Dancing to the Truth (The Brent Trilogy 3)

Chapter 9

I was halfway through my shift on Friday, working from home again, when my phone rang. I picked it up.

"Hello, Brent, it's Becky."

My realtor.

"Hey Becky," I said, and I stepped away from my work computer.

"I just wanted to inform you that the house went up for sale, and that there are already buyers that are interested in coming to see it. Would tomorrow work for you?"

"Um, sure... but, I still have my stuff in here and it's kind of a mess," I said, feeling apologetic.

I could tell that Becky was waving her hand, as if to tell me that it didn't matter, even over the phone. "Oh, that's not a big deal, Brent. I have an excellent staging team that can be there later today, and get the house ready for tomorrow's viewing. What do you say?"

"O-okay," I said, not liking the fact that this was all moving this fast. "That should be fine, I guess."

"Excellent!" said Becky. "I have another call coming through on my other line, but I have a good feeling about this, Brent."

We bid each other goodbye, and then she hung up. I didn't expect people to be wanting to see my house so soon after the listing went up, but I guess I should've been prepared for every eventuality. Since I told Becky that I was interested in looking to buy a new house or potentially a condo from my share of the money we made from selling the house, I haven't even started looking. And now, all of the sudden, it was the last thing I wanted to do. Could I refuse selling the house?

No, that was absurd. She didn't say it, but I knew that Whitney was depending on the money she was going to get from the house sale, and I already screwed her up enough to pull another one of my antics just because I was feeling the fear of moving on, of facing the darkness.

Besides, how likely was it that these potential buyers were going to like the house and make an offer on it right away? I remembered that me and Whitney saw five different houses before we decided on this one. I needed to relax, but that was kind of hard to do.

My encounter yesterday with Julio and Carter left me feeling empty. I loved hooking up with men, that much was true, but... there had to be something more than this to life. Suddenly, I was thinking about William again. William, who had grown up and matured more than I had in the two-and-a-half-years that we didn't see each other. William, who faced his darkness and now knew exactly who he was. I was low-key jealous, even though I was happy for him.

As I returned back to my work, feeling more restless than ever before, I wondered how was I supposed to relax at all today or tomorrow, when I was going to have a staging team going in and out of my house, just to get it ready for more strangers to come and gawk at the rooms where so much life has happened, where I had left such big parts of my soul between these walls.

And as I wrapped up with work, I knew that the best option for me right now was to just get out of the way, and let Becky and her people work their magic in transforming this into someone else's house, and not the place that I called home.

I picked up the phone, and I dialed Marcus.

On the fourth ring, when I was thinking that he wasn't able to talk, he picked up the phone.

"Brent, I was just thinking about you," he said, and I could feel his smile even over the phone.

"What are you up to this weekend?"

"I was going to go to a coworker's birthday party tomorrow and do laundry on Saturday, like usual. Why do you ask?"

"So, here's the thing..." I told him what was going on at my house. "... so, I was thinking, if you don't mind, of course, that I could come and hang with you this weekend in Austin?"