6. Dario
CHAPTER 6
Dario
This is a bad, bad idea. ‘What was I thinking?’ feels like it should be my motto these days.
The drive back to my place seems to pass in a flash, but I still manage to spend the entire time questioning my sanity. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone outside of my family my new address, let alone invite an almost stranger over.
But there’s something about Lochlan that puts me so at ease, and I can’t explain it. It’s not that he’s a firefighter, although I suppose that helps. It’s that he seems to really see me and, more to the point, he’s not put off by that. It’s like when I talk, he hangs on my every word. I’ve spent so long feeling insignificant, or worse, a burden. However, on both the occasions I’ve hung out with Lochlan, he seems delighted by my company.
It makes me nervous. Like I’m constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I’m not strong enough to resist a little compassion from a hot guy. Until he proves me wrong, I’m going to do my best to try and keep trusting him.
I just hope I’m not going to ruin how he feels about me by letting him into my home. I’ve told him again and again that I just moved here, but surely he’s going to expect a grown man to have something to show for his adult life. I think he’s a bit older than me, and I’d hate for him to think of me as some immature college kid still.
I’d hate it even more if he ghosted me. I know we’ve hardly known each other a hot minute. However, I’m pretty sure I’d still be crushed.
Well, there’s no going back now. As I swing into my driveway, I take a deep breath and reason with myself. Much like when he sat down with me under the oak tree before class began, no one forced him to ask if we could have dinner together. And he certainly didn’t mean in a date way. I saw the way those girls were flirting with him when I got to the beach. So that makes him coming over much safer. He’s just being my friend.
I need all the friends I can get right now.
His truck pulls up behind me, so I quit dawdling and get out of my car with Queenie right behind me. It’s amazing how fast she’s slipped into her new routine. “We’re home,” I tell her like I do every time we return. I want her to learn the word and know that this is where she belongs. That she’s safe here.
But it’s also kind of for my benefit as well. I’ve never had a place of my own. I love my family, but growing up with them was kind of a lot. I was pretty desperate to spread my wings and get to college. My roommate was okay, but we didn’t exactly become friends.
And then I met Shane.
I shake my head, refusing to think about him right now. Instead, I look at my little house like Lochlan might be seeing it. It’s an L shape with a cute set of semi-circle stairs leading to the awning and the front door in the middle. The steps make me think of mille feuille cake layers.
The left side of the house is two stories with a covered balcony attached to my bedroom, and the right side is a single story. Like most architecture around here, the walls are white and the roof tiles terracotta. The patio out front isn’t large and neither is the lawn out back. But I love that thanks to all the foliage it feels secluded from the neighboring houses. Palm trees sway around the edges and there’s even a little fountain nestled in the shrubbery where birds like to play, much to Queenie’s annoyance.
It might not look like a palace, but it feels like one to me. More importantly, it’s all mine, and when I close the door on the world, I feel at peace and secure.
Lochlan’s parked his truck on the street, and I watch as he and Rocky hop down onto the sidewalk, expecting to feel a sense of trepidation at him breaching my sanctuary. I am nervous, for sure. But I’m also hoping that I haven’t made a terrible mistake. This might be okay.
“Um, so this is me,” I say, trying not to cringe at my own lameness as I wave in the general direction of my house. He’s going to realize where we are, duh.
However, he’s grinning as he and Rocky jog up beside my car. “Dude, this is neat!” He cranes his neck and really takes it all in. “Yeah, if I were your folks, I’d be hella proud that you landed on your feet like this. Can we go inside?”
He walks past me toward the door, apparently oblivious as to how his words—no—his effortlessly given compliments shake me to my core. He can’t mean it when he says things like that, can he? Like when he calls me smart and cool and all those other unlikely things.
But as he turns and waits expectantly for me to open the door, I can’t help but feel like every bone in his body is genuine. This big golden retriever of a man doesn’t know how to bullshit, I’m sure.
Or maybe I’m still reeling from so many years with a guy who lied to me like it was breathing that I can’t tell honesty from deceit anymore.
Catching myself before I can spiral down that rabbit hole, I head up the steps and unlock the door. “It’s still pretty empty,” I warn him again. “I saved up every penny for the deposit and that hasn’t left much for anything else yet. I wasn’t able to bring any furniture from my old place, so anything I have right now is from thrift stores or donated from my family, bless them.”
As soon as he steps over the threshold, Lochlan automatically kicks off his sandy flip flops and looks around my small entrance hall. Someday, I’d love to have art on the walls, a nice coat rack, and a fancy lampshade. But at the moment, I’m grateful to have a rickety table to leave my keys on and a hook on the wall for Queenie’s leash.
The whole place is tiled, so I want to invest in some rugs to stop it being so echoey. As it is, our bare feet slap as we walk toward the kitchen. I can feel Lochlan looking around as we enter the room.
“Oh, I can see your family knows what’s important,” he comments, and I chuckle, agreeing. I’ve got all the kitchen appliances I could need on the counter as well as a very healthy spice rack.
“You haven’t even seen the cupboards yet,” I joke. “My mom and tias keep sending me grocery deliveries and care packages. I might not have a dining table, but I’m certainly not going to starve.”
Lochlan crosses his impressive arms and nods. “There aren’t many problems that can’t be solved by decent food. Your family sound like good people.”
My heart flutters and I remind myself that he’s just being nice. Although it’s cool of him to acknowledge and appreciate my family. They mean a lot to me.
I’m sure he’d say that to any of his friends. Still, I can feel him not judging my space, and that’s such a relief I can’t stop myself from feeling grateful.
I open the back door and let the dogs out to play. “It’s very secure,” I assure him. “I’ve checked a hundred times. No one’s making a jailbreak.”
“Excellent,” he says, then claps his hands together. “Come on then! Give me the tour.”
“It won’t take long,” I assure him.
He shrugs and winks at me, turning the flutters I was experiencing into full blown tremors. “Then we can get to making pizza quicker.”
“Oh,” I say with a jolt, dashing over to the fridge.
I take the defrosted dough out as it’ll need to rest for half an hour. But I also grab two beers before closing the door, then make short work of using the bottle opener and tipping some chips into a bowl to show that I don’t intend to leave him hungry for long.
When I hand him his drink, he holds his bottle up. “Sláinte! Cheers to your new place, dude!” I let him tap the glass together. “May you have many happy years here.”
A wistful smile tugs at my mouth. That feels like tempting fate to me, but it’s a nice thought. “Salud to my first guest,” I say, repeating the tap. We both take a drink, and for a second, I get lost in watching how his throat bobs as he swallows.
Get it together! I scold myself. No perving on my new (hot) straight friend, for crying out loud.
“Tour, yes,” I splutter, spinning around in the open space I’ve yet to fill. “Well, as you can tell, this is the kitchen and then this side will be the dining room.”
“In the meantime, it’s a killer dance floor,” he jokes, running into the middle of the sparse room and pulling some truly hideous moves. But it makes me laugh, which he seems to do a lot.
I love it.
The living room doesn’t have much in it aside from an old couch and a medium-sized TV. But it works and the sofa is pretty comfortable, so I really can’t complain. Even if it takes months and months, I’m going to slowly make this place my own and invest in furniture that brings me joy.
For now, it’s got lots of potential, which I tell Lochlan.
“Oh, for real,” he says, nodding and looking around like he’s mentally decorating. “Good bones. You could have bookcases and sideboards and all sorts in here.”
“I want a big potted plant on the floor in that corner there,” I say tentatively, so used to my ideas being laughed at.
Lochlan, of course, just nods and lifts his eyebrows. “Yes, great idea! What kind of colors do you like? Warm? Cool?”
I shrug and move toward the stairs. “I’m not sure, really. I guess I’ll have to figure that out as I go.”
“Yeah, totally,” he says cheerfully. “You can really make it your own that way.”
“I hope so,” I say as we go upward.
He can’t see my bashful smile, but it’s there. I’m sure—again—that he’s just being nice. However, it’s validating that he gets how important it is to me that this place is stamped with my personality…even if I’m not entirely sure what that looks like just yet.
It’s only as I open my bedroom door that I realize how intimate showing him in here is. I try not to blush and fumble over my words as I tell him the mattress is one of the only new things I did splurge on this month because the idea of a used one was too gross for me. He notices Queenie’s mini staircase immediately and admits that Rocky’s been sleeping on his bed too.
I let him look in the bathroom as I glance at the closed office door. I hadn’t thought through that he might see it, but as it’s shut, I hope I can get away with it.
“And that’s just full of junk,” I say dismissively, waving my beer bottle at it, already moving toward the stairs again. “I’ve barely been able to fit my desk and computer in it.”
“I still want to see, though,” Lochlan cries, reaching for the door handle.
“Oh, it’s tiny, you won’t?—”
I’m not even sure what I was going to say. I just wanted to stop him from looking inside.
Too late.
He flings the door open to reveal that the office is indeed small…but it’s also the only room in the house I’ve been able to properly decorate. My cheeks really do flame as horror creeps over me. “See, it’s just junk,” I say, trying to will him to come back out of the room.
But he’s turning slowly and looking absolutely enchanted.
“Oh, man,” he gushes. “Is this all yours? Sorry, dumb question, it must be because it’s here.”
I lick my lips and edge over the threshold, looking around at all my posters, figurines, and general nerdy paraphernalia. The only shelves I have so far are in here, bursting with the evidence of my childhood obsession that doesn’t seem to have died yet.
“I told you I was a geek,” I mumble.
I’m sure there are cool things that cool people collect. But ever since I was a kid, I’ve been tech driven and fascinated by what the human race will invent in years, decades, centuries to come.
So it’s probably no surprise that my biggest passion is science fiction.
Star Wars. Star Trek. Stargate. Battlestar Galactica. If it’s got ‘star’ in the title, I probably have some sort of collectible from it. Not to mention Doctor Who, Aliens, Predator, The Expanse, Terminator, Firefly, and even more niche franchises that a lot of people won’t have heard of.
I cringe, waiting for Lochlan to laugh at me. I knew bringing him to my pathetic, empty house was a mistake. But I never expected him to see my secret stash. Especially when I’ve been parted from it for so long. Getting it all out of storage and displaying it has brought me so much joy. But seeing it from an outsider’s perspective, it’s so clear to me in that moment that I should just have left it all in boxes. What kind of adult has toys like this? Not sexy, attractive ones, that’s for sure. He’s going to think I’m a fucking child. I should just?—
“Holy shit!” Lochlan cries. I realize his gaze has traveled upward and he’s pointing at the top of my cluttered bookcase. “Is that the Millennium Falcon made out of Legos?”
“Uh…yeah,” I utter, then it’s like my nerves take over and I can’t stop talking. “I worked every summer job I could when I was thirteen to buy it myself. It took about six months to make in between schoolwork. I can’t believe it’s survived all this time but, um, yeah. It’s just some silly kid thing.”
Lochlan scowls at me. Like full on frowns and shakes his head. “No it’s not. Don’t say things like that, okay? You worked hard for it, and I bet it took a shit ton of patience to make it. Han Solo was my man growing up. In fact, this whole room is like a wet dream.”
I blink, not sure I heard him right. “You…like sci-fi?”
He scoffs and starts inspecting my daleks and xenomorphs more closely. “Remember which dorky kid wanted to be an astronaut?” he asks, jerking his thumb at his chest. “What I really wanted was to be Han or James T. Kirk or Malcom Reynolds.” He rubs his chin. “Fuck it. I’d have been Ellen Ripley in a heartbeat, too.”
For a second, I can’t breathe. My throat has thickened so much, it’s difficult to swallow.
Shane mocked the shit out of me for ‘believing in little green men.’ I’d already figured that out by the time we moved in together, so I kept this whole collection in my parents’ basement. Which was a smart move, because the one time I dared to bring a ‘Live long and prosper’ mug into the apartment, it mysteriously smashed within a few days.
I dread to think what might have happened to the Falcon.
I clear my throat and try to find my voice. “Ripley and Sarah Connor were the eighties sci-fi queens,” I manage to say without squeaking too much.
Lochlan doesn’t seem to have noticed my minor breakdown. He clicks his fingers and nods, his gaze still devouring all my trinkets. “Those mothers be mothering,” he quips. “Hey, we should watch something super classic after we make pizza. Like Demolition Man or Fifth Element. You know, something where the colors and costumes are off the chain.”
A laugh bubbles out of me. It feels like more than relief. The joy of not only being accepted and not judged…but embraced and celebrated is almost too much. “I’d love that,” I say, not caring that I do squeak this time. It’s that or burst into tears. “I’ve got a few different subscriptions, so chances are we’ll be able to find whatever we want.”
“Something cheesy to go with our cheese pizzas!” Lochlan cries. He finishes his beer and raises his eyebrows at me. “As much as I’d love to spend all night here, shall we go make food and get our geek on?”
I nod, unable to speak for a moment. “Sounds great,” I say after a beat.
Sounds perfect. Because Lochlan is perfect.
If only he wasn’t straight…but asking for that really would be too much.
Right now, I’ll take all of him I can get.