22. Salem
TWENTY-TWO
SALEM
I barely remember what I was doing before Indy decided to turn me inside out, but I know I need to find where I left my notebook. I head to the bar, waving briefly at the guys while I move flooring samples and paint swatches around. That’s when I realize they’ve stopped talking.
I glance up. “Yes?”
Kit can barely conceal his laughter, while Jerryn and Bane look like they’ve seen an alien. Ridley has an amused smile on his face, but it’s Lowen who looks like a concerned big brother.
“Boo,” he says. “I think you should swing by the bathroom.”
“Bathroom? Why?”
“Because you look rode hard and left wet,” Kit says without hesitation.
My cheeks flame with heat as I twist on my heel and stomp down the hall to the bathrooms. They’re still pretty gross inside, but we have running water and mirrors, so that’ll do.
When I see my reflection, embarrassed laughter bubbles out of me. Sure, Indy sort of fixed my hair, but my face is red from his stubble and my neck and collarbone are covered in reddish purple bruises. I turn on the water, wet my hands, and run them through my hair, then splash my face.
Resting my hands on the sink, I gaze into my eyes in the mirror. I should be mortified that all the guys, my bosses , know what Indy did to me, but I can’t summon that emotion. I’m… proud. Indy is such an incredible man that it’s almost unbelievable that he actually exists.
When I come out of the bathroom, I walk down the hall with my shoulders back and all the confidence Indy’s attention provides. He’s with the guys at the bar now too. He winks at me, and my stomach fucking flutters in response.
Lowen smiles warmly, handing me my notebook. “Since you’re here, Salem, can you weigh in on the wood stain options?”
“Sure.”
He slides four pieces of wood toward me. They range from very light to very dark.
“Hmm, the dark one is nice, but it might feel like a dungeon in here. I think you’d want something durable with the college kids around, so I’d probably go with this medium dark one.” I push it forward.
“Told you,” Bane says.
Lowen pops his bottom lip in a pout. “Fine. You guys win.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“Lowen thinks he’s in a Paris café still,” Ridley says, but his tone is full of affection for his friend. “We were trying to get him to realize we need something to hide the inevitable wear and tear.”
“Sorry, Lowen.”
He smiles. “It’s fine. I’ll give you this if you give me the light fixtures.”
Kit groans. “Seriously, Low?”
“How about we compromise?” Indy suggests. “You can put them in the bathrooms.”
Lowen scrunches his nose. “How is that a compromise?”
“It’ll be nice,” Indy says. “Like a…” He waves his hands. “An elegant break from the main bar.”
Ridley pushes a small cardboard picture toward me. “He wants those chandeliers and wallpaper.”
I look down at the swatches. The wallpaper is black with silver geometric swirls on it, and the light fixtures are very pretty, but definitely don’t read small town queer bar.
“I think it could be cool, Lowen. No one would be expecting swanky bathrooms in a place like this. We want to attract a diverse crowd from locals to students, so it would really appeal, especially to women.”
Lowen glances around the space for a moment before his face lights up. “I think I can get on board with this.”
Indy rubs my back before pulling his hand away abruptly and clearing his throat.
“Fine,” Lowen continues. “We can do the black fixtures for the rest of the place.”
Oakley approaches us. “Small update, guys. We can finish the office drywall today and get the new floors laid tomorrow if that works for you.”
“It does,” Lowen says, his tone all business now. “I have a side quest for me, Salem, and Indy.”
“What’s that?” Indy asks.
“We’re going canvassing. We’re gonna visit the other businesses in the area and talk to them about any potential partnerships and what their struggles are. I also have a business consultant coming to talk to us tomorrow. She’s agreed to give us a few quick and dirty lessons on running a restaurant.”
“Quick and dirty, just how I like it,” Kit says with a grin.
Lowen simply shakes his head. “Head in the game, Kit. ”
“Oh, it is.”
“Why do I have to go canvassing?” Indy asks.
Lowen tilts his head before placing his hand under Indy’s chin. “Have you seen your face, gorgeous? Not that Salem and I can’t charm the masses, but our target market is different from yours.”
“You’re using me for my looks?”
“Absolutely. Leverage all your assets.” Lowen bats his mascaraed lashes. “The three of us cover all bases, plus the ladies like you. I wouldn’t know what to do with a woman’s attention.”
“Same.” I chuckle.
“Guess I’m going canvassing.”
Three hours later, Lowen, Indy, and I stumble into a local restaurant for a food break. We’ve covered most of Willow Bay and part of Clearbrooke, and I’m tired and hungry, but I’m also having a blast. Lowen and Indy together are pure comedy. Lowen is a diva in the best of ways, while Indy basically coddles him and gives in to his whims. It’s charming.
The restaurant has seen better days and smells like old grease, but I need some carbs, so it’ll do. A teenager walks over to our table, handing us sticky menus and looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here. That is, until he focuses on Indy. His face lights up and his acne-dotted cheeks turn pink.
“Hi, guys. I’m Paul. Can I get you some drinks?”
“Do you have sparkling water?” Lowen asks as Indy scoffs a laugh.
“Uh, no,” Paul says. “We have regular water.”
I bite my bottom lip to keep from laughing.
“I’ll have an iced tea,” Lowen says with an artificial smile .
“Cool,” Paul says. “And you?” His voice literally trembles as he looks at Indy.
“Cola is fine.”
Paul nods, still staring until I clear my throat. He flinches, turning to me.
“I’ll have some regular water.”
“Be right back.”
Paul scampers off and I chuckle. “Someone has a crush.”
Both men look up from their menus, oblivious.
“Paul was staring at Indy like he’d seen a god.”
Indy laughs before going back to his menu.
“Indy hardly notices anymore,” Lowen says. “What a life, huh? Walking around as a living personification of sex and masculine beauty.”
“Says the one who treats life like a runway.” Indy winks.
“Oh, I have my fans, but it’s nothing like Indy.” Lowen glances at me. “But I don’t have to prove that to anyone at this table.”
“No, you don’t,” I say, drawing Indy’s eyes to me. “Hottest man on the planet.”
Indy just shakes his head again.
“Weird that he’s not an asshole too,” I continue. “I mean, you’re confident and aware of yourself, but you could choose to be a dick.”
“There are plenty of people in this world who think I’m a dick, trust me.”
Lowen chuckles. “Truth.”
His comment makes me wonder about his past for a second. Do I want to know how many people have graced Indy’s bed? Nope, but I am intrigued by his comments.
“Indy’s college exploits are legendary,” Lowen says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a plaque in a dorm or frat house in his honor. ”
“Shut up, Low.” Indy grins, putting his menu on the table. “You make me sound terrible.”
“You weren’t?”
He nods, clamping his hands together. “College was about freedom for me. I didn’t want to miss out on a single opportunity that came my way. So I fucked my way through most of the campus, but I was safe and respectful. Consent has always been sexy to me.”
My cock twitches in my underwear and I shift in my chair. “What was your worst college hookup?”
Lowen chuckles, leaning back in his chair. “Oh, do share.”
Indy drags a hand through his hair, his smile pure sex, causing a ping of jealousy to bounce around my chest.
“Gabriel, hands down,” Indy says.
“I thought so,” Lowen says.
Indy leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Gabriel was a student teacher in my US History class. He was catnip to a guy like me—small, submissive, pretty.”
I nod, even though I’m not sure I want to hear more.
“He had these big hazel eyes that lured me in. I wish I had been able to think with the head on my shoulders instead of the one between my legs back then, because that twink was fucking unhinged.”
“Oh no, what happened?”
Indy pauses as Paul appears, dropping off drinks and taking our orders. I order a basket of fries and chicken strips, on the edge of my seat to hear the rest of this story now that I know it goes off the rails.
“We hooked up and it was pretty cool,” Indy says. “Gabriel was very eager to please me, and I even broke my one and done rule for him.”
“You liked him?”
“In bed, yeah. I didn’t know shit about him otherwise. He was dangerous too, seducing me in places that were all kinds of wrong. The library, the classroom, the common under a tree at night. I was drunk on him for a solid month.”
“And then?” Lowen prompts. The smile on his face is the one you get when you know the ending of a fucked-up movie or book.
“And then he showed up at our apartment one night absolutely losing his shit because he saw me talking to a guy on campus and thought I was flirting. I told him who I talked to and why was none of his business since we weren’t exclusive, and then he…” Indy makes a head exploding gesture. “It was like a bomb went off.”
“A complete meltdown,” Lowen adds.
“He was screaming at me and throwing shit. I wasn’t about to hit him or get rough, but I was close to losing my temper. The guys dragged him out and he spent an hour in the front yard screaming at me until some neighbors called the cops.”
I gasp. “Holy shit.”
“It gets worse,” Lowen says.
“No.”
Indy nods. “It does. He took off after the cops talked to him, but I got an email in the morning advising me that I was suddenly failing the history class.”
“He didn’t!”
“He did. He went and altered all my grades in the system and told the professor he suspected me of cheating.”
“Oh no.”
“He keyed my car. He showed up at a party I was at and told everyone I gave him herpes and I had a small dick.”
“Oh my god.”
“Fortunately, my reputation preceded me, so people knew I was psychotic about safe sex and testing, and my dick speaks for itself. ”
“How did you handle it?”
“I sucked it up and scheduled a meeting with my professor. I showed him all my previous graded assignments since I printed out everything, and I explained to him what had happened. He was livid.”
“I bet.”
“Gabriel was suspended for tampering with grades and inappropriate conduct with a student. We got a nice brick through the window for that.”
“We had to hold Kit back,” Lowen says. “He was ready to beat his ass since Indy wouldn’t.”
“Wow. How did he go away?”
“After three months of harassing and stalking, I’d finally had enough and got in his face. Scared him so bad he pissed himself.”
“Did you beat him up?”
“Didn’t have to. I’ve heard I can be pretty scary when I’m mad, and I was way past mad at that point. I told him to knock it off or I would ruin his life.” Indy shakes his head, gazing off for a second. “I threatened to make sure not a single person he ever met would ever trust him or fuck him again. I told him to forget I existed or regret meeting me for the rest of his life.”
Indy’s voice dropped several octaves, and I swear the man just got ten times sexier. How is that even possible?
“I assume he believed you?”
“He did. Rumor is he packed his shit and moved back to wherever he was from. Never saw him again.”
“I hope he learned from it,” Lowen says, “and changed his ways or got some therapy.”
“Damn.”
Paul returns with our food, and we dig in.
“I had some funny ones though,” Indy says, lightening the mood. “There was this guy… What was his name? ”
“The Spiderman one?” Lowen asks.
“Yeah.”
“Nick.”
“That’s right. Nick. He invited me over and went into the bathroom to freshen up. He came out wearing a full-blown Spiderman costume, but it was open where his ass was.”
I snort a laugh. “Nice.”
“He wanted me to pretend I was Doctor Octopus.”
“Oh my god.”
“It was okay, but he kept making swishing noises like he was shooting webs from his hands. Weird as fuck.”
“That’s crazy.”
“What about you?” Lowen asks. “Any memorable hookups?”
“Hmm.” The one that comes to mind feels safe enough to share. “Probably this guy who called himself a daddy.” I munch on a fry while Indy’s eyes bore into me. “I met him at a bar and went back to his place, and it was cool at first, but then he started pressuring me to let him put a diaper on me and feed me snacks like I was a baby. He was looking for a little, and that’s not me.”
“Oof,” Lowen says. “That’s rough.”
“He had a whole room set up with binkies and blankies and plushies. I hope he found the little of his dreams.”
“Low, tell him about that mountain dude.”
“Oh god,” Lowen says dramatically. “Evan. He was divine. Rugged, handsome.” Lowen stirs his tea with his straw. “Unfortunately, he forgot to mention he was married, a fact I discovered during a romantic winter night in his cabin.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“The missus came home. She got an early flight because a storm was coming. Fellows, that storm landed in that cabin that night. Poor woman. I called her a few weeks later to apologize and tell her I didn’t know.”
“How did she take it?”
“Well. We had brunch a few times. It wasn’t the first time that had happened, but it had been a couple of years so she thought he was over it. She dumped him and ended up taking a transfer with her company and moving west.”
“And then?” Indy prompts.
“The cheating bastard called me and asked me to come over the minute she moved out. I declined, of course, sisterhood and all that, but what a loss. His dick was a gift from the universe.”
“Sounds like we’ve all had some doozies over the years.”
Indy nods. “Yeah.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice though to find that one person who just clicks?” Lowen muses, gazing down at his salad. “I don’t believe it’s real, but I really want someone to prove me wrong. Even if it’s not my love.”
I shift my gaze to Indy to find him already looking at me. I can’t read the expression on his face, but it makes me want to crawl into his lap.
“Maybe…” I stop myself, unsure of where I was going.
“Maybe what?” Indy says.
I shrug. “Maybe someone will prove Lowen wrong someday soon.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”