by Wendy Qualls
“You don’t like steps anymore,” Dave teased.
“Jackass.” Rick grinned and kicked Dave’s shin with his own. “I’ll have you know this chair goes down stairs just fine, as long as they’re little ones. It’s getting it up that’s the problem.”
“Hey, whatever problems you have with keeping it up, keep those between you and Sharon—”
“Screw you,” Rick interjected. “Just for that, you get to run the business meeting next practice.”
“Enjoy it while we still have a team to practice with.”
Rick shook his head, the levity falling away. “Just…give it time, all right? We’ll see if this Lito guy works out or not, but if not…NALSAR doesn’t have to be your whole life, you know. You can do other things. It’s allowed.”
Dave knew. Of course he knew. But what else was there?
* * * *
Hope you had fun last night! See you tomorrow? - Dave, Lumpy, and Woozy
The dude signed his texts as if they were from his dogs. That was really damn adorable. Lito unclipped Spot from her leash and topped off her water bowl so she could rehydrate after their run. There was no question she enjoyed being out and about with him as they covered what had now tentatively become their “usual” route, but she had obviously loved getting to play with the other dogs during search team practice even more. She’d also loved the frantic dash-back-and-forth-for-treats without having to slow her speed for her poor bipedal human. Lito’s new rental house had a small backyard—a luxury they’d never had in Atlanta—but it wasn’t fenced. Letting Spot charge around out there unsupervised probably wasn’t a good idea, no matter how much she might have disagreed with him. Lito poured himself a cup of ice water and downed it in one go. Damn, it was muggy and miserable out there. Autumn, my ass. He refilled the glass, pulled out his phone again, and thumbed out a response.
Woof, woof! - Spot
Pretty sure that’s “can’t wait” in dog. - Lito
It was five minutes to seven, so Lito headed for his living room and turned on his PlayStation. He and some of the guys in Atlanta had a standing “date” for gaming on Wednesday nights, and he was extra-thankful for that fact now that he was two and a half hours away from everyone else. Or farther, for some—Brandon was now living out in the suburbs on the east side of Atlanta with his new boyfriend, Paul, and Jericho was on the home stretch of a three-year stint in Haiti. He had crap internet access most of the time but he joined them whenever he could. Black Lake felt like the middle of nowhere, Lito decided, but it definitely could have been worse.
Tonight the gang ended up being him, Brandon and Paul, and a handful of the usual crew. Lito slipped on his headset, got comfortable on his beat-up secondhand sofa with Spot lying on his feet, and signed in.
“—and look who’s here,” Chris said, his voice loud through the headphones. “Lito, my man! How’s exile?”
“Oh, screw you.”
“That good, huh?”
“He means he misses your twink ass,” Ian chimed in. “Both your ass specifically and the rest of your hot bod attached to it.”
“None of y’all have ever gotten that close to my ass,” Lito countered. “Like I’d share it with you losers.”
“As opposed to that dude with the rainbow squid tattoo last year? Yeah, real winner there.”
Ian had a point, but Lito couldn’t flip him off over audio chat so he settled for taking another gulp of his water instead. “We playing Overwatch again tonight, gentlemen?”
“And he changes the subject. Nice.” Chris laughed, but they settled into the game with no more than the usual amount of bickering. Paul and Brandon were the best players in their little circle—by far—but Lito usually managed to not drag their group’s team down too much. He snagged his favorite character, the one with the ice powers, and relaxed into the sofa cushions while everyone else worked out who got dibs on DPS and who got stuck playing the healer. As so often happened, Brandon finally ended up handing out assignments so they’d have a balanced squad. He was excellent at battle strategy, as evidenced by the fact that they won their first two games handily. The crew usually got their asses handed to them when Brandon and Paul weren’t online.
“But seriously, Lito,” Ian said during a lull between rounds, “I want to know how your new job is treating you. Or, you know. Not new necessarily—you said you’re still doing a lot of the same stuff?—but new location. This is the first time you’ve lived in a small town, right?”
It was, and Lito was a bit surprised he’d remembered. Attention to detail wasn’t usually Ian’s strong suit. “Miami, Orlando, and Atlanta,” Lito answered. “And Lima, technically, although we moved when I was still too little to remember it. So yeah, it’s an adjustment.”
“Is it terrible?”
“Believe it or not,” Paul cut in, “most of Alabama got electricity way back in the eighties. Some of the towns even have cars.”
“Fuck you.” Ian said it with a laugh. “Just for that, you get to play Mercy this next round. I’m sick of having the big glowing ‘healer’ target on my back.”
Now that Lito thought about it…Paul was from a town about the same size as Black Lake, wasn’t he? He’d moved in with Brandon in Atlanta after some sort of messy fallout when an ex outed him to the conservative religious college he’d been teaching at, but the whole thing had finally been worked out a few months earlier and he and Brandon seemed perfectly happy together out in suburbia now. “It’s not as terrible as I’d feared,” Lito admitted, “but I still miss you guys like crazy. It’s lonely here.”
Adam, who’d been pretty typically quiet so far, made a sound of commiseration. “Hard to imagine you staying lonely for long, dude,” he said. “You attract friends the way flowers attract bees.”
“Only friends like you guys.” Friends who got him. “I think it’s safe to say there aren’t a lot of people like y’all in Black Lake. I only accepted the move because I didn’t have much of a choice if I wanted to keep my job. I like it, I’m good at it, and Dayspring practically built their purchasing and renovation procedures around me. If I have to get exiled to Bumfuck, Alabama to keep doing my thing, then that’s what I’ve got to do.”
“I thought it was because you hated telling your bosses no,” Chris chimed in.
“You hate telling anyone no,” Brandon teased. “Except Ian.”
Ian mumbled something that sounded like “screw you.”
They weren’t entirely wrong. Ronald and Betty ran their hotel chain like a family business, and Lito had long ago been adopted into the fold. And yeah, so maybe he was “the gay designer.” Might as well own it, right? Even if the new office was a bit…less welcoming than he’d hoped.
“It’s different here.” Painfully so. The not-rightness was hard to explain, but Lito tried anyway. “I’m the only man at work. Also the only non-white person, the only non-straight one, and the only one who’s ever lived within reasonable shopping distance of an IKEA. Everyone’s been nothing but nice, but it keeps feeling like the old ‘bless his heart’ kind of Southern nice, you know? Like they’re not sure what to make of the strange gay decorator so they’re just faking it. I still haven’t met my new direct supervisor, either—she’s been on a business trip all week. I’m really hoping she’s not as weird-Southern-sweet as the rest of them.”
“So find somewhere else to get your socializing in,” Brandon suggested. “Join a rec league. Take up swing dancing. Whatever.”
“Right, and dance with who?” Lito could just picture the looks he’d get if he showed up at whatever passed for the local watering hole and started grinding on random dudes. Probably not just evil looks—a full-on beatdown was more likely. “I don’t think there’s much of a local LGBT scene. Can’t spit without hitting a church, though.”
Ian made an amused noise. “Take Spot for lots of walks and hope you run into a cute guy
with a compatible dog, maybe? Isn’t that where you found that personal trainer dude way back when?”
“I, um.” Prior experience suggested he really ought to tell them about NALSAR now so they could get the teasing out of their systems all at once. “I’m thinking of joining a search dog team, actually. The rescue-lost-hikers-in-the-woods kind. I mean, I’ve only been to one practice so far, but it was fun. Spot loved it.”
“Damn, dude!” Adam exclaimed. “Go you, getting out of your comfort zone! Never would have taken you for a nature type. Not with that whole ‘city boy’ thing.”
“Oh, me either.” Hell, he’d never even been anywhere that could be termed “nature” until he was already an adult, Miami’s beaches excepted. “It’s kind of nice, though. There’s about half a dozen people on the team and they all seem pretty easygoing. I bumped into the team trainer at the pet store this past weekend and he invited me out to see it for myself. I was curious, and bored, so…yeah.”
“Ha!” Ian sang a few bars of “bow-chicka-wow-wow” cheesy-porn-style music. “Let me guess—the trainer dude is hot. And built.”
Lito rolled his eyes at Ian’s totally predictable guess. The guy made for a terrifically reliable friend, probably Lito’s best friend in their little group, but he had sex on the brain 24/7 and rarely had much of a filter. Sometimes it was a wonder he managed to make time for things like eating or going to work. “He’s…not bad looking,” Lito admitted. “No reason to think he plays for our team, unfortunately.”
“Like that’s ever stopped you from appreciating when something good is in front of you.”
No point arguing with that. “I try to be subtle, at least.” Had it been only in his imagination that Dave was eyeing him with more than just professional interest? Or that Dave’s texts were a touch flirty? “Afraid this one is wishful thinking, but if he ever lets me take a picture of him and his dogs I’ll send it to y’all. I honestly can’t tell whether he spends all his free time at the gym or whether he, like, chops his own firewood or something, but you’d appreciate the chance to ogle.”
“Hot damn,” Ian said, and whistled. “You know me so well. Although I guess chances are if he is gay, he’s probably in the closet. Can’t imagine otherwise living way out there.”
Yeah, thanks. There was an awkward moment of silence while nobody wanted to point out that Lito was living “way out there,” thankyouverymuch, but then Brandon put them in the queue for the next capture-the-flag battle and the game eventually resumed. Lito found himself paying significantly less attention than he had been before.
Was it possible Dave was in the closet? r anything other than one hundred percent straight? Unlikely, Lito had to give Ian that, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. Both of them liking cock didn’t mean Dave would be interested in Lito’s cock (or any other part of him), of course, but Dave hadn’t seemed to mind Lito flirting a bit. A very little bit. If nothing else, daydreaming about Dave was going to make a nice little fantasy until Lito got settled into his new, much-less-LGBT-friendly life.
However long that took.
Chapter 4
Lito Apaza. Lito Ah-PAH-sah. Dave had been repeating the name in his head off and on for the last forty-eight hours, hoping he could actually come up with it when practice rolled around, but he was pretty sure he still wasn’t pronouncing the “z” correctly. Lito didn’t have a discernible accent—at least not one Dave could place—but he made some words sound much more fluid than Dave ever could. It was sexy in a way Dave probably shouldn’t have been thinking about. His own time in Afghanistan got him away from home long enough that he at least realized he did have an Alabama twang in his voice, but not long enough for him to lose any of it.
“Hey, boss, did you know you’re muttering to yourself out loud?”
Dave turned and only barely restrained himself from flashing Mike a rude gesture. The two of them were repainting some of the playground equipment at the community center, so flipping off a coworker right in front of a Head Start classroom was probably not a good idea. Even if the playground itself was closed until the paint dried. “At least it’s someone worth talking to,” he slung back. “All that’s been on your mind lately is football.”
“Football and Rhonda.” Mike grinned. “She found this new recipe for a cheese dip and it’s amazing. Wanna come over for the game Saturday? Rhonda said you’re welcome to hang.”
“Sounds fun. Thanks.” Dave wasn’t anywhere near as rabid about college football as Mike was, but the three of them had gotten together for a few games in the past. It was always entertaining. Particularly because Mike was an Alabama fan and Rhonda rooted for Auburn even when the rival teams weren’t playing each other. The result was usually some Army-worthy insults being traded back and forth. Dave played his fair share of ball in high school—never a star player, but solid nonetheless—so Mike ragged him about his apathy to the sport nonstop during football season. “Count me in unless something comes up,” he said. “Did you do the inside part of the pirate ship yet, or just the hull?”
They were making pretty steady progress, all things considered. Dave’s to-do list for his crew was never empty, but for once they were reasonably caught up on the normal mowing and picking up trash. The nice weather had seemed like a sign that he and Mike should get the playground done before winter set in. He had four other guys besides himself in the Parks & Rec maintenance department, but Mike was the only other one who was full-time. All four were more than happy that Dave, as their supervisor, was the one who had to deal with the paperwork.
Which…Dave checked his watch. He’d hoped to finish up a few more little things while they were here—oil the squeaky hinge on the gate, check the perimeter of the community center building for fire ant hills and wasps’ nests, maybe pick up some of the debris that inevitably littered the edges of the ball field—but it was getting on toward four o’clock. If he attempted all that and still wanted to shower before NALSAR practice at six, he’d have to cut a lot of corners. There was the issue of leaving a freshly painted playground unguarded too, which was just asking for disaster. It couldn’t be helped, though. At least if he and Mike came back in the morning, they’d see any vandalism before it had too much time to set in. If they finished up quickly and skipped the rest of the list, he’d have time to run back to his little broom closet of an office at city hall and finish next week’s assignments for the guys. He tried to be fair about accommodating the part-timers’ schedules—especially since he ditched work for a search often enough and they always adjusted for him—but there was no predicting the weather with any certainty for more than a few days out. Outdoor work would have to be subject to change.
Mike was fortunately a solid worker who could talk and paint at the same time. Dave let him chatter about Rhonda and football while they touched up the last few peeling boards on the play structures, but his mind was mostly focused on the team. And Lito Apaza. Ah-PAH-sah. Who was small and feisty and adorable and had a beautiful “amazed” expression which Dave was going to enjoy coaxing out of him as often as possible. Even if nothing happened between the two of them—Lito was either gay or the most gay-sounding straight man of all time, but that didn’t mean he’d be interested—even if they merely became teammates, Dave could still appreciate those wide eyes and that slow smile. He resolved to earn another impressed look at practice if Lito and Spot showed.
“Think that was the last one,” Mike announced. “You need to get going, right? Dog team tonight?”
“Yeah, but we still ought to—”
Mike shooed him toward the truck and started collecting their painting debris. “You take these back and I’ll fix my time sheet in the morning. Grab me a bag and one of the litter sticks, would you? I’ll keep myself busy.”
“You sure?” It was technically against the rules to leave Mike behind when they had both ridden to the site in the work truck. Rhonda’s house was less than two blocks
away, though. No mystery to why Mike would rather finish his day at the community center than ride all the way back to city hall and then have to wait for his brother to come pick him up.
“If we both sit here babysitting the playground and literally watching paint dry, you’ll be late for your practice,” Mike said. “Dude, I recognize when you’re thinking about your dogs.” He handed Dave both buckets and helped him batten them down as best he could for the drive back. “You had me an hour and a half short this week anyway, with that fence thing finishing up so quickly on Monday. Hint, hint.”
He had a point. Dave shook his head and sighed. “If you want to pick up trash for another hour and a half, go ahead. I can’t count it as overtime, but as long as you remember to bring the litter stick back in the morning and you don’t let someone who can fire me see you out here after five and still on the clock, I don’t have a problem with it. I’ll fix your schedule so you get credit for the time when I get back to my office.”
“You’re awesome, boss.” Mike gave him a sloppy salute that would have probably earned him extra latrine duty if he’d actually been in the Army. “Go save some lives out there tonight!”
“If we find any surprise dead bodies, I’ll let you know.”
He left Mike cheerfully stabbing empty potato chip bags and daydreaming about Rhonda. The other guys were already done and gone for the day when Dave got back to his office, so he made up the next week’s schedule and then half-assed the rest of his paperwork. Nobody would be around to complain until tomorrow anyway. He got home in time for a longer shower than he expected—which felt so good after being hunched over and painting all day—and a quick dinner of reheated leftovers before he called Lumpy and Woozy to the car and headed back out for practice. The sight of Lito’s little orange Saturn when he got there made something in his gut do a little wriggle.