised, caught in his all-seeing stare. I was good at hiding my emotions, blanketing