Pick Up the Pieces

by Tinnean

AFTERWARD, AS I lay sprawled over his back, still buried inside him, and he panted to catch his breath, I whispered in his ear, “Happy birthday, baby.”

  “Th-thanks, Theo. You… you’ve m-made this the best birthday I’ve had in years.”

  “Welcome, babe.”

  “S-suppose we put away the cake and go to bed?”

  That sounded like an awesome idea, and I was just going to tell him so when the doorbell rang.

  “Shit!” he muttered.

  “I’ll… I’ll get it.” I pushed myself off him, but my legs folded under me, and I landed on the floor on my ass.

  He crouched down, and I couldn’t help myself. I reached out and stroked his cock and balls. He shivered and watched wide-eyed as I caught up the final drops of his climax and licked them off my forefinger.

  “I… I think you’d better take a minute, babe. I’ll get rid of whoever is there.” His breathing almost under control, he straightened, reached for his jeans, and stepped into them. I was sad to see that gorgeous package disappear from view.

  I opened my mouth to tell him he’d forgotten his Nikes, but he was already out of the room.

  Oh, well, it would just make it easier to get his jeans off him later.

  I hauled myself to my feet, still feeling a little wobbly. That had been beyond awesome. There just wasn’t another way to describe it. I hoped we could have as much fun on my birthday in January.

  I stripped off the condom and disposed of it before straightening my clothes. I was wondering if I should put the cake in the fridge for tomorrow—the hell with the coffee, and everything else could wait until the morning to be tidied—when Wills called my name. And from his tone, I had a feeling it wasn’t the ladies from downstairs or a Jehovah’s Witness.

  “Who is it, babe?”

  “It’s Mr. Vincent.”

  What was he doing here? I walked into the foyer, determined to conceal my disappointment at being interrupted.

  “Vince! I haven’t seen you in a while.” He was always alone—well, he didn’t have someone who was waiting for him to come home—and it would be rude to shove him out the door. “We were just going to have some cake. Would you like a slice?”

  “No, that won’t be—”

  “Look, Vince. You’re here now. Have a piece of cake. It’s Wills’s birthday! I made it myself. Strawberry shortcake.” The strawberries were fresh and plump. I’d gotten them from a little mom-and-pop store a few blocks over that specialized in produce. The “mom” liked me. When we’d first moved to this neighborhood, I’d determined to patronize the local shops. She’d pinched my cheek and given me a basket of strawberries so juicy a single bite had the juice running down my chin. I’d made strawberry tartlets and shared them with her, and I’d become her favorite patron.

  “With real whipped cream, Mr. Vincent.”

  “Only the best for my guy.”

  Wills blushed and smiled, and I was pleased at how pleased he was to hear that.

  “All right,” Vince said. “You twisted my arm.”

  “I’ll just get an extra plate and cup and saucer, sir.” Wills went down the hallway to the kitchen, and I couldn’t take my gaze from the way his jeans clung to his ass.

  Those jeans… those “lick me, suck me, fuck me” jeans… I ran my tongue over my lips, almost tasting his come from earlier.

  “You know where the dining room is, Vince.” I waved him in the right direction. “Go on in and grab a seat. I’ll be right back. I want to give Wills a hand with the cake.”

  Before Vince could object—if he was going to object—I was off for the kitchen. I paused in the doorway and admired the view.

  Wills had a foot braced on a stool while he tied the lace of his Nike.

  “Hey, babe.” I walked up to him, wrapped my arms around his waist, and rubbed my groin against his butt.

  “Mmm. Don’t make me hard. My boss is right here.”

  “That’s a downer.”

  “Delayed gratification?”

  I let him go with a swat to his backside. “Do you think I went a little overboard?”

  “How so?” He made the first cut in the cake.

  “All the strawberries. All the whipped cream.” I took the knife from him and made three more cuts. Wills had taken out the dessert plates, and I placed a slice on each one.

  “You can never have enough.” He ran his fingertip along the edge of the cake, gathering up some of the whipped cream.

  “Y’know, now that I think of it….” We hadn’t used whipped cream in any of our love play. I’d used the entire carton of heavy cream to make this for his cake, but I could go to the mom-and-pop store for more tomorrow—no, tomorrow was Sunday, and they were closed. Well, there was always Safeway.

  “Now that you think of what, babe?”

  “Huh? Oh, nothing. I lost track of what I was going to say.” I’d let it be a surprise.

  He gave me a look.

  “What? Weren’t you going to get a cup and saucer for Vince?” I put the three plates along with forks and spoons on the tray we’d brought back from Key West. It had the image of the Atocha battling the wind and waves that took her down. A glance over my shoulder as I walked out showed he was still looking like he suspected I might be up to something but he just couldn’t figure out what.

  Laughing softly, I entered the dining room. Vince was standing there, gazing at the discarded wrapping paper, at the streamers and balloons and hats and party horns.

  “We already sang ‘Happy Birthday,’ but we can sing it again if you want.” I’d always been hesitant to tease him—he wasn’t the sort of man who gave the impression that would be a good idea—but since the incident with Paul in the hospital, I was a lot more relaxed around him.

  And besides, he was Wills’s boss.

  “That won’t be necessary.” His eyes widened at the sight of the slices of cake. Maybe I had gone a little overboard?

  As I put the plates on the table, I noticed the bullet that was tied up with a piece of crepe paper streamer. “Uh….”

  Vince ignored my surprise and picked up one of the books I’d given Wills instead. “My boy comes in sore because of this, I won’t be happy, Bascopolis.”

  Just then Wills came in. “If you’ll have a seat, Mr. Vincent?” He was putting the cup and saucer on the table when he saw the book in Vince’s hand. “Oh, shit.”

  “It’s okay, Wills. As long as I don’t send you in to work sore, Vince’s got no problem with it.”

  “Oh, shit.” He took the tray from me and started to back out of the room.

  “Wait! You’ve got another present!” I tried to keep a straight face, but I was afraid I’d hurt myself keeping the laughter bottled up. “Vince brought you something!”

  “Thank you, sir. That wasn’t necessary, but I—”

  “Wait until you see it!” It was a good thing I hadn’t drunk anything, because now I was laughing so hard I would have snorted the liquid out of my nose.

  “It’s not that funny,” Vince said, scowling at me. “Here.”

  Wills took the bullet and bit his lip, trying to keep his expression blank. “Th-thank you, sir. It—it’s what I’ve always wanted.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “I’ll just… uh….” He coughed lightly. “… get the coffee and cream and sugar.”

  I beamed at Vince. “It’s the thought that counts, and that was a nice bow, Vince.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said again.

  “Now, what did you need to see me about?”

  “What do you know about coffee beans?”

  Wills paused in the doorway. “I know four ounces of the kind Theo likes costs almost ten dollars.”

  “Forty dollars a pound?”

  “Yes, sir. If I didn’t love him so much—”

  I felt my jaw drop. He’d often told me he loved me—when we were in bed, or when he was leaving for work, or even for no reason at all—but he’d just said it now in front of the man who was his boss!

&n
bsp; I stared after him as he left the room. “I can’t believe it, you know.”

  “Neither can I. Forty dollars a pound?”

  I wanted to give him a smack. How could he be so blasé about it? “No. I can’t believe he— He says it so easily. It doesn’t matter what I’ve done. He just looks in my eyes and tells me—”

  “Theo, don’t worry it to death. Now, about the coffee.”

  “Does he even understand, Vince? Maybe he thinks what I did was glamorous or… or something.” He’d never asked me about it, but everyone and his brother had seen Pretty Woman back in the early nineties, and if anyone could make hooking look like a viable job option, Julia Roberts could.

  Vince shook his head. “What’s got your shorts in a twist?”

  “We’ve been living together a few months now. He’s like a kid in a candy store: everything is so new to him, and he’s willing to try it all. He treats me great, the sex is fantastic….” Maybe this was too much information, but I had to make Vince see where I was coming from. “It’s just…. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, y’know? Kind of ‘if it seems too good to be true, it’s because it is’? I know how lucky I am, but… every once in a while it hits me: this is a guy who’s never really lived….”

  “Excuse me?” Vince looked baffled. “How do you figure?”

  “I mean, he’s almost like a virgin bride.”

  Okay, from his reaction to that, I’d definitely said too much, but he didn’t have to look at me like I was the idiot stepchild. I gave him one of the looks I’d seen Ma give Poppa when he’d come in with fish guts on his boots.

  I guessed he had more fortitude than Poppa; it didn’t work the same way. “You know what I mean. He’s lived at home, and he’s lived with me. Oh, sure, he’s gone to college, worked a white-collar job, but does he even know what the real world is like?”

  He didn’t look like he was about to fall on the floor laughing, but he did look amused. He shook his head. “Trust me, Theo. He knows.”

  “Ha! I mean, before March he didn’t even know he was gay!”

  “Sex isn’t all there is to life.”

  “Bite your tongue!” It was the most important thing. I’d never have made it through these past twelve years otherwise.

  “What do you think it is that Matheson does for a living?”

  “I don’t think—I know. He’s a troubleshooter. He goes out and fixes computers.”

  “Talking about me, babe?” Wills came in with the tray holding the coffeepot, cream and sugar. “There’s gotta be something more interesting.”

  “Not to me,” I said.

  Wills looked pleased. Dammit, I needed to tell him more often how much he meant to me.

  “Black, right, Mr. Vincent?” Wills held up the coffeepot.

  “Right.”

  Wills filled the cup and handed it to him, then turned to me.

  I held out my cup and met his gaze. “Milk’s for wusses.”

  Wills gave me a slow smile, and I knew he remembered the night we’d met as well as I did.

  Fortunately, Vince didn’t seem to notice. He was fascinated by his first sip of coffee. “This is good stuff.” He took out a pen—I’d never seen one so oddly shaped—and a notepad and looked across at us. “Okay, now tell me, where do I get this forty-dollar-a-pound coffee?”

  ONCE HE’D gotten the information he came for, Vince put away his pen and notepad and tucked into Wills’s birthday cake.

  “Excellent, Theo.”

  “The secret’s in the whipped cream.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. You add a metric ton of it to the cake.”

  “Wiseass.” He pushed back from the table. “I have to go. Thanks for the information and the cake and coffee. And happy birthday, Matheson.”

  “Thank you for your gift, sir,” Wills murmured.

  “Yeah. Listen, take Monday off, okay?”

  “Thank you!”

  “Vince, wait a second, okay?” I said. “I’ll get some cake for you to take home.”

  “You’re a good cook, Theo. I’m not going to say no.”

  “Smart man!” I hurried into the kitchen—the sooner we got him out of here now, the sooner we’d get to bed. I put a large slice of cake into a Tupperware container. Vince could probably get two servings out of it.

  He and Wills were talking by the front door, but they stopped when I joined them.

  “Here you go, Vince.”

  “Thanks. Have a good weekend.”

  “You too.” And finally, the door shut behind him, and he was gone.

  We set about getting the apartment tidied up.

  “So what do you want to do on Monday?” I asked as I put away what was left of the cake. I knew what we’d do tomorrow, aside from buying whipped cream. Usually when Wills had Sunday off, we’d sleep in, maybe have brunch at Charmaine, and then go to the National Zoo or the Smithsonian or for a ride out to the country.

  “What do you say we go to the beach?” He’d cleared off the dining room table and now was loading the plates, cups, and saucers into the dishwasher. “The weather’s supposed to be good, and it should take less than an hour to drive over to Chesapeake Beach.”

  “I say yes! I’ll make some pepper-and-egg sandwiches, and we can pick up a bag of potato chips and a few cans of soda before we head out.”

  “Works for me.” He looked over and grinned at me. “Which suit are you going to wear?”

  “I thought the red box cut I wore at Key West.”

  “Uh…. Do I have a vote?”

  “Wills?”

  “I’ll have to beat off everyone on the beach—men, women, gay, straight.”

  That was so sweet. “Which suit would you prefer?”

  “How about the one you brought to Cambridge?”

  “If that will make you happy, babe.”

  “Thanks for indulging me.” He shut the dishwasher door.

  “I like nothing better.” I cupped his cheek and kissed him, and he leaned into me, threading his fingers through my hair.

  Eventually he straightened. “Are you ready for bed? We can run the dishwasher tomorrow.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’ll meet you in the bedroom.” While I shut off the lights, Wills made sure the front door was secured.

  I took the time to wash my hands and face and brush my teeth, wondering again about how easily Wills said “I love you.” I wished the words came as easily to me as they did to him.

  I stripped off my clothes, dropped them in the hamper, and stared into the mirror, smoothing my hands through my hair.

  “Okay, enough of this. You’re going to get into bed with him and tell him you love him.”

  “You say something, babe?” Wills called.

  “Did you have a good time tonight?” I went back into the bedroom, where he was sitting on the bed, untying his Nikes.

  He looked up and grinned at me, his eyes bright with pleasure. “This was a great birthday. Thank you for doing this for me.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” I watched as he placed his Nikes in the closet.

  “Give me a few minutes, babe.” And he went into the bathroom.

  I folded back the bedspread and climbed into bed. I could hear him singing about his heart being here for me to take, and I took a condom and lube from the night table. I squirted some lube onto my fingers and worked it into my ass.

  In a few minutes he’d be out of the bathroom. He’d come lie beside me, and I’d roll the condom onto him. I’d kiss him, and as he slid into me, I’d whisper, “I love you, Wills.”

  The bathroom door opened, and there was a snick as he shut off the light. “Theo?”

  “C’mere, babe.”

  He came to my side of the bed as I knelt up and tore open the wrapper. Tremors ran through his body while I put the condom on him and slicked him up. “Oh, God.”

  “One last birthday present.” I lay back, braced my feet on the mattress, and raised my hips.

  He settled hi
mself between my legs and held his cock at my hole.

  I drew in a breath. “I love you, Wills.”

  With a slight flex of his hips, he was in me. He caressed my cheek and tipped up my chin. His expression was so tender I couldn’t catch my breath. And as his gaze held mine, he whispered, “Best. Birthday. Ever!”

  Coming Soon from DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  Foolish Me, the sequel to Pick Up the Pieces

  I NEVER thought anyone would love me. How could they, when Franky, the one man I’d been certain loved me, had showed me the only thing I had to offer was my youth and my body?

  Of course a good many men did love me—physically—but that was because from the time I was fifteen and my father threw me out of the house for being gay, I’d been a rent boy.

  And then I’d met William Matheson. Wills… of the ordinary brown suits and nothing-special haircuts… someone I shouldn’t have looked at twice.

  But I did. Something about his warm, chocolate-brown eyes brought my gaze back to him again and again.

  I couldn’t say I fell in love with him at first sight… as much as I might have yearned for it, what rent boy would ever believe shit like that?

  But I did. I’d asked him to move in with me, hoping but never believing….

  And now…. Now I couldn’t believe the turn my luck had taken. We were living together.

  THROUGH TOO many years—those years when I’d been a rent boy—I’d learned to keep my mouth shut, stifling any curiosity I might have about my clients. Wills wasn’t a client, had never been a client. He was my lover, but….

  Old habits die hard.

  Oh, I knew Wills was a troubleshooter who dealt with computers, and his company was headquartered in DC, but I’d never questioned him about it or about why, on occasion, he carried a gun. He traveled throughout the country, and some of those areas probably weren’t too safe.

  Mark Vincent, his boss, worked him like a son of a gun. Weekends, holidays, early morning, late into the night….

  And that was something else I never questioned.

  IT WAS Indian summer, and the weather was warm and dry.

  We’d been living together since Memorial Day.