Chapter 10 #2
“Steph!” Steven eased her back, but the coat, firmly in her grasp now, came too.
Myles had the grace to let her take it without comment.
Outside, Bob’s car rumbled up to the curb.
“There’s my ride!” Tossing Myles’s sweater at Steven, she nabbed her own from the coat tree in the corner of the foyer and pushed her feet into her docks.
Bob had made it halfway up the walk when she stepped out. “Hi.”
Ever the gentleman, he took her cardigan from her and held it so she could push her arms into it.
“Didn’t want to make you wait.” She aimed a devastating smile at him. “Have fun, boys!” The wave she tossed at them was much less accurately aimed; then she was gone, chatting to Bob as they headed back towards his car.
“I am so sorry about that,” Steven said, attempting to hand Myles’s hoodie back to him. “You didn’t have to make a special trip.”
“To be honest, those four walls were beginning to close on me. Jet and Shelly are watching Avatar for about the millionth time. Good as the movie is, I just couldn’t do it again. I might have snuck away.”
“In that case, welcome to my refuge,” Steven said, ushering him deeper into the house while ignoring the twist of unease at Myles implying he wasn’t a fan of being stuck indoors. Maybe a change of scenery would be enough to let him stay for a bit.
“Steph said you were in the middle of something.”
“Inventorying new books for the shelves.” He poked at the dust-covered boxes on the coffee table.
“New.” Myles looked skeptical.
“Well. New to the store. Sort of. We’re slowly pulling my dad’s… overly enthusiastic collection out of storage to put them out. They won’t sell from the Labyrinth.”
Both of Myles’s eyebrows went up. “The Labyrinth?”
“Jake sort of nicknamed it that after he got turned around down there once.”
“Are you talking about your basement?”
“Do you want to see?” As soon as he asked the question, Steven wanted to kick himself. Why would he even ask that? Just because he geeked out over the sheer volume of old books down there didn’t mean anyone else would care. Who wanted a tour of someone’s overstuffed basement?
Myles poked at the top box, then dusted his fingers together, then rubbed them on his jeans. Then brushed at his jeans like he thought they must be streaked with the offending dirt now.
“Never mind,” Steven said, shoving the boxes nearly off the far side of the table and stepping in front of them. As if blocking them from Myles’s view would make him forget they were there.
“No, it’s fine. I can help. Here.” He offered Steven the bills again. “Before I forget, take this.”
“I’ll get you a receipt.” Steven huffed at himself as he hurried to the register, rang up the album, and wrote out a receipt.
“Idiot,” he muttered as he scribbled. “What were you thinking? You already knew this about him. The drawer, remember? Hey, guy who abhors a mess, let me show you the most chaotic part of my existence. Oh, and also, it’s filthy. So. That gonna trigger you?”
He fished change out of the till and slammed the drawer shut, then pressed both palms to it to steady his nerves. “Stop it, Steven. You’re talking to yourself. Great impression that’s going to make.”
Another forced breath or two and an elusive tendril of calm wafted through him with the distant strains of classic rock music that was probably in his head, since the store speakers had stopped working years ago.
The song soothed him like a quiet afternoon in the shop usually did.
It would have to do, or Myles would really start to wonder.
Plastering on a smile, he returned to the main room.
All of the books from both boxes were piled haphazardly on the table, and the boxes were folded flat with the one Stephanie had left, a golden ball of tape resting on top.
Myles stood next to the piles, both hands held out in front of himself like they might be contaminated and he wasn’t sure what to do about it.
“You didn’t have to,” Steven blurted.
“Gotta wash.” Myles pinned him with wide eyes. “Where?”
“Kitchen.” Steven pointed to the door at the back of the room, stepping aside to leave plenty of room as Myles darted past.
“Right. Knew that.” The clipped sentences all but sweat anxiety, and Steven counted to ten before he followed, hopefully giving Myles enough time to pull back.
“Okay?” he asked from the doorway.
“Okay,” Myles grated, even as he scrubbed at his hands under steaming water. “All good.”
“Okay.” Steven whipped the towel from the stove handle and sidled in next to Myles.
Myles eyed it.
“Right.” Tossing it aside, Steven plucked a clean one from a drawer. “Use this.”
“Thanks.” Myles took it from him and rubbed hard. “I was… that was… I, um.” He grunted, furrowed his brow, and glared at the floor.
“No worries.” Gentle, so as not to cause more flurry, Steven took Myles’s hands in his and slowly rubbed the towel between his fingers until his hands were dry. When he’d finished, he eased the towel free of Myles’s death grip. “Those boxes are pretty dire.”
“Just dust,” Myles said. “Didn’t think I’d…”
“Tell you a secret,” Steven offered.
Myles tilted his head but said nothing.
“The other day, when I came back to find you cleaning out the junk drawer, and you thought I was being super chill about it?”
“I freaked you out.” Myles’s gaze dropped so heavily Steven imagined he heard it hit the floor with a thump.
“No.” He touched fingertips to Myles’s forearm, not sure if skin to skin was okay.
It got Myles to look up again, but he didn’t pull away or look otherwise alarmed. In fact, some of the tension eased and his shoulders dropped the barest amount.
“I was glad of the distraction from my own shit storm.”
“Jake.”
“No. Me. Going outside to make sure Jake was okay. I haven’t been farther than the swing on my front porch in months. Really. Not since Christmas. I haven’t been out hardly at all over the winter. These four walls.” He glanced around the cluttered kitchen. “They’re safe.”
“Outside isn’t?”
“I’m sure it’s fine. I don’t really know why.
” It was his turn to study the cracked linoleum tiles.
“It’s less that I’m afraid of out there than that I’m comfortable in here.
Really comfortable. And there’s a lot to do.
” He waved around the room at the mess he didn’t keep up with clearing away.
“As you see. I couldn’t leave her like this while I go out, right?
It could be dangerous. Something might happen. ”
Put like that to Myles, it sounded even more ridiculous than it had either in his head or out loud to his twin sister.
Myles, however, smiled a soft smile and tugged him against his body, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “What might happen?” he asked as he rested his head against Steven’s and let out a deep breath, like the contact soothed him in some way.
“I have no idea.”
“But something.”
“Something.” The man was warm. Solid. The panic of a moment before didn’t fit with the firm embrace Steven found himself in.
“The thing about irrational worries,” Myles said after a minute, “is that they are irrational. You don’t have to make it make sense.”
“How do you fix something that doesn’t make any sense?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have just scalded all the skin off my knuckles washing away a bit of harmless dust.” He pushed Steven away, but not too far. Just enough to look him in the eye. “You know, you really should turn down the temperature on your water heater.”
Steven snorted.
“No, seriously. If Shelly is going to spend any amount of time here, that hot water is too hot. It will hurt her.”
“You figure she’s going to spend time here?” Steven’s skin prickled, and his heart sped up. He liked the little girl, but he liked her uncle more, and if she was going to be here sometimes, that meant…
Myles squared his shoulders. “She will if I do.” How this muscled ex-army guy with the sad eyes could look so hopeful and so terrified at the same time, Steven didn’t know.
But he could do something about it, couldn’t he? And he didn’t even have to leave his house. “I hope you will. I want you to.”
Myles’s face softened into a smile again. His eyes lost a bit of the sadness. Or, maybe more accurately, something less sad pushed his grief back.
“Yeah?” He lifted Steven’s face a bit with two fingers, ran his thumb over Steven’s chin.
“Yeah.” The air in the room had grown suddenly thin. Steven gulped.
“That’s good.” Had Myles leaned closer?
“Yeah,” Steven said again. Or whispered, because Myles was so close it seemed rude to speak any louder. “Are you going to kiss me?”
Myles’s mouth twitched, like another smile wanted to form. He nodded. “I was thinking about it.”
“Less thinking. More doing.”
Myles grunted and lowered his head until their mouths met. It was a slow-release kiss, starting as a touch, deepening until Myles had cupped his head and Steven wrapped both arms around Myles’s waist.
It was probably a bad idea. Almost definitely a bad idea. Myles didn’t live here. Steven didn’t go places. But hell if he cared right then. The man could kiss. Did it have to be more than a summer fling?
Steven groaned, trying to turn his brain off.
Myles’s other hand wrapped around his neck, and his tongue flickered over Steven’s lips. Steven’s brain voluntarily went offline until he realized Myles had retreated enough to press his forehead against Steven’s and gasp for a breath.
“Huh,” Steven muttered, brilliantly.
Myles chuckled, released him, then stepped back. “Should we go count books?”
“What, now?”
“Your inventory,” Myles reminded him. “Books won’t catalogue themselves.”
“Unfortunate.”
Myles’s expression was more relaxed than Steven had ever seen it. “Isn’t it just?”
“You know you don’t have to help me, right?”
“Is it okay that I want to, though?”
Steven cocked his head, skeptical.
“I can handle it.” His fingers flexed where they lay lightly along Steven’s nape and shoulders.
“How about this. How well do you type?”
“Why?”
“In the interest of saving the skin on your knuckles, maybe I handle the books and you type them into the spreadsheet.”