A One-Time Thing

19. Rowan

CHAPTER 19

ROWAN

I t was clear that Fisher was enamored with Gil. Maybe obsessed, because suddenly my twelve year-old wanted his own tools and his own side of the garage to work on his bike. The worst of it was that I could hardly blame him since, from the moment I laid eyes on Gil, I’d felt a pull toward him too. A need to know him.

He might as well have kicked me in the stomach when he’d dismissed himself from his own garage the other day. And then running into his friend had been awkward. Jack looked at me and Fisher like we were aliens and our presence in Gil’s life was the most astounding thing he’d ever seen. There wasn’t a word for how uncomfortable I’d been.

Thankfully, he didn’t stick around to wait for Gil once I told him that he’d gone for breakfast. Jack nodded, said it was nice to see us both, and drove off. The way he looked at me lingered, though. Like I was a puzzle he needed to solve. Like it was so unfathomable for me to be standing in Gil’s garage that he had to rush off to interrogate his friend.

If they were just friends.

I know Jack said they were. And Gil said they were. But that didn’t stop me from wondering if maybe Jack didn’t want more with Gil and that’s why he kept looking at me like I had two heads.

None of that mattered, though, because I didn’t hear from Gil for the rest of the weekend. I spent nearly every waking moment renovating my bathroom and obsessing about Gil. I played every interaction with him over and over in my head. He’d been clear from the start. It was just sex. And yet disappointment made my stomach churn.

It was just sex, but it opened me up to the fact that I didn’t want just sex with someone. I wanted more. I wanted dates and something with meaning. I’d never really been the kind of guy who jumped from hookup to hookup. I’d always been geared toward wanting a relationship. Something solid.

Monday morning found me in an appointment with a young couple looking to prequalify for their first mortgage. They were fresh off their honeymoon and had received a nice little nest egg from their family as a wedding gift. They wanted to use it toward their down payment.

Happiness oozed from both of them. The way they looked at each other was so saccharine my teeth ached. It was a relief when I was able to usher them out of my office. As they walked out, Brian from the next office over walked in.

“Just the man I came to see.” Brian’s face lit up like he was genuinely happy to see me. “I was going for lunch and thought I’d see if you wanted to join me.”

My next appointment wasn’t until later in the day and I had plenty of time to prepare for it.

“Sure.” Why not? It was just lunch. I’d wanted to start over when I moved, and part of that was making friends. Back home, I’d had Eric, but other than him, my social circle was woefully small. I didn’t want to fall into the same patterns as before where I worked, raised Fisher, and did nothing else.

Fall had come to the area and it was the perfect autumn day, straight out of a catalog with clear blue skies, crisp mornings, and a bit of heat in the afternoon.

“It sure is nice here this time of year.” Inwardly I winced. The worst part of getting to know someone was the small talk portion until you found something in common to bond over. Or found nothing at all.

“There’s worse places to live. Believe me. My uncle was in the Army, and my cousins lived all over the place. They hated it growing up, but they all ended up enlisting. Go figure.” Brian led me up the street to a little Lebanese place. “You been here yet?”

“Not yet. My kid has been on a mission to sample every pizza place and burger joint in town.”

“You can’t go wrong with a good pizza. Dotty’s has the best, if you haven’t been there yet.”

“I’ll remember that. Thanks.”

With so many people milling about during lunch hour, I found myself on the lookout for a familiar man with a shock of white hair and a scar on his face. It was stupid to be hung up on someone who didn’t want me.

Well, he wanted me, but only for one thing.

“You okay?” Brian asked as the line inched closer to the counter.

“Yeah, uh, just wondering what to get. I’ll admit my knowledge of Lebanese cuisine is limited. As in, I don’t have any.”

“I’ll order us a couple of wraps. I eat here all the time.”

Brian ordered a falafel wrap and a shish tawook wrap. He kept the falafel wrap for himself and gave me the other one.

“It’s grilled chicken with lettuce, garlic aioli, and pickles.”

“Ooh, you took a big gamble picking something with pickles. What if I was one of those pickle haters?”

“Well, then I guess we couldn’t be friends.”

Friends.

How easy Brian had offered his friendship to me. Gil had offered his body, but nothing else. And the way he’d just taken off the other morning had felt like him slamming the door in my face.

Sure, I could have gone over to his house at any point and talked about it, but I didn’t want to come off as needy and desperate, and literally stupid for agreeing to his terms, but wanting him to reconsider. He’d been perfectly clear what we were to each other and I was the idiot who’d actually gone and liked the guy.

Even when I was tripping all over myself, Gil never seemed to mind it much. More than once I’d made an ass of myself around him, but each time he met me with such patience that it was hard not to fall for the guy.

And I wasn’t. Falling for him would be stupid. Falling for him would be asking for trouble. Besides, I was out for lunch with someone else, and I was having a perfectly nice time. When I stopped thinking about a certain someone.

With that in mind, I swallowed my bite of wrap and lobbed a question to Brian.

“Have you lived here long, or are you a transplant like me?” There, a perfectly normal question.

Brian had led us over to a table by the windows and we’d sat down and eaten half our meal without talking. My question seemed to open up a floodgate and it was like Brian had just been waiting for the ice to break because he poured out his life story.

“I’ve lived here all my life. Grew up playing football when I was pretending to be straight, and blowing the players after I came out.” He said it with a smirk, like he was fond of the memories. “Got married. Got divorced. Lost custody of a remarkable cat, but he always did like my ex better than me.”

“I’m sorry. That’s still tough.”

Brian shrugged. “I think my ex needed him more than I did.” Talk of his ex seemed to trip him up and I wondered if maybe he wasn’t the only one hung up on someone else. “What about you? I mean, obviously you’re new in town. What brings you here?”

“My company was offering bonus checks to people willing to transfer to understaffed offices. I took the money, bought a house, and here I am. The house still needs a bunch of work, but it’s coming along. Slower now that I’m working.”

“I’d offer to help, but I’m all thumbs when it comes to DIY. I can manage to check my own oil and change a light bulb if ladders aren’t involved. I make a great eggplant parmesan, though, ask any of my dates.” Brian’s hint at the fact that he’d previously asked me out didn’t go unnoticed. I might not be the most socially adept person in the world, but Brian made his interest obvious.

Of course Brian’s comment about the light bulb made me think about Gil and him patiently teaching Fisher how to fix his bike. He seemed like the kind of guy who would climb a ladder for me and it was weird that I wanted that. Moving here was supposed to be a fresh start, but already I’d made a mess of things by falling into bed with a man who didn’t want me back the same ways I wanted him. But Brian was here, and he was perfectly nice. And attractive. Sure, my brain didn’t turn off when he was around, making me act like a fool, but that was okay. Preferable, even.

“So, do you frequently ask strangers to dinner, or was I special?”

Brian’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Well, you see…” He leaned in and lowered his voice like he was sharing a secret. “I’ve always had a thing for redheads.”

“Morgan says you have a thing for single men,” I countered, arching a brow.

His mouth twitched into a knowing kind of frown. “In this instance, let’s say I have a thing for single redheads.”

It was a deflection, but I wasn’t going to argue. Brian was single and he was allowed to pursue anyone he wanted. Even me.

“Okay, what would dinner look like if I said yes? What is there to do around here?”

“Well, we could do what the kids do and go through the drive-thru, then go up to the vista and fog up the windows.”

The idea of that didn’t suck, but I could barely picture myself in a fogged-up car with Brian. I was thirty-five, and he was lucky I could picture it at all, but it definitely wasn’t him in the seat next to me when I did.

“What do grown-ups do for fun around here?”

“There’s bingo every Thursday night at six at the senior center.” He grinned at me.

“There’s got to be a happy medium between the two.”

“Maybe. If I took you out for dinner, I’d pick you up at your house and I’d take you to my favorite restaurant. I’m there all the time, so we’d get a nice quiet table that was a bit out of the way from everyone. And after we ate, I’d take you to the art gallery because you look like an art gallery kind of guy.”

“And what does an art gallery kind of guy look like?”

Brian’s gaze flicked down to my throat where I’d neatly tied a bowtie that morning.

“Well, I can’t say for sure, but I bet they wear bowties. And I bet they’re the kind of guy who doesn’t like going to a movie on a first date because you can’t get to know someone in a dark theater, at least not in the ways you want to know a person. The way I want to know you.”

The exact way Gil didn’t want to know me.

Maybe I was using Brian. I knew there’d be nothing between us, but I couldn’t just sit around at home and hope that Gil would one day decide he wanted me for more than sex. Brian was attractive, but I wasn’t attracted to him. My heart didn’t skip a beat looking at him. I didn’t get so nervous I couldn’t function and fell all over myself.

And yet…

“So when would this date happen, if I were to say yes?”

“If you said yes, I’d take you out Wednesday night, with hopes that it went well enough for a repeat on Friday night.”

“That’s ambitious. But…” I took a deep breath and convinced myself that this was the right thing to do. I wanted something more than midnight hookups. “Wednesday works for me, if it works for you.”

Brian’s smile was wide and bright and his enthusiasm almost made me back out. He was clearly more invested in the idea than I was, but maybe I’d come around.

I couldn’t stay hung up on Gil forever, could I?