by Witt, L. A.
Obviously Jack had, and I wouldn’t have denied for a second that I’d missed them like crazy too. I’d been worried sick about them during the storm, so my neighbor had stayed over last night to keep them company while I was at the firehouse. I owed her a bottle of wine and a summer’s worth of lawn mowing for putting up with my constant texts to make sure they’d been all right.
As Jack settled down—sort of—the cats came closer. Snowball kept a wary eye on the dog’s tail, but Oreo trotted right up and rubbed against my leg, purring loudly.
“I know, I know.” I scratched behind Oreo’s ears. “I would’ve been home if I could’ve. I’m sorry.”
Snowball finally came closer, and she too rubbed against my leg and purred. By this point, Tiger had materialized, but she kept her distance—close enough to keep an eye on me and take any offers of food, but not so close I might pet her. She’d been a feral cat, maybe three or four months old, when I’d found her shivering in my shop. Though she’d mostly adapted to the indoor life, she still wasn’t what I’d call friendly yet.
I smirked at her. “You missed me too and you know it, cat.”
As if to assure me she hadn’t, she started licking her paw.
“Ungrateful bitch,” I muttered. “All right, guys. Let me get a beer so we can watch TV.” I rose slowly, using the counter for support and grumbling all the way up because my knee was not happy. Once I was on my feet, I gingerly rubbed my back. “Gettin’ too old for this shit.”
They patiently waited while I pulled a beer from the fridge and made myself a sandwich. When I headed for the living room, they followed as they always did—Jack on my heels with Snowball and Oreo avoiding his tail, and Tiger slinking a few feet behind.
Joints groaning, I eased myself onto the couch. “Definitely too old.” I put my beer and sandwich on the end table and reached for the coffee table to get my laptop, but of course, my dog picked that moment to throw himself across my lap.
“Really?” I said.
He looked up and tried to slurp me in the face, but I gently nudged his head away.
Across the room, Tiger eyed us all, refusing to come closer but not letting my turkey sandwich out of her sight.
Jack stayed in my lap with his chin on the armrest. I didn’t mind. At least when I had all eighty pounds of him sprawled across my lap, he wasn’t whipping me with that damn tail. The cats, on the other hand . . . well, if they were smart, they’d get out of the way.
After I’d eaten—sharing with the animals, of course—I took out my phone. I rested my forearms on Jack and pulled up the Grindr app like I always did in the evenings. I didn’t see myself going out tonight, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t look.
There were a few new profiles. Two right here in Bluewater Bay for once instead of clear out in Port Angeles. I had to give Wolf’s Landing props—for as much as people said the show had killed the small-town atmosphere, it had given rise to a thriving queer community. Some people complained about that too. I was not one of them.
I pulled up the first of the two new profiles. Meh. Cute, but I had twenty years on him. Not that twenty-five-year-olds were bad in bed, and God knew I’d had my fair share of younger men who dug older guys like me, but maybe not while I was sore and gimpy after a long day on the engine. When I didn’t feel quite so close to my age, I’d check him out again.
I moved on to the next profile and jumped enough to make Jack lift his head.
No way.
That wasn’t . . . was it?
I tapped the profile and looked closer at the picture.
Shane?
Holy shit, yeah. That was him. Hell, he was wearing the same unholy Raiders T-shirt he’d had on this morning. That godawful shirt that suddenly had a slightly higher chance of winding up on my bedroom floor.
His profile was pretty sparse, but he’d filled in the basics at least.
33. Bisexual. Within 10 miles.
My heart sped up. Okay, so maybe I did have the energy to go out tonight if this guy was on the menu.
I gently nudged Jack off my lap. He flopped down next to me, and I absently petted his ears while I shifted around to get comfortable. Once we were situated, I continued through Shane’s profile.
New to the scene, looking to break a long dry spell.
A dry spell? Really? He didn’t seem like someone who could possibly be wanting for cock. If he was, though, I was more than happy to step up. If he was new to the scene, he might be fresh out of a relationship. Which meant he might be itching for some rebound sex. That, too, was a service I happily provided.
I kept reading. He wasn’t into BDSM and didn’t say if he was a top or bottom. Considering every guy I’d hooked up with recently had been a power top, I hoped that meant he was either a bottom or versatile. Not that I minded tops, but I did like to switch things around once in a while.
And the thought of topping him or bottoming for him . . . yes, please. So many possibilities. Plus there was that look we’d exchanged when we’d first seen each other this morning. Did that mean I had a shot?
Only one way to find out.
I tapped the chat function and sent him a quick message.
Hey, you look familiar.
Of course, immediately after I sent it and couldn’t take it back, I realized how stalkery and creepy that could sound, so I quickly added, It’s Aaron. From this morning.
No response. A moment later, his green light went dark.
Well, shit. Not much I could do about that. I’d tried. I’d failed.
I put my phone on the armrest and clicked on the TV. I had a few episodes of Wolf’s Landing that I hadn’t watched yet, but I didn’t have the focus for that tonight. I’d probably spend half the time thinking about one of the people behind the scenes, which meant I wouldn’t pay attention to the show at all since I already spent half the time thinking about the actors. Pity I hadn’t known Levi Pritchard was gay back before Wolf’s Landing. Back when I used to see him on the rare occasion he’d venture into town. Maybe I’d have worked up the balls to approach him.
The thought made me chuckle. A grizzled old actor and a grizzled old firefighter. Wouldn’t that have been a match made in geriatric heaven?
I continued browsing for something to watch. My Netflix queue was almost empty. Damn. Either some new seasons needed to start, or I needed to find some new shows, because—
My phone vibrated, startling both me and Snowball. She kicked the back of my head, then thwacked it with her tail for good measure.
Ignoring her, I picked up the phone. Holy shit—was that a message from him?
I opened the app, and sure enough, he’d responded.
Hi. Didn’t expect to see you on here.
I couldn’t tell if that meant he was annoyed or just surprised, so I sent back a benign, Never know who you’re going to stumble across.
LOL so I’m noticing.
I tapped my fingers on the sides of my phone, trying to come up with something else to say. This was a lot different from checking each other out at work. The fact that we were having this conversation on Grindr meant some very specific things were on the table, and I knew from experience how quickly a badly judged comment could torpedo everything.
He was the first to break the silence.
Sorry. Still figuring out how to use this thing. Never been on before.
Well, it was something to keep the conversation going. Yeah, you said you’ve been on a dry spell.
Yep. Long story. Longer dry spell.
I gnawed my lip, thumbs hovering over the keys as I debated my approach.
Shane beat me to it—Any chance I could talk you into a drink?
Talk me into it? I chuckled. Oh if he only knew.
But I didn’t let on and simply wrote back, When/where?
Tomorrow night?
Disappointment tried to close in, but hey, I’d still get to meet up with him even if it wasn’t tonight. I doubted I had the energy to do much tonight anyway. As it was, the cr
itters and I would probably fall asleep right here.
So I wrote back, Tomorrow night is great.
Perfect. 8? Friends & Neighbors?
See you then.
Great. Have to run for now. Looking forward to it.
You & me both. ;)
I sent the message, then rested my head against Snowball and scratched the back of Jack’s neck.
Tomorrow. Eight o’clock. I could wait that long.
Couldn’t I?
Chapter 3
Shane
Friends & Neighbors had opened downtown a few months ago. It wasn’t a gay bar per se, but it had unofficially become the hangout and hookup spot for Bluewater Bay’s thriving queer community. I’d been here a few times with friends, and it was one of those public places where men could be flirty and affectionate with other men without watching their backs. On paper, it had seemed like a good place to meet Aaron for a drink.
In practice, I wasn’t so sure. Especially now that I was here.
What am I doing?
I couldn’t say I was all that surprised he’d found me on Grindr last night, or that he’d found me so quickly. This was a small town. Even with the influx of queer people working on Wolf’s Landing, there were only so many of us.
Hell, I’d been on the app for all of an hour and had found two coworkers, a former neighbor, and someone I was pretty sure had been my daughter’s history teacher last year. There’d been a thumbnail of a gorgeous African American man with long braids, and I’d tapped because I thought he looked familiar even though I couldn’t see his face, and—oh hello, ex-husband’s tattoo.
So if two men in this town were on the app, the odds of them finding each other were pretty good. But, damn, what were the odds of me losing my mind at the sight of a gorgeous firefighter, only to have him ping me on Grindr that evening? I wasn’t going to spend too much time calculating it. I was more interested in waiting for him to show up for some drinks before we . . . Were we really doing this?
Did meeting on Grindr and coming here automatically mean we were going to wind up in bed tonight? I’d been pretty clear on my profile that all I wanted was to get laid. So had he. But what if he just wanted an actual drink? With someone he’d happened to bump into on the job, and then on Grindr? What if I made a move and he rejected me because, hey, Shane, you dork, this wasn’t that kind of meetup?
I closed my eyes and sighed. It was stupid to be this nervous. I wasn’t a kid, for God’s sake. I’d been on dates before. Blind dates. Internet meet-ups. First dates. Second dates. Third dates that never should have happened.
But I hadn’t done any of that for the last six years. And never one-night stands. Or casual hookups. Or any of this shit.
I gulped as I sat there in the booth, tapping my nails on a half-empty beer bottle while I waited for Aaron to show up so I could find a way to screw up my first sort-of-date with someone new in six years.
Six years. Wow. Had it really been that long? Man, it had. I’d spent a little under five of those with Leo, and somehow we’d wedged an entire life into that period. A first date, a second date, a weekend together, meeting the kids, moving in, getting engaged, getting married, moving here, drifting apart, falling apart, blowing apart, divorcing.
Now we’d moved on. In fact, with the divorce behind us, we were actually civil. The kids adored him, so when I’d asked if they minded staying at his place tonight, they’d jumped at the chance, and so had he. God bless the man—he’d treated them all like they were his own from day one, and that hadn’t changed when we’d split up.
“Got a date tonight, huh?” he’d asked cautiously when I’d dropped them off.
“How’d you guess?”
Leo had laughed, eyeing me over his glasses. “Because I know you, and I can see how nervous you are from here.” He’d gently nudged my arm. “Good luck. The kids will be fine here.” That last part had never worried me. Not even for a second.
So I’d left them with him, and now I was here. In a bar. Waiting for Aaron. Acting like I had one-tenth of a clue what I was doing.
It wasn’t like it was too soon. My marriage was cold in the grave. Leo had already had and broken up with a boyfriend. Why the hell had I even waited this long?
Oh, that was easy. From day one, I’d made all kinds of excuses for not getting back in the saddle. Needed to focus on my kids. Wanted to concentrate on my job. Didn’t feel like meeting anyone and going through the motions. Didn’t even care if I ever saw another person naked again.
And that was all true, but it really came down to one thing: I was terrified of failing again. Both of my marriages had ended in disaster. At least I was civil with my ex-husband and ex-wife. He still made an effort to be involved with the kids even though they weren’t his, and she did her best to see them as regularly as she could. That was more than I could say for Desiree’s egg donor, wherever the hell she was now.
I kneaded my forehead. Nothing made wild, unattached sex more appealing than a shitty track record of actual relationships. It was just . . . not something I’d done before. Did I want to? I had last night, especially when I’d made my Grindr profile and specifically stated I wanted sex, nothing else.
And Aaron’s profile was similar. Which meant that was where this was going—into someone’s bedroom. And . . . then . . . what? How the hell did this even work? Shit, maybe I should’ve asked Dan and Jase for a primer. Except that would have meant admitting I’d always been a wait-till-the-third-date kind of guy, and something told me I’d never hear the end of it if my (enviably) sluttier coworkers caught wind of that.
I groaned into the empty booth and took another swallow of beer. Aaron wasn’t due for another ten minutes, so I looked up his profile again, as if it might offer some magic piece of information I hadn’t already caught the first fifty times I’d read it.
46. Gay. Vers.
Non-smoker.
That last part had given me pause. He must’ve quit, then. Good. That was a plus. I had to admit, though, I liked what the old habit had done to his voice.
Prefer as few strings as possible.
Have pets — if you’re allergic to cats/don’t like dogs, my place won’t work.
If you don’t like kissing, don’t bother.
That last line made my heart race and my mouth water. I loved kissing, and I’d been married to a man who was both indifferent about it and not very good at it. At this point, if Aaron showed up and suggested we go make out in a movie theater like a couple of teenagers, I’d be putty in his hands.
My heart sped up. Shit, maybe I really could do this. Was it such a huge leap from making out in a theater—something I’d done during my brief period as a horny childless teenager—to getting naked in bed? Neither of us were virgins. We both presumably knew what we were doing. And, hey, no one was getting pregnant.
At that thought, I actually laughed out loud. Was that why I’d been more interested in men than women lately? Fuck. Seven years, and apparently I still didn’t completely trust that vasectomy. Eh, couldn’t be too careful.
And regardless of my phobia of another accidental pregnancy, the fact was Aaron would have turned my head no matter what. He was insanely sexy. According to his Grindr profile, he was also exactly what I’d been craving for a long, long time. All wrapped up in one hot package.
As surreptitiously as I could—though the booth I’d chosen was in the back and the place was pretty dim—I adjusted the front of my pants. Yeah, so maybe I wouldn’t want us to only make out, but it would be a damn good start.
I read over his profile again and zeroed in on one line in particular.
Prefer as few strings as possible.
I chewed my lip. He wanted the same thing I did—sex and nothing else. Question was, what came after that? How did this work? Did we shake hands, walk away, move on with our lives, and not do it again? What if we liked the sex? Was a two-night stand too much?
I was getting ahead of myself. We’d meet. We’d see where tonight we
nt. And after that . . . I’d think of something.
And there he was.
Heart pounding, I watched him cross the thinly crowded, dimly lit room. Oh yeah, I definitely wanted him. The knowing grin on his lips made him even hotter than he’d been yesterday, as if that were possible. He obviously wasn’t in his firefighting gear, but that sure didn’t detract from the effect he had on me. A snug black T-shirt, relaxed-fit jeans, a pair of laced-up boots—he was perfectly attractive even out of his gear. Especially when he was looking at me like that. Was a devilish leer—the kind where he was not even trying to hide that he was undressing someone with his eyes—his normal state? Or was that reserved for me tonight?
My mouth went dry. Please undress me with more than your eyes. Somehow, I managed to croak, “Hey.”
“Hey.” He took the bench opposite me and folded his long fingers on the table. “So.” He chuckled softly, though I couldn’t tell if any nerves had come into play. Something told me he didn’t know the meaning of nerves. “Here we are.”
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat and offered a cautious smile. “Here we are.”
Now what? How does this work again? I’m pretty sure there’s a technique to all this. Right?
Aaron tilted his head slightly, watching me with intense focus. “So you work on Wolf’s Landing?” Of course he knew that, but it was an icebreaker, so I ran with it.
“Yeah. Did some films before, but I took this gig because it looks like it’ll be around for a while. Steady work and all that.” Rambling, idiot. I shifted a bit, folding my arms on the edge of the table. “It’s not that exciting.”
Aaron shrugged. “Must be interesting, at least. But I’ve never been on a set. Aside from coming in and cleaning one up, I mean.”
“Yeah, and it was a hell of a mess. The insurance company is going to be thrilled.”
“Isn’t that going to mess up filming, though?”
“Oh, probably.” I paused for a deep swallow of my nearly finished beer. “They’re going to rejig the schedule so we’re doing as much on-location shooting as possible while the sets are rebuilt.”
