Elias

by Amy Aislin

  City Worker had abandoned the sunglasses today—it was overcast and threatening snow again—so Elias registered the brief flare of amusement that warmed those blue eyes from icy winter to hot summer sky before City Worker carefully schooled his features.

  "You've been playing me!" Elias exclaimed.

  His words had City Worker throwing his head back in a laugh. His smile was wide and white, eyes crinkling at the corners. Damn if Elias's butterflies didn't flutter in simpering puppy love.

  "I'm sorry," City Worker said, grin belying his words. "But you come over here all serious even as you hand me an apple turnover? You look like the world is ending."

  That was Elias's resting douchebag face at work. He was probably wearing it even now.

  "I'm Ty," City Worker said, thrusting out a hand. His voice was pleasantly modulated and smooth, but it sounded young. Elias reassessed his mid-twenties estimate. Maybe this guy really was eighteen.

  That would be unfortunate. Elias was a long way past his teenage years.

  Nevertheless, after introducing himself and shaking Ty's hand, he took his horoscope's advice and did something new.

  "Do you want to grab a coffee?"

  Sitting across from Elias at a small table at the back of a local coffee shop, Ty chuckled to himself. This was the funnest week he'd had in a long time. The thought made him realize how pathetic he was, that taking the piss out of a stranger for a few days was the highlight of his uneventful life.

  Elias had delivered his apple turnover and his hot chocolate and his coffee with such a dour expression on his face the past three days that Ty hadn't been able to resist toying with him. And admittedly the warm drinks had been a plus.

  Although this invitation for coffee had come as a surprise. Hopefully it would help Elias get that uncomfortable-looking stick out of his ass.

  "You didn't have to buy me coffee," Elias said now. “I invited you. I should be paying.”

  "It was the least I could do after the past few days," Ty said, sipping his hot chocolate. Elias had gotten that one right. Ty hated coffee. He'd only had a few sips of the one Elias had brought him.

  As Ty swallowed another sip, Elias gave him a blatantly obvious once-over that was, sadly, more curious than sensual.

  "How old are you?" Elias asked.

  Ty's eyebrows went up at the question. "Twenty-six."

  Now it was Elias's eyebrows that went up. "Are you sure?"

  "Do you want to see my driver's license?" Ty asked, chuckling.

  "It might be a fake," Elias said with a slight smirk.

  "I haven't had a fake since high school," Ty said. He split the apple turnover in two and handed one half to Elias. "It was my older brother's. I only used it twice, though. I've never been a big drinker, and clubbing was never my thing."

  "I never had one," Elias admitted. "Too afraid to get caught."

  Elias looked his age, ruggedly handsome in a lawyer-type way. He was clearly a businessman—his dark blue suit was tailor-made, and his brown leather messenger bag was buttery soft. He had warm, café-au-lait skin, dark brown eyes, and black hair gelled into a short faux-hawk. His face was long and patrician, but the short, neat beard kept him from looking too much like a lawyer. In fact, he looked like an outdoor enthusiast-cum-lawyer.

  He was beautiful in an imposingly masculine way. Ty wouldn't want to meet him in a court room.

  Elias's phone sat on the table next to his coffee cup. God, Ty hated when people did that. Like, Hello! I'm sitting right here! Even as he had the thought, Elias's phone lit up, and he glanced at it.

  "So tell me," Ty said, before Elias could check his new message. "What kind of lawyer are you?"

  Elias blinked at him. "I'm not a lawyer."

  "Are you sure?" Ty teased, mimicking Elias's earlier question.

  It made Elias laugh, and eeeeeee gods! Damn, but no one should have a smile that killer. He probably had pretty boys falling at his feet. Ty had been called a pretty boy once or twice or a dozen times. It made him want to hit someone every time.

  "I'm sure," Elias said. "I work for Top Line, Ltd. Basically we get called in to assess things when a company goes through a reorganization."

  The smile slipped off Ty’s face. Yeah, he knew all about reorganizations. His dad had felt the effects of a reorganization when Ty was a kid. "Reorganization" was a fancy word for "layoffs."

  "Hi there!" A barista stopped next to their table, holding a tray of mini plastic cups filled with dark liquid. "We're sampling our new dark-chocolate espresso flavour today. Would you like one?"

  Ty declined; Elias took one. The blissed out look on his face once he swallowed? Mouth slack, eyes wide and pleased? Ty tried not to imagine Elias wearing that expression during an orgasm and failed epically.

  "What do you do?" Elias asked.

  Redirecting his attention off Elias's mouth, Ty took a sip of hot chocolate to wet his dry throat. Elias was much too hot, much too put together, much too confident. It made Ty feel like an inexperienced teen, especially dressed as he was in baggy jeans, a white thermal top, and an open flannel shirt. "I work for the city. I cover about a four-block radius, removing trash and replacing garbage bags in public garbage cans as well as in some commercial buildings."

  Elias was nodding. "Cool," he said. It was a pretty typical response to Ty's job. Nobody ever seemed to know what to say when Ty told them he was a garbage man. It wasn't a glamorous job, but somebody had to do it. And Ty liked it. He got to spend most of his day outside, he made good money, and he worked decent hours with a great crew.

  Elias went silent again, so Ty went with one of his favourite getting-to-know-you questions.

  "Do you have any pets?"

  "No."

  Huh. That question usually elicited a longer response.

  "I had a hamster when I was a kid," Elias finally elaborated after taking a sip of his coffee. "Does that count?"

  Ty couldn't stop his charmed smile. "Sure. What was his name?"

  "Booger."

  Ty snorted his drink. Fuck, it hurt! Holy mother, who knew getting hot chocolate up the nose would burn so badly? His eyes watered on top of everything, and it probably looked like he was either crying or laughing himself to death.

  He needed to blow his nose, and the tiny one-ply café napkins would never do and—

  "Here." Elias thrust a travel pack of tissues in his face. Oh, thank Christ. Ty had left his own travel pack in the console of his waste-removal truck—which was in the parking lot around the corner.

  Once he'd blown his nose, he glanced at Elias—who looked like he was biting his cheek to hide his smile—crumpled up the tissue in his hand, and said, "Speaking of booger…"

  Elias's laugh was soft, like he was having trouble believing the conservation was actually happening.

  "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to make you…" He waved at Ty like, choke on your drink and almost die.

  "No biggie," Ty said. "Not your fault. I just didn't expect...Booger. It's not what I would've pictured you naming your hamster."

  "What name did you think I'd go for?"

  Ty narrowed his eyes on him and made a show of pretending to think it through, stroking an imaginary beard. "Apple."

  "That's…" Elias seemed to think about it. "That's a pretty good name for a hamster, actually."

  "I'm awesome at naming pets," Ty admitted.

  Elias grunted. "You should put that on your resume."

  Ty laughed, his entire body warming under Elias's teasing. It was an unexpected yet thoroughly enjoyable change from his attitude pre-Booger. This Elias was smiling softly, bantering with him, ignoring his phone—which was blowing up on the table next to him. Ty should probably point it out—Elias might be needed somewhere urgently—but he was enjoying his company too much.

  "Do you live in the city?" Elias asked.

  "For now," Ty said. "I bought a house recently. Took possession last week, actually. I move on Saturday." He didn't mention that he was still living at hom
e—because that was just sad—or that he couldn't wait to get away from his well-meaning yet large, loud, and nosy family.

  "Congratulations!" Elias toasted him with his mug, a wide smile creasing his cheeks. "Do you need help moving? I'd be happy to help."

  Ty sat back in his chair and chewed the last bite of his apple turnover. Elias was hot, no question. But ever since they'd sat down, he'd looked sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes at a loss for words. Did he regret asking Ty out for coffee? Maybe he was uncomfortable with people he didn't know?

  Either way, his offer to help came as a surprise seeing as they barely knew each other. Ty almost told him he had enough people willing to lend him a hand on the weekend, but it'd be nice to get to know Elias, maybe go on a few dates, see where things led.

  "Sure," he finally said. "I could always use an extra hand."

  As of 5:00 pm last Friday, Ty was the proud owner of a small, two-storey, three-bedroom home in Puslinch. Built in the mid-seventies, it was just over sixteen-hundred square feet on a third of an acre of land that looked like his own private park. His nearest neighbour owned a horse farm half a kilometre south. To the north, the street dead-ended at a regional conservation area.

  There were streams and rivers nearby and plenty of hiking trails. It was quiet, and yet it was only a fifteen-minute drive to downtown Guelph.

  It was perfect. It was all his. And best of all? It was over an hour's drive away from the rest of his family on a good day. On a bad day—which in the Greater Toronto Area's crazy-ass traffic was almost every day—it would take nothing short of a Mack truck running over their house to convince his parents, his brothers and sisters, his grandparents, his cousins, and his aunts and uncles to make the trip here for anything but a pre-planned family gathering. And he wouldn't be called up on a whim to babysit his nieces and nephews.

  He loved his family, but God, did he ever need his space.

  "Dude, where do you want this?"

  His older brothers held his bedroom dresser between them.

  "Upstairs," Ty instructed. "Bedroom on the left. It says so on the sticky note taped to the top." He followed behind the twins, watching them sweat their way up the stairs to the second floor, cussing the entire time.

  It had taken Ty an embarrassingly long time to decide which bedroom he wanted for himself. The master bedroom on the first floor had huge windows and a set of patio doors that led nowhere—the previous owners never got around to building a deck. The upstairs bedrooms were two feet smaller than the master, but the room on the left of the stairs had a window seat.

  "Maybe I should've taken the master downstairs," he muttered. Right as his brothers set the dresser down in his room upstairs.

  "Oh, fuck that," Matt said.

  "Not this again." Jeremy rolled his eyes.

  "We are not lugging this thing back downstairs."

  "Notice he didn't even help us get it up here?" Jeremy said to Matt. "Just let us do all the hard work."

  "Consider this your payment for all the free babysitting I've done over the past ten years," Ty said, and turned for the stairs.

  "Damn. Can't even argue that." Matt said behind him.

  "Fucker."

  Ty snorted as he went back outside to unload more boxes from the U-Haul. Thank God the weather had cooperated. He understood now why nobody moved in winter. You never knew if it was going to hail or snow or be ball-chillingly cold. Luckily, it was none of them today, the temperature only minus five with no wind chill to speak of.

  "Where do you want this box?" his sister asked.

  He checked the side of the box—bedsheets, he’d written in marker—and sent Jenn to the upstairs hall closet. He was heading into the house with a couple of suitcases full of clothes when Maddie passed him on her way out.

  "Dad's upstairs assembling your bed," she said, "and Mom's putting the cutlery in a drawer above the garbage can." Her face told him what she thought of that idea.

  "That's disgusting," Ty said.

  "I figured you were letting her do whatever she wanted with the kitchen, and then you'll go in there and change everything around once we leave."

  Exactly. There was no use arguing about what went where when he could move it to where he wanted after everyone was gone. His mother had very specific ideas about where things should be placed in a kitchen—something to do with energies and flow and windows and nothing to do with practicality. The fact that it was his kitchen and that he should have the final say about where everything went made no difference to her.

  "Smart girl," he said to Maddie. She grinned at him, braces catching the light, and trounced down the crushed stone driveway to the truck.

  Maddie was the youngest after him. They got along the best despite the nine years between them, probably because their older siblings had dubbed them the "Accident Babies" since the day they were born. Ty was seven years younger than Jenn, which meant he was nine years younger than Jeremy and Matt.

  He and Maddie had always been a team. She was the only one he would miss not seeing every day.

  "Dude, the seventies threw up on your kitchen," Matt said on his way out the door.

  Ty had to laugh. Because the seventies had thrown up on his kitchen. He'd had a week to paint the bedrooms, the hallways, and the dining room. He could've done the kitchen, too, but the more time he spent there, the more he started to like the turquoise cupboards and green-and-white walls.

  "Hey, Dad," Ty said, depositing his suitcases in a corner of his new bedroom. "You didn't have to put my bed together."

  "Are you kidding?" Marty Green said around the screws between his lips. He slotted them into the headboard and twisted everything into place. "Let your brothers do the heavy lifting. Old guy like me with a bad back? I'll stick to the easy stuff."

  At sixty-years old, his dad liked to joke that he was old, but he didn't look a day past fifty.

  "Tyler." His mom stood in the doorway. "You don't have a KitchenAid mixer."

  "Well, I don't bake, so…" He left the rest of that obvious sentence hanging.

  Sue Green nodded decisively. "I'll pick one up for you next time I'm at the store," she said, and headed back down to the kitchen.

  Ty's exasperated eyes met his dad's amused ones. "Why do I even bother?"

  "I don't know," his dad said. "She'll do whatever she wants regardless of what anyone says. You know that."

  Ty helped his dad put the rest of the bed together then stood to survey the room.

  "Should I have taken the master downstairs?"

  His dad gave him a guileless look. "But this one has the window seat." He sounded like a kid, an overgrown one who knew his fourth child extremely well. Window seat trumped patio doors.

  "Hi." A throat being cleared from the direction of the doorway. "The teenager outside told me to come up."

  "Elias!" Whoa! Tamp down the excitement, there, boyo. "You made it," Ty said a little more sedately.

  Man, even dressed down in pressed dark jeans and a deep purple polo, Elias looked like he was heading into the office for a business meeting. Neat beard, gelled hair, he looked ready to fire a person or seven.

  Abominable job aside, Elias was a nice guy, if quiet and a bit hard to get to know. On top of their impromptu coffee date on Thursday morning, they'd gotten together on Friday morning as well. Elias had purposely—at least Ty liked to think so—sought him out on Friday morning to ask him out for coffee again. It was a nice break from Ty's usual everyday routine, and he got the impression that Elias needed the break from office life, too, despite the bid for the open VP position he'd said he was gunning for.

  "Sorry I'm late," Elias said. "Took me longer than I thought to get here. I didn't realize you were moving so far out of the city."

  "Hi there." His dad held out a hand to Elias. "I'm Marty, Ty's dad."

  "Elias. It's good to meet you, sir."

  "Elias is a friend of mine," Ty told his dad. "He offered to help me move today."

  "That's really nice of you,"
his dad said, packing away his tools. "How do you two know each other?"

  "We work in the same neighbourhood."

  Elias raised an eyebrow at Ty's answer. What? You don't want to tell your dad how you got mad at me for putting my newspaper in the wrong trash can?

  Ty was happy to tell his dad anything Elias wanted. His dad would just tell him that was typical Ty behaviour. He grinned at Elias. Sure, but then I'd have to tell him that you bribed me with hot drinks and an apple turnover for three days.

  Elias seemed to get the message. His cheeks reddened.

  On such a strikingly handsome and confident man, the blushing was rather adorable. Ty stood there like a tool, just smiling at Elias until Elias's blush reached his ears. Elias cleared his throat again and looked away.

  "How can I help?" he asked. "The U-Haul was empty when I drove up. Sorry I didn't get here in time to help unload."

  Ty's dad waved his apology away. "Don't worry about that. My oldest boys had it covered. Ty, your curtains are over there." He gestured to the window seat. "Maybe Elias could help you put those up?" He was out the door a second later, tool box in one hand.

  "I can do those on my own later," Ty said. "Wanna help me set up the TV downstairs?"

  Brushing past Elias, the tiny hairs on Ty's arms stood straight at attention when their arms touched. He got a whiff of Elias’s cologne: spices and wood. God, why did Elias have to smell so good on top of looking so good? Ty had to stop himself from lunging at him. He wanted that scent all over him, in every pore until he was smelling it for weeks. The best way he could think of to do that would be to get them both naked and sharing the same small, enclosed space. Like underneath his bed covers.

  His sisters and mother arguing in the kitchen successfully halted any boner that might've developed. Family was good for that.

  "That flower pot goes on top of the fridge, Maddison."

  "But Ty said he wanted it on the windowsill above the sink so it gets lots of light."

  "Fridge, Maddison."

  "But it'll die up there."

  "Fridge."

  "And then he'll cry big, fat, sad tears because his favourite plant is dead."