Derrick wondered what drew him toward outgoing people. LeeAnn. Devon.
Gavin.
“Hey.” Devon snapped his fingers in front of Derrick’s face. “You in there, bro?”
“Yeah, I’m here.” Derrick took another slow drink of his beer.
Devon gave him a long, steady look. “LeeAnn made it back to San Francisco okay?”
“Yeah, she posted on Facebook when she got back, said she’s beginning rehearsals with the symphony again.”
Devon nodded, glancing at the TV as he finished his beer and refilled it from the pitcher. “You’ve been off in outer space since she visited.”
“Yeah.” Derrick rolled his glass back and forth between him palms. He stopped when he realized he was making his beer warm. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
A non-committal sound was Devon’s only reply, and Derrick’s lips twitched. They were doing the Guy Thing, he thought with an amused shake of his head. They tip-toed around anything that might be tricky or too emotional, the better to maintain a macho illusion. He’d bet money Devon had probing questions he refused to let himself ask.
Devon had been his best friend since the tenth grade. Derrick had been in the hospital when Devon had broken down sobbing as Hannah lost both ovaries in an emergency surgery for ruptured cysts, ending their hopes for children of their own. Devon was the only friend of Derrick’s, other than his neighbor Miss Ingrid, who had been with Derrick at both his grandparents’ funerals that bleak winter ten years ago. Not even his older brother had made it home for those.
But when it wasn’t crisis time, they skirted around anything too emotional or introspective.
“She thinks my life is at a standstill,” Derrick volunteered, letting Devon off the hook. “And I can’t manage to convince myself she’s wrong.”
Devon tipped a shrug. “She could be full of it, too. She’s visited, what, three times since college? What does she know about your life?”
“Enough to recognize it hasn’t changed in ten years. I’m still where I was before… everything.”
“You always talked about doing volunteer work, maybe for the Peace Corps or something, once you didn’t have anything else you needed to be here for. What stopped you, back then?”
“I dunno.” Derrick stared into his beer glass. “I think I was just too tired, after it was all over. By the time I wasn’t so tired anymore, I’d started making a life for myself. I have my business. I have the hockey league in the winter. I help out Miss Ingrid when I can….”
“Well, if it works for you, why change it?”
“I dunno,” Derrick repeated, shrugging helplessly. “Maybe it doesn’t work for me anymore.”
“Then do something else. You’ve got nothin’ holding you back, bro. How hard can it be?”
“Guess you’ve got a point there.” Derrick set his empty glass aside with another wry smile. “Sorry. Compared to what you work with every day this must seem….”
“Like a bunch of White Guy problems?” Devon snorted, waving his hand. “Everyone’s got their issues, man. Okay, yeah. I spend my week tryin’ to keep street kids fresh out of rehab from goin’ back to their pimps or takin’ up drugs again. You’ve seen what I’m up against. You do the repairs and maintenance on our halfway houses without charging for labor—and don’t even think I don’t know you under-bill for the cost of materials. I’m not gonna accuse you of not havin’ any perspective.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I don’t wanna see you happy, bro.”
Devon gave him a warm smile and Derrick returned it, then ducked his head, looking down thoughtfully. “Do something else, huh? Just like that?”
“Just like that.” Devon lifted his beer in a grinning salute, and drained it.
JUST LIKE THAT.
Derrick awoke later than usual Saturday morning, drawn out of a pleasant dream he couldn’t remember, one which left his dick hard and aching. It seemed he could still smell the scent he’d caught yesterday when he’d passed close to Gavin as he’d exited the elevator. He gave Chelsea a glower for disturbing him when her breakfast was overdue, wanting nothing more than to sink back down and try to remember and pursue the dream further. Chelsea nudged him again, however, and with a groggy groan, Derrick rose, hitching his straining gray briefs up where they had crept down his hips, and went to fill her dish with kibble.
Usually he was a morning person, waking eagerly, prompt to get started with the day, but today he only wanted to return to bed. Scratching his chest, he shuffled back down the hall, stopping by the bathroom before shutting the bedroom door behind him to guard against another interruption. He crawled back under the covers, hiding from the chill of early morning air that had swept through the house from the windows he left open overnight.
He tucked the pillow under his head and shut his eyes, but it was already too late to get back to sleep, he knew. Instead, he let his mind wander.
It wandered right to Gavin.
Gavin was flirting with him. He was sure of it. That parting shot on the way out of the elevator didn’t leave much room for doubt.
And to his surprise, Derrick discovered he liked the idea.
It had been ten years since he’d let himself feel attraction for anyone. He had cut off that part of himself and set it aside. Observations on who might or might not be attractive to him were made on a distant and academic level, acknowledged but never actually experienced.
It had been ten years—longer, really—since he’d let himself react to anyone, the way he had been doing to Gavin.
It felt good.
He wanted more of it.
He wanted to know if Gavin always smelled the way he had during that brief brush in the elevator. He wanted to see what Gavin’s eyes looked like without the glasses.
He wanted to know just what Gavin would say or do next to stop him in his tracks.
The morning wood returned, hard and eager, Derrick reached down and slipped his hand inside his briefs, grasping his cock and stroking once.
God, yes.
He’d become good at this, with more than ten years of celibacy under his belt. It had helped offset the occasional longing for another body, another pair of hands, to try to make masturbating more. He tried to make it intimate, rather than just perfunctory. He’d learned to make love to himself.
His hips lifted, moving to meet his grip. He paused only a moment, pushing the covers away and wriggling to shove his underwear down before his hand returned to his dick. He drew it up in a long stroke from root to tip, an accompanying groan sliding from his throat. He cupped his hand over the head and spread the drop of pre-cum collecting at the slit around with slow circles of his open palm before his fingers closed around his cock again. A slight, gentle twist at the top, then gliding down with the foreskin to the base.
His other hand slid across his chest, fingers tweaking and pulling at one nipple, then the other. When the hand on his dick pumped faster, he started to pinch, skirting the edge of actual pain. The touch moved lower, fingertips ghosting along the sensitive skin of his belly and groin.
His knees came up as he spread his legs wider, splaying himself across the bed. He pushed into his own grasp again with a soft grunt, his hips moving in counter-rhythm to his hand, torn between the impulse to draw it out, tease and play with himself, and the need to ease the tension it seemed had been mounting over these past couple weeks. It seemed like forever since he’d fantasized about an actual person. Like feelings of attraction, he’d shut that off. He always stuck to nameless, faceless forms when he imagined another body against his.
This was different. Better.
Better to hear Gavin’s tenor murmuring flirtatious obscenities in his ear. Better to see those whiskey-brown eyes staring at him as the pleasure built.
A grimace strained his face. The gliding strokes of his hand transformed to hard pumps. He gave himself over to the impulse with abandon.
Jesus. Oh, God… Yeah…
His teeth clenched as he made himself hol
d back. He didn’t want a gentle, mellow orgasm. He wanted it hard and intense. His other hand grabbed his balls, pulling on them from the base, squeezing. He pushed it back, staved it off until the need for release was maddeningly urgent. When it finally forced its way through his restraint, it didn’t roll over him, it smashed into him full-force. It ripped itself free from his balls the instant his hand released them and exploded from the head of his cock, splattering his hand, his belly, his chest.
Panting, his muscles quivering, he let his hand fall away from his too-sensitive dick, landing limply on his thigh. The morning air chilled the sweat and semen on his chest as he panted. He opened his eyes, staring up at the ceiling in something a little close to amazement.
And then, feeling wonderfully, gloriously, terrifyingly alive for the first time in as long as he could remember, he began to laugh.
Midway through installing the shelves, he thought he caught Gavin checking out his ass.
He couldn’t be completely certain. Gavin may have just turned to glance over his shoulder to see how the installation was going. But Derrick’s gut, the feeling of being watched combined with the furtive way Gavin had spun back around to his desk, said otherwise.
Derrick flushed, the instinctive self-consciousness of being the object of someone’s attention combining with his own awareness of Gavin. So long since he’d let himself notice anyone, or felt he’d been noticed. What was he supposed to do with it?
His awkwardness wasn’t helping matters. It was weird to look someone in the eye after masturbating to thoughts of them.
Hey, I barely know you, but I jerked off imagining you this morning. That’s not creepy, is it?
It had been so much easier—and far less risky—not to notice, or be noticed.
Gavin worked at his desk again, so Derrick held his silence as he completed the installation with his usual meticulous care. He checked the measurements and level every step of the way to be sure no little inaccuracies crept in. Absorbed in his task, he forgot to be self-conscious, forgot that Gavin might or might not be looking at him.
Which was, of course, the only reason he fumbled and nearly dropped his laser plumb when Gavin spoke.
“Those look really nice. You do great work.”
“Thanks.” Derrick glanced over his shoulder with a small, pleased smile. Gavin swiveled his desk chair around and watched him with open interest.
“You matched the stain perfectly. How did you do that after just one visit?”
Derrick shrugged, turning back to fitting the final shelf on its support. “I just have a good eye for detail, I guess.” He laid his level along the shelf, pleased when the bubble aligned between the marks. He checked the other shelves again, though they had been level as he’d installed them. Then he stepped back, looking at the entire installation with a critical eye.
He was delaying, he realized, frowning at his work. He didn’t want to call the job done and leave.
“Something wrong?” Gavin asked.
“Do they look level to you?”
It was a stupid question, and Derrick felt a surge of annoyance with himself for asking it. The level still lay on the bottom shelf where they both could see it, the bubble centered.
Gavin took his time answering. “Yeah, they’re level.” Derrick nodded, unsatisfied with the response, but unable to find a reason to delay any longer. He grabbed his level off the shelf, squatting beside his toolkit to put it away.
Then Gavin added, “I’m not sure my desk is, though.”
Derrick looked up from his bag to the desk on which Gavin’s laptop sat. If there was any incline to its surface, it wasn’t apparent to the naked eye.
He glanced at Gavin, whose eyes sparkled behind his glasses.
Play along, they coaxed.
Caught somewhere between caution and an amused yearning to join the mischief, he drew his level back out of his bag and laid it on the surface of the desk. As if in on the conspiracy, the bubble hugged the line on the left, resting minutely to the side of center.
Anyone would have called it good enough. It wasn’t a significant enough incline to cause any problems working at the desk.
Gavin lifted a challenging eyebrow. “See? Not level.”
“No, I guess it’s not,” Derrick said carefully. It was one thing to be the recipient of Gavin’s flirtations, but this was different. This required him to be an abettor, a participant in the game, rather than the passive object of it.
At the least, it was unprofessional. Worse, it meant taking a risk on….
On what?
On whatever might come of it.
How hard can it be? Devon’s voice prodded him.
Harder than you think, man.
“I’ll just check the leveling feet,” Derrick murmured. As flirtatious banter went, he was sure it failed on every single possible level. Gavin watched with quiet amusement and Derrick cursed the blush working its way up from under the collar of his t-shirt as he knelt down by the corner of the desk.
Only once he was on the floor did he consider how it would look, kneeling before Gavin’s chair.
If this were a bad porno, I’d be… No. The desk.
He ignored the heat in his face and reached down to the leveling foot, when Gavin murmured, “I think a few of my favorite movies have started out this way.”
Derrick swallowed. Shit. Was he that transparent?
His mouth made an executive decision to leave his floundering brain in the dust.
“Think I’ve seen a few of those,” he said softly, all his attention on trying to turn the foot. Anything to avoid meeting Gavin’s eyes.
“Is that a fact?” He barely heard Gavin’s low reply over the pulse in his ears. Words abandoned him, and he focused on his task instead. He hid behind it until he could figure out just what the hell he thought he was doing here, or why he ever thought he could keep pace with someone who was clearly far better at flirtation than he’d ever be.
“It’s rusted,” he said, sitting back on his heels and rubbing gritty flakes of iron oxide onto the thigh of his jeans. “That can happen with older desks if the carpet around it’s been shampooed.”
He dug in his kit for a can of WD-40 and carefully sprayed some around the bolt. It still wouldn’t budge. Now what was he supposed to do? He still wanted an excuse to stay, but playing this out any further just might be going overboard. But once he’d begun to play along, it became that much harder to drop the bull.
This is why you don’t lie, he scolded himself. You suck at it.
“I, um. I could go to the hardware store, get a new foot and replace it, if you wanted. But you’d have to empty out your desk so I could turn it over.”
Gavin’s expression sobered, as though he detected the shift in Derrick’s mood, the sudden uncertainty about carrying this game any further. A small delay to “investigate” the problem was one thing. Making a project of it, taking it to that extreme, was something else entirely.
As he busied himself putting his level away, Derrick added carefully, “That might be a bit more effort than you’d really want to, ahem, put into this.”
In his peripheral vision, he saw Gavin shift in his chair, and glanced up to see a troubled look on his face.
Clearly Derrick wasn’t the only one questioning the wisdom of carrying this any further.
Despite all his doubts about the strange game they’d started, he couldn’t help feel a pang of regret when Gavin murmured, “I don’t want to waste any more of your time on a Saturday. It wouldn’t be fair.”
He bit back a snort. “Only thing I’ve got planned for the rest of the day is a rousing plate of microwaved leftovers and the Tigers game,” he said with a self-effacing chuckle, tucking his drill away in the bottom of the duffel. Only after the words had left his mouth did he wonder if the response made him sound pathetically lacking a life.
He wanted Gavin to give him the go-ahead to do the repair. Just for an excuse to stick around a little while longer, to have a few mo
re of those flirtatious exchanges. But it was ridiculous. The desk was fine. At best fixing it would be a waste of time and money. At worst it could be seen as an unethical means of padding his bill and get him reported to the Better Business Bureau.
The job was done. There was no reason to stay. And judging from the way Gavin took his time responding, Derrick suspected the game had played itself out as far as it could.
It had been fun while it lasted. A break in the usual routine.
“Tell you what,” he said, with his usual calm half-smile, trying to find a way to let Gavin off the hook before things got truly uncomfortable. “The desk is usable for now. You have any jobs you need me for in the future, I’ll be sure to pick up a leveling foot and bring it with me, replace it free of charge. Call it a bonus for repeat business.”
The smile Gavin gave him felt forced. Derrick wondered just what had happened, what had shifted to make what had been a fun game end on such an awkward note. Maybe just the knowledge that they had been close to carrying it too far.
“I can’t see why I wouldn’t call you again,” Gavin answered, recovering smoothly. He pushed himself up from his desk chair in a fluid movement. “You did an excellent job. The shelves are perfect.”
“Thank you.” He offered his hand to Gavin, slipping on his mask of casual professionalism. The job was over and there was no reason to stay.
You could always ask him out.
The hollow thunk in his stomach at the idea wasn’t one of the good, exhilarating kind. As new and interesting as it was to dip his toes in the kiddie pool of flirtation, he wasn’t ready to dive head-first into the deep end and initiate a date.
Nothing left to do, then, but try to make a dignified exit. Which was made a little harder by his reluctance to release the handshake. It verged on becoming awkwardly long.
“Been a pleasure working with you, Mr. Hayes.” He drew his hand back, grasping the strap of his duffel for lack of anything better to do with it. “I’ve got some paperwork to do, calculating labor time and materials, but I’ll send an invoice this week.”
Inertia: Impulse, Book One Page 3