by Ali Lyda
Speaking of hard… my hand drifted down to my morning wood. Regardless of how gross I was after my night out, it felt good to touch myself without worrying about Giuliana’s sixth sense interrupting any fantasies I’d had. Or berating myself for having fantasies at all when I had a tiny baby to care for. I must have had some crazy dreams last night, though, because my cock was hard as steel in my hand.
There had been a lot of good-looking guys at the bar. At least, I thought there had been. The few things I could remember felt like unfinished clips of a film reel. My memory began to piece together the night as I stroked myself slowly, enjoying not having to rush.
Mason had tried pointing out potential hookups, which had led to an impromptu drinking game. Every time he picked someone I’d actually consider sleeping with—if I was going to do that, at least—I’d have to drink. When he got it wrong, he drank.
Christian, my best friend since college, had been with us also, ostensibly to offer support as a wingman. Christian had been there when I’d married Kyle, when we’d promised to have and to hold no matter the obstacles. Unless, apparently, the obstacle was a baby we had both wanted. Then Kyle had been off like he couldn’t get away fast enough.
Of course, I’d been excited just to spend time with Christian. After Kyle left and Giuliana came, I hadn’t had much time for friends. Soon enough Christian got in on the game, and Christian and Mason focused on picking out guys who looked like Kyle’s opposite.
The memories were coming back faster and faster now, without my having to try as hard to remember.
I remembered that it had led to Christian pointing a finger at a tattooed man at the bar, leaning in that perfect way and watching the dancers with hooded eyes.
It had been Javi. My cock twitched in my hand, my climax looming. What had Javi been doing there? As I stroked the thick shaft in my hand, I remembered wondering if Javi was truly at the bar or a figment of my imagination. He’d been looking at me when Christian had pointed him out. When our eyes had locked, the gin had carefully tucked common sense away and pulled out an insane need to talk to him.
I slowed my attention to myself, thumb sliding across the slit at the head of my cock, spreading precum. Heat burned in my belly, a swampy mix of desire and shame. I’d been avoiding Javi. I knew I’d pissed him off when I’d said he didn’t have to work with me. But instead of apologizing, I’d used it as an excuse to avoid him. Being around him muddled my thoughts and made it so fucking hard to remember my goals.
But Christian and Mason had seen my interest and prodded me to go talk to him. And I’d done it, hadn’t I? Javi had looked away like a rabbit considering escape as I’d made my way to him. But I hadn’t wanted him to flee. I didn’t want him to hate me. The gin, in fact, had made me really, really want him to like me.
My hand moved faster despite myself as my memory became sharp again. Javi’s incredible tattoos, gorgeous and rich, covering him like stars in the sky. A constellation of ink that deserved to be studied up close. I’d apologized and Javi hadn’t run, he’d stayed there, not moving when I’d edged closer to him, unable to help myself. I’d apologized and then—
Fuck.
Any hope I’d had for coming dissipated as the rest of the night clicked into place in my mind. I hadn’t just said I was sorry. I’d told Javi I thought he was too sexy to work with, and then had practically fallen over my two feet. He’d grabbed me, and his hands had felt so good, lighting my body up in ways it hadn’t in too long. I’d gone to kiss him, and now the sour taste in my mouth made sense.
I’d vomited on him.
Moaning, I rolled onto my stomach and pulled a pillow over my head. I’d puked on my hot neighbor, the one I wasn’t supposed to be attracted to. The one I was supposed to work with. The one I definitely wasn’t supposed to want to kiss, gin-infused or not.
The memory served as a cold, hard reminder that I wasn’t in a place to be dating. Giuliana didn’t deserve two absent parents, emotionally or physically. And just because it was so damned hard doing it on my own didn’t mean I should rush out to find a replacement dad for Kyle.
It made it difficult to trust any feelings I had for Javi. Was it just lust? Or was it my subconscious, desperate to rope someone in to make things easier? Neither was an acceptable answer. No, I wanted to prove to myself and to the ghost of Kyle that I could do it on my own.
But while I knew that I needed to reinforce some distance between myself and Javi, it didn’t solve the fact that I’d made a colossal ass of myself the night before. I didn’t want Javi to hate me, or for things to feel weird because of my… forward behavior. As much as I’d rather forget that last night had ever happened, I had to apologize to Javi.
After a shower and some much needed coffee, I braced myself to pick up Giuliana from Mason’s house, grateful for an excuse to postpone the apology. The drive gave me time to ruminate on how to get out of the deep hole I’d dug. The sun beat down, so hot and bright it rendered my sunglasses useless.
I was still hungover, stomach sour and head an aching mess. And God, the embarrassment of having to approach Javi with an apology had my insides threatening a repeat performance of the night’s shame. In the short time I’d known him, I’d shut down his party, I’d flubbed telling him he didn’t have to work with me so that it offended him instead… and I’d told him he was sexy. Too sexy to work with.
And if my fuzzy memory served right, I’d had every intention of kissing him after that, right before puking all over him.
How was I supposed to apologize for that? But damn—if just the thought of seeing him made me sick with worry and regret, work was going to become almost impossible. I had to fix this.
Soon I was knocking on Mason’s door. Dana greeted me moments later with Giuliana in her arms and Mason, wearing a shit-eating grin, behind her.
“Good morning, Sunshine,” he said as I took my daughter and cradled her close. “I bet you feel fabulous.”
“Not funny, Mason.”
He walked with me to the car, carrying the heaps of bags that traveled with a newborn. “It was so funny. Gordo, you puked on a dude—it was like the exorcist. I can’t believe the guy stayed long enough to help me get you out and into my car.”
I bit the inside of my cheek—that part of the night had remained hidden from my memory until Mason had piped up. Because it hadn’t been bad enough already. I didn’t have the patience for Mason’s teasing this morning.
“Javi is my neighbor and volunteers at the youth center I’m doing that job for,” I said sternly.
And if he’s nice enough to help after I barfed on him, maybe my apology can smooth things over enough that they aren’t too weird.
“Ah, shit, you think he’s hot. You so have a crush on your neighbor.” My brother was sharp, picking up on the small details that others might not notice. He’d always been like that, but it had only gotten worse since he started his career as a cop. It could be really fucking annoying.
I opened the door to the backseat of my car and began to secure Giuliana in. It gave me a chance to hide my face.
“How hot he is or isn’t has nothing to do with it,” I said, taking overly long to fiddle with the straps of her car seat.
“Bullshit. Christian and I egged you on to go talk to him and you did, because you thought he was hot before you even realized who he was. You don’t have to lie about it, Gordo—just because Kyle left and you’ve decided to make yourself into some single-dad martyr doesn’t mean you don’t find men attractive still. I’m straight as hell, and even I saw how hot he was.”
Ah. We’d hit the you-can’t-be-single-forever portion of the lecture. Mason, for all of his amazing attributes as a brother, had some singularly pain-in-the-ass flaws. Like thinking he knew what was best for me and pushing me to move on from Kyle.
He didn’t understand that when my husband had walked out on our marriage right when our daughter was conceived, he’d walked out of my heart, too. It had been a couple of long, hard years l
eading up to it, full of icy silences and misunderstandings; we’d been separated emotionally for a lot longer than that when the divorce had been finalized.
But that didn’t make the aftermath any easier. Because raising Giuliana alone was hard. So, so hard.
So the last thing I needed was Mason ragging on me to try and hook up with someone. I was just trying to do my best for my daughter, and he needed to respect that. I hoped that if I didn’t respond, he’d let it drop, but of course my luck wasn’t that good. As I opened the driver’s side door, Mason stopped me.
“Gordo,” Mason said, his tone gentle and patronizing. “Just because you have it in your head that you need to go at this alone doesn’t make it true. Or a good idea. If you keep this up, you’re going to crumble from the weight of carrying all of it on your shoulders. I don’t want to see you end up like dad, sad and bitter and lonely.”
It would have been better if he’d just punched me in the gut. My stomach rocked, twisting at the truth in Mason’s words and my own simultaneous refusal to believe them.
“That’s a screwed-up thing to say, Mason.” I slid into my seat and buckled in before he could say more. Anger flared like fireworks inside of me, and I rolled down my window and pinned him with my stare. “You’re an asshole.”
Feeling far from satisfied, I pulled out of the driveway before Mason could say anything else and headed home. My knuckles were white from gripping the wheel.
Mason had no right to invoke our father. My dad was the only person in my entire family who’d disowned me when I came out as gay. I supposed that I should have been thrilled that he was alone in his adamant refusal to accept me, but all it did was make my heart sick. The one person I wanted validation from the most was the person who refused to speak to me.
I knew from Mason that dad was getting particularly bitter about it. My mom—who was fully supportive of me—had stayed with dad, but I knew things were strained between them over it. I was even pretty sure they’d started rocking the separate beds, Fred and Wilma Flintstone-style. And dad was effectively a single old man who only had a connection to one of his two sons.
My parents lived three and a half hours away. Too far for my mom to be able to come help with my daughter, but not so far away that she couldn’t come visit occasionally. But dad? He could have more, including a relationship with his granddaughter, if he’d just stop being so stubborn, I thought as I pulled into the driveway, braking a bit too hard.
Giuliana wailed her surprise at the sudden stop, and it pierced my chest like a lance. She kept fussing, likely hungry after her nap and maybe even wet. Jesus, it seemed like lately I couldn’t get anything right.
As I pulled Giuliana out of her car seat, whisper-begging her forgiveness for my carelessness, Javi came out of his house. Because of course he did—my life felt as if it were becoming a sitcom, and I was the butt of every joke.
Javi was purposefully not looking in my direction. I could just pretend to be wrapped up in my daughter and wait to talk about last night, but on the other hand, holding Giuliana close gave me strength and provided a much-needed buffer between Javi and me. The fact was I probably wasn’t going to get a better opportunity than this.
“Hey, Javi,” I called out, unsure of how casual to sound. Was I allowed to sound casual after drunkenly vomiting on someone? “Could I talk to you for a minute?”
Dressed in black jeans that clung like a second skin and a t-shirt that managed to slink over every muscle, Javi shuffled over, looking a little apprehensive.
“Don’t be nervous,” I said, despite the fact that nerves had my stomach feeling as if an animal were trying to claw its way out of me. “I just wanted to say sorry for making a colossal ass of myself last night. I definitely owe you dry cleaning and some new shoes. Just let me know how much, and I can write you a check.”
Javi bit his lip, the morning sunlight highlighted the red blush of his mouth, catching my attention immediately. “D...d-don’t worry about it.”
I was spending too much time looking at his mouth—staring really—and I wondered if I was making Javi uncomfortable. God, I was making a complete fool of myself.
“I can’t help but worry about it,” I admitted. “We’re supposed to be working together, and I feel like I’ve done everything in my power and beyond to make it weird.”
Javi shrugged his slim but muscled shoulders. “It d-doesn’t have to be weird. We’re...we’re c-cool.”
He didn’t look like it would be cool, though. The air hummed between us, magnetic and alight. Javi brought his gaze up to meet mine, hazel eyes swimming with something I could almost believe was attraction. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but before he could, Giuliana let out a banshee scream.
It was tiny and fierce and grabbed both of our attention. She squirmed in my arms, little angry fists waving in the hair and gummy mouth open wide to voice her demands. It had been nearly three hours since she’d last had a bottle with Dana. I’d gotten so caught up in Mason’s lecture and Javi’s, well, everything, that I’d forgotten I needed to get her inside and feed her.
Feeling as if I’ve been drenched in ice water, I excused myself. “Sorry, Giuliana needs to be fed—I’ll see you later.”
It was blunt, and maybe I should have stayed and said more, but I was too busy kicking myself to care about niceties. Keeping your baby fed and dry was the most basic of parenting tasks, but as soon as I’d seen a pretty face, I’d gotten distracted. And hadn’t I just told myself a few hours ago that I needed to put more space between us?
If just talking to Javi got me so turned around that I practically forgot about Giuliana in my arms, how in the hell was I supposed to even think about dating him like Mason wanted me to do?
Easy. You don’t think about dating someone. You don’t have time for distractions.
Especially distractions like Javi, and all the messy things he made me feel.
8
Javi
I crumpled the paper in front of me in frustration and threw it in the trash. The backpiece I was trying to draft was giving me a headache. It wasn’t that the client was picky—he was trusting me with a massive piece, after all, and was giving me a lot of creative liberty. It was more that I knew what this back piece meant for the client, based on growing strong through hardship, and it was important that I get it right.
Absentmindedly, I began to rub the shield inked over my heart. It had hurt worse than all of my other tattoos combined. Not just because there wasn’t much meat on my sternum to shield my nerves from the needle, but also because of what it meant to me.
My parents, who were only parents by blood, had made my life utter hell when I still lived with them. The first “love” I’d ever experienced, the so-called love my parents should have had for me, had been twisted. It had hurt, over and over again, until the scar tissue around my heart was thick and near impenetrable. I’d had the shield done to remind myself that there were parts of me that needed to be shielded from everyone else.
And what was left of me, not good enough and broken, should be kept locked up where other people couldn’t see it.
Pulling out a fresh sheet of paper, I set in to sketch some more. This part, creating like this, was the part I lived for. I loved how it felt to capture a client’s vision and turn it into a piece of art, and I knew how important it was to feel good about the ink you got.
When working on sentimental pieces like this, I wasn’t always able to keep my thoughts and memories at bay, but as I sketched, I worked hard to tune out everything else in the shop. The music and voices faded. Black lines and color bloomed beneath my fingers.
“Javi, did you hear me?” Reagan’s voice cut through my creative fugue. I didn’t know how long he’d been trying to get my attention.
I put down my pen and pressed my palms into my eyes. “Sorry, no. What’s up, B-boss?”
“Can you take a few walk-ins tonight? Trinity called in sick.”
“You know I c-can,”
I told him. It was true, too. When I wasn’t at work, I was either hooking up or at home. As of late, it had only been the latter.
As of meeting Gordo, I thought, but refused to pay it any attention. I already spent too much time thinking about my neighbor and needed any distraction I could get, even if it meant working later than normal. Other than waiting for a walk-in, the best way to get my mind off Gordo was to find someone to talk to.
Preferably someone who did all the talking, like Dane, who was working on a client. His tattoos were like him—new school style with bright colors and distorted shapes, managing to be funny and catchy with a bit of flash.
I sat on a stool near him. “Just the B-boss and us tonight, Dane.”
“Nah, I’m headed out after this. I’ve got a date.” He took a moment to look up from his tattoo and waggle his eyebrows at me. “I met him at the donut shop.”
“Dude, don’t s-screw our donut supplier. His shop makes the b-best pastries in town,” I protested, but I was smiling, able to relax into the moment.
“This is where I make a joke about donuts and holes needing to be filled,” Dane said. Then he lightly slapped his client’s thigh. “Don’t laugh or your tattoo is going to look like shit.”
“Don’t be hilarious then,” the client replied. But he also stopped moving.
Dane shook his head and got back to tattooing. “Don’t you worry, Javi. It’s not the supplier, anyway—I just met the guy there.”
“Whatever you s-say,” I said, and tried to get back to my drawing, even though my flow had been interrupted.
A few minutes later, the door chimed. Reagan tapped my shoulder. “Javi! You’re up.”
The man who’d come in was handsome. Not nearly on the same level as Gordo, but he rocked a wicked smile and hooded bedroom eyes. He was the kind of man I usually wouldn’t think twice about trying to hook up with.
I stood next to Reagan and listened as the new client detailed what he was looking for. Reagan didn’t have time to do the tattoo itself, but if my stutter came out, we’d be there all night before I could lock down what the client wanted.