by Chase Potter
At that moment, Alex glances up, and for a solitary second I wonder whether he can sense my thoughts. He holds my gaze for too many moments before finally looking away with a shy smile. “Sorry, where was I?”
Was he just flirting with me? A light feeling flutters around inside my chest, and I tell myself it’s only because I want him to keep sharing. “Um, ongoing investigations,” I remind him.
“Ah, yeah. So like, with the zoning issue. It’s one of a dozen different things I’m looking into. And like the rest of them, I’m sure it’s nothing. But if there’s a tip, I sort of have to follow up with it.” He waves his nearly empty beer glass in the air arbitrarily.
No longer concerned about maintaining my composure, I take a deep pull and drain the rest of my glass. A fresh wave of relief washes into my stomach along with half a pint of beer. Alex doesn’t have anything on us, he’s just bumbling around chasing tips and loose ends.
The waitress stops back at our table and we order a second round. When it arrives, we clink glasses together and each take long drinks. After that, the conversation veers back to safer topics, and the minutes begin to slip past. As we talk, it strikes me how easy Alex is to be around. He knows when to hold back and when to press a topic, and it’s so natural that I have to remind myself that I’m not just hanging out with a buddy. Maybe it’s that charisma that got him where he is.
“You know what’s funny about the zoning thing?” Alex asks rhetorically as he returns to the subject. I stifle a burp, turning my face away, but Alex doesn’t wait. “You wouldn’t even have known about this, but you remember how I said that for those certain developers — yours included — only a handful of their variances were denied?”
I struggle to keep my words light. “Yeah, what about it?”
“Well,” Alex begins, lowering his voice to a whisper. “The city council actually voted in favor of several of those variances too. It’s really weird, but it looks like the only reason they didn’t go through was because the mayor interceded in some sort of back room deal. But of course there’s no public record of that, so it’s hard to know exactly what happened.”
“Sounds like a conspiracy theory.” Actually that’s why James has been trying to get a new mayor into office.
Just after me, he finishes off the last of his second beer and shrugs. “The mayor hasn’t even return my calls, so it’s not like it’s going anywhere.”
Alex pulls out his wallet, but I beat him to it. “I got it.” While I drop a pair of twenties on the counter, he just watches me. Like earlier, I can feel his gaze on me for too long. Heat filters into my cheeks, but I’m not uncomfortable. It’s actually kind of flattering, making my stomach warm and anxious all at once.
I get up from my seat and break the spell. “Shall we?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Outside it’s dark already, and the closest streetlights still seem far away. Just another advantage of picking an out of the way bar, I suppose.
“I had a good time,” Alex confesses to me and the night.
I get the feeling he’s waiting for something more, but he doesn’t make me wonder. “So,” Alex breathes the word and takes a step toward me. He’s so close that I can smell his cologne. My eyes shift from his hopeful expression, down to the way his black polo stretches to accommodate his shoulders, and lower yet to the hands at his sides.
I force down a swallow. How did I get in this situation again? No answer comes, and we stand there, unmoving as the night slows down, making every heartbeat stretch into a minute.
Alex closes his thumb and first finger on the fabric of my t-shirt, tugging lightly and pulling me toward him. He’s half a head shorter than me, and when my gaze moves from his fingers to his eyes, I realize we’re so close I can taste his breath. Vanilla and mint.
This is where I’m supposed to shove him away. This is the moment when I get the hell out of here. But I can’t move, and maybe I don’t want to.
Maybe I even want more.
His eyes flutter shut, and something forces mine to do the same. As though this will be okay, if only I don’t look. I stand motionless, an anchor in space and time, and his lips brush against mine. I’m surprised by the roughness, the feel of his stubble at the edge of my lips. My eyes are locked shut, but I’m not fooled because this is nothing like kissing a woman.
He presses against me harder, his tongue edges forward, and I… I push back. My tongue is touching another guy’s.
My eyes snap open, and I pull away from him. Sudden but not harsh, and my face is simmering in a self-conscious heat. In glaring contrast, Alex is just standing there, trying to hide a grin and failing pretty hard.
“I…” I take a step back, as if that will change what just happened. “I just had a… um,” I gesture in the direction of the bar, “a little too much to drink.” Two beers is too much, I guess.
“Right, sorry,” Alex says, still trying not to smile.
I point a thumb over my shoulder. “I’m… uh, going to be going then.” Without waiting any longer, I turn around. Step by step I put distance between us as I pass beneath the orange glow of the streetlights.
When I get to my car, I take minute to just… breathe. Steady, even breaths. I’m buzzed, and maybe it was stupid to let Alex make a move like that, but… I kind of liked it. I mean, I did.
I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m not looking for anything right now, definitely not with a guy. But that doesn’t stop the restless energy coursing through me. I tap the steering wheel with my knuckles as if that will help calm me down.
For a moment, I forget about Alex’s job, about my company, about James. My eyes drift closed and the memory of what just happened fills me. Alex’s breath, his lips, and the tug of his fingers on my shirt.
I take a slow breath, and when my vision is once more filled with the darkened street ahead, I push the thoughts away. As much as I would like my life to be simple, it’s not. So I take out my phone and text James. Just got a beer with Price. I think we’re fine, he’s just asking questions, doesn’t actually know anything.
Chapter Five
James lets himself into my condo the next morning and slams the door so hard the entire wall shakes. Eating cereal at the kitchen island, Carson jumps at the noise, and his spoon clatters across the counter. “Holy shit, James,” he exclaims.
James crosses his arms, and I can see the threads of his short temper already starting to unravel. I mentally chastise myself for having given him a key several years ago. “Go for a walk, Carson,” I order.
He stares, his spoon now held halfway to his mouth and dripping milk. “You’re kidding.”
He’s shirtless and barefoot, only wearing a pair of workout shorts. “Go for a walk,” I repeat.
Scowling, he abandons his cereal and stalks out of the condo. As soon as the door is shut, James crosses the living room and throws himself into the armchair. “Are you stupid?”
“Huh?” I bristle. James can be a real shit sometimes. All the time, really.
“Getting drinks with the guy?” James demands. “Jesus, Matt.”
“I wanted to get to know him a bit, find out how much he knows.”
“And?”
“Like I told you last night, he doesn’t actually know anything. He just got a tip.”
“I see,” James says, but he doesn’t sound impressed. “While you were… doing whatever you were doing, I called in some favors and did some snooping.”
“Oh yeah?” Discomfort touches the edges of my voice.
“The guy has been perfect his entire life. No debts or dirty secrets, and he has a full term as an upstanding DA in front of him.” James scowls. “Which is awful.”
“Potentially for us,” I reluctantly agree. “He’s…” I glance away from James, trying to find the right way to put this. “He’s a good guy though.”
The comment earns me a raised eyebrow. “Oh is he now? So after you plied him for information, you did some bonding, huh? How was that?”<
br />
I flush, and out of nowhere I’m hit by the memory of Alex’s tongue touching mine. “Fuck you.”
James opens his mouth. Then he closes it. Finally he sighs, and his shoulders wilt beneath the heaviness of the sound. “You want to go to prison?” he asks.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m serious,” he counters. “Every investigation starts with an anonymous tip or a wisp of evidence barely worth mentioning. You think you’re safe because he confided in you?”
I glare, jabbing my finger in his direction. “You are the one who thought it all up. You are the one who planned everything.”
James stares right back. “You might not have spent anything on your car, but if I recall you have always been paid well.” He draws a breath, as if replenishing himself. “If you haven’t started cleaning up your records, you should do that.”
My gaze gets lost somewhere on the far side of the room, and my pulse is like thunder in my ears, pounding harder with each passing second. James stands up and casts his eyes toward the window that looks out over the city. He steals a slice of my view, my lifestyle. The lifestyle that he helped me to get. And now he’s telling me it might get taken away. Not that I needed to hear that from him. I see that the pieces could fall into place easily enough.
When James speaks again, his words are at once both a promise and a threat. “Nothing good can come of being close to him.”
James doesn’t move, and neither do I as the weight of everything thunders down on me. If I lose this, my life, my condo, my firm… it’s not just me that gets screwed. It’s Carson too.
I refuse to let that happen. He doesn’t deserve to lose another home or another person he calls family.
The sound of the door opening drags our attention across the room. Carson steps back into the condo. Still shirtless and barefoot, he looks unusually vulnerable. “I have to pee,” he says, and then he heads to the bathroom.
Once Carson shuts the door behind him, James turns back to me. “Leave Alex Price alone,” he says coolly, and only then does he cross my condo and disappear out the door.
I hear the toilet flush, and Carson emerges from the bathroom. I can feel his eyes on me, but I don’t try to meet them.
“You okay?” His voice trespasses against my thoughts.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” The lie is cold on my lips, and I refuse to look at him.
* * * * *
Steam drifts up from my coffee, a pensive witness to the clicks and occasional typing. In front of me, the screen of my laptop is filled by digital copies of the warehouse blueprints I managed to get my hands on. I’ve spent half the day jotting down ideas for The Lofts. Stained concrete, industrial lighting, exposed rebar — all combined with a tease of luxury.
It’s been years since I took on a project that I was actually passionate about, and it’s a welcome change. Pressing my pencil to the pad on my desk, I return to sketching out a potential kitchen layout. Lines appear as I whisk the pencil across the paper, setting up an open format room with spacious countertops. In the margin, I scrawl a question to myself: marble?
Granite and stainless are the staple of suburban house flippers and soulless builders, but where’s the fun in doing what everyone else does?
I continue drawing, ignoring the distant sound of a phone ringing and being answered. Then my office phone rings beside me. I would ignore that too, but I can clearly see Edith through the glass, holding her own phone to her ear and waiting for me to pick up.
“Yeah?”
Edith’s smoker voice growls over the line. “Some guy calling for you.”
“Uh…”
She clears her throat, imitating the presumably younger male caller, “Hi, is, um, Matt available? I mean, Mr. Archer?”
“Put him through.”
On the other side of the glass, Edith gives me a fake smile. “All yours.”
I hear a click, and then she hangs up. The line is free from static, and I hold my breath for a moment. Then: “Alex?”
“Hey,” he says too quickly. “You never gave me your number.”
“Oh, right.” My hand is sweaty on the hard plastic of my office phone. I’m glad he called, but I can’t tell him that. “What can I do for you?”
There’s a pause, but after a moment Alex says, “Just wanted to see if you were planning on going to play football this week.”
I get the feeling that’s not why he’s calling at all, and an unexpected urge to bring up the other night coils in my stomach. I wish I could tell him that I enjoyed myself and that I wouldn’t mind a repeat. But James’s warning whispers itself in the back of my mind.
“Matt?”
“Yeah, sorry,” I say. “Um, not sure about football this week.”
“Oh.” Disappointment rings in the word. “Not still sore from when I tackled you, I hope?”
As if I needed a reminder of the way he stared down at me, his eyes searching mine. “That was almost two weeks ago.”
“Right.” An awkward space fills the line. “So I guess —”
“Look, about the other night,” I interrupt him, forcing the words out. “I just…” My voice promptly dies. I’m the one who brought this up, and now I have nothing to say.
“Yeah?” Alex asks, his tone a cautious mix.
I press on before my resolve fails. “I was pretty buzzed, and you caught me off guard, and I think you’re a good guy and all, but… um, that’s not for me. So, thanks but no thanks,” I finish quickly. It’s not quite true, but it’s true enough for him.
He takes a slow breath. “Huh, okay.” He doesn’t sound upset at least. “I can let you go then. See you at football maybe.”
“Okay,” I say, and then he hangs up. My mouth feels dry, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve just made a mistake.
Forcing the thought away, I turn my attention back to designing chic warehouse condos.
Chapter Six
Leaning against Alex's black Audi, I wait as the sun nestles lower into the sky. I wait for the football game to finish just a block away, and I wait while trying desperately to talk myself out of this. The wind gusts down the quiet street, bringing a chill as it rattles through the dead leaves that still cling to the trees. For a few days now, the weather has been giving subtle warnings of the impending change of season. But like most warnings, they were lost on me.
I cross my arms to stay warm as the wind picks up even more. Minutes tick past, and the cold starts to sink in. My thoughts wander as the sun turns from yellow to orange and finally to red.
“Hey,” Alex says as he comes to a stop. It’s a cautious greeting, and I don’t blame him. He has a gym bag slung over his shoulder, and his hair is wet. A mental image of him in the locker room showers pops into my head, and it takes me a second to remember why I’m here.
I stand up a little straighter. “Uh, hey.”
The silence stretches between us, wholly unbroken except for the rush of the wind. It’s not that I’m trying to make him talk first, I just have no idea what to say.
He meets my eyes, but I can’t read his expression. “You didn’t show up for the game,” he says.
“I didn’t, um… feel like playing.”
Alex shifts his weight from one foot to the other, tightening a hand on his gym bag. “I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again.”
Inside, a voice whispers to me, you can still leave. And I should, probably for a few reasons. I can’t seem to remember any of them at the moment, though. All I can remember is the feel of his lips on mine, the stubble and the warmth. “I feel bad about the, um, misunderstanding when we got drinks. Maybe we could hang out,” I say quietly.
His gaze whisks over me. “Sorry, I have work to do.” He doesn’t sound sorry at all.
I know I’m screwing this up. “Hold on.” I glance from his eyes to his shoulders, then to his gym bag.
Alex sighs as he moves toward the driver’s side door. “Look, Matt. I don’t know what you want from me, but—”
>
“You weren’t wrong,” I interrupt him. My heart thuds in my chest. Am I really doing this?
“Huh?”
“At the bar. You didn’t misread the situation. I… I liked it when you...” Unable to finish the sentence, I hold my breath, and an infinite number of individual moments occur and pass in the following seconds.
“You… you did?” Honest curiosity fills his voice.
I sneak a hand to the back of my neck as I’m betrayed by a sheepish smile. “Yeah, but I just… I mean, I’ve never…”
Alex's expression softens. “Hey.” He ducks his head to catch my eyes, and I let myself look back. He tries on a tentative smile. “It’s okay.”
I pull a breath of that chilly November air into my lungs, and I let it bolster my conviction. He’s a head shorter than me, and it makes it all the more obvious when I drag my gaze down from his, stopping on the stubble on his cheeks and chin before moving lower to his jawline.
Apparently encouraged, Alex asks, “You… want to get out of here?”
“Yeah, I do.”
* * * * *
I glance up from my beer as Alex emerges from his bedroom and sits on the other end of the couch. I’ve seen him in sportswear, and I’ve seen him in a suit. Now I’m forced to admit that he makes sweatpants look pretty damn good too. Picking up the beer he got for himself when we arrived, he lounges back on the couch.
My gaze is caught in a gravity well, dragged toward an obvious outline in the soft fabric of his sweatpants. For all the times I’ve been around guys wearing far less in the locker room, I can’t look away. With a flush of self-consciousness, I realize that it’s his dick I’m looking at. I get the distinct impression that he’s not wearing underwear, and damn it if I don’t feel myself starting to get hard.
I swallow the thought along with a forced sip of my beer, making a point to look somewhere else. Instead I end up staring at his chest. He’s wearing a yellow Levi’s branded t-shirt that stretches over his muscles, and the short sleeves hug his arms.
