by Neve Wilder
“One more beer.” I could do one more beer.
Tom socked me sloppily in the arm. “Awrigggggght.”
I shot him a glare and he gave me a sheepish smile, muttering an apology.
We walked the quiet streets in loose formation and with varying degrees of grace. Alex seemed all right. Emma bordered on unsteady. Alex had both Jill and Emma’s arms tucked in his, escorting them as if he were an old-world gentleman. Tom had his arm around Marie’s waist. And me, I shoved my hands into my pockets.
“So when did you know you liked dick?” Tom asked the question out of nowhere, head tipping over his shoulder so his words came straight at us.
It wasn’t loud now, just the muted crush of waves in the distance, the sound of our footsteps scuffing over the pavement. But everything got quieter. For a second, I thought that the question might have been meant for Alex, because it was so blatant and random, but Alex lashed out quickly with his leg, landing a solid kick to Tom’s ass. Tom lurched forward and caught himself with a “Hey!”
“The fuck kind of question is that?” I’d never heard Alex’s voice so sharp.
“It’s an icebreaker. I asked you!” Tom threw his hands up, as if he wasn’t sure what the issue was.
“Yeah, but this isn’t fucking 1990 and plus I know you! Are you really that much of an ass?”
The girls laughed uncomfortably, but I shrugged and lifted my hand to stall the argument. “It’s fine. It’s an easy question. I knew I liked dick when I put my mouth on one and enjoyed every fucking second of it.”
Of course there was more to it than that. Years more. But I felt like my answer was coarse and to the point enough as the question demanded.
Tom scowled at Alex, as if to say, See, it’s fine! but Alex only glowered back.
“I’ve kissed a girl before,” Jill said ambitiously, giving me a wide grin.
“Who hasn’t?” Marie sounded bored and flapped her hand.
“That’s a stupid fucking question.” Emma proceeded to launch into a discourse on heteronormative privilege that endured all the way to the boardwalk down to the beach. “Don’t sleep with him, Marie, I forbid it. He’s a backward step in evolution.”
Marie laughed. “I’ll make him work extra hard for it.”
Tom scoffed.
“But I will say…” Emma paused for effect, “It’s kind of a bummer because I was totally prepared to break my one month rule for you.”
I laughed. “Pencil me in for our next lifetime.”
“It’s a date.”
Our feet hit cool midnight sand and our party broke apart. Groups of revelers were scattered along the shoreline. Coolers were abundant, as were long hair and guitars. Not much had changed. Since the dawn of time, there’d been no more surefire combo than a guy with a guitar by the ocean. Emma and Jill flocked in the direction of one playing a John Mayer-esque tune and I couldn’t blame them. Alex walked with them a bit and then released them into the wild, loping back to me.
“I’m sorry about Tom. He’s an idiot with no filter when he drinks.”
“It’s fine. Really. It’s not 1990 after all, right?” I gave him a sardonic smile. “But I think I’ll head home.”
“Oh come on, just wait.” He held up a finger, darted into the middle of a circle of people—a couple of whom greeted him—then returned with a pair of beers.
I’d parked my ass on an empty patch of sand and he dropped down beside me, passing me a beer. For a while, we didn’t say anything, just watched the shifting pattern of bodies in the moonlight and listened to the disharmonious meld of music from three different groups of guitarists, each with their own hopeful fans pressed in close to their covers of other heartbreaker’s songs.
“Do I get on your nerves because I’m a flirt and enjoy messing with you?” Alex twirled the bottom of his beer can in the sand, reminding me of the Spirograph I used to have as a kid. I watched the circles expand and then looked up at him.
“You get on my nerves because you talk a lot.” He didn’t get on my nerves, not in that way, and I was certain my smile gave me away, but he didn’t reply immediately, just tipped his head back for another swallow, a little droplet of beer hanging on his lip ring until he knuckled it away.
“You’re still here,” he said, and I thought he meant beyond the present moment. He was right.
“So I am.” I reached and touched the curve of silver with the tip of my finger. Alex went still, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.
“Was this your first one?” I asked of the piercing.
He turned, ever so slightly, so that my finger grazed his lip, soft and warm, before I pulled it away. I was dancing along a mighty fine line.
“I think it was the second. Maybe the third. I don’t know. I can’t remember and there were a lot of them. I guess now it’s probably more edgy to not have tats or piercings.”
“How did you decide which ones to keep?”
“Easy.” When he grinned, it was a bit sharp, a bit predatory, like a wolf smiling from the underbrush. A shiver raced over my skin.
“I kept the ones that feel the best during sex. These”—he tugged at his shirt where the barbells lay—“are fucking phenomenal in the right hands.”
I’d heard, but figured half of it was hype. But the way he said it and the way he looked at me when he said it, his eyes all dark promise, almost made me squirm. I’d never been with anyone with more than a pierced ear, and Sean had been about as vanilla as they came. Shifting uncomfortably, I blocked him from my mind. I didn’t know what to say in response to Alex, so I said nothing. If I’d opened my mouth, there was a decent chance that, Show me, might’ve come out. Thank God I hadn’t taken part in the shots earlier.
Alex finished off his beer and cracked another.
“If you’re hungover tomorrow, I’m not taking it easy on you,” I warned.
“God no, please be as rough as you want.” He grinned and I put my beer to my lips, drowning my throat before I could say something I’d regret.
He watched me, dropping back to his elbows in the sand.
“So we’re just going to ignore this, then?”
“Ignore what?”
“Exactly.” He rolled his eyes. “Why?”
“Plenty of reasons, but let’s forget all of those and just go with this: just because you’re attracted to someone doesn’t mean you have to act on it.”
“It doesn’t mean you don’t, either.”
God. He was exasperating and irresistible at the same time.
“I’m not that much fucking younger than you. What are you, thirty-three? Thirty-five?”
“Thirty-seven, and it’s not just that. There’s a point where life stages matter, too. And you and I are in very different places.”
“I’m not trying to marry you, Rob, I’m trying to fuck you. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.” The bluntness of his statement startled a chuckle out of me.
“It’s always more complicated than that unless I’m never going to see you again, as has already been proven. And right now,”—I glanced at my watch—“I’m due to see you again in a little over ten hours.”
“Then I quit.” He gave me a devilish grin. “Take me home. Except…I need the job and the money. Shit. Spoilsport.”
I gestured to the crowd. “There’s a whole sea of possibility there. Go find someone easy.”
“Punny.” He smirked, then added, “Tell me you’re not interested. Flat out. Just say it.”
“I should just go home.” I poured out the rest of my beer and stood, dusting the sand off my shorts.
“All right, buzzkill,” he said, taking my hand when I offered it to him.
He pulled upright, and it was predictable what came next. My body knew it, heat flushing through me pre-emptively, responding to the closeness of him seconds before he was in front of me. I had him by a couple of inches in height. That damn ring in his lip was too close and tempting, begging me to reach out and tug it the way I use
d to the rings on carousels when I was younger. The air around him was electric, snapping at the fine hairs on my forearms. And when he caught that ring between his teeth and looked up at me from beneath his lashes, I exhaled a slow breath. He knew what he was doing, and it worked. It would have been nothing to take hold of him and sink into his kiss, to feel how his mouth morphed and melded to mine, taste the sea air on his lips. My dick twitched and swelled while my conscience heaved a sigh. My feet remained solidly planted, though, and then took the step back I needed just as he leaned forward and left the barest impression of his lips on mine.
I took one slow, soft inhale. “I’m the chaperone, remember? I make smart decisions. Don’t be late.” Then, I turned and began to walk back to the boardwalk. I heard the smile in his voice as he called out to my back, “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Unsurprisingly, I dreamt of Alex that night in delicious, vivid fragments that overlapped the next morning. Stretched out in moonlight, shadows banding his abdomen, his mouth open and dark and warm on mine. The pressure of his tongue like a wave cresting, flits of silver and steel in my teeth. His fingers digging into me, the pounding of his heart like the pound of the surf beyond the window, and the salt of his body on my lips. My name caught in his throat, other collections of syllables pulled from the heavy air and tangled in moans as I exploded, comet-hot inside him. I woke to cold, damp sheets twisted around my abdomen.
I knew the air would remain charged with the electrons of that dream. I’d have trouble looking at him and trouble looking away from him, trouble focusing, or focusing on the wrong things, like the small dip in his lower back where I’d spread my hand the night before, or the small tent of jewelry against his T-shirt. And that damned lip ring.
On my phone were three missed calls from Sean and one voicemail. I sighed, swiping my thumb to delete it, and got up to make coffee.
8
Alex
Tom was nursing a wicked hangover, so after the first move of the day, he took the truck to the back of the office’s parking lot, cranked the A/C and laid across the seat to pass out before our next move while I hopped into Dad’s truck and headed over to Rob’s.
“Never let me drink another Mind Eraser,” Tom groaned as I left him curled on the seat.
I was a little foggy too, a headache pulsing at my temples. I’d chugged water and a half gallon of chocolate milk and, as promised, was not late.
Rob wore thin cotton pants and a T-shirt, and though he didn’t look hungover, he didn’t look as fresh as he usually did, either.
“You can’t be that hungover,” I greeted him as I pushed through the door.
Winslow came careening down the hallway, the scrabbling of his nails on the hardwood like a doggie version of a countdown to destruction. I shoved the door closed just in time. He barreled into my legs instead, and I stooped to give him a scratch that he danced through, turning in tiny circles upon the floor and making me laugh.
“I’m not.” Rob raked a hand through his hair. It was tousled from sleep and incredibly sexy. “I didn’t sleep well.”
“I slept like a fucking rock.” I’d spent another hour down on the beach hanging out with Jill and Emma, then cabbed it with Tom back to the apartment he shared with three other roommates and passed out on the couch.
I had a to-go cup of coffee from the convenience store down the street that I was hoping would get rid of my headache. I set my backpack down in the hallway while Rob’s watchful gaze circled me, like at any moment I might pounce him. I would have last night, but I’d been soundly shut down. I was persistent but not a glutton for punishment. At least when I was sober.
I lifted my coffee in his direction. “Sorry, I should have gotten you one, too.”
“Nah. Plenty in the pot,” he said, scratching lightly at his chest.
The day was gray and humid, all low-hanging clouds pressing the heat farther down into the earth. I took out a painter’s chisel and went from window to window in the living room, unsticking the sills from the re-painted trim.
“Think this room’s going to need one more coat.”
“Hmm?”
Rob leaned against the archway that led from the foyer. His gaze was fixed just past my shoulder, outside the window where the palm trees had started to sway.
“One more coat.” I pointed at the walls with the chisel, then I squinted at him. “You all right?”
A long moment passed before he nodded, straightening. “I’m fine.”
It was the kind of slow day where everything seemed to register a half beat too late. I had plenty of time, too much time, really, to think about last night. Nothing I’d said had been embarrassing, but I felt the faint sting of it anyway. If he’d just been some rando, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice. But now that I was back in his presence again, the whole conversation last night seemed underlined between us, which I guess lent some credibility to his argument about being around each other.
So I stuck with being professional and didn’t crack any jokes or try to flirt. Which meant I was silent.
We started on the second coat at opposite sides of the room with our rollers and brushes, but I was aware of every foot of old carpet between us.
“You might want to just replace this,” I said, just to break up the silence.
Rob considered the carpet, indented where furniture had been, stained in places. It gave off a musty, waterlogged scent, the perfume of coastal houses everywhere.
“Yeah, I’ll think about it.” He sounded noncommittal, though. His phone rang and he glanced at the screen with a frown before leaving the room.
I picked up a can of trim paint and a brush and went into the hallway to get the molding around the air register where I’d noticed some discoloration and chips before.
The vent cover was filthy, so I pulled it off and then the air filter, which was covered in an inch of dust. No wonder the house never really cooled. Leaving both off, I took a wet rag to the cover and just inside the air vent, mopping up grime and cobwebs. Right where the ductwork bent to spread through the house was a small shoebox also covered in a layer of dust. Flicking dust from the cover with my rag, I listened to the sound of Rob’s voice, then nudged a corner of the box open. It was full of letters and photographs, the letters addressed to Rob’s father, I assumed. I closed the box up and straightened as I heard Rob end his call.
I hadn’t been paying any attention to the conversation, but the same storm brewing outside was threatening on his face when I walked into the kitchen with the box.
“You all right?”
“Is that the only thing you’ve got to say today?”
“I told you you should think about replacing the carpet.” One of his eyebrows flickered, just a little. Maybe amusement, but I wasn’t confident. “I figure I said enough last night.”
“Yeah…” It seemed like he might say something else, then he registered the box in my hands. His chin ticked in the direction of it. “What’s that?”
“Old letters and pictures. I peeked, sorry. Found it in the air register while I was cleaning it.”
Rob drifted closer to take the box, opening it to flip through the stack of letters, his face confused at first, then perplexed.
“Map to buried treasure?”
He glanced up at me as he refolded the letter and tucked it back in the box. “Don’t I wish,” he said absently. Something was bothering him. I didn’t know if it was last night or the phone call, but it was bothering me now, too. But with ten minutes to get back to the office for the next scheduled move, I didn’t have time to try to pry it out of him. And he probably wouldn’t tell me anyway.
“My time’s up. I can be here tomorrow from three until whenever.” I dropped my paintbrush into the bucket in the sink.
Rob nodded, then shook his head. “It’ll have to wait. I’ve got to go back into Savannah for work tomorrow.” He paused, a frown etched on his face, did the same I’m-about-to-say-more thing he’d done earlier, then turned away, opening on
e of the kitchen cabinets. “I’ll text you when I’m back and we can go from there. Good?”
“Sure.”
He pulled down a glass and filled it from the tap.
I steeled myself in the doorway, arms crossing over my chest. “Did I make you uncomfortable last night?”
“What? No.” The tight smile that followed wasn’t reassuring.
And that was it. Which was even worse: total apathy.
I let myself out.
Tom had rallied by the time I got back into the truck, my feet wading through empty sports drink bottles as I swung inside.
“Did you drink all these?” There had to be eight empties clogging the floorboards.
Tom straightened in the seat, angled the mirror, and checked himself out. “Yeah. I’m going to be pissing Gatorade for the next three days, but at least now I can open my mouth without worrying I’m going to hurl.”
I wrinkled up my nose at him and read off the next address. It was a straight junk haul which would be easy enough, even with a hangover.
“You actually embarrassed me last night with that dumbfuck question you asked Rob. And you know it takes a lot to embarrass me.”
Earlier in the summer, Tom had pantsed me when we were leaving, after moving a couple of upcoming juniors into a new apartment. In the middle of the sidewalk. I hadn’t been fazed, just hitched my pants back up from around my ankles, turned back, and waved to the girls. And their parents. The parents had called Franklin and we both got warned.
Tom ticked a look at me and I could tell he was trying to gauge how serious I was. I’d let it bounce off of me last night, but it’d aggravated me then and even more now that I was sober.
He lifted a brow. “He could have easily asked me back how I know I’m straight.”