Covet Thy Neighbor

by L. A. Witt

  I was reaching for the door to the stairwell when it opened. And just like that, I was face-to-face with Darren. He didn’t look much different from earlier, though his damp hair was casually arranged, so he must’ve just had a shower. Still, his presence struck me like it had the first time, and there went my heartbeat and brain waves.

  “Oh.” He stopped. “Didn’t realize you were off work already.”

  “Already?” I checked my watch, pretending my pulse hadn’t just jumped. “It’s quarter to eight.”

  “Aren’t tattoo shops usually open late?”

  “Yeah, on the weekends. Thursdays are… eh.”

  “Gotcha. So, um.” He tucked his hands in his pockets and rolled his shoulders. “I’m still learning my way around this place. Anywhere you can recommend for a beer?”

  How about my place? “All kinds of restaurants down that way.” I gestured past him toward the Light District’s town square. “Just depends on what kind of atmosphere you’re into.”

  “Something quiet is good,” he said.

  “I’d try Jack’s. Just opened recently, and it’s not one of those loud sports bar types.”

  “I think I’ll give that one a try, then. Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  He started to go but paused. “Do you, um, want to join me?”

  I coughed to keep from choking on my own breath. “I—really?”

  Darren shrugged. “Hey, I’m new in town. I’m all for any opportunity not to eat alone.”

  “So you’re just using me for company until you make friends.” I sighed and shook my head. “I’m touched, Darren. I really am.”

  He laughed. “Have to start somewhere.”

  “True, I guess you do.” I put my keys in my pocket. “Sure. Let’s go.”

  We started down the sidewalk. The only evidence of this morning’s torrential downpour was the odd puddle, and the evening was cool but hardly unpleasant. Not a bad night for a stroll with the newest hot guy in Tucker Springs. As long as I managed to keep my feet under me, I was golden.

  “So this seems like a nice neighborhood so far,” he said after a while.

  “Your brother didn’t seem to think so.”

  Darren laughed softly, if a little halfheartedly. “He’s just protective. You know how older brothers are.”

  The comment smacked me in the chest, but I didn’t let it show. He couldn’t have known.

  I forced a smile. “Yeah, I know how they are.”

  “Sorry if he was a bit, um, abrasive the other day. And today.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I sidestepped a small puddle. “But tell him you can pass the move-in discount on to him if he wants some free ink.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.” I paused. “Can’t promise I won’t take a few liberties with his design of choice, but….”

  Darren laughed with a little more enthusiasm this time.

  Toward the end of the block, we slowed down beside the rainbow-festooned Pride shop. Flags, banners, posters, books—the place had it all. Darren scanned the colorful merchandise in the window as we walked past.

  “They have places like that in Tulsa?” I asked.

  “Not in my neighborhood,” he said with what I thought was a hint of bitterness.

  “You, um, you do know this is the gay part of Tucker Springs, right?”

  “I do.” He looked at me as we kept walking. “That’s why I moved here.”

  “Oh. All right.” So he was gay. Detail confirmed, target acquired. “Carry on, then.”

  “So what do you do around Tucker Springs?” he asked. “When you’re not tattooing people?”

  “Well, a buddy of mine and I know the biking trails by heart. You into mountain biking?”

  “Mountains?” He threw me a sidelong glance. “I’m from Oklahoma. I get a bloody nose stepping onto a curb.”

  I laughed, not sure if it was his sense of humor or just those eyes that made my heart go crazy again. “The second-floor apartment must be hell, then.”

  “It’s an adjustment, let me tell you. It’ll be easier once my oxygen tanks get here, though.”

  Goddamn, he was quick. I liked.

  I cleared my throat. “Okay, things to do in Tucker Springs that won’t give you altitude sickness. There are some pretty good clubs around, especially here in the Light District. Buddy of mine owns Lights Out.” I gestured over my shoulder in the general direction of Jason’s club.

  “Isn’t that the one Chris was talking about? The sleazy one?”

  I waved a hand. “What would a straight guy know about a gay night club?”

  “Oh yeah. Good point. So it’s… a good one?”

  “Probably the best on the singles scene.”

  “Good to know. Though clubs aren’t generally my scene,” he said. “Too loud, too… just not my scene.”

  “Understandable.” But he hadn’t mentioned that he was spoken for.

  Jack’s wasn’t crowded, and the hostess quickly seated us by a window in the lounge area. We both ordered the local microbrew on tap and then browsed the small menu in search of something edible. I’d been grazing all day long, though, and Darren wasn’t particularly hungry, so we settled on drinks.

  “So how long have you been in Tucker Springs?” he asked.

  “Since college. About twelve years now, I guess.”

  “What’d you study? Art major?”

  “No, I was actually majoring in music theory. Planned to teach, but… I never finished. Dropped out my junior year.” I took a long drink, as if that could begin to rinse the bitterness out of my mouth. “What about you? What brings you to Tucker Springs?”

  “Work.”

  The single word gave me pause. Maybe I was imagining it, but something about his tone reminded me of the bitterness I’d just tried to wash off my own tongue.

  Before I could ask, Darren cleared his throat. “I’d been in the plains too long anyway and needed a change of scenery. Thought the mountains would be a nice switch.”

  “Is it?”

  He smiled. “So far, so good.”

  “Good. I think you’ll like it here.” And you certainly won’t hear me complain about you being here. I took a quick drink. “Even if you don’t like it right away, though, the place does grow on you after a while.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind if I start questioning my decision to come here.” He slowly swirled his glass, watching the remaining beer slosh inside. “So, the hiking is decent out here? Once I get used to the elevation, I mean?”

  “The hiking is amazing. And some of the trails are fairly tame for wimpy lowlanders like you.”

  Darren threw me a playful glare. “Well, I wouldn’t want to wind up on top of a hill and not be able to get back down, would I?”

  I smirked. “Yeah, well, Search and Rescue only comes out if you’re above three thousand feet. Anything lower than that, you’re on your own.”

  He nodded sagely. “I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe if I go exploring out there, I should take you along as a guide.”

  Oh, yes. Please do. “I’m always happy to show a newbie around the trails. You ever want to go, just give me a holler.”

  “I’ll do that.” He smiled, then sipped his beer. “So you mentioned the singles scene earlier. How is it in this town?”

  I shrugged. “Not as big as it would be in Denver or someplace like that, but there’s plenty of single guys on the prowl around here.”

  “You one of those guys?”

  My throat tightened. “Are you asking if I’m single?”

  He put his mostly empty glass down and looked me in the eye. “In a roundabout way, yes.”

  “I am.” I reached for my beer. “And you?”

  “For far too long, yes.”

  “Is that right?”

  He nodded. “Kind of took a break there for a while. Had some—” His expression darkened briefly, his eyes losing focus. Then he shook himself back to life. “You know how it is. Life gets
in the way, and the next thing you know, it’s been forever since you’ve been out with someone.”

  I nodded. “Oh, yeah. I know how that goes.” I raised my glass in a mock toast. “My last boyfriend and I split, God….” I paused, adding up the dates in my head. “Shit, it’s been almost four years now.”

  “Wow, really?” Darren shook his head. “Hasn’t been that long for me. I’ve only been out of the game for two.”

  “Well, I didn’t say I’d been out of the game for four years.” I grinned at him over the top of my glass. “Just said it’s been four years since I’ve had a boyfriend.”

  “Ah, I see.” He returned the grin, and then drained his glass. “You want another?”

  “I could go for one more.” I started to stand, but Darren put up a hand.

  “This one’s on me,” he said.

  “You sure?”

  He nodded and got up. “Same thing?” He gestured at my glass. “The pale ale?”

  “Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks.”

  He smiled. “Be right back.”

  I watched him go, and holy perfect body, Batman. His jeans weren’t quite painted on, but they didn’t leave much to the imagination. If they looked that good from this angle, then I needed to find something to hold my attention when he came back, or I’d be indulging my curiosity about how well they fit in the front.

  Seth. Dude. What the fuck?

  I shook my head and shifted my gaze out the window. It was too dark to see the mountains, but oh well. I focused on them anyway. Totally didn’t watch Darren’s reflection or anything. At all. Not even once. Especially not when he leaned over the bar. Or cocked his hip just a little.

  Dude.

  I rubbed my eyes. Okay, so he’d thrown me off-balance when he’d come into my tattoo shop the other day, and even now just watching him made me dizzy, but he was too perfect. There had to be something wrong with him, and now I caught myself waiting for the other shoe to drop. That one quirk, that one trait or something, that landed him very firmly in the friend zone. Or even the neighbor zone. Something heinous enough to disqualify him from my not-terribly-exclusive “fuck once and call it a day” zone.

  So far? No dice. This guy checked all the boxes. Hot as all fuck. Dry sense of humor. Intelligent. Direct. Presumably employed, if his job had moved him out here. I didn’t believe in bullshit like love at first sight, but the dial in my head had conspicuously turned from I’d fuck you to I could see myself dating you. Which would include fucking, so it’s all good.

  You’ve known him for an hour, idiot.

  That other shoe could still drop. There was still time. It had taken my ex a solid year to reveal his rampant douchebaggery, so there was most certainly still time for Darren to prove he was way too good to be true.

  “One pale ale,” he said, drawing me out of my thoughts and back into his presence. He put the glass on the table before he sat across from me and wrapped his hand around his own drink.

  “So, you mentioned before that work brought you out here,” I said, trying to tread lightly and gauge his reactions since this didn’t seem to be his favorite topic. “What is it that you do?”

  Darren took a long swallow of beer. Then he set his glass down. “I’m a minister.”

  Record scratch.

  “Sorry, what?”

  He laughed. “A minister.” He gestured outside. “Just started working for the New Light Church down the street.”

  “Oh.” I took a drink. A long one. “Well, um, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m an….”

  “Atheist?”

  I blinked. “How did you know?”

  Darren smiled. “God told me.”

  “Oh yeah?” I smirked. “What else did he tell you about me?”

  “Well, that you’d be interesting enough to be good company for a couple of beers.” He raised his glass. “I’d say He was right.”

  I eyed him. “Okay, seriously. How did you know?”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “The Professional Skeptic sticker on your truck kind of gave it away.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I suppose it would, wouldn’t it?” I gnawed the inside of my lip. “So you already knew about that before you asked me to come out here tonight.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “While the bartender was getting our beers, I ran back to where you were parked and checked your bumper for incriminating stickers.”

  “Smartass,” I muttered into my beer. I rolled a sip around on my tongue for a moment, then swallowed it. “Funny. Most people in your… profession aren’t too keen on having beers with guys like me.”

  He traced the rim of his glass with his middle finger. “Well, you might find that I’m not like a lot of people in my profession.”

  Yeah. We’ll see about that. I tried to push back the bitterness that a cross or a fish inevitably raised, but it was a challenge. Damn it, I liked Darren, but his goddamned job made him off-limits for dating. Or anything else, for that matter.

  Disappointing, but such was life. He was free to believe, just as I was free to not believe. It just put us very firmly off each other’s menus. I had no doubt I was as far off his as he was off mine; how much had I heard in my religious days about the perils of being the only Christian in a relationship? About being unequally yoked? Yeah, this wasn’t going to happen.

  “So.” I forced a grin. “Is this the part where we start loudly debating creationism versus evolution until they throw us out?”

  He laughed. “We’d need a few more beers for that, don’t you think? Maybe some tequila shots?”

  “Good point.”

  Darren drummed his fingers on the side of his glass. “For what it’s worth, I’m not usually the type to get into loud debates. I mean, not unless someone really wants to, but even then….”

  “So I’d have to provoke you.”

  Laughing again, he shook his head. “You’d have to work pretty hard to provoke me into something like that.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Then you, sir, are obviously new to the neighborhood, because that has ‘challenge’ written all over it.”

  Darren raised his glass. “Your funeral.”

  Fuck, dude. You are so my type, you asshole.

  He took a drink, and as he put his glass down again, he said, “Also for what it’s worth, we probably agree on more things than not. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that science and religion aren’t mutually exclusive.”

  “Fair enough.” I considered seeing what it would take to get him into a loud debate, but I was enjoying his company and my beer. “Well, beliefs aside, something tells me you and I are going to get along pretty well.”

  “I’m getting that distinct impression myself.”

  We let the topic of religion die and bantered about safer subjects instead. All the while, as we drank and talked, I couldn’t help feeling a little bummed out. After all, Darren had checked all the boxes and pushed all my buttons. Maybe I’d mistaken his lingering eye contact as flirty when it was just a sign of confidence. Maybe it was just wishful thinking that had made me draw flirtatious, loaded conclusions from every move he made. Except with the way he smiled now and then, or narrowed his eyes just right, it was hard not to read something into it.

  But even if we were both flirting, the fact was that ministers didn’t do one-night stands, and Seth Wheeler did not date Christians, never mind ministers. No matter how hot they were. Or how available. Or suggestive. Son of a bitch.

  After we’d each finished a third beer, we left Jack’s and wandered back toward our apartments. I opened the door beside my tattoo shop and gestured for him to go ahead. Good thing these stairs were dark: I couldn’t see his ass, which gave me a reasonably good chance of making it to the second floor without breaking my neck.

  The hallway between our apartments, however, wasn’t so dark, and it wasn’t Darren’s ass that held my attention. Or mine that held his.

  “Um.” He shifted his weight but still didn’t break eye contact. “Thank
s for… for showing me around the neighborhood.”

  “Yeah.” I swallowed. “Don’t mention it.”

  We shook hands, mostly because nothing else seemed appropriate at that moment, at least not to me, but still didn’t walk away from each other. And didn’t let go of each other’s hands.

  Eye contact. Broken. Eye contact. Broken.

  God, he was gorgeous.

  Seth. Dude. This way lies madness. Walk away. Walk the fuck away.

  Darren chewed his lip and met my eyes. “So, this might be a bit forward, but I’d like to see you again.”

  “You will.” I grinned in spite of the way my heart had just accelerated and the fact that I hadn’t yet let go of his hand. “We live in the same building.”

  Darren laughed. “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I do, and I—”

  He used his grasp on my hand to pull us together, and kissed me.

  The motherfucker kissed me.

  Not fair. Not fair at all. It was a crime against humanity that a man this hot and this amazingly aggressive was also one of—fuck, I didn’t care. I just wanted him. I cradled the back of his neck and parted my lips for his insistent tongue. Jesus, he cut right to the chase. Straight for the deep kiss from the get-go, and two could play at this game.

  I pulled him closer, kissed him harder, and he growled softly, digging his fingers into my shoulders.

  He broke the kiss as abruptly as he’d started it and held my gaze. “Wow. I….” He swept his tongue across his lips. “I wasn’t quite expecting….”

  “That makes two of us.”

  He blinked. “I… I’m sorry. I’m not usually this….”

  “I didn’t say it was an unpleasant surprise.”

  “Well, no, okay, it—” He took a breath. “I’m not normally so….”

  “Aggressive?”

  “Yeah. That. Not with someone I just met.”

  “Well, if it’s any consolation—” I shoved him up against the wall. “—I am.”

  He shivered, and I had a split second to remember he was a damned minister before we were kissing again, and from his kiss, I wondered if maybe he’d forgotten too. Or just didn’t care. Whatever. I kissed him harder, pressing into him and groaning when he pressed back.

  Once again we broke away, and once again we stared at each other. My hand was on his neck. Both of his were on my waist, tugging just slightly at my belt loops like he didn’t want me to pull back. The tension thrumming between us was impossible to read. Disbelief? Pure arousal? I didn’t know anymore. I knew I was hard, I knew I wanted him, and I knew there were reasons I shouldn’t even let myself fantasize about this going any further.