“No, I wanted to bring you here. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, and I’m sorry.”
After a moment, he said, “Are you sure?”
I grinned. “Absolutely.”
He visibly relaxed and gave me a lopsided grin. “Okay.”
I turned back to the maître d’, apologized, and we left.
We didn’t speak as we headed to the truck. As soon as we got in, I turned to him and said, “I’m sorry.”
His brow furrowed. “For what? The restaurant?”
“Yeah. I should have known better.”
“You’ve already apologized. It wasn’t necessary the first time, and it’s still not.”
“Maybe. I just want you to understand that I didn’t…” I trailed off, not knowing how to say what I wanted to say.
David saved me. “I understand. I’m just not used to something like that. I’ve never been to something like that.”
“Me neither. Um, maybe we can go next time.”
“Next time? We haven’t even had a this time yet.” He seemed nervous, but he smiled. “How do you even know there will be a next time?”
I returned his grin. “I have faith.” And his grin widened. “So, where to? You pick.”
He seemed to mull it over for a moment, then said, “I’m good with Burger King, honestly.”
I chuckled. “Burger King it is. I’m not familiar with this side of town, so you’ll have to be my navigator.”
Waving his hand toward the window, he said, “Drive on.”
I threw the truck into gear, and we were off.
Once at the restaurant, we placed our order and David found us a booth in the back corner, away from the other guests while I waited for our order to be filled.
Carrying the tray to our booth, I set it down and slid in opposite to him.
“Thank you, ” he almost whispered, and I got the sense he wasn’t talking just about the food.
“For?”
He glanced around at the restaurant. “This. I just felt…underdressed, out of place.”
“No, I get it. I really do. To be perfectly honest, I felt the same way”
That seemed to alleviate his discomfort. He bit into his burger, and we fell into a comfortable silence while we ate.
“How’s Ryan holding up?” he asked, popping a fry into his mouth.
“Okay, considering.”
“It’s a nice thing you’re doing, you know.”
I was confused. “What is?”
“Giving them space, time to be together before tomorrow.”
“I’m doing what I can, but it’s not much.”
“I think it’s more than you realize. You’ve been there for the both of them for the last couple of weeks. Even if it was only to listen to one of them bitch, or to be bitched at, you’ve been there. Sometimes, that unconditional support is all that’s needed to get you through.”
My face heated. The praise coming from him was unexpected and seemed sincere, but it was tinged with a sense of regret and heartache. On some deeper level, I understood that he wasn’t just talking about me, but himself as well. Not for the first time, I wondered what he had been through to make him so reserved.
Conversation came easier after that. We talked about the comic shop, his boss, Owen, the other guy that worked there, Greg, and the girl with pink hair named Trish. I realized that while I had been back stateside for a few months, I hadn’t really taken the time to get out and meet anyone. Not that I had really wanted to. Meeting new people meant that some of them may not have agreed with my previous career choice.
Which was precisely when David asked, “So, once this is all over, what do you want to do?”
“Do?” Was he talking about the date/non-date, or was he talking about a job?
“Yeah, what do you want to do when you grow up?” One corner of his lips curled up, and I could tell he was joking.
I decided to play along. “Grow up, huh? So, are you saying I’m not an adult?”
That time I got a full smile. “Well, you did bring me to Burger King our first time out, so…”
As he spoke, there was a lightness to his demeanor that I didn’t think he allowed himself to show. I found myself wanting more of that from him, and didn’t really care that I was the butt of his little joke.
“I hadn’t given it much thought, to be perfectly honest. I’ve never been one to set career goals. That was always Ryan’s way. Everything he did had to have structure and I was the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants brother. Whatever happened, happened. Hell, joining the military was a spur of the moment thing.”
He seemed to think about that for a moment. “What did you do while you were in?”
“Machinist.”
He tilted his head, silently asking the question he didn’t want to ask.
“I fixed shit.”
He chuckled. “So, you like to work with your hands.”
I waggled my eyebrows. “I sure do.”
His cheeks bloomed pink, and he looked down at the empty tray, tensing. I immediately regretted saying it. “I’m sorry.” I kept getting myself into situations where I had to apologize to him, and it was becoming frustrating.
“Don’t be.”
“I hope I didn’t offend you. Sometimes I don’t know when to keep my fucking mouth shut.”
“No, you didn’t, but…”
“But what?”
He sighed and glanced around the restaurant. Leaning closer to me, he lowered his voice as he said, “It sounded like…well…you were hitting on me.”
My stomach did a little flip. “What if I was?”
His lip curled into a small smile. “Are you…um…”
“Gay?”
He nodded.
“I am. I hope that’s not a problem.”
Relaxing, he said, “No. No problem at all. I’m—”
“Gay too,” I finished for him, and he sighed, throwing a wide grin across his face.
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
“I’ve…well, I’ve never come out to anyone before.”
“So, I was your first?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew what kind of double entendre that was, and silently prayed he didn’t take it as anything other than non-sexual.
I think he did, because he laughed, full and throaty, and his smile finally reached his eyes, lancing straight through me to sink into my bones. I wanted that smile, exactly like that, forever.
“You are,” he finally said.
Throwing caution to the wind, I said, “Then I’m honored to have popped your coming-out cherry.”
And there was that laugh and smile again.
He cleared his throat and sighed. “Now that that’s out of the way, where were we?”
“Discussing my career path, or lack thereof, in the middle of Burger King.”
“Right. So, what about an auto mechanic?”
“Seriously? I mean, yeah, they can make good money. Cars always need to be fixed. But, it’s not like that career is a relationship magnet. There’s a perception out there that mechanics are dumb as rocks. No one wants to say, ‘My boyfriend is a grease monkey.’”
“I could,” he said, pulling his left arm up and resting his head in his hand.
In that moment, two things happened simultaneously. First, my heart did a little flip because, if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear he wasn’t talking about just anyone, he was talking about me. Second, his shirt sleeve slid down just a little, and I saw the scar that started at just below the wrist and ran in a straight line to disappear below the sleeve. I couldn’t tell how long it was, but it looked rather sizable.
I understood why he always wore long-sleeved shirts. Anger bloomed in my gut. I wanted to break whoever had made him feel as if he had needed to take such drastic action.
I quickly diverted my eyes from the scar and prayed he hadn’t noticed. He hadn’t told me about it, but, realistically, how do you bring up a subject like that in a text message?
Getting my head back into the conversation, I said, “Is that what you want? A relationship?”
Instinctively, I knew that it was way too soon in this…whatever we were doing, to have a conversation about potential relationships. But that was where the tide of the conversation had gone, so I figured I’d stay in the boat.
“Honestly?”
“Yeah, honestly,” I said, and my heart froze.
His eyebrows knit together, as if he was carefully weighing his words. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess, someday. It would be nice to have one, to have someone. But people can be mean and hateful. They don’t—”
“Don’t stay.”
He looked at me, tilting his head, and his eyes bored into my soul. I had hit the nail on the proverbial head, and I could see it. The scar that I had told the story. Someone had hurt him deeply, and he carried the evidence, both on his arm as well as in how he interacted with people. Yeah, someone was going to get broken, and I was going to be the one to do it, for whatever they had done to him.
“Yeah.” He sighed.
“Listen. Relationships can be hard, I get that. Never been in one myself, at least nothing that I would consider long-term. Hell, even when I was in them, I knew they wouldn’t last. But I also knew I had to at least try regardless of the potential outcome. Yeah, there are some dicks out there that want nothing more than to get their rocks off. But some want the real deal. Some want to date, fall in love, get married, have the white picket fence with a dog and the two-point-five kids.”
Was I coming across too strong? Maybe. The conversation had gone in a direction that I never saw coming. But I feared being shut out after it seemed like his walls were coming down.
“Is that what you want?”
My breath caught, and I couldn’t figure out why. “Yeah. It is.”
“So, what is this?” he said waving his arms with flare at the restaurant.
“Um, it’s a Burger King.”
“No, jackass,” he grinned, “this. Us. Is this a date?”
I tried to keep the smile off my face, but to be perfectly honest, I don’t know if I was successful. “Would you want it to be?”
He chewed his bottom lip, thinking it through, and whispered, “Yeah, I would.”
“Me too.” And, just like that, I felt as if I had been set free. I felt like I was going to float away on the next strong breeze, if that were possible in the middle of a Burger King. I was giddy. Some of the questions I didn’t even know I had about him had been answered. But I also knew that I had been given an enormous amount of trust and responsibility. He didn’t open up easily, or to anyone, and I felt honored that he felt he could with me.
I thought back to the scar I had inadvertently seen and wondered what other kinds of scars he had, and I didn’t mean just physical. Something had to have happened to force him into a shell. I silently vowed then and there, in the middle of Burger King, on our first official date, that I wouldn’t add to his damaged heart.
After our burgers and fries were eaten, I stood and gathered the trays of trash to throw them away. “Where to?”
He chewed his lip again, thinking. “Did Lucas like the book you got him?”
“Yeah, he did. In fact, he finished it.”
“Wanna get him the second one?”
“There’s more?”
David rolled his eyes at me as if I had said the dumbest thing in the world. Believe me, I didn’t take offense. When it came to comics, I knew next to nothing. I left all of that up to Ryan, Lucas, and now David.
“Of course there’s more. We have most of them at the shop. And that’s under my apartment.”
His voice trailed off as if he hadn’t meant to disclose that last piece of information. I couldn’t begrudge him, though. I mean, would I really want someone I barely knew knowing where I lived so they could stalk the shit out of me? Well, maybe. It would depend on who it was.
“We can head there. If you wouldn’t mind. I mean, you’re there all the time. Are you sure you’d want to go in on your off time?”
“It’ll be fine. Should just be Trish and Greg there anyway, shouldn’t be too busy.”
We loaded into the truck and backtracked toward the shop.
Pulling into the parking lot behind the comic shop’s building, David pointed up at a lit window. “That one’s mine.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “That’s weird. I thought I turned off all the lights.”
I didn’t think anything of the comment, I regularly left a room without turning the light off.
We walked around to the front of the building, and David led me through the door. The perky girl that rang me up a couple of weeks earlier was back behind the register; her hair was blue that time. I pulled on David’s arm, and leaned in close, whispering, “Does she dye her hair those funky colors regularly?”
He snorted, “Yeah. You should have seen her at Fourth of July. She had red, white, and blue stripes.”
“Well, how very patriotic of her.”
We made our way to the back of the store, under the Spider-Man dangling from the ceiling. David pulled a volume from the shelf and handed it to me. “Here’s number two. You should know, there’s eleven of these and a whole bunch of other titles in the same format.”
I know my eyes went wide because he laughed. “Eleven?”
“Oh yeah, then there’s ‘Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man,’ and ‘Web of Spider-Man.’ Don’t even get me started on the Avengers or X-Men books.”
As he spoke, he got more animated, comfortable in his surroundings. “What have I gotten myself into?”
He smiled. “I guess I should have warned you when you came in the first time. They’re like Pringles. You can’t get just one.” Then, he laughed at his own joke.
Yeah, my David is a funny one.
My.
Damn, that thought sounded nice.
I allowed him to lead me back to the register. Perky, blue-haired Trish eyeballed both of us, her gaze full of mirth. Please don’t embarrass him, please don’t embarrass him.
Thankfully, she didn’t. She rang up the book, took my credit card, bagged it, and handed me the bag, all without a word. But she never took her eyes off David, and the look she gave clearly said, “We’ll talk later.”
He seemed oblivious to her, or maybe he was ignoring her, I couldn’t be sure. Then he led me from the store, and back to the parking lot.
At the bottom of the stairs leading to his door, he turned and said, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I mean, for tonight. I had…fun.”
Feeling brave, I reached out and cupped his cheek with the palm of my hand. My breath hitched at the physical contact. He seemed to lean into my touch, closing his eyes and losing himself in the moment. My thumb traced his chin, creating lazy circles on his skin, and I said, “I know what you meant. I did too.”
His eyes opened, and from the dim light cast by the street light, I would almost swear I saw desire reflected back at me from within the blue pools of his eyes. While I certainly wouldn’t have minded, our night had been full of what I knew to be firsts for him. I didn’t want to rush him. I didn’t want to scare him. And I didn’t want him to do something that he might regret later. I reached a compromise with myself that I hoped would satisfy what I saw in his eyes. “May I?”
“May you what?” he asked, almost breathless.
“May I kiss you?”
I felt his lips twist against the palm of my hand. “Well, aren’t you a gentleman.”
I smiled as well. “I try.”
I leaned into him, keeping my approach slow, giving him time to pull away if he wanted, and tilted my head for a better angle.
He didn’t budge.
At the first contact of our lips, I brought my other hand up, and gently cupped his face. I felt his breath leave him in a gentle sigh, and he took hold of my waist. The current that passed between us was raw and powerful, coursing through my body from every poin
t of physical contact I had with him, and I felt that circuit complete again.
Losing myself in that feeling, I slid my tongue across his lips, silently begging for entrance. After the briefest of seconds, he relented, and I gently skimmed his tongue with mine, giving him permission to explore. His hands slid from my waist and up my back, landing on my shoulder blades, and he pulled me to him, holding me in place. My right hand traced the curve of his neck, palming it from behind, and used my thumb to trace a line against the skin, back and forth, back and forth.
My tongue caressed the roof of his mouth and the backs of his teeth, slowly memorizing every detail I could. The way he breathed. The way he smelled. The way his hands gently caressed my back. The tiny whimpers that he made with the back of this throat.
I allowed my tongue to retrace its steps, slowly backing out of his mouth, and, to my surprise and utter enjoyment, his followed. Where I tried to be gentle, he was almost feral, claiming, like I had opened the floodgates to a dam that was filled to bursting.
I allowed him complete control, I needed him to explore as much of my body as he was comfortable with. I understood that, while it was most definitely not a first for me, it may have been a first for him. I wanted him to have the maximum amount of enjoyment as possible.
Finally, we broke apart, chests heaving trying to catch our collective breath. My erection stood painfully within the confines of my pants, and I hoped he hadn’t felt it. If he had, he gave no indication. Instead, a dopey grin spread across his face, and he let out a breathy, “Wow!”
I grinned back, placing both arms on his shoulders and lacing my fingers together at his neck. “Yeah. Wow,” was all I could manage.
I allowed him to resettle. Hell, I needed to. I also needed to get home to take care of some “personal business,” but I couldn’t tell him that. Instead, I said, “You sounded unsure earlier about the possibility of a next time. Now?”
He licked his lip, and said, “I would very much like that.”
“I would too.” I beamed. He grinned back at me, and I swear he lit up that parking lot.
We stood like that for a moment, my arms on his shoulders, his hands on my back, and simply drank each other in.
Looking In Page 7
