“C’mon.” Scott elbowed Eamon gently in the side. “You’ve got to be well-rested so we can beat this thing together, right?”
Eamon smiled, holding his side. “Yeah, definitely. You just let me know when you’re free, and we can work on it again.”
“You mean you can work on it, I’m afraid,” Scott said apologetically. “You lost me hours ago.”
“I can take it home and try to work on it there?” Eamon offered. He paused for a moment. “Or is this your shop laptop?” He clicked his tongue in frustration. “Should have brought mine. I could have transferred the code over to that.”
“There’s no deadline,” Scott assured him. “When you have time, that’s all.”
“I have nothing but time,” Eamon said, running a hand through his hair. “Better to tell me when you’ve got a minute.”
“Outside of the shop’s hours, I’m all yours,” Scott said. Eamon definitely flushed at that. The lamp next to the couch was a little dim, but not too dim to see a blush hit Eamon’s pale cheeks. Scott hadn’t even meant that to be flirting. He wasn’t supposed to be flirting at all. But Eamon was very cute when he blushed, the pink adding a warmth to the austerity of his features that made Scott want to lean in. It wouldn’t be too far to go after all.
“Send me a text,” Eamon said, pulling back a fraction.
Scott firmly repressed the disappointment blooming in his chest. There was nothing to be disappointed by. He hadn’t been going to lean in, even if the idea was very tempting. “Will do.”
They got slowly to their feet and Scott showed Eamon to the door, Eamon collecting his sweater from the couch as they went by. He pulled it on, rumpling his hair severely, and Scott had to hold himself back from reaching out to tidy it into place.
“I really appreciate this,” he said instead, tucking his hands behind his back. “You’ve been fantastic.”
“Don’t praise me until I’ve got it working,” Eamon told him. “But thanks. It’s been fun to have something new to work on.”
“No big ideas for your sabbatical?”
Eamon wrinkled his nose. “It’s not really that kind of sabbatical.”
Scott lifted his hands. “Hey, rest’s important too.”
“Rest is driving me crazy,” Eamon muttered. He squared his shoulders. “But thanks, really.”
“I’m the one who owes you,” Scott reminded him. “Have a good one, man.”
And then Eamon was gone and Scott was forcing himself not to watch as Eamon walked down the path, the way he’d forced himself not to watch all evening.
It wasn’t even that typing was so compelling, but there was something about Eamon’s certainty in his actions, his quiet competence, that made Scott want to watch him. Eamon can’t stop talking about his company, Scott reminded himself. He’s going to go back to it the second he can and ditch you and Sellis Creek all in one go. But the memory of Eamon’s hands flying over the keyboard wouldn’t leave him, even as he trudged up the stairs towards bed.
11
Eamon
Eamon had never been any good at leaving a project unfinished. He’d always preferred to work all hours of the day and night until he could definitively say that something was done, and then let himself collapse. Having to work with other people who expected some kind of work-life balance out of their jobs had tempered this strain a little bit, though mainly it had left him alone in offices working until two a.m..
He’d almost had Scott’s website working again! It worked for one kind of appointment type now. That had to mean that it could process the data. There was just something in the data for more complicated appointments – more bikes, more types of bike, different payment options – that was corrupting the entries.
Infinitely close – at least by programming standards – and here he was waiting around doing nothing. He’d wandered past Sellis Creek Cycle Works on Saturday, just as part of his daily attempt to not go stir-crazy, and contemplated going in, but there had been too many other people in the shop and Scott seemed busy at the counter, looking handsome with his best customer-service smile.
It would have been easier if Eamon had had some real work to do, but he could hardly try to work on his strategy with the board when Kevin’s messages had slowed to a trickle. He’d thought about sending out feelers to various board members to see where they stood on his unjust exile, but it was hard when he had no idea who the traitors were. Even Kevin seemed baffled, which must mean that the plan to oust him was far deeper and more widespread than he’d thought.
Instead, Eamon spent a lot of time that weekend biking through the conservation area, wearing himself out with constant motion. Spring was definitely coming, and the woods and marsh were singing with it, even to an unpracticed eye such as Eamon’s. It made him think of Scott too, and the other man’s impassioned defense of the clean-up efforts and modern wetlands management. Whatever had happened here, it was an improvement over the marsh of Eamon’s childhood, the one he’d been told never to go into because the boardwalks were rotted out. He’d realized later that much of this concern had been code for parental worries about teens drinking in the woods, but he’d never had much of a gang to go out breaking rules with, so the impression of muck and decay was what had stuck with him.
Honestly, riding through the parkland, he could almost imagine he was in a different town, somewhere where no one knew him at all. Not that that would be too far different from Sellis Creek. Even the few connections he’d had here seemed to be long gone, whittled down to people like Lennox who knew their mothers had known his mom without ever knowing who her son was.
Not that there was any reason to know a failure like him. He’d thought he had it made, but if everything could be stripped away from him like this, what did he really have? The knowledge in his own head, that’s what he’d clung to, and yet the first time he’d been called upon to use some of it, he’d fallen down at the first hurdle.
He pedaled harder, overtaking the cyclists in front of him, the wind whipping at his face. He’d just have to show that his first failure had only been a first step, a minor hurdle before he could present Scott with a finished product that actually worked.
Somewhere, in the back of his mind, the thought emerged that there was no reason for him to be so fixated on helping a person he’d only just met. He shoved it away, taking deep lungfuls of biting spring air. He’d needed a project and he’d found one: that was all. And Scott had been so understanding about the trials and tribulations of running your own business. Sure, his circumstances were extremely different, but sympathy overrode all that. He deserved something nice for all that.
It wasn’t a failed crush because Eamon didn’t have a crush. He had eyes, so he wasn’t oblivious to Scott’s attractiveness, but the fact that Scott hadn’t picked up on it when Eamon had casually dropped the boyfriend bombshell into conversation didn’t mean a thing except that Scott was a good guy who wasn’t going to discriminate.
Another reason that Scott had earned a few favors, and why Eamon found himself swinging past Sellis Creek Cycle Works again early Sunday morning, laptop bag swinging at his side.
“You’re bright and early!” Scott called out as Eamon pushed open the door to the shop. He looked adorably sleep-rumpled still, particularly with the huge paper cup of coffee in one hand.
“Still on business hours, I guess,” Eamon said with a shrug.
“On a Sunday?” Scott’s voice was full of honest distress, and it made Eamon want to laugh.
“It happens,” Eamon admitted. Better than saying the truth: that he’d been tossing and turning since five in the morning wondering where he’d gone wrong.
“Save me from it just happening like that,” Scott said, taking a long drink of his coffee for punctuation.
“You work six days a week,” Eamon pointed out.
Scott scowled. “That’s different.”
“I don’t see how.” Eamon leaned on the counter, enjoying the back and forth.
; “I work for me, myself, and I.”
Eamon snorted. “So do I.”
“It’s different,” Scott assured him. He waved away Eamon’s objections with one massive hand. “So what can I do for you today?”
“I was thinking your scheduling problem over,” Eamon said, “And I have a few more ideas I want to try out. So I brought my laptop–” He held up the bag. “I thought I could transfer a copy of the program over and work on it.”
Scott looked taken aback. “Are you sure?”
“Not doing anything else,” Eamon said.
“You’re putting a lot of work into this though.” Scott sounded worried and Eamon wondered why. “I definitely owe you one, you know.”
“No, not at all–” Eamon started to say, but Scott interrupted him.
“I know it’s not much of an offering, but if you want to come over tomorrow and test your new ideas, I’ll cook you dinner.”
“Oh.” Whatever Eamon had been expecting, that wasn’t it.
“I promise I can cook,” Scott said with a laugh, clearly misinterpreting Eamon’s shock. “Or, actually, I can cook like five things well, and I promise I’ll feed you one of them.” His smile was bright. “So, what do you say? Or is tomorrow too early for you? There’s no rush on this after all.”
“I should have a fix for the bug I think I found by tomorrow,” Eamon said. He didn’t add that he was fully prepared to stay up all night to make that statement true. “Dinner sounds great.”
“It’s a plan.” Scott beamed at him. “So, what do you need from me?”
“Just a quick data transfer,” Eamon said. “I can do it in seconds.”
They both stared awkwardly at the minuscule space behind the counter, clearly coming to the same conclusion.
“I’ll go tidy up out front,” Scott said quickly. “You can sit back here.”
“It won’t take long,” Eamon promised.
They swapped places, sliding through the swing door of the counter past each other, close enough to touch. Scott’s stool was warm from his body heat, and Eamon wrapped his ankle around the chair leg, the piece of furniture just a fraction too tall for him and probably perfect for Scott.
“There isn’t much to see,” Eamon said apologetically as Scott leaned curiously over the counter.
“And I do have displays to fix,” Scott agreed. “Yell if you need anything.”
There was no need to yell in such a small shop, but the thought of it was just like Scott, a big man whose personality seemed to fill the room, making everyone welcome. Eamon smiled. “Will do.”
He didn’t actually have much to do either, once the data transfer had started. Leaning on the counter, he kept one eye on the progress bar and the other on Scott, bending over the shelves of bike gear and rearranging them back to tidiness. He looked away when the door opened, but the customer’s voice was loud and booming in the small space.
“Another employee? You’re moving up in the world, my man!”
“Nah, just a friend doing me a favor,” Scott demurred. Still staring down at the two laptop screens, Eamon felt an odd jolt of warmth. “What can I do for you today?”
“Training wheels for my daughter,” the guy said cheerfully. “Say hello to Mr. Ladley, sweetheart.”
Another voice, belonging to an individual who’d been so silent Eamon had entirely failed to notice her, squeaked, “Hello, Mr. Ladley.”
“Goodness, you’re awfully big these days!” Scott said, in a voice like nothing Eamon had ever heard from him before, a softness with no teasing edge behind it. “I remember when you were coming in here for your first tricycle. We’ll find you just the right training wheels, don’t you worry!”
Eamon risked a peek as the sound of footsteps announced that the little group were busying themselves with the shelves of training wheels. The little girl was examining the sets of training wheels with the kind of intensity that Eamon expected only from the serious cyclists who came in for the kind of water bottle that might shave two ounces off their carrying weight. It contrasted oddly with her messy ponytail and the glittery backpack she clutched to her chest.
Scott, crouching down to look her in the eye, was explaining the differences between the sets of wheels with a perfectly straight face, despite the primary differences being the color of the spokes. She nodded along with his every word, staring each set down like it had secrets to reveal. Her dad, hands stuck in his pockets, didn’t seem surprised by any of this.
“I want yellow ones,” the little girl announced after a while.
Scott cleared his throat. “I’m not sure we have yellow ones. We’ve got blue and pink and green and purple and white?”
“But I like yellow,” the girl explained, the squeakiness of her voice at odds with her unswerving determination.
“An excellent point.” Scott nodded solemnly. “Let me see... We’ve got some yellow streamers for the handlebars? You could have those as well as the white training wheels.”
“Oh!” The little girl took in the bin of streamers, the mylar flashing in the light as the colors all tangled together. “Daddy! Can I have streamers too?”
“I think we could manage streamers,” her dad said with a suppressed smile.
Scott handed the little girl the yellow streamers and the box of white training wheels, and she rushed up to the counter, standing on tiptoe to push the goods towards Eamon. “These, please!” she said importantly. “I’m going to go ride my bike this afternoon!”
“That’s...good,” Eamon said, entirely thrown off by being addressed so suddenly. He’d been observing for so long, he’d almost forgotten they could see him too. “I’m, uh, not sure how to use the cash?”
The little girl looked deeply unimpressed by this evasiveness.
“I’ve got you,” Scott said, coming up from behind her. He looked at Eamon, eyes twinkling. “Let me just get back there.”
He’d squeezed in beside Eamon before Eamon could make a move to escape, their shoulders brushing as he bent over the cash register, ringing things up slowly. “That will be twenty-seven dollars and forty-five cents,” he told the little girl.
She gave him a look like he was stupid. “Daddy will pay.”
Her father snorted. “He will indeed.” He handed over his credit card, one hand resting affectionately on his daughter’s shoulder. She ignored the paying part of the equation, focusing on packing first the training wheels and then the streamers into her glittery backpack.
“Thank you!” she said abruptly as she finished, turning to dash out of the store and leaving her father hurrying in her wake, his receipt abandoned in Scott’s hand.
“You’re welcome!” Scott called after her.
There was only the sound of the bell jangling behind them.
“Oh, you should have seen your face when Charlotte tried to make you work the register!” Scott crowed, elbowing Eamon in the side. “Smart kid, huh?”
“Yeah?” Eamon said, unsure.
“Knows just what she wants.” Scott grinned. “Strikes a hard bargain too.”
Eamon hadn’t really seen any evidence that she struck any kind of bargain, only of Scott being impossibly kind to a kid who had too many demands, but he nodded. Scott wasn’t moving away, that was the problem. Eamon could get over how cute it had been to watch Scott get right down on some kid’s level if he would just move away and stop being so tantalizingly close.
“You ever want kids?” Scott asked vaguely, looking up at the ceiling of the shop as he scooted back around the side of the counter.
Inexplicably, Eamon missed his warmth.
“Never thought about it,” he admitted, and felt his heart break as Scott replied, “Too bad.”
He was still watching the ceiling, the pose stretching out the line of his neck into something infinitely kissable, and all at once Eamon found himself admitting something else. This really was a crush.
Dammit.
12
Scott
”I’m not ditching
you,” Scott hissed into the phone. “I’m just busy today.”
“Too busy for our Monday night ritual? I’m appalled,” Lennox cackled gleefully.
“It’s not a ritual! We just both sometimes have Monday nights off!”
“Pretty much always have Monday nights off,” Lennox corrected him. “So it’s a ritual.” He laughed at Scott’s disgusted noise. “So, what are these big plans?”
On the stove, the pasta sauce was beginning to bubble a bit too vigorously. Scott rushed over and began to stir, phone trapped between his ear and his shoulder. “Eamon’s coming to dinner.”
“Oh, so you’ve ditched me for a pair of pretty eyes.” Lennox couldn’t even fake sorrow through his unmitigated glee and it was pissing Scott off.
“What would you know about pretty eyes?”
Lennox scoffed. “Please. I’m straight, not blind.”
“You don’t understand,” Scott snapped. “He’s fixing my website.”
“Is that what they call it these days?” Lennox’s delight was infuriating. It would only have been worse if Scott had had to see his best friend’s dumb smug face, but then at least he could have put him in a headlock and noogied the annoying right out of him.
“No, for real,” Scott said. “Which I cannot do. So don’t you dare scare him off.”
“I thought he was some fancy CEO-type?”
“Me too,” Scott said. “But then he volunteered and I didn’t see any of the rest of you helping out, so shut it.”
“All right,” Lennox caroled. “You have fun on your date then!”
“It’s not a date!” Scott practically yelled into the phone, but there was no one on the other end anymore. He didn’t just cook for dates, that was ridiculous. He cooked for himself all the time, and he was pretty sure he’d fed Lennox more than once, even though the prospect of dating his best friend gave him the heebie-jeebies, straightness aside.
Fuming, he stirred the pasta sauce more vigorously than necessarily and yelped when a flying blob of sauce landed on his wrist. He was still scrubbing at the painful pink spot when the doorbell rang and he rushed into the front hallway to fling open the door.
Love in Tandem Page 7
