Chapter 17
Brandon
My head was swimming.
The numbers on the timesheets in front of me were all but a blur despite my best efforts to focus on actually getting any of this paperwork done before close this afternoon. But no amount of putting my pen to paper was motivating me enough to work through the past month’s worth of clock-ins.
All I could focus on was Avery.
He’d been too far gone in post-nut bliss to notice me quietly grabbing my things and leaving last night. I hadn’t had the heart to stop by the kitchen to make up some excuse to Hazel for leaving so soon, nor did I bother emailing Avery when I finally got home.
Sticking around for whatever aftermath awaited me once he finally realized his former best friend sucked him off wasn’t exactly the kind of conversation I’d been prepping myself to have when he’d invited me over.
In fact, that was the complete fucking opposite of what was supposed to happen.
But goddamn, would all of that be used as fodder for my own future self-gratification. Seeing Avery’s face twist up in pleasure like that was incredible, even more so because I’d been the one to cause it in the first place.
He’d tasted amazing on my tongue, his weight solid in my hand and thick enough to wrap my fingers around him comfortably.
Each twitch of his hips, or flickering of his lashes over his eyes had driven me to keep going, to keep touching and tasting him until he was exploding in my mouth and making a mess out of the both of us.
I’d touched myself to the memory while driving home, coming in my own hand in a humiliating fashion as soon as I’d pulled into my own driveway and parked my truck.
I’d sat there after the fact for a long while, contemplating my life choices and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do now.
How was I supposed to look Avery in the eyes when I’d had his entire cock in my fucking mouth and drank down his cum like it was water found in the Sahara desert?
Scrubbing a hand over my face, I dropped my pen back down onto the desk and sighed heavily.
The problem was that it was too good not to want to do it again. The other problem was that Avery was very much straight and even if this was for some strange reason a moment of weakness or curiosity for him, that didn’t guarantee that he’d want to go for a second round.
It was healthy to want to explore yourself. Hell, I never minded showing newbies the ropes once they were comfortable enough to crawl into bed with me and teach them the proper ways to take care of someone else.
Why gatekeep the experience?
This was entirely different, though, and had me wondering if Avery was somehow questioning his sexuality.
If so, how long had that been going on?
Surely, before he’d come back to Ellington Heights.
Pushing back from my desk, I climbed to my feet and headed out of my office toward the back of the shop.
I pushed the glass door open to enter the garage.
Music was blaring on the speaker closest to Vance’s station, some classic rock song that was vaguely familiar but too loud to actually make out of the words over the ridiculous amount of bass.
He was working on the black Bel Air while the Ford Coupe was up on the risers at Charlie’s station. No one else besides Vance was back here, which meant that they’d all probably gone on lunch already.
When he turned to grab a socket wrench, he spotted me and waved. “Hey, boss!”
I flicked down the volume on the speaker to less of a dull roar and to something that wasn’t threatening to blow my eardrums out. “Everyone else gone?”
“Yup. Just me and you.”
Glancing over at the clock, I said, “You want to take off? I’ve got things until the others come back.”
He propped his safety glasses up onto the top of his head, tugging off his gloves in the process. “You sure? We’ve got that two o’clock coming in soon.”
“I think I can manage a valve check.”
He grinned. “She thinks it’s one of the valves because her husband looked it up on Youtube. I’d bet twenty bucks it’s actually the timing belt.”
A true death blow for an old ‘92. “Let’s hope it’s just a valve.” Because I really wasn’t in the mood to be dealing with a cranky old retiree arguing with me about what her hobbyist husband drilled into her head before she’d brought her car in to us for maintenance.
I never minded people coming in well informed about their issues but sometimes the Internet wasn’t the best place to try and replicate a mechanic’s decades worth of knowledge.
Vance clapped me on the shoulder. “Twenty bucks.”
I shook my head at that.
He tossed his gloves onto his station before grabbing his keys and taking off out the back door that led to our private lot behind the building. Stretching my arms above my head, I let out a soft sigh.
Having the shop to myself for a bit would give me the chance to clear my head. I needed to purge myself by doing something else outside of cooping myself up in that office while pretending that the best way to forget about last night was through paperwork.
I was much better with using my hands anyway. I found comfort in picking things apart and then putting them back together again.
Heading over to my own station, I grabbed a few of the tools out of my belt and laid them out on a rolling table, bringing it over to the Bel Air that was parked closest to me with the hood already propped open.
Peeking at the inside of it, I could see what Tony was already halfway through tuning up before he’d left, and picked up my own tools to finish what he’d started.
Out of the four of Avery’s cars, this one needed the least amount of work, which meant that by the end of the week, it’d be set to roll out of here and road ready for whatever buyer ended up taking it off of Avery's hands.
Which reminded me... I still needed to get him that list.
“Wow, you’ve really got them working on them all at once?”
Startled, I whipped around to where the door leading to the front of the shop was propped open and Avery was standing with one foot already past the threshold.
He was wearing a business suit that hugged his fit frame nicely, making him look rather out of place next to the wall of tools right beside him.
His hair was swept back from his face and there was a plastic bag hooked over his arm that swayed when he let go of the door. “Bit of a slave driver, aren’t you?”
I ignored the way my body flushed with heat as he drew closer, busying myself with turning back to the Bel Air and leaning over the lip of it to tighten one of the valves.
“Weren’t you the one bragging about how you’d pay my shop to work exclusively on these for you as long as it got done correctly? ”
He chuckled, his footsteps growing quiet right behind me. “I’m kidding, Brandon.”
His playful teasing was throwing me off, not at all what I was expecting to be faced with after last night.
Anger?
Absolutely.
Disgust and maybe a little bit of embarrassment?
Definitely.
But this?
It only further confused me.
The sound of the plastic bag being set down caught my attention and then the feeling of something looming over me had me lifting back from where I was bent over the car.
Avery’s hand came around on my right side to cup the edge of the car, leaning over my shoulder to get a better look at what I was doing.
“How’s it looking?” The question was said right into my ear, his voice smooth and slightly gravelly.
I fought the urge to shiver.
Fuck me.
I was pinned against the car. The subtle shift of his hips brushing up against my ass, along with the hand that was anchored to the car, left me little room to side step him.
Having him this close to me was making me dizzy.
Whatever cologne he was wearing made the urge to turn around and bury my face in his chest nearly impossible.
“Uh...” I swallowed thickly. “Good. Just needed to replace a few valve caps and flush out the engine and replace it with new fluid. This one’s the cleanest out of the four.”
He hummed softly. “That sounds promising.”
I hoped it wasn’t obvious that my hand was shaking while I leaned back over to fit the wrench over the last valve cap. “Should be out of here soon. I’ll get you that list.”
“And I’ll have a check sent over to you for the work.”
“Thanks.”
Not that I really cared about the money, but I was glad he was taking this seriously and wasn’t trying to haggle me on prices.
Avery could absolutely afford whatever number I threw at him, even if I went out of my way to name it something ridiculous.
I simply appreciated that he had enough integrity not to make the process a drag and fight me for an itemized list.
Fixing cars like this was half labor costs and half having the knowledge on how to diagnose and implement whatever needed to be done. A lot of people that came through my shop neglected to take that into consideration whenever the bill came around.
“I brought you something,” he said, finally stepping back to give me space to breathe.
When I turned back around, he was already lifting the plastic bag off of the ground and fishing through it to pull something out. What was in his hands was a plastic lunch container with the sections separated, jam packed with food.
“I figured you hadn’t eaten yet,” he explained, offering it to me. “Hazel made it with love.”
I couldn’t help but smile at that. “You didn’t need to bring me anything.”
“I wanted to.”
The after last night was an obvious unspoken end to that sentence.
Taking the container from him, I noted it was hot to the touch, with slight condensation underneath the clear top.
I was hungry now that food was being placed in front of me.
With my head so preoccupied, I’d neglected to grab leftovers from my fridge and bring them with me this morning.
I figured I could live off of the snacks I’d had stashed in my office, but this was way more appetizing.
I traced my thumb along the sharp edge of the top, letting it pinch at my skin to try and draw me out of my already spiraling thoughts.
What did any of this mean?
Where did we go from here?
“Avery... last night—”
“Don’t,” he said, shutting me up instantly. “Whatever it is... don’t overthink it. Please.”
I clutched the container tight in my hands when he crowded me against the car once again. An unsteady hand was raised toward my face, faintly moving along my cheek while his expression twisted into something that looked close to pain.
“Please,” he repeated.
“What...” I wasn’t even sure how to ask, or what.
How could I go about encompassing a decade’s worth of confusion surrounding my attraction to him that was now seemingly being crashed into by Avery’s own unexpected brand of surprise?
I swallowed again. I needed to know. “Did you hate it?”
His eyes widened briefly and then narrowed. “No. Did you?”
Fucking hell.
My heart stumbled over the quickness of his words. “No.”
He blew out a breath. “Good... good.”
Relieved?
Exasperated?
I couldn’t tell.
Needing the subject change, I said, “Tell me why you’re in a suit.”
He glanced down at himself and then said, “I have a meeting with my lawyer. And with that woman who’s contesting the will. I was supposed to go over there earlier this morning but I got a little sidetracked.”
I wondered with what. Though judging by how fresh this food was, I was going to wager a guess that when he’d approached Hazel about making this for me, she’d forced him an apron on him, too. That was usually how she worked when asked for favors. A ‘you want it done, you’re helping’, type deal.
“I hope it goes well.”
He flashed me a brief smile. “Yeah, me too.”
Dancing around the subject like this was painful but of my own doing. Confronting whatever the fuck was going on with Avery felt like too much right now, even though I was dying to know what was going on inside of his head.
But the problem was that I wanted more. Last night wasn’t enough to satisfy that deep rooted craving in me that had always wanted him.
In fact, it seemed to have only made it all worse.
I had hoped, years and years ago, that by exposing myself to as much of Avery as possible that it’d somehow get my brain to wean off of him, force me to get bored of him until all that I had left was general apathy in what used to be my feelings for him.
The reality, of course, was much different. All it’d done was make me want to drop to my knees right here in the middle of my shop and get him back in my mouth again. Just to see that blissful expression once more while he came.
Avery surprised me out of my thoughts by cupping my jaw in his hand, holding me firmly in place. His thumb grazed over my cheek, sending a spiderweb of pinpricks radiating across my skin.
“Have dinner with me tonight.”
It was a bad idea. But him apparently not regretting last night was what my mind was getting stuck on.
If that was true, then what else was Avery hiding from me?
Or himself, for that matter?
How much farther could this line be pushed between us until a chasm inevitably opened up and swallowed us both whole?
Oh my god, I’m so screwed.
“Okay.”
Dinner I could do. That was simple.
There didn’t need to be any strings attached to dinner.
Avery smiled. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”