It was Toshiko.
“Gideon.” The slight upward inflection at the end of his name was as close as Tosh ever got to a greeting. “This is unexpected.”
“No. No, it’s completely expected. I called ahead and everything. Got a little date.” Toshiko’s eyebrows inched up a fraction, the equivalent of anyone else shouting What the effing hell? “With Ruth. You know, spa day. Lunch.” He flourished the bag in his hand. “Prezzies.” God, what was wrong with him? Why did he feel the need to justify himself to Toshiko for visiting the family of his roommate? Get real. You justify yourself to her every time you see her—for pretty much everything.
Toshiko regarded him solemnly, and he wondered for the billionth time whether her brainpower extended to mind reading.
Alex came down the stairs, tucking his Carter Construction shirt into his Levi’s. He hesitated when their gazes caught, but then his eyes lit up and Gideon had a perfectly sappy my hero reaction, complete with sigh and insuppressible smile. Toshiko’s left eyebrow climbed another quarter inch. Gah!
Without acknowledging Gideon further, Alex grabbed his jacket from the coatrack next to the door and dug his keys out of the pocket. “Sorry I’ve got to run.” Is he talking to me? Does he blame me for being here? “Thanks for hanging with Dad today, Tosh.”
Gideon’s chest constricted, trapping his breath. Guess that’s a big fat no. Alex and apparently his whole family trusted Toshiko, of all people, with their fragile Ned, while Gideon qualified as stranger-danger. On the other hand, Gideon hadn’t exactly proven reliable in that department on his previous visit.
“Thanks aren’t necessary.”
Alex’s grin widened, as if he were intimately familiar with Toshiko’s communication style. How long had she been in the Circle of Trust anyway? The itch of hurt feelings threatened to turn into a full-body rash.
Alex still didn’t make a move to touch Gideon or even greet him, which ratcheted the hurt a little higher. What, were they a secret? Had he changed his mind since last night?
Alex bisected the space between Gideon and Toshiko as if to say, Move along, folks. Nothing to see here. “Later.” But as he passed by, his gaze flicked down to Gideon’s crotch and he murmured, “One,” out of the side of his mouth.
Gah! Construction site blowjob. Window sex handjob. Pavlov’s dogs had nothing on Gideon’s dick; its response was instantaneous. He waved at Alex’s retreating back and directed a pained smile at Toshiko.
She was staring at his crotch.
He covered the front of his too-tight pants with the bag. “Tosh. Remember right after we met, when you asked me to tell you when you were doing socially unacceptable things?” He gestured from her eyes to his hips. “That’s one of them.”
She raised her gaze to his face. “Penises must be extremely inconvenient.”
“Tosh—”
“They make it impossible to prevaricate.”
“Listen.” He lowered his voice and glanced around, checking for witnesses. “What are you doing? Conducting some—some field experiment? You can’t do that to this family.”
“Why do you assume the worst?”
“What else am I supposed to think? You don’t do warm and fuzzy. You’re like . . . like . . .”
Toshiko tilted her head, but she’d resumed her default neutral expression. “A brain on a stick?”
Gideon gawped at her. “I—”
“You haven’t been subtle in your opinions, Gideon. Do you also believe that all Japanese are reserved and motivated only by ambition?”
“No—that is, I thought some of your personality had to be driven by culture. Everyone’s is, whether we like it or not, but—”
“My father was Japanese, a concert violinist. My mother, who is of Irish descent, is a physicist. She taught me very early that for women who hope to succeed in science, emotionalism is a career disadvantage. You may credit her with my behavior patterns.”
“I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”
“Hurt is irrelevant, however, you should occasionally challenge your assumptions.”
“Challenge assumptions. Check.” God, you’d think I’d have learned that by now. “So what are you doing here?”
“Perhaps to remember I have a heart as well as a brain.”
He groaned, fist clenching around the bag. “God, Tosh—”
“Ned is not an experiment. He’s a reason.”
“A reason?”
“A reason for my research. How does information get stored and passed in the human brain? What if we could emulate that synthetically? What if those synthetics could be passed back, repair the damage in the organic host?” Her disconcerting gaze transferred from Gideon to the doorway next to the fireplace. “I sit with him to remind myself it’s not theoretical. It could matter to people like Ned, who lose who they are. To people like the Hennings, who have to watch someone they love become a stranger.”
She turned away, dismissing him in her usual fashion as no longer pertinent. Well, shit. Does everyone in the world other than me have unsuspected hidden depths?
Ruth emerged from the hallway, dressed in a pair of gray wool slacks and a slate-blue twinset that brought out the color of her eyes. She appeared ten years younger than when Gideon had seen her last, perhaps because she was smiling.
To Gideon’s intense astonishment, Ruth hugged Toshiko and Toshiko, oh my god, hugged her back, closing her eyes as joy and yearning flitted across her face.
“He’s already eaten, but he doesn’t seem interested in TV.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.” Toshiko vanished down the hallway.
“Wow. I didn’t realize you and Tosh were such good friends.” Oops. Not the way to start the day—his tone was a skosh too accusatory.
“We only met her recently, but I’m so glad Lindsay brought her over. I don’t know what we would do without her.”
The hideous specter of inadequacy that had haunted him since he’d failed to convince Mark to accompany him to the ER loomed large in the virtual corners of Gideon’s mind. Damn it, not now! He’d built his whole adult persona on being superlative. Indispensable. To dodge the creeping fear of not being enough, he held out the bag. “Even though shopping isn’t on today’s dance card, I brought you something anyway.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“It was my pleasure.” His anemic bank balance would recover as soon as he billed the Luddite. “Go on. Look inside.”
Ruth opened the bag and pulled out the new scrub top. “How did you . . .”
“Alex told me. And darling, plain blue is positively criminal these days. See?” He pointed to the pattern on the fabric. “Smiley lightbulbs. I thought your husband might enjoy that, considering he was an electrician for so long.”
She held the shirt to her chest and bestowed a brilliant, though watery, smile on him. “Thank you.”
Such a small thing, to make her so happy. Gideon felt like a total poser. Shopping, sharing lunch and salon TLC—he loved this stuff, so taking Ruth out for the day was easy for him. Surely if Tosh could reveal the heart behind her big, giant brain, Gideon could put himself out a little too.
What would really prove that he was a deep and serious guy—if not to Alex and Lindsay, then at least to himself—would be to do something he found truly difficult. Something he loathed. Only one thing was big enough, scary enough to qualify, and the notion that he might actually face it by choice kept him buzzing with flight-response adrenaline, even during a day spent with a spectacularly nice woman.
All through their afternoon, as he kept up his trademark glittery persiflage, he wrestled with the Big Bad—his uncharacteristic superstition that the only way to make it through October-the-sequel and the dreaded count-your-blessings-asshole holiday unscathed, was total avoidance. After all, that plan had worked for him perfectly since he was eighteen.
But when he walked Ruth to the door, he knew it was time to make soufflé or get out of the kitchen.
“So, Ruthie. Big holiday coming up next Thursday. What are your plans?”
She stopped admiring her French manicure, and her face, which had relaxed during their salon time and lunch, seemed to age in front of his eyes, like a time-lapse YouTube video. “Oh. Nothing special.”
“I . . .” His throat closed before the offer could escape; sweat dotted his forehead under his freshly styled bangs. For pity’s sake, G, pull up your big-boy briefs and say it. “Well— If you—” Gah! He swallowed a surge of nausea and surrendered, forcing himself to smile. “Whatever you do, your nails will be fabulous, right?” Coward-coward-coward. “I adored our afternoon. Another one soon?”
“That would be lovely.” She mustered up a smile of her own and gave him a hug that he sooo didn’t deserve. “I’m so happy Lindsay has a friend like you,” she whispered.
Lindsay. Not Alex. So the two of them weren’t on the family’s radar yet. “Ruthie, trust me, when it comes to friendship with your family, the pleasure is entirely mine.”
But unless he could get over himself, friendship might be the only thing on the books. And for some reason, that wasn’t enough anymore.
Geekspeak: Spoofing
Definition: When a person or program hides or fakes their identity to gain unauthorized access to another’s information.
When his mom called him as he’d been about to leave the Pettygrove house yesterday, gushing about her afternoon with Gideon, Alex wasn’t sure whether he was about to burst from pride or wither away from jealousy. That Gideon, despite all his talk about being a selfish SOB, had reached out to Ruth and given her a goddamn break, something neither he nor Lin could give her? Fucking awesome.
Yet he was enough of a bastard that he’d wished Gideon had spared a couple of those hours for him—but Alex hadn’t gotten so much as a phone call or a text in the last twenty-four. The clock was ticking on their time together, considering it was only fair to count the gumbo-with-sex-chaser as their second date. Only one more before I’ve got no excuse to see him outside of work.
Then what? Damn it, I should have held out and stuck with the original abstinence plan and kept him guessing. That was my only ace in the hole. Maybe the continued dead air between them was a sign.
Sure, Gideon had been on board with the sex—even enthusiastic eventually—why wouldn’t he be? That was how all his hookups played out: Sex, then boom. Hit the road, Jack. Gideon had already confessed he didn’t see Alex as someone who fit in his world, so why would he break his tried-and-true pattern? That high-end asshole Jared Haynes was still on the horizon too. How the hell could Alex compete with him?
If Alex wasn’t so shit-scared of getting turned down flat, he could come right out and say he wanted more. But Gideon was all about the shiny. He had talent, education, ambition—while Alex was the blue-collar guy who lived with his parents in the same room he grew up in.
Sure, he had a good reason, but that reason was another drawback. How long could Gideon put up with a family that had to deal with his own self-professed personal nightmare?
Alex parked his car at the jobsite, still scowling, but before he reached the elevator, his phone rang. The caller ID set his pulse racing. Gideon.
“Hey. How you doing? Mom said she had a great time with you yesterday. I’m jealous.” D’oh. Way to be subtle.
Gideon laughed. “You can take her out whenever you want. Don’t be selfish.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” His voice was a suggestive purr that went straight to Alex’s dick, but then he went on in a completely different tone. “You’re not at work yet, are you?”
“In the garage. About to head upstairs.”
“Meet me in Starbucks in the lobby? We need to talk.”
Shit. When was that ever a good thing? “Uh . . .”
Gideon laughed again. “I didn’t mean to sound so ominous, but I have an idea that I need your opinion on. There’s coffee in it for you.”
“Can’t say no to that. Be right there.”
When he walked into the Starbucks, he immediately zeroed in on Gideon, who was sitting at a table with two giant cups in front him, and wearing a tentative smile. Gideon was never tentative. Freaked out, sometimes. Occasionally pissed. But whatever his mood, he was in it one hundred percent.
Alex found the uncertainty unexpectedly arousing. Still touchable. Yeah. Let’s work it. He tilted Gideon’s chin up with one finger and leaned in for a kiss. Not some lame-ass peck. Not X-rated either, because that shit was private, but he slanted his lips over Gideon’s, capturing his gasp of surprise, and chasing it back with a little tongue action.
When Alex broke the kiss and dropped into his chair, Gideon blinked at him like he had in the ER, then broke into a stellar smile that melted Alex’s insides.
“Well. Hello to you too.” Gideon licked his lips, and Alex wanted to dive in for another round but sipped his coffee instead.
“Hey. Thanks for the java.”
“No problem.”
“So.” Alex waited for Gideon to get to the point, but he simply sat there, his hands wrapped around the base of his cup, blinking those big, brown eyes behind his glasses. The frames were blue-green tonight, shimmery like the scales of an exotic fish. How many pairs does he have? I’ve never seen him in the same color twice. “What’s up?”
Gideon startled and took a quick gulp of his coffee. “Oh. Right. Um, here’s the thing.” He screwed up his face and opened his mouth, but instead of coming out with it, he took another swig.
The skin at the small of Alex’s back prickled, and his earlier misgivings poked their heads up again. But Gideon had kissed him. He’d been into it, hadn’t he? What the fuck was going on? “A thing?”
“Uh-huh. It’s . . . When I . . .” Gideon clutched his hair with both hands. “Gah! I can’t believe this is so freaking hard to say.”
Alex sat back, ice washing through his veins even though he’d just downed half a cup of nuclear coffee. “You cutting me loose?”
“What? No! God no.” Gideon took a deep breath. “I want to do Th-Th-Thanksgiving. With your family. I mean, for your family.”
Alex frowned while Gideon drummed his fingers against the table. “Really? Lin told me you don’t observe Thanksgiving. Because of what happened with your folks?”
“Yes. And the . . . incident with Mark happened on T-day too, so I’m definitely not a fan. But this isn’t about me, as shocking as that may be. It’s about you and your family. How would you feel about staging a—a festival of food-induced memories, starring all the Henning family traditions, with a little Wallace special sauce on the side?”
Warmth infused his chest. “You’d do that? For us?”
Gideon nodded. “Yes. If you— That is, would it be okay?”
“Hell yeah. My mom hasn’t had the heart to do the whole holiday thing since Dad got sick, though now’s probably not a good time to expect her—”
“No, no, no.” Gideon shook his head. “The idea is that we do all the work—you, me, Lin. Your mom is welcome to hang out with us, naturally, but I want this to be something we can give to her. To her and to your dad too.”
Alex grabbed Gideon’s hands and tugged him out of his chair and into a kiss. “Baby, you are the best.”
Gideon chuckled and pulled back to gaze into Alex’s eyes. “You may not say that when you find out exactly how controlling I can be about a project like this.”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea.” Alex dropped his voice bedroom-low. “I know how to handle it too, wouldn’t you say?” When Gideon flushed, Alex allowed himself a mental high five before easing up on the innuendo. “I say, bring it. I’m with you all the way.”
Gideon kissed Alex’s cheek. “Come on, then. Time to get to work. I am sooo ready to kick this project in its annoying little balls so I can focus on the one that really matters.” He marched out of the Starbucks, holding Alex’s hand, and didn’t stop talking about holiday plans the whole way up to the sixteent
h floor.
“Get your mom’s menu. Her recipes. Everything. You and Lin brainstorm your childhood and come up with a scenario. We’ll make a Thanksgiving for your dad that will match his memories exactly. That’s what comforts him, right? Familiarity?”
“Yeah. Most of the time, but sometimes—” Alex grabbed Gideon’s elbow when he nearly rammed into the doorframe, and steered him around the corner into the server room. Jesus, the guy hadn’t taken his eyes off Alex’s face long enough to look where he was going.
“If you think I need to keep out of sight so I don’t freak him out, I’m totally cool with that. I can stage-manage everything from the kitchen.” He was almost skipping now. “We’ll go shopping Wednesday night. Get everything we need. Then on Thursday . . .” His voice died and he stood stock-still in the middle of the server room. The faint odor of linoleum adhesive and paint hung in the air, but the place was spotless, exactly as Alex had asked.
“The . . . wait. This room is done? All of it?” Gideon whirled and stared up at Alex, wide-eyed. “How? God, when?”
Alex shrugged, the awe in Gideon’s voice kindling that postkiss glow again. “Convinced Manny it’d piss off the consultant. The flooring guys were a tougher sell, but I promised them a couple of cases of beer and they were good.”
Gideon revolved slowly, taking in the assembled server racks, the workbench, the electrical gang boxes that Alex had repositioned in a more convenient spot for the equipment.
“I can unpack the blade servers. Install the operating-system images. Configure the LAN. I could have it done before Thanksgiving, easy, except—” He stopped, his gaze riveted on a spot to the left of the door. “A thermostat?” he squeaked. “Is this . . .”
“Yup. Dedicated zone. Programmable from the wall unit or through a software program you can install on the console. You can mmmph—” Gideon’s unexpected, but not unwelcome, kiss stopped Alex’s explanation. Hells, yeah. Bring on the X-rated show, because this kiss was definitely NSFW.
Gideon pulled away, but kept his hands laced behind Alex’s head. “Thank you.” He jumped, wrapping his legs around Alex’s waist, and Alex caught him under the ass and hugged him close. “God. No one has ever . . .” He stared at the tinted windows on the corridor side of the room. “Are those one-way?”
Clickbait Page 17
