by Neve Wilder
I thought of his thighs, how the dark hairs laid slicked flat by sweat against them when we’d shown up that morning, the way the muscles shifted and popped into relief when he bent. Over a table, a box, a chair. Whatever. Sliding my boxers from my hips, I started to drift into a nice fantasy that involved a box cutter and Rob’s clothing.
Then my phone pinged.
The text from Rob was simple: Have a good weekend.
Or maybe he was just an average guy trying to get on with his life and I needed to quit trying to make him into something else.
5
Rob
I didn’t know what had possessed me to send that text. There wasn’t anything even substantial about the message, aside from vaguely suggesting I’d been thinking about him enough to finally reply to his earlier text. All of which was true. I’d spent the early evening overthinking everything, including my non-response to his perfectly normal, if a bit teasing well-wishes for the weekend. God, was this what I was coming to? Specious analyzation of a fucking text? For that matter, why had I even agreed to hire him?
Alex was flirtatious, yes, but seemed harmless. And didn’t I enjoy it a little? The way he’d looked at me, the little verbal jabs he’d aimed at me here and there? In the late afternoon stuffiness of the house, his presence had suffused me with a sense of normalcy. I’d felt alive. Not to say I was feeling dead inside and I was nowhere near as hopeless as I’d been a few months before, but between Sean and my parents, I’d been feeling eroded, as if the vividness of life had been dulled at the edges by a gray fog that had crept in and dampened everything. Nothing penetrated. Alex, inexplicably, was a shaft of light burning through that fog.
My finger hovered over the keypad as I composed twenty different retorts to his comment about Pride and Prejudice. I’d deleted all of them and sent that banal reply instead, as if by adhering to politeness, I could squash the buzz in my stomach I got when I was around him. It was almost funny. Absolutely sad. And likely didn’t matter in the end. We’d work together the next week or so, and I could allow him to add a little color to my world before returning to my gray miasma. That last part was perhaps a bit dramatic, but being around Alex made for a striking comparison to my days spent in the office.
An electric undercurrent of possibility and momentum had run through my twenties. From college to my first job, I’d been filled with an insatiable desire to climb whatever ladders were put in front of me. I’d left lovers on rungs below me if they couldn’t keep up. Even Sean, I’d fit into whatever nooks of time were free around my job over the past year. But he’d done the same thing, so it’d balanced out.
My thirties were more akin to the settling of a foundation. I knew I was in a good place, career-wise. I’d been moving up the ranks for years, driven by this vague notion of ambition that, when I looked hard at it under bright light, I couldn’t really place the origin of.
In between Alex leaving and my text, there’d been two calls from Sean that I’d refused to answer, some wine that I’d judiciously self-imposed limits on, one much-needed shower, and the inkling of an idea that I was starting to question where I’d chosen to lay my foundation in the first place.
I spent Sunday morning collecting paint chips and supplies and piling them in the living room, then spent the rest of the day cleaning the house.
“I’m one hundred percent sure I’m overthinking this, but why the hell are there so many whites?” I called over my shoulder as I heard Alex arrive the next day.
On the wall in front of me, I’d taped at least ten different versions of white paint, each with its own poetic, aspirational name: Dove White, Milk Cream, Marshmallow Fluff, Wave Froth. Wave Froth?
“Easy there, Picasso.”
I shot a frustrated glare over at Alex and his grin erased itself. He came to stand beside me, studying the paint chips.
He wore a white T-shirt and some jeans spackled in what looked like paint and cement. It was the T-shirt where my gaze stuck, as if by some of that same cement liberally scattered across the thighs of his jeans. Over his pecs, rather than the flatness of nipples were the hard-edged lumps of piercings. Dear God. How had they gone unnoticed to me before? Or hadn’t they been in, then? Now that I’d noticed them, I couldn’t un-notice them and had trouble tearing my gaze away, let alone stifle the slow sludge of dirty thoughts that started swirling in my mind. They came in tortuous little flashes: his nipple puckered around the silver, an arch of his back, a twist, a flick. For fuck’s sake. Snapping my gaze back to the wall as he approached nearly gave me whiplash.
He smelled fantastic again, like laundry detergent and sunshine. Someone must have done his laundry because I didn’t remember any guy’s laundry ever smelling that good in college.
“They’re all whites, yeah, but there are different undertones you can pick up on.” He canted his head as he surveyed the chips. “Right here you’ve got some pinks.” He flicked at a chip labeled Sunset White, the name of which originally made no sense at all to me. “Right here is green.” He pointed at the Wave Froth chip. “Sometimes it helps to see them if you don’t look at them straight on, or if you put two next to each other and look for the contrast.” He glanced at me to see if I was following, which I was, then continued. “So I’m sure you know white is just a reflection of all of the primary colors, yeah? But they can be weighted differently so that one of those colors is just a fraction stronger than the rest, and that’s where you see the undertones.”
“Mm-hmm.” I squinted at the chips until they blurred. I wasn’t too certain about undertones, but the confidence in his voice, the authoritativeness was a total turn on.
I took a couple of steps back, repeating the process, and started to see what he was talking about. That didn’t make the choice between colors any easier, though.
“If you’re hell bent on white, just go with Decorator’s White. It’s basically an inoffensive classic.” Alex picked up my stack of chips until he found it, then flicked it with his fingertip. “But I wouldn’t do white in here.”
“No?” I was lost and mesmerized at once, the same way I’d been when he’d picked up the imitation Lladró and began spouting off about the artist.
“Nope. I’d do a neutral gray.”
“Neutral gray,” I echoed dully, then bent to stir my hand through the chips. I had grays somewhere.
Alex crossed the room, all business, to pull back the heavy curtains. “These have to go, by the way. It’s killing the view.” Afternoon light plummeted into the room like a wave toppling, reaching every corner in brilliant white-gold sheets.
Returning to the chip pile, Alex picked through them, shuffling them around until he had a handful of grays, then sorting through those until only three were left in his hand that he took across the room to plug into the window casing where it met the wall.
“White’s great if you don’t really know what you’re doing and you just need to set a blank stage or not push a buyer away with something too personal or godawful like magenta, but if you’re willing to give it some thought and look at other factors, you can make a space that evokes a feeling. Or at least punches up the surroundings.”
The grays he put up next to the window were subtle in difference, but I saw what he was talking about. They were soft and inviting against the view of the lawn, the street, and horizon line of ocean and sky beyond. I glanced back at the swatches of white, which now appeared too sterile. He was right.
“Did you take interior design or something?”
Alex chuckled and gave me a lopsided grin as he pulled one of the grays from the wall and slapped it into my hand. “Color theory 101 and HGTV on constantly at home. Or, well, my parents’ house.” He wrinkled his nose as if that admission embarrassed him.
I considered the paint chip and then the walls. They were currently a faint pink-orange color—as was the hallway—and even I recognized that a color that looked as if it’d come straight from a tuna can wasn’t going to lure a potential buyer. The bedrooms, hal
lways, and baths were an odd assortment of my mother’s whims: pale purple guest room, sodden wine-stain red master, lime-green explosion in the hall bath. She’d loved color and had applied it without prejudice.
I hated to even ask, thinking about the additional work it tacked on.
“Could you do this for all of the rooms? Color pick, I mean?”
“It’ll cost extra.”
“That’s fine.”
“I’m joking, dude.”
Dude was better than sir or mister, so I gave him a thin smile.
“I can do it if you want me to, no problem.”
“I don’t,” I said. “But it would probably make the house more marketable, right, if the colors were updated?”
“That’s what HGTV says.”
I did the math on how much longer I thought it would take. I could still telecommute to work if needed and I hadn’t specified with my boss the exact day when I’d be back. He’d been lenient, too, considering the circumstances and the fact that I’d been busting my ass for the firm over the last decade.
I nodded slowly. “That’s what we’ll do, then. If you have the time, that is.”
“Oh, I have about as much as you want,” he said and turned away to reorder the paint chips before I could dwell on that.
We spent the next hour going room to room picking colors, any instance of skepticism on my part met with a full demonstration by Alex of why the color was the right choice. He was convincing, damn convincing, and he was in his element, walking about with a fan of paint chips, tacking them up, walking back, squinting, moving forward again and declaring a decisive winner. I could honestly say that I’d never felt the stirring of an erection over paint colors until Alex.
I thought he’d be a great teacher, never mind the dirty fantasies that called up for me, but when I told him so, he wrinkled his nose.
“You’re very good at explaining things in a way that makes sense,” I said. “What’s wrong with teaching? On a collegiate level, there can be a lot of benefits.”
“A lot of grading and desks and offices and paperwork, for one,” he said. “And restraint.”
“In what way?” My brow wrinkled.
“I’d probably want to bang half of my class.”
I gave him a flat expression but could tell he was just trying to get a rise out of me. I was getting an idea that was going to be our thing. He poked, I evaded.
“Are you some kind of sex addict?” I was amused by this turn in conversation.
“I wouldn’t say I’m a sex addict at all, but I do have a very, very healthy sexual appetite.”
If I looked away while he was staring at me like that, it would be another one of those tells. He was good at that, too, forcing me to consider my every action by his bluntness. So I maintained eye contact, and that I didn’t blush was only because my blood was busy circulating furiously behind my shorts.
“Most people do at twenty.” I was guessing there.
“Twenty-three in a week,” he corrected me.
“Fine. Twenty-three. But there’s nothing wrong with a little restraint.”
“You’re right. Belts and handcuffs can be amazing.” His smile curled up, shameless, and I didn’t even know where to begin with that. I was on the cusp of a full erection, so I shook my head and turned from the room. “Let’s go get paint.”
In the car, with the safety of the steering wheel and judicious positioning, I picked the subject back up.
“You’re not a helpless idiot. Restraint isn’t just about…not doing something. It’s about being selective, too, about working toward a goal, filtering out the things that matter from the things that don’t.” I’d unintentionally swerved into a life lesson, it seemed, and Alex wasn’t in the mood. He sat with one leg tucked up on the seat, denim straining over his knee, watching the scenery flash by as he worried that lip ring. His fingers closed into a fist. I’d touched a nerve. I thought I should feel bad about it, but I didn’t. Maybe it was schadenfreude, but seeing that he could be unsettled was somehow reassuring to me.
“And you’re not an old fart with one foot in the grave.” His gaze skimmed me up and down, one brow lifting. “Even if you’re hell-bent on acting like one. So do me a favor and save the life lessons for someone not already living them. And if I remember correctly—which I do because I wasn’t drunk—you didn’t seem all that keen on restraint when I was going down on you in a bathroom stall.”
Yep, I’d definitely touched a nerve. I clamped my mouth shut.
Alex wandered the aisles at the paint store while I got the paint, and once we got back to the house, we went room to room, divvying them up. We’d not spoken much since the car ride to the store and now I felt bad for setting him off. I really didn’t know much about him, but what he’d shared—dropping out, tight finances, living with his parents—was enough to stress anyone out.
“Those for me?” He eyed the box of Cracker Jack I’d set on the table by the door once we’d finished for the day.
“Yeah.” It’d become part of my morning routine. Run, go to the convenience store for a bottle of wine or Coke, and, if Alex was going to work that day, a box of Cracker Jack.
“Thanks.” He gave me a small smile.
I studied him and before I could second guess it, asked, “Do you want a beer?” I didn’t want to leave things on an uneven keel. And I also didn’t want to think about why that was so important to me.
“Sure.” He shrugged.
I went off to grab the beers, returning to find him on the floor, his back propped against the bookshelves as he stared out the window. A triangle of sweat darkened the collar of his T-shirt and his fingers combed the carpet at a restless tempo.
Alex took the beer I offered him, wedging it between his legs, then slid his thumb under the seal of the Cracker Jack box, shaking out a handful of it into his palm. Winslow trotted in like clockwork, sniffing at his hand and then settled along Alex’s leg, panting.
Alex held his cupped hand up to me in offer.
“Too hot for sweet,” I declined.
I sat on the floor, too, with my back pressed to Mom’s old leather couch. For long moments there was only the sound of Alex crunching and my beer guzzling.
“What happened to your dad?” he asked. “You don’t have to answer or anything. I’m just curious.”
“It’s fine. It’s been several months and it wasn’t sudden. I mean, we knew it would happen eventually. Not that that makes it any better but—” I took another swallow of my beer, intent on not circling the subject like a vulture afraid to swoop any longer. “He had heart trouble for a long time. All sorts of cardiac problems over the last year and he just…finally dropped dead, basically. There wasn’t anything the doctors could do for him. Honestly, I think he was tired of it all. Mom was gone. She had ovarian cancer. It was quick and brutal. Diagnosis to death in six months. He was never the same after.”
Alex grimaced. “That’s rough.”
“Yeah.”
I chuckled suddenly and he seemed surprised.
“For as long as I can remember, they were more like teammates. They were good parents, but just—” I didn’t know why I was telling Alex any of this, except that he was listening so intently and it distracted me from the heat. The heat and the way it lay in a fine sheen over his skin. “To be honest, I think my dad was probably gay—at least bi—but I don’t think he ever acted on it.” I couldn’t remember when I’d first noticed it or why, but my own father had been one of the first to set off my fledgling gaydar.
“Did you come out to him?”
“Never officially, but I didn’t really try to hide it, either. I think he always knew. We didn’t talk about it. It was uncomfortable for him.”
“Were you the one to find him?”
I shook my head. “No. He had a home health nurse coming every few days to help out.”
Alex nodded and we fell into a silence. Not uncomfortable, exactly, but weighty. Alex resumed his viewing of the sunset, s
haking kernels of candied popcorn from palm to palm. I nudged at Winslow’s flank with the tip of my toe and he let out a satisfied groan.
Alex looked up at me again. I thought he might say more about my dad, but instead he tossed a Cracker Jack in my direction, calling out “Catch!”
I had to veer hard to the right to catch it, but I did. The caramel melted on contact and stuck to my teeth. He gave me one of those gleaming, sun-bright smiles. “By the skin of your teeth.”
I leaned over, snatching the box and shaking a few in my hand so I could return the favor. He caught it easily.
“The best part of this stuff was always the prize. They’re not really that good.”
“You’re wrong.” Alex tossed another kernel up in the air for me to catch. I threw up my hand and caught it midair. “The prize is always disappointing. But it’s all about the anticipation, that maybe someday the prize will be really good. Cracker Jack itself is decent.”
“How is that any different than what I just said?”
Alex shrugged. “It just is.” Then, fishing through the box, he pulled out the wrapped prize and tossed it in my direction. “Do the honors.”
I peeled the paper back to reveal a smiley face with a disembodied hand giving a giant thumbs up.
Alex laughed. “See, terrible. But admit that for a second you thought maybe it’d be something good.”
“Not even for a millisecond.” I smirked.
“So jaded.”
I slid the sticker from the backing and held it up on my finger. “It’s all yours, color whiz.” I leaned forward on my knees to stick it in the center of his T-shirt, fist bracing my weight to one side of Alex’s leg as I pushed the sticker into cotton. His chin angled down as he examined my handiwork, and then his eyes met mine, his grin fading. He licked his lips and I had to force a casual smile. Don’t mind me as I try to inhale you.