Chapter 17McCormick
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
MCCORMICK
As we approach the for sale sign, I slow my bike to a crawl. Stiles shakes his head. This isn’t the one. In fact, it’s the fifth house today he’s rejected. But I have to agree with him, none of them feel right.
We roll on in search of the next one. For the last two days, we’ve been running down leads on available houses from ALR brethren, Brewer and Mandy, and my own Internet sleuthing.
Maybe it’s time we hire a realtor. This morning we got pre-approved from our bank for a VA loan, and I checked our credit scores. We’re all set to buy our first home.
It’s thrilling to know that we’re going to be living together permanently. No lease, no verbal agreement, or temporary situation. One mortgage, two names. We’re building a future together that belongs to the both of us.
After four years, it’s about fucking time.
We turn left down a quiet street and leave the neighborhood behind us as we continue through a wooded area that stretches at least three miles. The house that comes into view isn’t impressive at first glance. It doesn’t have charming curb appeal or massive square footage. It wasn’t designed by a famous architect, or featured in any magazine. The simple, one-story ranch style home is part brick, part white siding, and about as plain as you could get, but I can see the potential.
A chill dances along my shoulders, making the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention. Something about this house grabs me and is holding on tight with both hands.
This is it. This is our home.
Stiles removes his helmet and climbs off his bike. “It's quiet out here.” His bearded face breaks out in a grin. “I like quiet.”
“We could add some shutters to the windows and paint the front door. Maybe add some landscaping to spruce it up.” A covered porch runs along the entire length of the front of the house, and I can just picture us sitting out here in rocking chairs, watching for deer and squirrels and rabbits.
Stiles turns in a circle, taking it all in. “The yard is big enough to park everyone’s trucks or bikes, if the Bitches or the ALR came to party.”
Fuck that. “They better not tear up my fucking lawn. They can park down the hill and walk.”
Stiles laughs. “Oh my God. You’re him. You’re the old grumpy man who yells at the kids to get off his lawn.”
Is he mocking me? “Depends what they’re doing on it! Why do you need to do anything on the lawn when you can do it on the sidewalk?”
“I don’t see a sidewalk,” he smirks, turning left and right. “Just grass.”
“Well, while I’m painting the front door, you can lay the concrete for a sidewalk.”
“Should we call the listing agent? I’m dying to see inside.”
“Yeah, sure. I don’t much care what it looks like inside. We can fix whatever’s wrong. This place just feels right.”
Stiles closes the distance between us and grabs hold of my hips. His voice is rough, just a whisper, and the way he’s looking at me has my dick half-hard.
“Is this the one, Mac?”
“You’re the fucking one. You , Stiles. I would live in a goddamn tent with you, as long as we were together.”
His eyes flare. He wasn’t expecting such an honest declaration. But I’m not in the mood to flirt and play games. This is our house and he’s my man. I’m laying claim to both of them.
He crushes his mouth to mine, licking between my lips to get inside. The kiss feels urgent, needy, and tells me exactly how badly he wants me. Shit, could we get away with fucking right here on the front lawn?
Boldly, Stiles reaches for my dick, cupping me in his hand with a little squeeze. “I know what you’re thinking,” he chuckles.
“That we could do it right here on the grass?”
His chuckle turns into a full-blown laugh from deep within his chest. “People can’t walk on it, but we can fuck on it?”
“It has to do with even weight distribution. Feet make a bigger impact than an entire body rolling.”
“Mac, quit,” he wheezes, “you’re killing my hard-on.”
“You should know better than to ask.”
Stiles shakes his head. “Let’s peek in the windows. Then I’ll buy you lunch.”
“Deal. Then you can take me home and finish what we started.”
“Deal.”
But after we finish lunch at the tavern, we only stop at home long enough to switch out the bikes for my truck before heading to Stiles’s place to begin the long process of cleaning his apartment and packing up his stuff.
Moving sucks. Packing sucks. Cleaning sucks. But it’s all worthwhile because I never have to say goodbye to him again and watch him walk out my door for the night.
“We have to stop by the leasing office and terminate my lease.”
I give him a gentle smile. “We did, yesterday. We’re just here to clean and pack today.”
Stiles’s dark brows draw down tight over his eyes. “Don’t let me fuck this up by forgetting shit. It’s important. I don’t want my broken head to ruin this for us.”
“Babe, you’re not gonna fuck this up. Trust me, okay?”
He grins. “I like when you call me babe.”
It takes us twice as long as it should to finish because we can’t stop making out every fifteen minutes. Like a couple of teenagers. All day long I’ve been walking around with this stupid perma-grin on my face, looking like a damn fool.
It feels fucking amazing. Being in love, and with my best friend, so I know it’s real. I can trust this feeling. Stiles isn’t going to run out on me, or change me into someone else, or any of the things that have happened in my past relationships.
We’re solid. Ride or die.
“That’s about it,” Stiles calls from the bathroom. “We’re done.” He walks out carrying a basket of laundry. “We’ve just got to get this stuff washed.” He passes it off to me. “Why don’t you load us up while I turn in the keys at the office?”
“I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”
We end up at the shitty laundromat closer to our place rather than the nicer one near his. After dumping his laundry in the machine, we take our usual seats, with our backs against the wall of glass windows so we can keep an eagle eye on our load. People at this laundromat are notorious for stealing clothes out of the machines. I rub the toe of my boot across the dirty floor. It’s straight up fucking nasty. If you accidentally drop a piece of clothing on this floor when you’re switching machines, you have to wash it again before you can wear it.
The tops of the machines have a layer of dust two inches thick, and the area surrounding the vending machine has dried up snacks and food stuck to the linoleum. It’s been there so long, the ants don’t even want it.
“Someone should clean this shithole up.”
“One hundred percent,” Stiles agrees. “Check out Flavor Flav in the back,” he says, nodding his head in that direction.
He’s talking about the tall skinny white man, wearing black denim shorts and a white T-shirt four sizes too big. He’s holding his pants up with his right hand so they don’t pool around his ankles, and his left hand is clutching the giant gold stopwatch around his neck.
I can barely get the words out around my laughter. “Maybe he’s timing his laundry?”
“Yeah,” Stiles laughs, “that’s it.”
“You want a drink?”
“Nah, I’m good.” Stiles eyes the vending machine warily. “They probably haven’t restocked that soda machine in six years.”
“Probably.” I push to my feet and shuffle over to the vending machine, dropping money into the slot. A green can rolls out the bottom, and I grab it up and pop the top, tilting my head back for that first effervescent sip that makes my mouth tingle. A man walks up, presumably to grab a soda, and pauses to give me a once over. He reads my shirt, ‘Save A Cycle, Ride A Vet’. It’s one of my favorite ALR shirts.
“Did you lose your leg in a motorcycle accident?”
“Afghanistan,” I answer, taking another swig.
“Oh. Thank you for your service.”
“My pleasure.”
When I take my seat beside Stiles, I give him a sideways glance, sizing him up. He’s quiet. Too quiet. “You good?”
“Yeah. My sister called yesterday while I was at work. My nephew’s getting ready to ship out for basic training.”
“Already? Damn, it feels like yesterday we were at his school talking to his JROTC class.”
“Yeah. It snuck up on me.”
His face is drawn tight with tension creating a furrow between his brows. “Hey. He’s gonna be fine.”
“I’m not worried about basic. I’m worried about what comes after. The idiot enlisted as infantry. He didn’t pick a specialty even though I drilled that shit into him. It increases his chances of getting called up.”
I bump his shoulder with mine. I’d like to put my arm around him, but I don’t want him to freak out and pull away. Cause that shit would sting. “Whatever comes his way, we’ll deal with it together. And we’ll be there for your sister.”
He looks amused. “Together?”
“That’s what I said.”
Stiles sits a little straighter. He likes the together thing.
Look at us, navigating an uber-healthy, but super secret straight to gay relationship that we really haven’t even discussed in depth, and are basically winging it on the fly. But we’re nailing it.
We’re like, relationship gurus, or some shit.
I pull the truck to a stop in front of Stiles’s garage, and climb down. He's bent over a bike, and I’ve got a great view of his ass in his worn jeans, covered in grease stains and dirt. They hug him just right. His shirt rides up, showing off a glimpse of the top of his crack. Visions of sliding my tongue along that crack to see where it leads fill my head with inappropriate thoughts, and I’ve got to adjust myself before one of his coworkers busts me.
I don’t know if it’s a best friend thing or a boyfriend thing. Maybe both, but when he spots me, Stiles's face breaks into a huge, silly grin, a lot like the one I’ve been wearing for days. No, weeks!
“What are you doing here?” Then his smile falls. “Did I miss an appointment? Something for the house?”
“No. Relax. You get off soon and I thought we could check out some places.”
He wipes his hands off on a rag and tucks it back in his pocket. “I thought you liked the one we saw the other day.”
We’ve been calling it the Pigeonhole, ‘cause it’s on Pigeon Lane, but he must have forgotten already.
“I do. But Riggs sent me the name of his realtor. I called her up today and she got in touch with the listing agent for Pigeonhole. They can’t show it until next Tuesday, but she’d like us to check out some other stuff while we wait.”
“So, we’re meeting up with her now?”
“As soon as you’re ready.”
“All right. Let me go wash up and tell James I’m leaving.”
Cindy is waiting for us outside of the first house, but we’re just here to humor her because I can already tell it’s a no from the first glimpse. It's a townhouse. If I wanted to continue sharing walls with my neighbors, I would just stay put in my apartment.
“Just smile and nod,” I tell Stiles. “This place is a definite no-go.”
We walk through the townhouse, and I have to admit, it’s nice. Everything is brand new and clean as a whistle. I would even say a little too fancy for our taste. I turn on the faucet in the kitchen, but no water comes out.
“It’s not hooked up yet,” Cindy explains. “But check out the cabinets and drawers. They have that soft close feature so there’s no slamming.”
No slamming? I’ll be the judge of that. I start opening cabinets and drawers and shutting them as hard as I can, you know, kicking the tires. The face of the drawer falls off and clatters to the kitchen floor.
“Oops, sorry.” Stiles shoots me a what-the-fuck look. “What?” I whisper, “I barely touched it.” We make our way to the dining room, where the absolute ugliest chandelier almost knocks me in the head. “They hung this way too low.”
“Well, you wouldn’t be walking underneath it. There would be a table here,” Cindy explains.
“That makes sense.” I reach out to stop it from swinging back-and-forth, and one of the dangling crystals breaks off in my hand, while another drops to the tile and shatters into a thousand sparkling pieces. “Shit.” I hand Cindy the one in my hand that I saved. “That looks expensive.”
She smiles to cover her irritation. “No worries. Let's move on.”
“I’m gonna check out the bathroom,” Stiles calls, going his own way as we move into the living room.
I make small talk with Cindy about the French doors, the tiny-ass backyard, and the lack of a garage, and realize Stiles isn’t back yet. It takes about thirty seconds to check out the bathroom. He’s got to be actually using it.
But there’s no water! I bet he already forgot. Shit.
“I’m gonna check out that bathroom with Stiles.” I catch him as he’s coming out of the bedroom, re-buckling his belt. “Did you use the bathroom?” I whisper loudly.
“Yeah,” he returns in the same stage whisper. “Why? You need to use it? ‘Cause there’s no paper.”
“That’s because the water isn’t hooked up.”
I watch his face as the light dawns. “Oh. Fuck. No wonder it wouldn’t flush. I thought the damn thing was broken.”
“Yeah, like everything else in this place. What the hell did you wipe with?”
His eyes get shifty, and he looks left and right before admitting, “My sock.”
Old Army trick. “Where did you put it?”
His cheeks color. “Balled it up and tossed it under the sink.”
“And the toilet’s still full?”
“Yeah, I told you, it won’t flush.”
Aw hell, my man needs saving. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. Quick.”