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Burton Guster excelled in a great many areas, and was proficient in many others. His resume spoke for itself: excellent communicator, hard-worker, dependable, compassionate, a real team player, proficient in Microsoft Word. Beyond that, he co-ran his own business, had become a rather successful sales rep for a well-known pharmaceutical company, and had helped solve hundreds of cases that had stumped even the police. He even did his own taxes!
He didn’t put it on his resume, didn’t even like to admit it to himself, but over the years, Gus had realized that he was also really good at denying the truth.
On a completely unrelated note, Burton Guster didn’t feel a shred of guilt after he kicked his best friend out of the horse-drawn carriage. He didn’t feel even a smidgen of guilt as the horse trotted away, pulling Gus and his warm, snuggly blanket along behind it. He didn’t feel an ounce of guilt as he cast one derisive glance over his shoulder to see Shawn standing in the middle of the road, Canadian forests on both sides, civilization in the distance but at least a five mile walk. And he certainly didn’t consider asking the driver to turn the carriage around when he saw how much like a lost kid his abandoned friend looked in the dusky moonlight.
No, sir, not one bit.
And honestly, Gus thought as he stubbornly avoided looking back again, ignoring Shawn’s slightly panicked appeals (“Really, buddy? C’mon, Gus! It’s dark and cold and there are raccoons afoot!”), this was no less than Shawn deserved. It might even teach him a much-needed lesson. To be fair, after thirty years, Gus was used to Shawn taking advantage of their friendship, but he had really stepped over the line this time.
It was bad enough that he’d stolen Gus’s credit card (again), this time to pay for a luxurious ski vacation to Canada for him and his girlfriend, but on top of that, when Abby had bailed, Shawn had asked Gus along, probably not even recognizing the irony that Gus had been invited as a guest on a vacation that he didn’t even know he was paying for. And then, the spoiled icing on the rock-hard cake, Shawn had presented the offer like he’d been thinking of Gus first, like this whole trip was an effort to strengthen their friendship and reconnect after all the stress of the past few months.
When Gus had finally connected the dots, it had hurt . Yes, he was used to Shawn taking advantage of their friendship, but this felt different. And it just so happened that Gus had connected those dots while he and Shawn had been returning from a horse-drawn carriage ride through the woods, a few miles outside of the city.
He’ll be fine, Gus assured himself, pulse drumming loudly in his ears. He hadn’t been this angry in a long time. And it’s a straight shot back to the tour company. As long as he stays on this road, he’ll be back in the city in a few hours. From there, Gus knew, Shawn had at least enough cash to get a cab to their hotel. And if Gus was wrong, he still had Gus’s credit card. He’d be fine. And besides, Gus added, if he’s really desperate, he can always call Lassie or Jules for a ride. The detectives had arrived in Canada that morning, Lassiter’s gaze firmly locked on the art thief Shawn and Gus had been chasing. They wouldn’t be happy to get a call after 10 p.m. from Shawn asking to be picked up, but they’d get over it – and maybe by the time Shawn finally got back to the hotel, Gus would have had enough time to work through some of his anger and be ready to talk to his friend again.
Gus tucked the blanket tighter around himself as he rode. Early spring in Canada was pretty chilly during the day, but the cold really dug its claws in deep at night. Unbidden, an image of Shawn, stranded in the woods with his jacket and nothing else for warmth popped up in his mind. Maybe he should ask the driver to turn back?
Gus shook his head. No way. Shawn was a grown-ass man, even if he didn’t act like it ninety-nine percent of the time. He’d be fine.
Gus was really good at denying the truth. All the way back to the tour company, he shoved aside any rising doubts or concerns, replacing them with his righteous fury at Shawn’s misdeeds. He really took it too far, he reminded himself. And yet, the hardest thought to shake was tied directly to his anger at how far Shawn had taken this whole thing.
This wasn’t like Shawn.
Sure, Gus found himself thinking as he tipped the carriage driver, thanked the man for his time, and shuffled to the Blueberry, Shawn was irresponsible. He was reckless, and inconsiderate, sometimes flat-out rude. He made executive decisions, most of them terrible, and treated himself to anything that Gus owned whenever he’d felt like it. Gus had tried to set boundaries a couple of times before, but Shawn was excellent at finding chinks in Gus’s armor.
But Shawn was also, deep down, a good person. He cared, deeply, even if he rarely showed it. Come to think of it, Shawn was great at denying the truth, too. Maybe that’s why he and Gus were best friends. Friends who deny together, what? Die together? Gus shook his head, his thoughts going in a direction he didn’t care for.
But he couldn’t stop the feeling that something wasn’t right this time. What Shawn had done wouldn’t have been a stretch for him right after he came back to Santa Barbara, even at the beginning of Psych. But being back home had changed Shawn in many ways. Gus thought back to their school reunion, the kind words, the credit he’d given to Gus in his speech to the school. That was the Shawn Gus had been seeing more and more these past few years. Shawn would still tease and act like an idiot and take advantage of his friends, but not like this.
It was almost like… a cry for help.
Gus shook his head firmly. “Nope,” he said out loud. He wasn’t going to turn around and go looking for Shawn now. He was obviously just being selfish, using Gus because he knew his friend often played the doormat and let people – particularly Shawn himself – walk all over him. Well, not today. Not anymore. “No way,” Gus added for good measure. He put the Blueberry into gear and drove toward the city lights. Away from Shawn.
“He’ll be fine,” Gus said again, and this time he almost believed it.
Two hours later, Gus got the phone call. He’d managed to calm down a bit, especially after he’d gathered up all the rose petals and thrown them away. He’d taken a warm shower, put on his warmest pajamas, and tried not to think about how cold it had gotten outside. The pinprick of worry in his chest had been trying to branch out, expand its real estate, and Gus had flipped on the TV in an effort to distract himself. Late night CBC was airing an old MacGyver episode. Cozy in the plush hotel bed, Gus settled in and watched.
Right as Mac and his friend Charlie were defusing twin bombs on a cruise ship in tandem, Gus’s phone rang. He glanced down and couldn’t help the sigh of relief when he saw Shawn’s name light up the screen. He wasn’t angry enough at his friend to wish him any harm, and had cooled down enough to admit he was glad Shawn was okay, but as soon as he thought about what Shawn had done, irritation bubbled up once again.
“What is it, Shawn?” Gus snapped.
For a moment, there was silence.
“Shawn?” Gus practiced his gift of denial once again, steadfastly pretending the knot in his gut was not twisting into a living, breathing mass of panic.
Relief spread through him as Shawn finally responded, only to be replaced by actual fear at the sound of his friend’s voice – shaky, distant, confused. And most disconcerting, Shawn sounded surprised to hear Gus on the other line, despite the fact that he had been the one to call Gus in the first place.
“Gus? What are you doing here?”
Gus shot up in bed, heart hammering. “Shawn, what the hell are you talking about?”
A pause, a shuffling sound, a series of beeps as Shawn accidentally hit some keys. “Oh, silly me. You’re on the phone.”
The panic in Gus’s stomach turned to a sick dread. Something was very wrong. Even Gus, the master of denying things he didn’t want to deal with, couldn’t pretend that that there wasn’t. Shawn wasn’t acting like an idiot, and he wasn’t pretending to be hurt or injured to worry Gus or make him feel guilty for abandoning him on the road. No, Gus knew Shawn, and Shawn was in trouble.
“Where are you?” Gus demanded.
More shuffling, a muffled yelp, and a muttered curse. Instead of answering Gus’s question, Shawn informed, “I went swimming.”
Gus’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What are you talking about, Shawn? It’s February in Canada, and we came up here to ski .”
Shawn sounded genuinely baffled when he shot back, “Well, if I didn’t go swimming, why am I all wet?”
Gus swallowed hard. “Shawn, where are you?” he asked again. “Do you remember what happened?”
“It’s c-c-cold,” Shawn observed in the detached tone of a seasoned news anchor. For the first time, Gus noticed that he was stuttering. Had he been shivering this whole conversation, or had he just started? Shawn continued to ramble, “I m-mean, like r-r-really cold, d-dude. C-colder than the time we g-got stranded in a snowstorm in northern Nev-Nevada.”
Gus rolled his eyes. “Shawn, that was Neil Patrick Harris and Kelli Williams in Snowbound , and you know it.”
“Wait,” Shawn said slowly. “What d-d-do I know?”
“Shawn, where are you?” Gus demanded again, the time for misplaced references long behind them. “Are you back where… where I left you?” Guilt tightened his chest, turned his heart to lead.
“Gus? You l-l-left me? When? That’s–” an audible shudder, “–not v-very nice.”
Gus bit his lip. Shawn was being even less helpful than usual, and everything that he’d said and done so far had painted a very concerning picture in Gus’s mind. If Shawn was soaking wet – somehow – and out in the cold, wandering around, then they could be looking at hypothermia. It had to be nearing 30 degrees outside now as midnight fast approached, and a person could become hypothermic even in forty or fifty degree weather if they couldn’t get dry or were exposed long enough. Gus needed to find Shawn, now .
He tried one more time. “Shawn, do you remember what happened after the carriage left? Did you start walking back to the hotel? Did you call someone to come get you?”
Shawn didn’t speak for a long moment, and Gus got the impression that he was thinking about something very hard. While he waited for a response, Gus listened closely for any background noises. A crunching sound? Maybe someone walking on dry grass or dead leaves? Had Shawn gone off the road for some reason?
Finally, Shawn answered. “S-Shortcut. Wanted to get b-b-back faster ‘cuz it was c-c-cold.”
Fresh waves of guilt washed over Gus, but he ignored them, grabbing his keys from the dresser and rushing for the door. If Shawn was wandering around in the woods, even if just the ones at the edge of the city and not the great Canadian wilderness, Gus wasn’t going to be able to find him on his own. He needed help. “Okay,” he said, desperately trying to keep his voice from shaking, for Shawn’s sake, as he rushed to the elevator. Thankfully, Lassie and Jules had secured rooms at the same hotel, just two floors up. “Okay,” he repeated. “You went off the road, trying to find a shortcut because it was cold. Why didn’t you call someone to pick you up?”
No answer. Gus tried again, “Fine. What happened after you went off the road? How did you get wet?”
“Tripped,” Shawn supplied shortly, his voice noticeably weaker. “Fell d-down hill. Stream at the bottom.” Gus could tell just from the stunted explanation that Shawn was getting too tired to hold up the conversation for much longer. He slammed his index finger into the button for floor seven, again and again, until the doors finally slid shut and the lift started moving.
“Shawn, are you still moving, or have you stopped to rest?” he asked.
Shawn didn’t respond.
“Shawn, are you hurt anywhere? Or are you just cold?” Gus tried again.
No answer.
It was then that he checked his phone and realized he’d lost signal in the elevator. “Damn it!” he yelled, quickly dialing Shawn’s number again.
The phone didn’t go straight to voicemail, which meant that it hadn’t died and hadn’t lost signal. Gus honestly wished it had, though, because the alternative was that the phone was ringing, and Shawn, for some reason, just wasn’t picking up.
Gus bolted in the direction of the detectives’ rooms, no longer able to deny the truth: He might have, in a moment of anger, killed his best friend.
Neither Juliet nor Lassiter were impressed by Gus’s behavior.
“Good Lord, Guster, I don’t blame you for finally ditching that dead weight, but maybe you could have done it somewhere else? You know, where he might not freeze to death or get eaten by bears?” When Juliet looked up at him with wide, surprised eyes, he’d clarified, “Not that care if Spencer gets eaten by a bear, but it would be a lot of paperwork.”
Juliet shook her head slowly, blue eyes swimming with disappointment and worry. “Gus, I understand why you were angry, but I can’t believe you actually left him there, all alone, in the cold. That’s… really unlike you.”
Gus’s fingernails dug into his palms. “That’s the thing about being best friends with Shawn,” he said. “I’m not making excuses, but he can drive you a little crazy sometimes, make you lose sight of the bigger picture. He’s just so…”
“Obnoxious? Childish? Incorrigible?” Lassie supplied helpfully.
“Can we get back to the matter at hand?” Juliet had snapped then, her gaze a determined fire. “Shawn’s hurt, wandering around in the woods, freezing, and you’re both standing here criticizing him?”
Gus hung his head, not attempting to explain that he hadn’t been complaining about Shawn or even trying to make excuses for himself. He’d just needed someone to understand that he would never hurt his best friend. Not intentionally at least.
But the hard truth was that intentions wouldn’t matter if Shawn ended up frozen to death in some ditch in Canada. Either way, it would be Gus’s fault.
Either way, he would have killed his best friend.
In the end, Lassiter was able to track Shawn’s phone with a little help from the local police department, Mac in particular. Despite Shawn’s less than conventional methods and the fact that he and Gus had caused more trouble than they'd solved since they'd taken the case, the young officer was eager to help find his new friend.
All the while, Gus kept re-trying Shawn’s phone, even as they all piled in Lassie’s rental car, the man himself at the wheel, Juliet in the passenger’s seat, and Gus and Mac in the back. Eventually, they had to get out of the car and go off-road themselves, picking their way carefully through the trees and underbrush so that they didn’t follow in Shawn’s footsteps and end up tumbling down a hill.
Finally, as the group neared the coordinates they’d tracked Shawn’s phone to, Shawn answered.
Terror settled on Gus’s heart and dug its claws deep at the weak delirium in Shawn’s voice, any relief he felt upon hearing his friend alive draining away at how far downhill he’d gone in the forty-five minutes since they’d last spoken. At first, Gus couldn’t understand the string of garbled words pouring from the speaker, but he did notice that Shawn had completely stopped shivering at this point – not a good sign. He put Shawn on speaker so that the others could hear, and saw the deep lines of concern carved into each face – even Lassiter’s – at the incoherent ramblings.
“We’re almost there,” Mac breathed, glancing down at the police-issued GPS. “As long as he hasn’t wandered too far since we tracked his phone at the station, we’ll find him soon.”
Lassiter’s lips were tight. “Go ahead and call for a bus,” he ordered Mac. Gus glanced from Lassie to Jules, whose blue eyes glittered black in the rays of the flashlights.
The more Gus listened to Shawn, the more he was able to pick up on words and phrases and he realized with a sinking gut that Shawn wasn’t spouting complete nonsense at all. He wasn’t on another planet entirely; he was stuck in the past. And the part of his past he had descended into shed all the light Gus needed onto the situation. It suddenly became very clear why Shawn had gone so far this time, what he’d been running away from.
“He’s watching me, Gus,” Shawn muttered. No more crunching sounds, so Shawn must have finally stopped wandering around. A chuckle. “Not he, she. We thought she was he but he was she. Watching me. And mom. She’s got my mom, Gus. Gus! Guess what? It’s my fault. She’s coming after me , Gus. She’s going to kill me…”
And so on and so forth.
What this ultimately told Gus was that this whole thing – the sudden desire to go on a ski trip, the stolen credit card, the deception, all of it – was connected to Yang. More guilt summoned hot, fresh tears to Gus’s eyes. Why hadn’t he seen it sooner? Why had he ignored the signs that Shawn was trying to deal with trauma the only way he knew how – by running away, by engaging in destructive behavior, by getting people to pay attention to him, to see him, to help him, no matter how negative that attention might be.
It was what had happened when his parents got divorced. When his dad had arrested him for “borrowing” his neighbor’s car. Shawn had insisted that he’d been fine after the whole ordeal, but how could he have been? A serial killer had targeted him and nearly killed his mom. And that same serial killer had developed an obsessive affection for Shawn, had promised him that their story wasn’t over.
But Shawn had buried all that away, deep inside, like he always did, and when the feelings got too much, he’d panicked. At least this time he hadn’t packed up and moved away. But he had run, and when Abby had bailed, he’d taken Gus with him. If anyone should have been able to see the signs that Shawn was spiraling, it should have been Gus. His best friend. But he’d been so blind and angry by Shawn’s behavior that he’d refused to see the truth.
“I’m so sorry, Shawn,” Gus whispered as his friend rambled on about how many hats and black jeeps and chasing trains.
They found him about a hundred yards from where they’d tracked his phone, slumped against the base of a massive cedar. He was curled up on himself, skin bone-white in the flashlight beams, eyes half closed, moving restlessly in their sockets. He’d let go of the phone at some point, but it had caught on his coat collar, and he kept muttering into it, his addled words amplified by Gus’s speaker.
Gus hung up and fell to his knees beside his friend.
“Shawn?”
Shawn’s eyes cracked open a fragment more. “Hey, Dad,” he slurred. “What’re you doin’ here? Told ya I don’ wanna go fishin’ today…”
Gus peered up at his friends, hot tears tracking down his cheeks. “He doesn’t know who I am,” Gus whimpered.
“Ambulance is waiting right off the road,” Lassiter barked, squatting down beside Shawn and pressing a gangly hand against his cheek. Shawn’s head lolled to the side at the touch. “He’s ice cold.”
Juliet knelt in front of Shawn while Mac hung back, muttering into his radio. Through his own tears, Gus could see the fear on Juliet’s face, though she maintained her composure well. She pulled off one glove and placed her fingers on Shawn’s throat, on his pulse point. “Slow,” she said curtly. “Really weak. We can’t wait for the EMTs to get to us with that stretcher.”
“Right,” Lassiter snapped. “We carry him, meet them halfway. Guster, you grab his feet. I’ve got his head. You, whoever you are–”
“Mackintosh, sir.”
“Whatever. You and O’Hara lead the way. O’Hara, focus your beam straight ahead. The other one–”
“Mackintosh.”
“Whatever. Keep your light on the ground. Let’s move.”
Shawn was going to make a full recovery.
After Gus, the detectives, and Mac had met up with the EMTs about three-fourths of the way out of the woods, everything had become a blur. The EMTs had set to work immediately, not willing to wait any longer to start raising Shawn’s body temperature. While Juliet had turned her back, the EMTs had cut off Shawn’s still-damp clothes, started him on an IV round of fluids, covered him with a thermal blanket, and tucked hot packs on either side of his neck, his armpits, and groin. After that, they’d strapped him to the stretcher, draped another heated blanket over him, and carried him as quickly as possible to the ambulance.
They’d sped away with his friend before Gus even had a chance to ask if he could ride with him.
An hour later, Gus sat in the waiting room of a hospital whose name he’d already forgotten. Juliet and Lassiter had dropped him off, then headed back to the station with Mac to take care of a few things in the aftermath of the rescue. Juliet promised they would be back at the hospital as soon as possible to check on Shawn, and though Lassiter had rolled his eyes, Gus had clearly seen the concern lurking just beneath the surface.
This had been far too close.
Gus had also called Henry, once a nurse had come out and told Gus that Shawn was going to be okay, that they were getting him into a room so that Gus could see him. When Henry demanded to know how the hell his son had ended up frozen half to death not ten miles from his hotel, Gus had muttered something vague. He had no doubt Henry would find out what had really happened, either on his own or from one of the detectives. But right now, Gus could barely accept his own part in all of this, and speaking it aloud would only make it that much more real.
“Mr. Guster?” The same nurse from earlier popped her head into the waiting room. “Mr. Spencer is awake, and he’s asking for you.”
Gus had a whole speech planned out for his apology, and he practiced it in his head as he followed the nurse out of the E.R. and toward the elevators. As soon as he opened the door and saw his best friend blinking sleepily back at him, every bit of that speech deserted him.
Shawn looked terrible . His face was beyond pale, nearing a sickly gray. Dark circles under his eyes, bloodless lips, hair limp and lifeless, he looked more dead than alive. The nurse had said something earlier about how close of a call it had been, about how much of a challenge it had been to get his body temperature up after he’d been exposed to the cold and damp for so long, but it was only now, seeing Shawn lying so still and small in the hospital bed, that Gus realized just how close he had come to losing his friend forever, and it would have been entirely Gus’s fault.
Shawn’s dull gaze lit up somewhat when he saw Gus, and his dry, cracked lips inched up in a ghost of his signature crooked smile.
That did it. Gus had already cried enough to end the drought in California, but apparently he still had more left in him. Fresh, hot tears snaked silently down his cheeks as he made his way into the hospital room and sat in the hard, plastic chair beside Shawn’s bed.
“Shawn,” he hiccupped, barely able to meet his friend’s eyes, shame clinging to him like lint on an old sweater. “I’m–”
Shawn cut him off, his voice ragged and weak. “I’m sorry, Gus.”
Gus blinked, mouth hanging open so wide he probably looked like one of the bass mounted on Mr. Spencer’s wall. It took him a moment to find his voice. All the while, Shawn regarded him with uncharacteristically serious hazel eyes.
Finally, Gus managed “ You’re sorry?”
Shawn nodded slowly, carefully, and from the way he moved, his head could have weighed a million pounds. “I… I don’t know what I was thinking when I stole your credit card and planned this trip with Abigail. Normally, I’m much more responsible when I take your things.” His eyes gleamed with the tiniest hint of mischief, and Gus, despite the intensity of the guilt attempting to bury him alive, couldn’t help but snort.
One look at Shawn’s nearly translucent skin and Gus grew serious once more. “You’re right,” he acknowledged carefully. “What you did was a huge invasion of my privacy, and it took advantage of our friendship in a huge way. And you never should have lied to me about inviting Abigail first.”
Shawn dropped his gaze to his blankets, looking properly chastised for perhaps the first time in his life. Gus had a feeling that the exhaustion from his ordeal had a lot to do with it, but he could also tell that Shawn felt genuinely guilty.
“But,” Gus said so firmly that Shawn had no choice but to glance back up and meet his eyes, “that is no excuse for what I did to you.”
A raw vulnerability flashed briefly on Shawn’s face, something so foreign that Gus barely recognized it for what it was. “Maybe I deserved it.”
Gus shook his head. “No.”
“I just–”
Gus held up a hand. “For once, will you just let me talk without interrupting?”
Shawn pursed his lips but amazingly fell silent.
Gus took a deep breath. The tears had dried on his face, though the guilt inside raged. He knew that he would have to deal with that guilt for a long, long time. Maybe someday he would come to terms with what his rash actions had almost cost him. But that day was not today. “Look, Shawn, I’m not going to apologize for being mad. But I am sorry I didn’t see this for what it was. And I’m sorry I kicked you out of the carriage to fend for yourself.” Unspoken, but keenly felt: I’m sorry you almost died because of me.
Shawn narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, you didn’t see this for what it was?”
Gus looked at Shawn, and Shawn looked back. Normally, Shawn was great at hiding his emotions, his fear, his pain, the parts of himself he didn’t want anyone, even himself, to see. But the hypothermia had taken its toll on his body, severely weakening him, lowering his defenses. And when defenses were lowered, it was easier for things locked away to escape.
Gus saw in that moment every ounce of pain that Shawn had hidden away after Yang. He saw the raw, unfiltered fear. The guilt. The uncertainty. The paranoia that this would happen again, that Yang would escape or another psycho would target him. Everything that he’d shoved into a box and pushed into a dark corner of his mind, and that Gus and Mr. Spencer and everyone else had just left Shawn to deal with – or rather, not deal with – on his own. And Gus knew that Shawn knew exactly what Gus was talking about. He also saw a brittleness in his friend, and knew that if he pushed right now, Shawn might break, and he didn’t think either of them could handle a Humpty-Dumpty situation right now.
So Gus sat back in the chair and shoved his own guilt and shame and fear and hurt into its own box, not because he didn’t plan on dealing with it, but because Shawn needed him, now, and Gus couldn’t keep Shawn’s head above water if he himself was drowning. “Never mind,” he said, watching as Shawn visibly wilted in relief.
All was quiet for about five seconds, and then something in the air between them shifted, as if the hospital room itself were shrugging off its shroud of melancholy in a desperate bid for normalcy. In that moment, all was forgiven - Gus knew it, and he could tell that Shawn did, too.
“So,” said Shawn, his tired eyes sparkling.
Gus eyed him warily. “So,” he echoed.
“Guess I gave you the cold shoulder, huh buddy?”
“Seriously, Shawn? Way too soon!”
“You can’t claim ‘too soon’ on something that didn’t happen to you,” Shawn argued. “I’m the one with a hippopotamus here. If I’m ready to joke about it, then you’re contractually obligated to indulge me.”
“It’s hypothermia , Shawn, and you know it.”
“I’ve–”
“No. You haven’t.”
A moment of blessed silence.
“I could really go for some ice cream right now, buddy. What about you?”
“Shawn.”
“Fro-yo, then?”
“ Shawn. ”
“So that’s a Fro-no?”
“ Too soon , Shawn.”
Shawn pouted quietly for all of five seconds.
Then – “You realize you’re going to have to buy me Del Taco every day for the next ten years to make up for this, don’t you?”
Gus blanched. “Seriously, Shawn?” Of course Shawn would go for the jugular. One look at Shawn’s mischievous grin, though, and Gus realized exactly what he was doing. He knew full well that Gus was harboring an obscene amount of guilt over what had happened. Joking about it was his way of showing Gus that there were no hard feelings, that they would get through this and laugh about it one day just like they did everything else. Despite himself, Gus accepted the olive branch Shawn had extended, even if that olive branch was tactless, brash, and smelled like Quatros Quesos Dos Fritos . “Actually,” he corrected, “ I paid for this whole vacation, if you remember. So if anything, you owe me .” Gus could play hardball, too.
Shawn’s eyelids were growing heavier by the second, but still he shot back, “Yeah, well, look how well your little ski trip turned out.”
“It was your ski trip, Shawn!”
“Potato, potato,” Shawn yawned. He pronounced the word the same way both times.
Gus rolled his eyes, but didn’t respond, as Shawn’s eyes had finally slipped closed. His breathing evened out, and Gus was left, once again, alone with his thoughts.
This time, however, the guilt didn’t consume him. He knew that this wasn’t over, not by a long shot. But for now, Shawn was safe. He was going to make a full recovery. Gus’s credit card was maxed out, and he was on a vacation he couldn’t really afford. He’d probably end up paying Shawn’s hospital bill, too.
But he still had his best friend. And for now, that was more than enough.