“You wish.” He immediately felt bad for his snotty tone and tried to make up for it. “Besides, I come here to hang out with you. Not pick up men.”
“That’s because there are no attractive men under fifty coming here on a Sunday night.” Kalea narrowed her eyes and stared at nothing for a moment, calculating. “Although we could do that. Singles’ night at the movies. Show up half an hour early for wine and beer in the lobby? How hard do you think it’d be to get a permit for that, if I’m not selling it?”
“You’ve got the sheriff here. You can ask him,” Eli drawled. But Kalea was tapping her fingertips against her bottom lip and Eli could see the idea wiggling its way deeper into his friend’s brain. He gave in. Fine, he would think about this seriously. “You’d have to make it a twenty-one-and-older-only night. Otherwise it’s a nightmare separating the kids from the adults. Which means you’ll need someone to card people.”
Kalea’s pffft noise blew the hair off her forehead. “Like I don’t know every kid in this town by name.”
“True. Still, safer.”
“You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”
“Because you know who’s going to protest?”
Kalea rolled her eyes. “Don’t remind me. I’m still pissed about the piano bar.”
Clear Lake, although relatively cosmopolitan due to the presence of the college on its outskirts, also had a strictly conservative core group that were anti anything they saw as a near occasion of sin.
When Eli went to church, it was to the Roman Catholic church on the far side of town, because Father Nick was the kind of priest who would sit on your back porch on a Saturday afternoon and man the grill while drinking a beer if you invited him to your barbecue. He didn’t make it to services that often, but during the growing season, he or Gee brought flowers every Friday afternoon from their garden. Eli liked the idea of the blooms brightening the weekend services.
Father Nick had been the one to tell them to cool their jets when Kalea and a bunch of the younger residents were ready to set up a picket line after the conservatives in town managed to put the kibosh on the permit request from a new jazz piano bar. He reminded them that as much as that sucked, they were all grown ups and could deal. Their current priority was pushing for permit approval for a teen rec center, to give the high schoolers something to do other than party in the woods with illegally-bought beer. That potential establishment was currently being blocked too, and their attention needed to be laser-focused.
It was probably a good thing the hardware store had stopped carrying spray paint, come to think of it.
“Talk to the Mayor when she comes out.” Clear Lake’s mayor only went to the movies on nights when she wasn’t attending other town functions. Her husband, an astrophysics professor at St. Francis, was deep in his own world and mostly just nodded and smiled pleasantly to everyone in her wake on the rare occasions he joined her. “See what she says.”
“I can’t wait. I’m too excited.” She yanked the booth door closed, locked it, and pulled out her small cash box to do a quick reconciliation with sales in the gap between the staggered starts of the four pictures she had running. “Go ask the sheriff for me after you check the back door. Please?”
Eli flipped her a salute as he strolled across the marble floor of the lobby, on his way to patrol the exits. He ignored the nerves fluttering in his stomach.
“You want in on dinner tonight? We’re thinking pizza,” he asked Cassie as he passed the candy counter. The long-haired girl already had her textbooks spread across the counter, notebook and pen at the ready. Getting homework done in between shows was a perk of the job on slow nights when the cleaning duties were knocked out of the way early on.
“You bet. But no mushrooms!” The girl’s shout followed him down the long hallway toward the rearmost theater.
There was a fire exit at the end of the hall, facing him, the theater #4 entrance to his right just next to it. He could push through that fire door—it was only alarmed after closing—and follow the hallway further back all the way to the rear doors that exited to the alley behind the theater. He didn’t need to walk through any of the screening rooms to check the back doors, and certainly not the one where the sheriff sat by himself.
In the dark.
All alone.
Eli pulled open the swinging door to the theater and walked in.
Not until he stood at the top of the sloping, carpeted walkway that led down to the front rows and the back exit did he realize what a stupid idea this was.
On a Friday night, the room would be crowded and noisy with people finding seats, getting up for that one last trip to the bathroom before the movie started, realizing they did want popcorn after all, gossiping before the show, or calling out answers to the trivia questions that showed on the screen until the previews started.
On a Sunday night?
A quick head count gave him a total of nine people scattered far from each other in the rows of padded seats.
He didn’t even have to strain hard to pick out Joe Baxter, sitting by himself only a few rows ahead of where Eli stood at the top of the slope.
Baxter had taken the second seat in from the aisle, leaving an empty space right next to him.
Damn the man.
Eli was going to have to walk right past him, feeling those eyes on him all the way down that long walk.
Shit.
Maybe he could sneak back out and take the emergency exit hallway before anyone—
The sheriff turned his head to glance back over his shoulder, spotted him and grinned. Then he had the nerve to wink, the jerk.
Eli just wished his stomach didn’t dip and roll at that bit of sass.
Double damn.
He gave Joe a brisk nod and marched right past him down the aisle. No sense dragging this out. He had an actual task here and fooling around mooning over Joe wasn’t part of his plan.
If only he didn’t feel those eyes on his ass, as if he’d accidentally stuffed one of those activated charcoal hand-warmers in his back pocket, the entire walk to the rear exit.
When he finally shoved against the bar on the door and pushed through, he had to step to the side and lean against the wall for a second as the tension left his body. Jesus. What was wrong with him? Baxter was just a man.
A man whose hands had curved around Eli’s ass as Joe had tugged him in close between his thighs and dove into his mouth, while Eli had clung to the back of Joe’s neck with both hands.
He straightened up and sighed. His head was such a mess. If only he were better at lying to himself, he could pretend none of this mattered. That he didn’t want to press a hand against his dick every time he talked to Joe Baxter.
Or looked at him.
Or heard his goddamn name.
Eli slapped a hand to his forehead. Maybe he was coming down with something. After a moment, he gave it up as melodrama, plus he apparently didn’t have a fever. He walked over to kick away the crushed pop can that was indeed propping open the back door. He poked his head out into the alley to, just in case he could scarify some of the little miscreants—nothing like revisiting his youth—but didn’t see anyone.
Then he turned around, and the dilemma smacked him in the chest all over again.
How to head back to his Bench of Safety in the lobby?
His first instinct, chickenshit that he was, was to take the long fire exit hallway that ran up the outside of the building. He could avoid seeing the man who made his pulse race and Kalea would just have to ask Baxter her own damn self if she wanted answers about the alcohol-permitting problem.
Then Eli could hide out in Kalea’s grungy little office behind the candy counter when Joe’s film ended, and the only price to pay would be his friend bawking like a chicken around him for a couple of days. Because they were mature now.
He was tempted.
Only the absolute certainty that Joe would either know Eli had been too chicken to walk past him again or would—even more h
orrifying—worry that something had happened to him because Eli never walked back through the theater. What if Joe came to the lobby to check on him? The imagined embarrassment froze him in place with indecision.
His eyes skittered from one door to the other.
“Oh my god, you complete and utter dumbass. It’s just a fucking walk through a nearly empty room. Get your head out of your ass and sack up.”
With that, he yanked on the door handle and stepped back into theater #4, right into the steady burn of Joe Baxter’s heavy-lidded stare.
Baxter didn’t even try to hide it. Eli’s face turned pink and he blessed the low lights on the fabric-covered walls. The heat of Baxter’s gaze slapped into him like stepping from frosty air-conditioning into the steamy heat of the summer night. Joe’s eyes raked over his body as Eli walked slowly toward him.
Eli’s brain went fuzzy and he blinked stupidly as he drifted to a halt at the end of the row where Baxter sat. Joe shifted in his seat, leaning on the armrest closest to the aisle. Eli’s eyes dropped to his hips.
To his lap.
Let’s be honest here. You’re trying to see if his dick is visible through his jeans and thinking about it rubbing against you last night.
He coughed on his own spit and dragged his eyes up to Joe’s face, hoping he couldn’t read minds as easily as he made it look like he did.
No, I’m not. Not thinking about his dick at all.
Shit. He was just full of lies tonight, wasn’t he?
Baxter tilted his head to the side, indicating the seat next to him.
He couldn’t.
He shouldn’t
The house lights dimmed to almost nothing and the trivia was replaced by an MPAA-rating screen and then the production company’s logo. The previews were starting.
There was one moviegoer all the way in the back—please let it not be Mr. Pederson—and Eli didn’t think he was blocking their view, but just in case . . .
He dropped into the seat next to Joe, who took advantage of Eli’s obviously total discombobulation to press the length of a thigh up against his, in the guise of adjusting in his seat as Joe gripped a small cup of popcorn between his thighs.
“Have you seen this one yet?” he whispered in Eli’s ear.
The flutter of his breath against Eli’s skin made him shiver.
“I’m not seeing it now,” he whispered back. “Kalea wants to know how hard it would be for her to get a permit to serve beer and wine in the lobby sometimes if she starts up a”—Oh. Shit. He really should learn when further detail was not required—"um, singles night.”
He stared straight ahead at the screen. He would not look at Baxter to see if his dimples were showing when he leaned over again, shoulder bumping up against Eli’s now until they were practically touching from head to toe and Eli’s skin was lighting up like sparklers flaring on the Fourth of July, and asked, “So, are you asking if I’ll meet you here for singles night?”
Eli clenched his teeth and kicked Baxter’s ankle. Hard.
“I am asking for your professional opinion of a small business owner’s marketing strategy.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
And holy shit, his pants and other things inside his pants were on fire when Baxter pried his hand off the armrest between them and shook it gently until the cramped muscles in Eli’s fingers relaxed. Then Baxter laced his fingers through Eli’s and held their clasped hands in front of them, staring at them like he’d never seen fingers before this night.
“And what if I asked you?” Before Eli could call him out, Joe continued, “I know I said I wouldn’t do this, but this is the last time. I promise.”
Eli blinked.
The midnight post-skinny-dipping make-out session might have been a trick of the moonlight and a little summer madness. The joking invitation to watch a movie at the ticket counter just a whim.
But that was an out and out date-type request.
Sort of. And despite having told Joe exactly how not interested he was, Eli was tempted.
“Go ahead and ask me and you’ll find out.” He gasped and clapped a hand over his mouth. He seriously needed to start reviewing his thoughts before he let them out of his mouth.
The teenagers ten rows in front of them, perfectly quiet and slumped low in their seats, let out a general shhhh! as the previews ended and the movie started. Eli ducked down lower in his own seat and hoped he would melt into a puddle of metallic goo like the second Terminator and slither up the sticky carpet and out into the lobby.
“Little jerks,” he muttered. “They’re probably the ones who propped open the back door.”
“Want me to arrest ‘em for you?”
“Ha! Yes.” Hypocritical guilt required a barely audible retraction a moment later. “No. It’s possible I may have done exactly the same thing when I was their age.”
He was getting used to looking for Baxter’s smiles in the dark.
“So you’re the one I oughta cuff?”
Yes. Please. “No.”
The shhhh! that erupted from the teenagers this time wasn’t general at all and involved some pretty specific glares in their direction.
“You know what we have to do now, right? Because the previews are starting and we can’t talk . . .” The low murmur at Eli’s ear vibrated through the bones in his skull until he leaned his head closer to Baxter just to make it stop.
“Watch it?” He wasn’t sure he was even speaking out loud anymore. Subsonic vocalization maybe.
“Yeah, that’s not even on the list.” Baxter’s nose nudged his cheek. “We have to make out.”
Eli’s breath caught in his chest and he held it, held it, held it until his face was hot and his lungs were burning and when he finally let the air burst out, it was louder than any whisper.
No, we absolutely do not have to make out, with Mr. Pederson probably watching and planning his rounds tomorrow with the latest gossip about the town librarian and the new sheriff.
But his head was already turning and his mouth fumbling, lips against Joe’s chin, his cheek, until finally Eli found his mouth and sighed against it. He kept his hands in his lap, as if to touch Baxter’s would be to make this real, but they wanted to be on his skin so badly that Eli had to tangle his fingers together and squeeze until his knuckles ached.
Joe’s hands weren’t having any kind of existential crisis. He reached over with his left and cradled the entire side of Eli’s face, from the thumb on his chin and the fingers splayed across his cheek, to the pinkie trailing down his neck. Eli opened his mouth to say something, wait or stop or fuck, please, kiss me harder, and Joe captured Eli’s bottom lip between his teeth and stroked it with his tongue.
The scratchy weave of the seat fabric itched against Eli’s cheek. His elbow was smashed up against the armrest and he was pushing off the seat in front of him with one foot, hands still in his lap, but his entire body arcing towards the man whose tongue was in his mouth, setting him on fire.
The five points of Joe’s fingertips on his face anchored Eli in his seat, while the rest of his body flew into outer space and drifted, his nerves humming happily.
Not until Eli finally reached up, at last, with one hand and brushed it against the wiry hairs on Baxter’s wrist did Joe let his mouth go. He pressed his forehead against Eli’s and rubbed noses with him.
Eli’s sigh was buried beneath an explosion from onscreen, where the opening scenes of the movie had unspooled without either of them paying a bit of notice.
“I really do have to go.” His lips brushed against Joe’s as he spoke. He wasn’t sure if Joe heard his words or just read them from the touch of their mouths.
He felt Joe nod, rather than saw it. A day’s worth of stubble scraped gently against Eli’s cheek. His fingers were still clasped around Joe’s wrist, holding his hand in place against Eli’s face.
“Tell your friend that I didn’t try to persuade you to stay. I want her to like me.”
“Why?”
&n
bsp; “So, she’ll ask me to help run singles’ night with you guys.” Baxter lifted his head far enough for Eli to see the light from the screen catching on the whites of his eyes. Then his eyes narrowed as he smiled at Eli. “And I’ll have an excuse to spend more time with you.”
“It might also be a voter registration drive.” Eli was full of all kinds of good ideas tonight.
Joe chuckled. “Sounds like a party.”
“Also, this thing is still not happening.” His plate, it was full. “But maybe you can help us plan the singles’ night.”
“Slash-registration-drive? Okay. It’s a date.” Baxter sat back in his seat, grinning. Eli almost forgot to let go of his wrist. “I’m gonna watch the movie now.”
Eli glanced at the screen. A flipped-over car was burning as a man walked away from it into a milling crowd.
Nope. No idea.
“You got any idea what’s happened so far?” he asked, trying to smother giggles.
Joe shook his head. “Not a clue.”
He pressed one last, quick kiss to Baxter’s shoulder—trying, failing, to resist a sharp nip at the end that made Baxter shudder—and levered himself out his seat.
“Enjoy the show,” he said automatically, biting his lips to keep his grin from letting all his secrets out. This had been a really good night. “And it’s not a date. It’s a planning session.”
“Whatever you say,” Joe murmured.
Eli took three steps up the aisle, then ducked back and leaned over Joe’s shoulder to whisper in his ear. God, the man smelled delicious, all sharp and clean “Maybe it’s a little bit of date.”
The graze of fingertips on his wrist as he ran away left ghostly echoes of Baxter’s touch that lingered until Eli rubbed his wrist hard as he practically sprinted into the lobby.
He couldn’t wait to see what came next.
Thank you!
Thank you for reading The Sheriff & Mr. Devine. I hope you enjoyed it! As I was writing this story, it became obvious to me that it was taking place in the same town where my 2016 holiday romance Glass Tidings was set. It also became obvious to me that I had a whole lot more story to tell than I’d originally intended, so look for a full-length book about Eli and Joe in the future.
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