19. LUCAS
LUCAS
Once out of the truck at Evelyn’s house, I was alarmed to realize all of a sudden that I not only had to haul all the heavy boxes out of the truck, but I needed to get them up to the second floor as well. Max wouldn’t be able to help at all with that second part. Fuck my life.
Just as I was running a hand through my hair and disarranging my ponytail again, a tall, burly man came striding out the front door toward us. He looked like he could bench-press me. I hoped he wasn’t the bouncer.
Instead of the stern look I expected to see on someone built like a linebacker, though, when he got closer I saw that his face was split in a wide, welcoming smile.
“Hi guys!” he called as he walked up the front path toward us.
“You must be Max. Need any help? I’m Eli, by the way.
” He held out his hand to Max, who shook it bemusedly and confirmed his name in exchange.
“Lucas,” I offered when he released Max’s hand and turned to me. “I’m a friend of Max’s. And yes, we’d love some help getting this stuff up the stairs, especially.”
“No problem.” He slapped me on the back, jolting me forward accidentally. I hoped he didn’t try the same with Max; he’d send him rolling down the street. “I remember how it was hell trying to get my stuff up to the third floor when I moved in, believe me.”
“I’ll push stuff out of the truck if the two of you can catch it,” I suggested, moving to climb into the back of the truck. “Then Eli and I can haul it up the stairs piece-by-piece.”
“Sounds good to me,” Max agreed, positioning himself in front of the bed. “Come at me, bro.” He held out his arms as if I was about to throw the boxes at him.
Eli and I laughed, and Eli reached out to pat Max’s shoulder. “You’re funny, man. I think we’re going to get along.”
Did he sound flirty? No, it was just me reading too much into it because I didn’t love seeing another man standing alongside Max, especially when that man was also touching him.
Rolling my eyes at my ridiculousness, I walked to the back of the truck bed and grabbed the first box, part of the bed.
I picked up one end and pushed the other along the ground until it got to the opening, at which point Eli grabbed the other end before Max could.
He grunted deeply as he picked up its weight.
Yeah, the box probably weighed 80 pounds, but did he need to be so stereotypically manly about taking it? I huffed quietly as I maneuvered my end of the box out of the truck and onto the ground. We left the box there, off to the side of the truck, and I went back in for the next box.
We worked like that for a good twenty minutes, Eli taking each box before Max could. I expected Max to be frustrated, even angry, at having someone preempt something he could have done, but instead, he was smiling almost vacantly at the taller man. What was up with that?
Eventually, we had the truck unloaded onto the sidewalk in front of the house, the pile of boxes nearly as tall as me. I glanced from the boxes to the front door, then at Eli. “You ready to do this?” I asked him.
He nodded, looking almost excited at the prospect. Next to him, Max frowned. “What about me?” he asked me.
I glanced down at him and had to bite my lip at the look of annoyance on his face. I didn’t want him to be annoyed with me! “I don’t think there’s much you can do until we have everything upstairs,” I confessed reluctantly. “You can’t carry anything up the stairs.”
Eli put his hand back on Max’s shoulder and I fought the urge to bare my teeth at him. “You’re good, dude,” Eli told him. “This way, you can start sorting and building while Lucas and I carry.”
Still frowning, Max gave a reluctant nod. I bent to pick up one end of the first box and waited eagerly for Eli to take his hand off Max and pick up the other end. “Ready?” I asked him. “I’ll go backwards.”
Eli nodded and we slowly hauled the box up the sidewalk, through the front door, up the stairs, and down to Max’s room, which Evelyn had left unlocked for us, thankfully.
We dropped the box on the floor and both blew out a breath at the same time.
Eli grinned at me. “This’ll be our workout for the day taken care of. ”
I forced a laugh and agreed with him, even though the closest I ever came to a workout was carrying a stair chair for a patient.
“So,” Eli said as we carried the next box up the stairs a few minutes later, “you and Max.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Me and Max what?”
He shrugged one shoulder, somehow not dropping the box while he did it.
I tried not to notice how his biceps bulged under the strain.
“Is there a you and Max? I kinda got a vibe, but you haven’t touched each other or anything.
He seems really cool, so I just want to make sure I wouldn’t be stepping on any toes. ”
Fuck. I’d been right about the flirtiness.
And what did I say now? He was mine, as far as I was concerned, but in reality, he was a free agent who’d just been marking time with me.
Would he want me to mention that to someone who was interested in him, or would he prefer that I fall back on being his friend and leave the other guy space to move in?
I desperately wanted to lay some sort of claim to him, whether as a fuckbuddy or otherwise, but I couldn’t make myself tank his chances like that.
He deserved a shot at whoever he wanted; me having fallen head over heels for him was irrelevant.
Finally, I shook my head to Eli. “It’s not like that.
We’re friends.” The denial burned like acid on my tongue.
I dropped my eyes to the box we were holding and kept them there while we carried it into the bedroom, pretending I was focusing on not tripping.
When I looked back up at Eli as we put the box down, he was beaming.
“Cool, cool,” he said, slapping me on the back again.
“I mean, I’m not saying I’m gonna greet him by hitting on him or anything,” he rushed to assure me, clearly not wanting to give Max’s friend the wrong impression, “but if anything were to happen, you know, I’d want to make sure I wasn’t breaking anything up. ”
I longed to howl at him that yes, he’d be breaking something up.
But would he? We were managing breaking up just fine on our own without his help.
I was probably less than a few hours from never seeing Max again at this point unless something huge changed before then.
And I was losing hope that anything would, with every time Max avoided my eyes or went stiff next to me.
“You’re not breaking anything up,” I told Eli dully, raking a hand through my hair and then promptly having to re-tie it yet again.
I really needed to find a new nervous tic.
“Cool,” he said again, and turned to head back down the stairs.
We carried box after box upstairs, both sweating freely by the end.
I was pretty sure I was developing a blister at the base of my thumb from box corners rubbing at it.
As we put down the last box—boxes now covered the floor in Max’s room—I heard the whir of the stair chair coming up.
“Hey, Lucas?” called Max from down the hall.
“Yeah?” I shouted back.
“Can you grab my chair?”
Oh, right, he couldn’t carry it up with himself when he rode up.
I jogged out of the room, nodded at him where he sat at the top of the stairs, and went down to pick up his chair from the ground floor landing where he’d left it.
The chair represented his freedom of movement, and I didn’t want him to be stuck without it a second longer than he needed to be, so I made quick work of hauling it up the stairs and delivering it to him.
He nodded his thanks and transferred. “How’s it look in there? ” he asked, gesturing to his door.
I smirked, allowing myself to sink back into the comfort of our easy banter. “Like an Ikea exploded.”
He snorted and pushed down the hallway with me following behind. “Wow,” he said as he stopped in the doorway, “you weren’t kidding.”
Eli jumped to his feet and started clearing him a path to the center of the room without being asked.
Damn, the guy was even considerate. I bet he never came home covered in coffee and so tired he could hardly speak, either.
I chewed my lip disappointedly and lurked in the doorway while Eli continued showing Max how worth it he was.
Finally, when he could get into the room, Max wheeled inside and turned around in a slow circle. “Damn. I don’t even know where to start.”
“How about the bed?” I suggested. “It looked the most complex, so we might as well get it out of the way.”
Before he could answer, Eli pushed one final box to the side and hooked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the door.
“I’m gonna leave you two to it; in my experience, the more people involved in building furniture, the more chaotic it gets.
Just holler if you decide you need my help though.
Or if you need me to bring you drinks or something from the kitchen.
Evelyn’s got a big stock of bottles of water that she keeps for all of us to drink. ”
I nodded, trying not to smile triumphantly at getting these minutes alone with Max back.
Max smiled, bumped fists with Eli, and thanked him effusively.
Eli headed out, and then we were alone together.
I looked at him. He looked back at me, looking just as apprehensive.
“So…” I began, gesturing vaguely at the biggest box.
“That’s the main bedframe. Wanna get started? ”
He nodded. “Yup, sure thing.” Before I could do anything, he’d bent over in his seat and pulled the box up onto its side so he could rip it open. I made an abortive jump to take the weight away from him, but stopped short when I caught his glare at my attempt. “I’ve got it, Luc.”
“Right.” I subsided. “Sorry.”