by Rhys Ford
“Fine.” Her eye roll was much more impressive, enhanced by her thick sweep of fake eyelashes and her bloodred lipstick pout. “Do you mind if I pet the dog?”
“So long as any tonguing is only one-sided and on his end.” Rob chuckled and dodged Lilith’s punch. “Just go have fun and try not to get either one of us in trouble.”
It was risky letting Lilith run free through the crowd, but Rob spotted Mace going out of the back door with a pair of tongs in his hands. The shop was packed with people, but no one interested him as much as the firefighter who’d gotten under his skin. He gave Gus a quick smile when Gus’s little boy ran into his leg. Then he turned Chris around gently to aim him back toward his father.
“Behind you,” Luke said as he pressed his fingers into the small of Rob’s back. The crowd shifted and jostled Rob into Luke’s hand. “Here, step back. We’ll make you some room.”
“I was just—” Rob’s brain short-circuited when he turned around and found himself staring up into the long-lashed hazel eyes and beautiful mouth of a musician who’d pretty much provided the soundtrack for Rob’s coming out. “Shit. Um, hi.”
He’d seen Miki before, mostly side-eye glances Rob caught in between his appointments when the singer came to visit Ichiro Tokugawa or accompanied someone else to the shop for work. He’d fallen into some of the teasing conversations, but never anything truly one-on-one. To suddenly find himself face-to-face with the singer almost made him forget he’d been trying to get to Mace.
“Hey. You’re Rob, right?” The honeyed-whiskey voice Rob would recognize anywhere sounded amazing up close and live. “You were working in the spot next to Gus the last time we were here. I think you were doing a New School piece.”
“Yeah, it was… the Monty Python rabbit.” His feverish brain slapped up the image of the tattoo he’d been working on at the time. “Um… I was just heading to the back to help… Mace with a couple of things.”
“Probably a good idea,” Luke said with a chuckle. “Mace likes a layer of charcoal on anything he grills. I think he just spends too much time walking through smoke, so something doesn’t taste right unless it’s slightly burned. You driving? Damien brought a bottle of fireball whiskey, and I’m going around giving people shots so we can get rid of it. Want one?”
“Lilith and I took a taxi over because I figured neither one of us wanted to fight through traffic when this was over. And that way if one of us gets a little bit tipsy, we don’t have to worry about a car.” Rob grimaced. A dose of liquid courage seemed like a good idea, especially since Miki St. John had rattled him and he still had to go poke Bear’s little brother with a very sharp stick. “A small one, though.”
“That’s easy,” Luke replied, his dark eyes sparkling as he poured out a glug of whiskey into a plastic shot glass. “These don’t hold a lot, but it saves washing glasses.”
The liquid burned going down, and the sensation of red-hot cinnamon candies lingered on Rob’s tongue. It warmed up his skin, much like Mace’s hands did during sex, and it was tempting to take another, but if he didn’t move fast, Mace would be back inside and he would lose his chance to talk to him.
“God, that’s….” Rob gasped. “That’s… strong.”
“Yeah, none of the Morgans will touch that kind of shit… or at least admit they drink it,” Miki purred in his feral-cat drawl. “It offends their Irish sensibilities. I think Damie buys it just to piss them off a little bit. I love him, but he’s an asshole.”
“You should go find Mace. You know, because he needs help.” Luke spun a bit of humor in his voice, and Rob wondered what exactly he knew. Of the five brothers, Luke was the most opaque. His visits to the shop were few and far between, normally nearer to closing time when his arrival wouldn’t disrupt the work. He said something in Spanish under his breath, and Miki laughed. It caught Rob off guard, but the sly smile Luke gave him did little to reassure Rob that the teasing was innocent. “We’ll be around if you come back. Probably going to be a long time before we can get this bottle empty. Miki’s not helping at all.”
“Shit no.” The singer grimaced. “I puked that stuff up once. Not going near it. Oh, and tell Mace hey for me.”
Rob’s mouth was still burning when he brushed past Ivo and caught a snippet of conversation the leggy inker was having with a short curly-haired redhead with a thick Irish accent and wearing stilettos that resembled Ivo’s favorite pair of heels. Ivo’s attention snagged on Rob momentarily, and he narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t break from the conversation. Slowing his weave through the crowd, Rob tried to make his path look random, and when Ivo’s back was to him, he made a break for the back door.
As soon as he was past the heavy steel door, Rob kicked out the doorstop and let it close behind him.
All of the brothers were attractive in their own way. Bear had cornered the market on “slightly scruffy muscular with a heart of gold,” while Luke was an odd blend of quirky, deadly serious, and simmering hot. Gus and Ivo shared many of the same characteristics—they were brash and reckless pretty men with an air of vulnerability that Ivo spiced up with a healthy dose of sarcasm and teasing. Still, it was Mace’s avenging-angel face and tight body that made Rob’s heart pound in his chest and sent a fire through his veins.
It was just a pity Mace spent his childhood being raised by someone intent on sawing his wings off and hearing about how he’d never fly. Rob was going to have a fight on his hands, battling against ghosts and a steady drip of poisonous thoughts, if he hoped to get Mace to see he was worth all the love given to him.
Reality sometimes hit hard—a powerful sucker punch straight to the balls—and Rob felt its sting as his heart whispered sweet murmurs about waking up on Sunday mornings with Mace next to him. Then his wicked brain chimed in with how nice it would be if only Rob could sink his teeth into Mace’s tight ass, even if he had to tear his way through the old jeans Mace wore low on his hips.
“Jesus, I’m falling in love with this asshole,” he whispered to himself. “Well, fuck me.”
The back door finally shut and clanged loudly when the lock’s heavy strike plate hit the frame, but Mace didn’t look up. Instead he fiddled with something on the barbecue Randy brought over and said, “These are going to be about ten minutes more, Bear. The flame was turned off, so I need to let it heat up again. You might want to put the cheese—”
“Bear’s inside talking to a couple of cops, so the cheese is probably going to have to wait anyway,” Rob stammered out when Mace twisted around to stare at him. “And I think I kind of locked the door behind me. I didn’t throw the latch to hold it open.”
Rob got a suspicious look from Mace, but then it changed and went smoky and hot. The shot of cinnamon whiskey in his belly was a block of ice compared to the smoldering perusal Mace gave him.
“You shouldn’t have followed me out here,” Mace whispered over the crackle of fire and the murmur of street noise from the pier. “You should go back inside before I—”
“I’m pretty sure I can handle anything you can dish out,” Rob cut in. He was tired of chasing after Mace, weary of dodging the sexual tension between them, and most of all, sick of seeing the hints of doubt peek out from behind Mace’s hard mask of a face. “In fact, maybe you should get it all out of your system, and then we can talk about how much you get under my fucking skin.”
THE ALLEY behind the tattoo shop was dark, a shadowy sliver of space blocked off by their cars and the cooling grill that Randy had brought over from his house, so the chances of them being discovered with their pants down around their ankles was slim, but there still was a chance… especially since his entire too-damned-nosy family was only a door away.
“Jesus…. God, what you can do with your fingers,” Rob gasped. “Fuck… me.”
“Not only do I not have time, but if Bear finds us, we’re dead.” Mace reluctantly let Rob go, light-headed after losing himself in Rob’s kisses. He wanted more, but Rob deserved better. “We’ve got to stop doing
this. It’s… nuts. I don’t even like you.”
“Yeah, you’re no fucking treat either,” he grumbled back. Rob tried to straighten his hair, but the shock wave of blue-tipped ebony strands wasn’t willing to be subdued. “I was crazy for doing this once, much less—”
“Don’t count. I don’t want to know.” Mace tried not to think about the incredible sex they’d shared on the shop’s floor that day—that one day—and Mace hadn’t been able to get Rob off his mind ever since. It’d been a mad scramble of sweat and stinging skin, fueled by the excitement of knowing someone would be by to catch them if they tarried and having to be inventive because they only had a couple of condoms between them. He needed Rob to move on. Life would be better, he told himself, once Rob walked away from him. “That’s it. Tonight’s… we’re done. No more.”
Mace couldn’t afford to have Rob attached to him. He didn’t trust himself, not knowing where he’d come from—the cruelty his father raised him in and the emptiness his mother left when she turned her back on him. He had his own rage to worry about and his concern that he would lash out and hurt like his father had done in the past. It would start small, with a bit of anger at something done wrong, and the next thing he knew, his hands would be painted with hot blood and he’d be standing over Rob’s broken body. It was too much of a risk. He had too much to lose—his family, his job, and his sanity.
Walking away now was the best thing for both of them. He knew that, so why did it hurt so much when Rob’s gaze dropped away and his raspy voice finally whispered, “Yeah, you’re right. This is nothing but a quick fuck we like because we shouldn’t be doing it. So yeah, from right now, you and I are done.
“And if you believe that, you haven’t been fucking listening,” Rob growled. “Let go of me. Just for now, so we can get our heads on straight and get our shit together. We need to work out what we’re doing, because I know that was a bunch of lies we just told each other. I’m not walking away from you any more than you’re walking away from me.”
Twelve
FRANKIE’S DINER was a throwback slop house tucked away in a corner of the city where only locals roamed. It was built in the early days of mass transportation, nestled up against what had once been an old bus yard and a set of train tracks that now went nowhere. It was within walking distance of the trolley station and a city parking lot where transit drivers and city employees left their cars for the day and rode BART into work. The original Frankie was a steel-jawed woman rumored to be the granddaughter of an aging New York prostitute who’d come out to try her luck in the last days of California’s Gold Rush. A photograph of Frankie and her grandmother standing in front of the diner held a place of prominence behind the cash register—a black-and-white snapshot of hard living and gritty determination.
A couple of generations later, another Frankie worked the kitchen—a sharp-tongued, brassy-haired woman with a jawline much like her grandmother’s and armed with the attitude of a badger with a sore tooth.
There were too many years on the diner’s red vinyl booths and seats for its retro feel to be anything but authentic. Set in a lower quadrant of a brick building, the diner’s exterior was deceptive and hid much of its roomy interior. Its outer walls were lined with banquettes, and its kitchen was hidden behind a pass-through window set into a wall behind its L-shaped lunch counter.
Delivering the last of the burgers to the shop’s buffet table, Mace pulled Rey aside and told him to cover for him. He didn’t wait for Rob to shoot a few quick words to Lilith while he slipped out the back door to wait. A few seconds later, Rob stumbled out to tell Mace Lilith hadn’t even blinked an eye when Rob told her he was leaving.
“She’s got musicians to talk to. Pretty ones,” he chuckled. “I’m the last thing on her mind right now.”
They’d arrived in the middle of the dinner rush and waded through a small cluster of people to get to the counter. The clang of utensils scraping across thick, heavy white plates battled for dominance against the stream of chatter that poured out from the full dining room. The air was thick with the smell of burgers and gravy and punctuated by the crackle of fries hitting hot oil. The servers did a fierce dance around their tables, refilling coffee cups, dropping off checks, and then stopping at the next gathering of diners to see if they needed anything else.
The diner was loud, fragrant with common, hearty food, and ripe with the promise of leftovers and possibly heartburn.
It was also one of Mace’s favorite places to eat.
A slender Chinese man whose name Mace never caught was working the cash register. He chirruped a sweet hello when they walked through the door, and there was a quick spit of shouting until a corner table set aside for the staff was hastily cleared for them to sit at.
Mace thanked the teenage girl who led them to the table, slapped a couple of menus down, and promised their waitress would be by in a few minutes. Rob slid into the seat next to him, both of them angled toward the door because the table’s location meant only two people could sit there at one time or it would block the flow of servers to and from the kitchen.
“When you said you knew the perfect place we could talk, I figured you meant your apartment, where it’s kind of quiet,” Rob muttered as he shrugged off his jacket.
Mace didn’t hold back his short laugh. “Do you really think we can trust each other if we’re alone and there’s a bed nearby?”
“No, probably not.” He hung the garment off the back of his chair and glanced around the dining room. “How the hell do you stay in shape if you eat here all the time? I’m getting fatter just breathing in the air.”
“I do a lot of running,” Mace reminded him. “Also, our equipment is pretty heavy. You try lugging fifty pounds of gear up and down flights of stairs and see how much a salad satisfies you. And you’re not fat. Why do you—”
Rob lifted up his T-shirt, pinched at his side, and rolled a bit of his flesh out for Mace to see. “Look. You see this? I inherited my mom’s metabolism… and kind of her face. I was a chunky kid. It took a lot to get rid of it. Okay, mostly quitting college, my dad kicking me out and not supporting me anymore, then a steady diet of veggies and ramen noodles. Combine that with not having a car and using a bike to get to work for two years? Took off enough, and I don’t want to gain it back.”
“If you inherited your mom’s face, she must be stunning,” Mace replied. “And if you gained it back, you’d still be gorgeous. Anybody who tells you otherwise should fuck off. Sit down, have a salad or a burger, whatever you like. Just….”
Rob’s poured-whiskey-over-ice gaze flicked up and snared Mace into a trap he hadn’t seen coming. There was a lot about the irreverent tattoo artist Mace hadn’t planned on knowing. In the back of his mind, he knew people were flawed. Just Gus alone was proof in that pudding. But Rob… he hadn’t imagined the folds of self-doubt hidden beneath his brash confidence.
Maybe they weren’t so different after all.
“I’m going to guess they don’t have a grilled-chicken-and-salad plate.” Rob leaned back in his chair and studied the menu. “Or do I live dangerously and have a double bacon cheeseburger with a side of poutine in the hope we’ll work it off later?”
“Well, since I have my car, I wasn’t planning on taking a run up the hills, but if that’s what you want to do, I’m willing.”
“As attractive as that sounds, I haven’t bought my cemetery plot yet, so I’ll have to pass.” That time the glance Mace got was accompanied by a nibble on Rob’s lower lip. “Besides, I think we should talk about you first.”
Their waitress was an old hand at taking orders, delivering drinks, and leaving her customers with the impression that they’d only see her again if it was time for them to cash out or die of a heart attack brought on by the triple-layer cheesecake that was seducing Mace from its place in the refrigerator case a few feet away. Her nonchalant attitude was a lie, because the ironically named Marge worked the floor like a master, and there were quite a few times when Ma
ce reached for his half-empty glass of iced tea, only to find it filled to the brim and a fresh slice of lemon floating among the crushed ice.
He did smile when Rob opted for the cheeseburger, slightly egged on by Marge and her promise that the gravy was calorie-free and his salted-caramel-and-coffee malt didn’t count, because it was a special of the day.
“Are you working or are you off?” The pink-haired older woman poked at Mace’s shoulder with her pencil. “Because if you’re working, I don’t know what kind of fish we have in the back. But if you’re off, I’ll have the cook drop some of that buttermilk-and-bacon-battered chicken into the fryer for you.”
“Was that on the menu?” Rob shuffled through the pages. “Because I didn’t see that on the menu.”
“It’s something Frankie made up for him.” She winked at Rob. “He saved her dog’s life.”
“So now she’s trying to kill me by giving me clogged arteries. Chicken’s fine, but mashed potatoes instead of fries.” Mace handed her his menu. “And a side of greens.”
“Smothered?” Marge tucked both menus under her arm. “I’ll put an extra piece of chicken on your plate for your guy here.”
“Smothered’s great.” Mace smiled up at her. “And an—”