On A Night Like This

Chapter Twenty

-Jayce-

He stared at the wall of his hotel room, sighing before he looked back at his laptop. This would be the fifth job application he'd submitted today. He hoped someone would call him back, but he worried that because it was now December and the holidays were approaching, companies wouldn't be hiring until the new year.

He had enough savings to stay in this hotel for the rest of the month, but after that, he'd have to start bringing in some money if he wanted to make sure he had enough to pay for the deposit and first month's rent for a new apartment. To make things worse, most of the apartments he'd looked at wanted proof of employment and current pay stubs, so he couldn't even get an apartment until he got a job. It was stressful, but it wasn't what was bothering him most. 

Dylan was constantly on his mind. He missed the quiet, gentle man. He missed Dylan's huge arms wrapped around him, Dylan's warm lips against his, and the way Dylan seemed to smell like Christmas. He still didn't understand quite what had gone wrong. Dylan seemed to like him, and he'd told Jayce he could be himself. But maybe what had happened was what always happened to him - as soon as he wasn't perfect, guys left him. He'd challenged Dylan about going into town and brought up Dylan's flaws, and a few hours later, Dylan had sent him back to Seattle.

The other possibility was that his helplessness and tendency to turn everything into a disaster had been too much for Dylan. Because of his poor planning, he'd caused a missing persons fiasco, wasted everyone's time, and caused the police to show up at Dylan's door. Most people wouldn't be happy about that.

He hadn't known his brother was going to invite him for Thanksgiving this year, or that both his brother and his parents would panic when they didn't hear back from him and couldn't get in touch with him. It was nice to know his family actually did care. Since he missed Thanksgiving with them, he had been invited to fly to his brother's house for Christmas.

Giving up on the job applications for now, he crawled onto the hotel bed and sank down with his face in the pillows. He was upset about how things had turned out with Dylan, and he'd spent more time moping around than he wanted to admit. Every time he closed his eyes, he pictured Dylan's face. He didn't know how things would have worked out between them, especially living several hours apart from each other, but he'd at least wanted to try being in a relationship with Dylan.

Beside him on the bed, his phone started vibrating. He picked it up quickly, hoping maybe it'd be someone from one of the jobs he'd applied to, but he sighed when he saw it was just his brother calling him. Again.

"Hey, Matt," he answered. "I'm still okay. Not lost anywhere. You don't need to keep checking up on me."

"I know, but I want to. I feel bad for being too wrapped up in my own life to keep in touch on a consistent basis. That's going to change."

"You have a wife and kids. You should be focused on them."

"And I can focus on you too." Matt sighed. "I didn't know Dad and Mom were being so weird about you being gay. If I had known, I would have done a lot of things differently."

"It's not your problem."

"It is, especially when my little brother takes off into the mountains without telling anyone and almost dies."

"I'm fine," he insisted. "I promise. I won't ever do that again, trust me."

"You still owe me the detailed version of what happened. I mean, some guy who lived in the mountains found you? You can't just leave it at that."

"Okay," he sighed. He started filling Matt in about Dylan, and he couldn't help but tell him everything. He needed to talk to someone about Dylan and about how he had messed it all up.