Stage Two

by Ariel Tachna

  That was an opening if ever Thane had heard one. “Speaking of that—”

  “Mr. B.?”

  “Excuse me,” Blake said. “I need to go see what they need.”

  “I’ll come help.” If he was working beside Blake, the chances of getting to speak with him privately would be higher and maybe he’d get a chance to ask him out. And even if he didn’t, he’d get to spend time in his company, hopefully changing Blake’s impression of him for the better. However justified he might have been in his anger when they first met, he hadn’t done much since then to change the way Blake saw him.

  Blake smiled at him as they walked together down to the stage. Blake veered to the side to climb the steps, but Thane couldn’t resist showing off a little. He planted his hands on the front of the stage and pressed hard, vaulting onto the stage. When he turned to watch Blake walk up the steps, he thought he caught a glimmer of interest on his face, but by the time Blake moved into the full light, his expression had returned to neutral. It didn’t matter. Thane had time. He didn’t have to convince Blake today. He didn’t even have to ask him out today if he couldn’t find an opportune moment. He could wage his campaign subtly now and be blunt about it later.

  “Emma? You called me?”

  “Stage left.”

  Thane followed Blake toward the wings, trying not to stare too obviously at his ass. The sweatshirt was shorter today, much to his delight, and the jeans were snug enough to remind Thane of just how good Blake had looked at the club.

  He pushed through the stage curtains one step behind Blake and waited to see what Emma needed them for.

  “What’s up?” Blake asked.

  “We’ve got the mission walls done. I wanted to ask about the roof. Are you still planning on trying to rough something in so it looks like there’s a roof on one side and a ceiling on the other?”

  “That’s still the plan. We have over a month left and we’re further along than I expected we would be,” Blake said.

  “What did you have in mind?” Thane asked, trying to picture something functional and relatively simple at the same time.

  “It’s a Salvation Army mission from the Prohibition era,” Blake said. “It doesn’t need to be fancy. Just an angle away from the wall on the outside with something to approximate shingles and enough of a finish on the inside that it looks like a ceiling.”

  “You need a couple of joists,” Thane said. “Actually, one might even do. You could cut it in half and put one half on each side to support the roof. Then you could put lauan over it as a sublayer and maybe some wooden shingles for the roof. Or… you know, we might have some leftover shingles from the project we’re working on now. If you can wait a week or two to actually finish the roof, I can donate anything we have left.”

  “I thought you had a business to run,” Blake said, but he was smiling, so Thane smiled back.

  “I do, but there’s not much I can do with half a bundle of shingles. I can get a joist for you at wholesale too, or I can teach your students how to make one themselves, although I’m pretty sure I can get a premade one for about the same price as the lumber to make one.”

  “Let’s see if we have the right length boards here to make one, but if not, we’ll take you up on the offer,” Blake said. “Just remember it doesn’t have to actually meet code. It just has to not fall apart before the show is over.”

  Thane laughed. “In other words, we can make it out of anything that’s the right shape instead of having to use two-by-fours or better?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Show me where you keep your extra wood. I’ll see what I can do.”

  TWO hours later, Thane had managed to piece together functional joists with the help of Kit and Phillip and a very enthusiastic Emma and Zach, but Blake had disappeared somewhere. “Let’s go find Mr. B. and tell him what we got done,” Thane said, wanting to surprise Blake with the news.

  “He went back to his office,” Emma said. “He said he needed to get something.”

  Two weeks ago, Thane would have been furious at the idea of leaving the students unsupervised, but he’d come to appreciate how competent Emma and Zach were. “I’ll go find him if you want to keep working in here.”

  He was sure they would see through the excuse, but they just shrugged and went on to the next task. He slipped out the stage door and walked the empty halls to Blake’s office. He met Blake about halfway there.

  “Is there a problem?” Blake asked immediately.

  “No problem,” Thane said. “The kids have a surprise, so I told them I’d come find you.”

  “You could have waited. I was coming back.”

  “I see that now, but it’s okay. I wanted a chance to talk with you alone,” Thane said.

  “About the boys? You don’t have to worry. I spoke to the baseball coaches today. They were not happy about what happened and assured me they’d deal with the bullies once they were out of ISS. They won’t bother Kit and Phillip anymore.”

  “That’s good to know, but that wasn’t actually what I wanted to talk about.”

  “Oh?” Blake looked up at Thane, confusion clear on his face. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “Have dinner with me on Saturday,” Thane blurted out.

  Blake’s surprise was evident in his parted lips and wide eyes. Thane was tempted to lean down and kiss him, but he didn’t have the right to do that yet. Soon, he hoped, but not yet.

  “I’m flattered, Thane. Really I am, and if you’d asked me out when we were in high school, I’d have said yes in a heartbeat, but I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  BLAKE paced the living room of his apartment, still too wound up to settle. Thane had asked him out. Thane Dalton had asked him out.

  And he’d turned him down.

  Oh, he hadn’t had a choice. He couldn’t go out with Thane. But that didn’t stop him from feeling like the biggest idiot in town. He could have played dumb and treated it as an invitation from a friend, but that would only have prolonged the inevitable and made things harder later. The tone of Thane’s voice hadn’t been friendly. It had been downright seductive. Blake might have appreciated the time to get to know him, but when dinner was over—if not the first date, then soon—Thane would expect a kiss, maybe even more.

  Blake had no doubt he’d enjoy it. He’d enjoy any way Thane chose to touch him, but it couldn’t last, no matter how much Blake might fantasize. Thane had nephews to think about and a business to run, and Blake… Blake had his job and all the constraints that went along with it. If Thane weren’t the guardian of students Blake was responsible for, if he had no association with the school and wanted something lasting, Blake might have considered it, but Blake had no illusions. Thane’s attitude toward him had started changing after Thane saw him at the club, decked out to attract attention. It had worked, obviously—he allowed himself a momentary thrill at the thought of Thane finding him attractive enough to pursue, however temporarily—but that was hardly the basis for a lasting relationship. Lots of men found him attractive enough to pursue at the club. None of them yet had wanted more than that.

  “Self-pity is unbecoming,” he muttered. “You didn’t want most of them either.”

  He wanted Thane, though, and not just because he was exactly Blake’s type. Lots of men pushed his buttons on a physical level, but he needed more than that to sustain his interest. He needed a man with a heart as strong as his body. If anyone had asked him a month ago if Thane would fit his criteria, he’d have laughed. Then he’d watched Thane swoop into his office, an avenging angel set on protecting his nephews no matter what. He’d watched Thane take time off work to be involved in their lives—granted, some of that was probably to make sure Blake didn’t make things worse, but he’d still done it—and he’d watched Kit and Phillip bloom under the attention. They bore no resemblance now to the sullen teens who sat in his office a month ago, in trouble yet again and refusing to tell him what had happened. Sure, he ca
ught glimpses of lingering grief when one of the other kids mentioned their parents, mothers especially, but then Thane would be there with a comment or a joke and the grief would disappear in the face of Thane’s presence.

  It would be so easy to fall in love with him for that alone, but Blake couldn’t allow himself to go there. He’d end up with a broken heart, and that wouldn’t help anyone. It probably didn’t matter now anyway. He’d turned Thane down, and Blake knew him well enough to know that would have pricked his pride. Thane wouldn’t waste any more time on him.

  If only that didn’t hurt quite so much.

  THANE sat at the kitchen table, beer in hand, as he mulled over his conversation with Blake. He’d rushed it. He should have known Blake would be skittish. They’d only known each other for a month, and Thane had spent half of that antagonizing Blake left and right.

  Things had gotten a little better in the past couple of weeks as he’d come to see that there was more to Blake than Thane had first thought. Seeing him at the club had been an eye-opener, but maybe not for Blake. Seeing him with the stage crew kids had been even more of a revelation once he realized why Blake did things the way he did. Seeing him stand up for Kit and Phillip had turned every preconception on its ear. He’d made the mistake of assuming Blake was just like the principals who had made his own life such hell in high school, but he wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  Blake had said something about high school. Thane frowned. He’d assumed—damn, he’d done a lot of that where Blake was concerned—that their meeting in the principal’s office was their introduction to one another, but Blake’s comment made it sound otherwise. Had Blake been at Tates Creek while Thane was there? Surely he would have said something sooner if they’d known each other. Surely Thane would have remembered if they’d known each other. Even if Blake had changed over the years, Thane hadn’t been blind in high school. He would have noticed Blake. Wouldn’t he have?

  He had a yearbook around here somewhere. Not that it would change anything, but at least he’d know. He set the beer down and went in search of the box where he kept his high school mementos. He didn’t have many, not having been involved in sports or other organizations that gave out trophies or awards, but he’d kept things from prom and graduation and a few other events along with photos, mostly of him and Derek mugging for the camera. He found the box at the back of the attic, buried beneath rarely used Christmas decorations—that would have to change now that he had the boys—and a pile of moth-eaten blankets. Maybe he ought to think about cleaning out the attic at some point.

  It was too cold to sort through the box in the attic, so he carried it back down to the living room. He dug around until he found his senior yearbook. He didn’t think Blake was older than he was, so his best chance of finding him would be that one. He flipped open to his class first, although he really didn’t think they’d graduated the same year. He had known the majority of his classmates in passing at least. He found the Bs, but Blake wasn’t there. That made him feel a little better. He could be excused for not knowing all the students in the years behind him. Tates Creek wasn’t a huge school—about 1500 students on average—but that was enough to make it hard to know everyone.

  He checked the junior class next, but Blake wasn’t in that set of photos either, nor was he in the sophomores. When Thane flipped to the freshmen, he found a very young Blake Barnes smiling off the page at him. He studied the picture, trying to match the face in front of him with his memories. Blake hadn’t changed all that much since high school. The inevitable teenage acne had cleared, but he still had the same curls on the top of his head and the same quiet smile.

  He recognized the photo as being a younger version of the man he now knew, but he couldn’t summon memories of Blake as he’d been then. Not terribly surprising given the age gap. He’d had a few classes, mostly electives, with students in different grades than him, but none of his classes as a senior had included freshmen. A few sophomores, but no freshmen. If Blake remembered him, it was from the halls or the cafeteria.

  They wouldn’t have had any reason to be friends back then, and Thane had only started to accept his bisexuality. He hadn’t acted on it until later, so at the most he would have pretended not to notice Blake anyway because he wasn’t ready to do anything beyond look. Not to mention that he’d been shallow enough in those days that he wouldn’t have seen past the acne and the conservative sweater to the boy underneath. He’d like to say he’d outgrown that unfortunate tendency, but his initial reaction to Blake made a lie out of that assertion.

  That was in the past. He’d seen inside Blake now, and he liked what he saw. Now he just had to convince Blake to give him a chance for real.

  He closed the yearbook and leaned back in the recliner. He needed a plan. Just asking Blake out hadn’t gotten him anywhere, so it would clearly take more than a simple invitation. He’d given Blake a bad first impression of him, with the way he’d barged into the office, cursing up a storm. He didn’t regret it—he would never apologize for standing up for Kit and Phillip—but he could have been more diplomatic about it. Then again, he hadn’t ever imagined Blake’s opinion of him would matter, so he hadn’t given any thought to how he came across. He’d wanted to scare Blake into cooperating. That had backfired on him, for sure.

  The first task, then, had to be to change that impression of him, and the best way to do that was to spend as much time with him as possible while being himself as honestly as possible. He couldn’t make Blake like him, but he could show Blake the rest of who he was, not just the overprotective uncle with a potty mouth.

  He could also make it clear that he wasn’t going away easily. Blake’s comment hadn’t just been about high school. He’d specifically said he’d have accepted the invitation if Thane had asked in high school. That implied a certain level of attraction. Thane could work with that. He might not pay a lot of attention to his appearance most of the time—nobody at the jobsites cared how he looked—but he got appreciative looks when he put any effort into it. He’d have to be subtle about it. He could hardly show up to work with the stage crew dressed to impress, but he could fan Blake’s attraction while he figured out the rest of his reasons for saying no.

  It might take a while, but they had time. He wasn’t a particularly patient man, but some things were worth doing right, and Blake was definitely worth the effort.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “UNCLE Thane!”

  Thane looked up from where he was helping Zach go over the plans for the platforms for the sewer set. Unlike most of the platforms that were either very close to the ground or only used in one position, these would have to be carried on and off the stage and be sturdy enough for dancers to jump on and off over the course of the scene. The usual legs they added to raise platforms off the ground wouldn’t be enough.

  “Look!” Kit said, running onto the stage waving a paper behind him. “Another A on my science test.”

  “Great job, Kit,” Blake said before Thane could speak. He hadn’t seen Blake approaching, but he gave Blake his best smile even as he reached for the paper.

  “Not just an A,” he said when he looked at it. “A ninety-eight. That’s even higher than the last time. You know what that means.”

  “Pizza!”

  “Yes, but not until after stage crew. Better get your ass in gear, or Mr. B. will fire us both.”

  Kit blanched and rushed to put his paper in his bag and get started even as Blake chuckled. “I wouldn’t really fire you, you know.”

  Thane grinned at him. “Not even for my bad language?”

  “I hear far worse than that on a daily basis,” Blake said primly.

  Thane fought down the urge to poke him in the ribs, just to get that look off his face. “I should thank you for taking Kit and Phillip under your wing. I’m doing the best I can with them, but I hadn’t exactly planned on being a father.”

  “Life has a way of throwing a wrench in our plans,” Blake replied. “There’s a r
eason people quote Burns’s line, ‘The best-laid plans of mice and men.’ For what it’s worth, I think you did an incredibly admirable thing, taking them in the way you have. Not everyone would have.”

  Thane shook his head in automatic denial. “I couldn’t have done anything else. Even if it had been a freak accident rather than something my sister and I talked about when she got sick, I couldn’t have let them go.”

  “If anything, that makes it more admirable, not less,” Blake said. “Come on. We should set a good example for all the kids and get to work too.”

  “Zach was showing me the platforms and asking for ways to make them more stable for the dancers,” Thane said, determined to work beside Blake as much of the day as possible. He would do whatever needed to be done, but he needed Blake nearby if he intended to wage his campaign to change his mind about a date. “I had a thought about what might work, without adding too much weight to them.”

  “What’s that?” Blake walked toward the area where they stored the platforms set aside for the sewer scene.

  “You need to stabilize the legs so they can handle the dancers pushing off them, right?” Thane said.

  “Yes, that’s right. Normally when we have musicals with big dance numbers, they’re dancing on the stage floor, and when we have raised platforms, they’re either attached to something, usually other platforms, or they’re for show, not for walking on. This one is an exception,” Blake said.

  “The thing is, the braces don’t need to do anything except keep the legs from moving, if I understand correctly,” Thane said. “A one-by-two along each side at floor level will brace the legs without adding a whole lot of weight. It’s a temporary solution, but I think it will work.”