Chapter 4 #2
Come up blank and scrub a hand through my hair. What the hell is wrong with me? I’ve never thought this hard about what to wear in my entire fecking life.
“You’re nervous.”
I cut my gaze back to the phone I propped on the windowsill when I came upstairs. Logan’s giving me that look again. “I’m excited,” I deadpan.
He doesn’t blink.
I try hard to do the same, but Logan has this way of waiting me out, and I’m weaker to it now than I was before my lungs got smoked out. “All right. So I’m fecking nervous. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, mate. It’s nice.”
“Nice?”
Logan treats me to a rare smile, before he’s interrupted by commotion behind him, his rowdy boys coming home from wherever, and doesn’t get the chance to finish his sentence.
I spend another twenty minutes getting the third degree from his ten-year-old twins.
They want to know everything. But I don’t have much to tell them.
All I’ve done for the past two years is breathe, fuck around, and fight my way back to where I am right now: fussing over which ancient T-shirt to wear down the pub.
Red or blue.
The kids pick red. Then they’re gone and my house feels deathly quiet. And despite the agitated effort I’ve put into straightening it up, it’s still messy as hell.
I have another hour to kill. I focus on my bedroom, re-stacking my clothes on the carpet, smoothing the clean sheets on the mattress. It’s my cue to consider buying some actual furniture, but it barely crosses my mind. Nothing does except the message thread on my phone.
The short message thread.
It’s not like me and LeLionDuBois96 have been chatting it up all week. Beyond logistics for tonight, we haven’t talked much, but I still find myself opening FlingIt and navigating straight to the last words we exchanged.
HotCraic97: Seven okay? x
LeLionDuBois96: Yeah x
Why we’re both still putting kisses at the end of every message, I have no idea. It was an oversight the first time, a hangover from talking to more gals than lads lately. But he reciprocated and I wasn’t sad about it. And now I’ll only stop if he does.
Time to go.
I shut the app down without letting myself ponder why he’s online right now. What he’s doing. Who he’s talking to. Without contemplating why I haven’t opened a single message that’s not his since last Friday.
Life’s too short for that kind of brooding. Or wondering why the urge to brood over a FlingIt connection has suddenly struck me.
I lock up and leave my house. Brave the icy pavements all the way to the pub two streets away, contemplating why he picked this place when everything about him screams that he’s not out. My profile doesn’t lie when it says I’m discreet as fuck, but this dude seems jumpy.
And hey, maybe LeLionDuBois96 didn’t even read my profile.
Plenty don’t bother.
And yet plenty do, which gets me thinking that maybe he did, and for no reason whatsoever that fecking haunts me until I’m back in the app like I never left.
He’s not online anymore.
And he’s on the move, according to his distance stamp.
On his way to the quiet corner table I’ve parked myself at in the pub.
At least, I hope he is. I hope a lot, and it’s an odd feeling.
I like sex. I like people. But I’ve never craved a connection as much as I apparently want this one. As much as I apparently want him.
I’m not much of a drinker. I leave my cider untouched and tap into my app profile. Read the nonsense I tossed up there a few months back without much caring who read it.
I see it all now with new eyes.
Critical eyes.
HotCraic97?
Jesus. What kind of clown was I to pick that?
The same clown who posted a wank pic for funsies, that’s who. A pic I’ve almost forgotten about until it’s right there, filling my screen, and it’s enough to put me off dick for life.
Yeah, right.
But still. What a knob. And not the good kind.
Maybe I should just post my face at this point, but I have too many reasons not to.
Regulations. Professionalism. Station gossip.
Take your fecking pick. Either way, I’m about to cringe myself into a stroke.
So I stop glaring at myself and tap into him instead.
LeLionDuBois96. Match the carved shoulder pic with the dark-haired beauty over the back fence, even as doubts begin to creep in.
What if it’s not him?
Worse, what if it is and he’s scrolled my profile thinking I’m some cocky twat who talks like that in real life?
You do talk like that.
“Hey.”
I glance up, startled. And there he is.
Tall and dreamy, with eyes like burnt caramel and a smile so faint I almost lurch up and reach for it.
“Hey there. All right?”
He nods. Slowly. “Want a drink?”
“I’m good.”
Another nod and he retreats.
Walks away.
To the bar, thank the Lord. Think I’d expire if he left, but I’m grateful for the few minutes his absence gives me to compose myself. Cos fuck me, he’s even hotter up close than I remember.
And that bod? Clothed in simple jeans and a dark jacket, there’s not much on display. But as he makes his way back, sets his drink on the table and shucks his coat, I get my first look at his corded forearms. And I’m gone. Stunned stupid, save for the low heat roiling to life in my gut.
He’s not here to fuck.
Gentle, remember?
I remember. Both that and my manners. I wait for him to take a seat before I extend my arm across the table. “Galen.”
He shakes my hand, watching me as if I’ll vanish if he looks away too soon. “Sab.”
“That short for something?”
“Nah, my parents just don’t like syllables.”
“Mine only liked names beginning with G.”
Sab reclaims his arm and wraps a hand around his pint glass. Draws it towards him, but doesn’t drink. “You have siblings?”
“Two brothers and a sister. Garrick, Gavin, and Gráinne.”
“Gráinne?”
“Irish. I’m from Kerry. Most of my rabble still live there.”
“Why not you?”
“Followed a girl here once and couldn’t afford the boat back.”
“A girl?” Whether he realises it or not, Sab leans closer, as though I’ve opened Pandora’s box and he can’t wait to look inside. “So you’re…pan, right?”
He did read my profile. I shrug. “I don’t pay gender much attention anymore.”
“Anymore?”
“It was different when I was a rookie at my first station. Wanted to fit in, you know? Took me a while to figure out no one really cares where I put my dick.”
“How do you feel about it now?”
“Fecking glorious, as long as I’m getting pronouns right.” I take a big swallow of cider.
Sab watches me.
My mouth.
My throat.
Even my hand as I put the glass back on the table.
I wipe my lips, trying not to get too big of a kick out of him tracking that movement too. “Can I ask you something?”
It takes a millisecond too long for Sab to bring his attention back to my eyes.
I grin.
He grins back, shy in a way that doesn’t quite fit the rest of him. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“Staring. Being awkward as fuck. Je ne suis pas toujours comme ca, promis.”
“Eh?”
He cringes. “Fuck. Sorry again. I get all French when I’m nervous.”
“That was French?”
“Yeah.”
“Stop the lights.”
“What?”
I laugh. “I get all Irish when I’m just about anything. And it’s probably worse for whoever’s nearby. I say words you recognise, but somehow they don’t mean anything.”
“What does stop the lights mean?”
“Jesus-fecking-Christ. Or thereabouts. Basically, you speaking French like that is sexy as hell.”
Sab’s faint grin amps up a notch. “Really? My ex said it was annoying.”
“Your ex is wrong.”
A statement of pure fact. One Sab doesn’t seem to know what to do with. His knockout smile remains a split second longer. Then it fades, replaced by the nerves he walked in with. The same fear I feel bleeding through every message we’ve exchanged. “What did you want to ask me?”
I glance around. For a Friday night, the pub’s not that busy, most folk staying home before the festive madness really gets going. But it’s still our local—his and mine—and what I want to ask is likely something he doesn’t want anyone to overhear.
He’s sitting opposite me.
I’m in a booth kind of seat and there’s plenty of room if he doesn’t mind getting a little closer.
I incline my head to the empty space. “Sit with me?”
At best, I’m braced for his hesitation. The worst I can imagine is he’ll refuse and I won’t know what to do with it.
But he does neither.
Just stands and slips around the table as the pub’s sound system blares to life above us.
Sab folds his body into the booth seat to some Mariah Carey abomination. Seems to notice whatever my face is doing. “Music too loud?”
“No, I just hate it.”
“All music?”
“Just this shite.” And honestly, with Sab this close and gifting me a second dose of his pinewood and vanilla scent, it’s hard to hate anything. Still, though. These cheesy songs. They loom over my good mood like the Grinch, and I don’t want him to think I’m just that miserable.
So I tell him the most modern version of truth.
“Used to be over someone I’m too old to give a shite about now.
These days it’s mostly because I got hurt at work a few years ago.
Spent an entire Christmas in hospital with nothing but Rudolph FM for company.
Then I got pneumonia the year after. Put me off a bit. ”
A frown flickers in Sab’s dark eyes and for a moment, I regret being too open.
Then I realise he’s not flinching at the unearned familiarity.
He’s nodding like he understands. “My brother used to be a metal head. Then he had a bike crash that ruined it for him. He turns it off every time it comes on now.”
“Really?”
“Ouais. Don’t think he realises half the time.”
Like Sab and his French, maybe. I relax, my arm sliding along the back of the seat as if it belongs there, lurking behind Sab’s broad shoulders while I study his killer lashes, something I don’t usually notice on men.
And Christ, he really does smell good.
Like coming in from the cold.