So far, it was working out well. He mowed the lawn and trimmed the bushes and paid a reasonable rent in return. He had his own space with his own entrance, but Evan was right there, too, and Evan was exactly what Colin needed in his life right now. Evan wore a suit and tie to work, he kept his tastefully decorated house spotless, and he never drank more than two beers when he went out. He was also just about the nicest guy in the world, and he accepted Colin, faults and all. And – for God knows what reason – he believed in him, even when Colin knew he didn’t always deserve it.
Lily, Evan’s fiancée, was pretty much cut from the same cloth. Though she worked in advertising and had her own condo at the beach – her parents had bought it for her – she spent enough time at Evan’s to have become an important part of Colin’s life. It had taken her a while to warm up to him – when they’d first met, Colin had been sporting a blond Mohawk and had piercings in both ears, and their initial conversation had centered around a bar fight in Raleigh where the other guy had ended up in the hospital. For a while, she simply couldn’t comprehend how Evan could ever be friends with him. A Charleston debutante who’d attended college at Meredith, Lily was prim and polite, and the phrases she used were a throwback to an earlier era. She was also just about the most drop-dead gorgeous girl Colin had ever seen, and it was no wonder that Evan was putty in her hands. With her blond hair and blue eyes and an accent that sounded like honey even when she was angry, she seemed like the last person in the world who would give Colin a chance. And yet, she had. And like Evan, she had eventually come to believe in him. It had been Lily who’d suggested that he start taking classes at the junior college two years ago, and it had been Lily who’d tutored him in the evenings. And on two separate occasions, it had been Lily and Evan who had kept Colin from making the kind of impulsive mistake that might have landed him in prison. He loved her for those things, just as he loved the relationship between her and Evan. He’d long since decided that if anyone ever threatened the two of them in any way, he would handle it, no matter what the consequences, even if it meant he’d have to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
But all good things come to an end. Isn’t that what people said? The life he’d lived for the last three years was going to change, if only because Evan and Lily were engaged, with plans for a spring wedding already in the works. While they’d both insisted that Colin could continue to live in the downstairs apartment after they were married, he also knew they’d spent the previous weekend walking through model homes in a subdivision closer to Wrightsville Beach, with homes that featured the kind of double porches common in Charleston. They both wanted kids, they both wanted the whole white-picket-fence thing, and Colin had no doubt that within a year, Evan’s current house would be for sale. After that, Colin would be on his own again, and while he knew it wasn’t fair to expect Evan and Lily to be responsible for him, he sometimes wondered whether they were aware of how important they’d become to him in the last few years.
Like tonight, for instance. He hadn’t asked Evan to come to the fight; that had been Evan’s idea. Nor had he asked Evan to sit with him while he ate. But Evan probably suspected that had he not done those things, Colin might have ended up at a bar instead of the diner, unwinding with shots instead of midnight breakfast. And though Colin worked as a bartender, being on the other side of the bar didn’t exactly work for him these days.