Accidental Love

by Max Hudson

  “Sorry, I—”

  “No,” Luca said. “It’s okay. Really.”

  Brooklyn looked away from him. “Luca…”

  “Listen,” Luca said when Brooklyn trailed off. “Why don’t you stay the night? You don’t have to, but it’s late, you said you have no work tomorrow, and I don’t want you to drive.”

  Brooklyn watched him. “What about Goose?”

  “Goose?”

  “My dog,” Brooklyn said with a smile.

  “You have a dog named Goose?” Luca replied, cocking his head.

  “Well, I wasn’t exactly going to call him Dog, was I?”

  Luca shrugged. “Do you have a cat called Squirrel?”

  “Shut up, Luca,” Brooklyn said, a smile on his face.

  Luca smiled back at him, shaking his head. “You don’t have to stay,” he said. “Goose needs you.”

  “My roommate can feed him and take him out,” Brooklyn said. “I’ll just owe her a favor.”

  Luca grinned. “Don’t owe any favors to anyone on my account.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know,” Luca replied, shrugging. “What if they cash them in?”

  “That just seems fair,” Brooklyn replied. “I don’t need to stay, though.”

  Luca looked down at his lap and nodded. “Right.”

  “Unless you want me to?”

  Luca looked back up at him. He thought that there was something like hope in that question, but he didn’t want to get too swept up in it. Getting too swept up in it would have been stupid and foolish. He knew better than that.

  “I, yeah,” Luca said, chewing on his lower lip. “I don’t think that I want to be alone tonight.”

  “I can sleep on the couch,” Brooklyn said with no hesitation.

  “Are you sure?” Luca replied. “I don’t want to bother you.”

  “I’m already here,” Brooklyn said. “It would probably take longer for me to go home. And Liz, you know, she needs to pitch in. God knows I help her.”

  “If it’s not too much of a bother,” Luca replied.

  “How about you treat me to brunch tomorrow? We can order in,” Brooklyn said.

  Luca’s eyes widened.

  Brooklyn laughed. “Or we can cook, if ordering in for breakfast is too ostentatious.”

  Luca grinned at him. “Okay,” he said. “That sounds good.”

  ***

  It had been a very long time since Luca had a sleepover that didn't have any romantic elements as part of it. He normally invited the person that was going to stay with him for the night to hang out in his bed, or rather, that was just the way it happened. It would have been very uncool to kick them out when they were already in his bed, panting and exhausted.

  That was not the case with Brooklyn, who was staying on his sofa, after he had covered it with Luca’s linen. Luca had a linen closet that he normally didn’t use, because there was no reason for him to use it.

  He changed his sheets every few months, but that was it. There were no guests, there were no reasons to pull out his spare pillows and his spare quilt. But Brooklyn looked comfortable and warm on his sofa and Luca couldn’t help but smile as he was walking toward his bedroom.

  The pain was coming and going, but he thought that he would feel better after some sleep. Except that when he got to bed, he struggled to get comfortable.

  The doctors had told him about that. They had said that going back home was going to be an adjustment. He didn’t know why he hadn’t expected it to be that much of adjustment, but they had been right. And the worst part of it all was that Brooklyn was right outside his bedroom, looking so lovely and cozy. At least one of them was having a good time.

  He turned and tossed and wondered how different the experience would be if he was okay. If Luca had met Brooklyn under different circumstances, then maybe they wouldn’t be in different rooms. Maybe they’d be talking to each other in the bed instead, and then that would lead to other things. Luca noticed that he was starting to get hard as he thought about Brooklyn, but he couldn’t—shouldn’t—do anything about it. Perhaps it was from all the medications and from how confused he was, from how weird everything that was going on was.

  He noted with something like academic interest that he hadn’t felt that way at all about Derek. It had felt wrong that they weren’t together, but wrong in a “it should be like this” way, not in a “I want it to be like this” way. Luca supposed that made all the difference.

  He hadn’t expected to think more about Brooklyn than he was about Derek. He still wanted to find the truth about what had happened with Derek, and of course, he wanted to know about what had happened in Las Vegas.

  But that was less important than Brooklyn which had taken Luca by surprise. Maybe his priorities were going to change even more after the accident.

  He finally fell asleep, thinking about Brooklyn. When he woke up, he was disoriented, but for the first time in what felt like a very long time, he also felt rested.

  It wasn’t as if he wasn’t in pain, though. He was, and it was hard, and weird, especially when he found himself unable to move very well because of the pain that every single movement caused him. But his head wasn’t throbbing and he was in his bedroom, and though things were a little too clean to really be him, he understood that was just his family trying to be supportive.

  He would surely undo their work soon enough. He got up, groaned when he put his leg on the floor and tried to put his weight on it, and then started to walk toward the kitchen. He’d already had his morning pill the moment he had woken up, because it was there, right next to him. He didn’t remember setting it there, so it must have been his sister or his parents who had done so.

  He usually slept in just his boxers and he didn’t want to go out to the living room wearing nothing but that, so he dragged himself toward the closet, grabbed some comfortable pajama pants and tried to slide them on.

  It was hard. He didn’t need to stay off his feet to recuperate—he had been incredibly lucky, like the doctors reminded him so many times—but his balance was all off and his legs were swollen and bruised still. He was supposed to instantly go back to bed if something hurt.

  His doctor had emphasized the difference between hurt and discomfort when Luca had been discharged from the hospital. Apparently, Luca would learn about it eventually. It would take him some time, but he would learn to tell the difference between the two things.

  Right now, though, the lines seemed to be blurred. Luca wasn’t sure if this was pain or discomfort. He thought it was pain, it was erring on the side of pain, but he couldn’t be sure. Despite the pull he felt toward lying down, where his body was telling him that he needed to, he didn’t want to go back to bed, partly because he knew that Brooklyn was waiting outside his bedroom for him and it would have been rude to just leave him there.

  If Luca explained what was happening, then he was almost completely sure that Brooklyn was going to want to take care of him. The last thing that he wanted was for Brooklyn to feel like he needed to do something like that for him.

  He liked Brooklyn, and he did like when Brooklyn took care of him, he couldn’t deny it. But he didn’t want Brooklyn to feel like he was a burden and he already felt like one himself.

  Everything was so much harder than it had been before. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to deal with any of this. He just wanted to go and have brunch with the cute guy that was staying on his couch and he didn’t understand why that suddenly seemed to be such an impossible task. He put on his pajama pants, finally, which were a little loose. He groaned when he put them on, but at least he managed to put them on, something that he hadn’t thought would be this hard before the accident.

  He was starting to realize that he could take lots of little things for granted. That he did take lots of little things for granted about what he could do every day, and this injury was making things way harder than he had expected.

  He was having to dedicate a lot more time to
thinking about stuff that normally he would have been able to do on autopilot and it was starting to bother him.

  He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to deal with all of this. He tried not to wince as he walked outside his bedroom to find Brooklyn in his living room. When he looked around to see him, though, he couldn’t spot him. His apartment wasn’t big, so it only took him a little while to find Brooklyn.

  He was in his kitchen, moving around and opening his cupboards. Luca started to walk toward him, knowing that he wasn’t making very good time even though he was only going across his living room and into his kitchen, which normally only took him a few seconds.

  Brooklyn looked up at him and smiled. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

  “Hi,” Luca said. “I was supposed to be the one making you breakfast.”

  “I know,” Brooklyn said. “But it was late and I was hungry. I hope that you didn’t mind that I started making breakfast.”

  “I don’t mind,” Luca replied. “I just wish I was helping.”

  Brooklyn shrugged. “It’s okay,” he said. “Since you’re providing all the ingredients, and your company, you’re helping.”

  Luca smiled. “You’re sweet.”

  “You mean hungry,” Brooklyn said. The toaster popped and Brooklyn went to get butter from the fridge. “How did you sleep?”

  “Okay, once I finally got to it,” he replied. “My head was swimming. Too many thoughts.”

  “Yeah, that happens after an accident.”

  Luca smiled. “I’m glad I’m here to learn from you,” he said. “You’re like my mentor.”

  “Your accident mentor,” Brooklyn said, as he seemed to consider it. “You know, it’s funny, but I don’t totally hate it.”

  “Why is that funny?”

  “I don’t know,” Brooklyn said, shrugging. “I guess part of me really hates the idea that I’m going to be someone’s disability guru.”

  “I… didn’t mean to make you feel like that,” Luca said.

  “No, it’s okay,” Brooklyn replied. He was pouring the coffee that Luca hadn’t even realized that he had made and Luca couldn’t help but smile at that. “How do you take your coffee?”

  “Black,” Luca said.

  “You’re easy to care-take.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a compliment,” Luca said. “Am I supposed to take it as a compliment?”

  “You’re supposed to take it as whatever you want,” Brooklyn replied. “I need to go after this, though.”

  “Well, yes, I can’t exactly expect you to make me lunch too.”

  Brooklyn smiled, but Luca thought that he saw concern in his eyes. “Do you want me to call someone?”

  Luca watched him, his eyes narrow and his heart beating fast in his chest. Part of him didn’t want to hear the answer to his question, but he knew that he had to. He had to ask and he needed Brooklyn to tell him the truth, even if the truth hurt.

  Brooklyn watched him, waiting for him to say something.

  After he had gathered his courage, after he had gotten close enough to the breakfast bar so that he was almost face-to-face with Brooklyn, except for the obvious breakfast bar in their way, Luca spoke. When he did, his voice was quiet. He was trying not to sound accusatory, but he knew that an edge had crept into his voice. “What do you mean?”

  Brooklyn looked back at him. When he spoke, his voice was deliberately quiet, but there was no accusation there. Despite how kind he sounded, Luca couldn’t help but hate him a little bit. “You know, so that you don't have to be alone.”

  Luca glared at him, at his face. “I can be alone. I'll be okay.”

  Brooklyn nodded before he answered, cocking his head as he did. “Okay, are you sure? Because I have to work tonight, and I don't think I'm going to be able to come back to you if you need me during my shift.”

  Luca cocked his head as he scoffed. “And what makes you think that I'm going to call you if something goes wrong? What makes you think I’m going to need you in the first place?”

  “Luca—”

  “You’re so arrogant,” Luca said. “You’re here because you seemed upset last night. Not me, you. Remember that? I don’t need you. Please get rid of the idea that you’re some sort of hero that I’m going to call to my rescue whenever things go wrong, because this is just guaranteeing I won’t ever call you. Not even for something like ice cream.”

  Brooklyn sighed, putting the cup of coffee down on the counter in front of him. “I didn't mean it like that.”

  “So then how the hell did you mean it?”

  Brooklyn walked over to where he was, handing him the cup of coffee that was still in his hands. It turned out that he hadn’t put Luca’s cup of coffee down.

  For a millisecond, Luca wanted to slap it out of his hand, but then he realized that his very own carpet would be the victim in that, and he didn't want to make any of his belongings pay for Brooklyn's attitude.

  Instead, he grabbed the cup of coffee and kept it in his hands. “When I was alone after my accident, things were very hard for me,” Brooklyn said, looking down at the floor.

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t know,” Brooklyn kept going when he saw the way that Luca was looking at him.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I mean, everything I do know is just from my own experience, right?”

  Luca nodded, though he kept glaring at him.

  “And part of what helped me deal was the ability to be with people all the time,” Brooklyn said quietly. “I mean, I got sick of not being alone, you know. I really wanted my space eventually, but originally it was really important that I was with people.”

  “I’m not you,” Luca said.

  “I know,” Brooklyn replied. “But I only have my experience to refer to.”

  “Well, I’m not you,” Luca said. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  Brooklyn licked his lips. “I should probably go.”

  Luca hadn’t meant to make him feel like he had to leave, but he wasn’t upset about it. He felt insulted that Brooklyn had brought this up in the first place, but part of him wished that he hadn’t been so rash to show how insulted he felt. After all, Brooklyn was just trying to help.

  He had made him breakfast and he had been super nice to him the night before, which was very unnecessary. Luca opened his mouth to apologize, but before he could, there was a knock on the door.

  Luca turned to look at the door, then he turned to look at Brooklyn again. “I’m not expecting anyone.”

  Brooklyn raised his eyebrows. “Okay…”

  Luca’s lips clamped shut. He didn’t understand why he thought that Brooklyn would care if he was expecting someone. Of course he wouldn’t care. Why should he care about something like that? They weren’t dating. Brooklyn was just his friend and he had spent the night being only his friend.

  He didn’t have to be anything else. That was all that he had to be and Luca had already offended him. Luca turned to him to apologize, caring very little about the person at the door, when the knocking started again.

  “Hold that thought, okay? Don’t go anywhere.”

  Brooklyn glared at him, saying nothing. Luca supposed that he didn’t deserve an answer, but he would have liked to hear something from him, anything.

  He wanted confirmation that Brooklyn would stay there, but Brooklyn gave him nothing. Luca supposed that he deserved nothing, so he wasn’t too surprised when Brooklyn didn’t make a sound. He did stay there, though, which was good. Because Luca was almost sure that Brooklyn was going to walk to the door before Luca had a chance to talk to him.

  But he hadn’t and Luca was pleased. He just had to get rid of the person at the door, then he could go back to talking to Brooklyn.

  Walking to his door felt like a mammoth task. Everything about being a person felt so exhausting that day. Maybe that was part of it, he thought. Maybe the reason that he had been angry with Brooklyn was because of the irritability that he felt after the accident.


  The doctors had warned him about that too. They had warned him about a lot of things, none of which he paid enough attention to. He didn’t look through the peephole before he opened the door, and before he thought about that, he opened the door.

  Derek was standing in front of him. It took him a little while to recognize him, because he looked like shit. Derek was the kind of person that always cared very much about his appearance, but something had happened that day. He didn’t seem to care very much about the way that he looked at all.

  There were big dark bags under his eyes and there was sweat on his face. When Luca opened the door, Derek leaned on the frame and looked right at Luca’s face.

  “You’re okay,” Derek said.

  Luca blinked. “I, yeah,” Luca replied. His gaze darted back to his kitchen, but he didn’t want to give away that Brooklyn was there. For some reason, it felt important to him that Derek didn’t know about Brooklyn. He wasn’t sure why. He shouldn’t have cared, because it wasn’t as if he was with Derek, and it certainly wasn’t as if he was with Brooklyn.

  He gestured toward the hallway with his head. “Let’s talk outside,” he said.

  Derek looked at him, furrowing his brow but nodding along with Luca.

  Luca closed the door behind him when he stepped outside. “What are you doing here?”

  Derek shrugged. “I don't know,” he replied. Luca noticed that he was panting, that he sounded like he was out of breath. He sounded like he had been running and Luca wasn’t sure what to make of it. He wasn’t sure what to make of Derek being there in the first place.

  “Okay,” Luca said, unsure of what else he could say. He wanted to ask Derek about what he was doing, but mostly, he wanted him to go. He wanted to go back into the apartment and apologize to Brooklyn for being shitty. That wasn’t going to happen as long as Derek remained there, in front of him.

  Derek cocked his head and shrugged his shoulders when he saw Luca’s questioning look. “I guess I was just worried about you.”

  “You were worried about me?” Luca asked, looking right at him.