21. Brodie
I’d been thinking a lot about what Maddox said. About farming. About moving the product. Did I really want to get into trying to sell myself—my wares—again?
As fantastic as it was to be free of the restraints that kept me from inventing, I was going stir crazy not knowing what to do with my time. I’d spent today lingering in shops. Catching up with Deacon and getting to know Adam, while checking out antiques… and the basement full of sexy furniture. Seeing how much Onyx had changed and how much he’d kept the same in the record store, and falling into memories of how much time Clint and I spent there. And browsing Joystick’s. Hot wings plus geek stuff? Brilliant idea.
I ended up at Gage’s Grub in the afternoon, and had been there since, talking to Sawyer. The burgers were good, the beer was good, and the company was fascinating. Sawyer knew a lot about one-off manufacturing, thanks to the work he and Evie did together making parts for combat robots.
Just thinking about it—combat robots—was cool.
“—it has this closed loop, dual extrusion option?—”
“Wait.” I cut Sawyer off, and the words looped in my head. “You said…” I frowned and processed. When he opened his mouth, I held up a finger.
That was the missing piece. “So triple-extrusion is an option too.” I was asking him as much as me.
“Yes.”
“I gotta go.” I stood abruptly, just as Gage approached.
Gage gave us each a confused look. “Something I said?” He joked.
“I’ll be back. Not today. You’re brilliant.” I pointed at Sawyer.
“Of course I am. About what?”
I’d tell them later. I needed to tell Clint first. I’d call, but I didn’t have his number. That was dumb.
It didn’t matter, and I was geeking-out levels of excited. The drive to Clint’s took entirely too long, considering nothing in this town was more than five minutes away. His car wasn’t there. When I’d passed Aubrey’s, her client’s car was still there, but Clint’s wasn’t. If she hadn’t been with a customer, I’d visit her. Get his number. See her…
I sent her a quick text. Let me know when you’re free.
What should I do now?
Drive?
That was my default answer if I needed to think through a problem, but it had been a long time since I had people so close who I could talk things out with.
It would have to do for now. I could better sort my thoughts out around this inspiration, so it would make more sense to Clint when I found him.
Raindrops hammered my windshield, and the rhythm should help me focus. I couldn’t quiet my thoughts long enough to grasp them, though. As I headed toward the edge of town, I was too excited to focus. We could… The possibilities… The things that could be made…
The loop of unfinished thoughts ground to a halt as I neared an old factory that had been abandoned since we were in high school, at least. Clint would escape here to dance, and his truck was parked around the side of the building.
I parked next to him, darted through the storm, and stepped inside. While the outside was in far worse repair than last time I was here, inside was still largely clean. Debris was pushed to the sides, leaving large portions of the floor clear. Parts of the concrete were cracked, but other portions were smooth and intact.
And one of those patches was where I saw Clint. There was a crack in the clouds, and rays of sunshine poked through, slicing through the holes in the roof as well, and lighting him up like a heavenly spotlight.
I couldn’t hear what he was dancing to, but his movements were as fluid and beautiful as ever.
The sun vanished as the rain’s intensity increased, and I didn’t care. I was captivated. He was grace personified.
Clint spun, and faltered when his gaze landed on me. “Fuck, you scared me.” He laughed as he took out his earbuds.
I shrugged. “I was trying to figure out how to interrupt you.” Except, I hadn’t really been. I would have watched him all night.
“Hmm.” Clint approached me, stopped with his toes nearly touching mine, and poked me in the arm. Once. Then again.
“What are you doing?”
“I thought you might be a ghost I summoned.”
“Were you communing with the dead?”
Clint shook his head. “Just the past. Hoping I’d see Aubrey tonight.”
An ache spawned inside, but I had no idea how to interpret the feeling.
“Or you.” Clint turned away and headed toward his bag.
His words made the ache shift.
I pushed the sensation aside and followed him. “I was looking for you. Is this a good time?” Of course it wasn’t. We were in the middle of a half-gutted building, during a heavy rainstorm, and I’d interrupted him.
He moved a pile of sweats off a duffle bag and grabbed a towel to wipe his face. “What’s up?” He asked as he stretched.
“I know how to make your thread.”
Clint chuckled.
“What?” I asked.
“Just… You’re still you after all this time.” He bent at the waist, pressing his hands to the ground, and held the pose for a few counts, before moving to stretch his legs individually.
Him cooling down while we talked was as familiar as if I’d watched him do it yesterday, so I had an idea what he meant. “Would I be someone else?”
“Money and success change people,” Clint said.
I’d changed. “I don’t hesitate to buy a first-class plane ticket.”
“I bet you still do. You just talk yourself into it being okay at the end.”
I grinned. Fair point. “Why were you hoping to see me?”
“I was ghost hunting.” Clint locked his hands behind him and rocked forward, raising his wrists toward the sky.
There was that phrasing again. “Am I a ghost?’
“Not anymore. You’re here. You’re real.”
“I am.”
“Why are you here?” Clint paused long enough to look at me with the question. “Not tonight, but in Haddarville.”
“I—” Hadn’t we had this conversation? If so, my answer had changed. “I wanted to come home.”
He gave a terse nod. “Do you regret leaving?”
Back then, he’d been furious when I told him I was going. My argument was he was moving to Salt Lake for college, and how was that different?
Because I’ll be within driving distance. If you go, you won’t. I could hear the argument as clearly as if we’d just had it. “No,” I said. “I did what I wanted to do.”
“And just like that you’re done?”
I’d been thinking so. Since I was asked to take a sabbatical I knew would end in my being fired, part of me believed that part of my life was over. It wasn’t, or I wouldn’t be here. “There’s still more for me to do, but I need to be here to do it. I need your help.”
“How are you so sure?”
“I’m not. But I have to pick a direction, and this is the one I pick. If I don’t do anything, I definitely make the wrong choice.” I needed to know, “Do you think I was wrong to leave?”
“If you’re asking me now? No.” Clint did a shake out of his limbs. “There’s so much that happened—bad and good—that I wouldn’t risk doing things differently.”
“If I’m asking past you?” This wasn’t why I was here, but the conversation was captivating. I’d missed him, but the feeling was more tangible now. More potent.
Clint grabbed his sweatpants from the top of his bag, and pulled them on. “If you’re asking past me, he doesn’t know why you would walk away from us for something so uncertain.”
The words were a gut punch. I understood what he was saying, but at the same time, “It wasn’t uncertain to me. I knew I was doing what I had to.”
“You asked.” He tugged his shirt on and tossed the towel on the bag, then sat.
“That’s fair.” I joined him, crossing my legs and making myself comfortable on a clean spot of concrete. It was still damp and sank through my clothing quickly, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade me from staying and talking.
Except that the conversation seemed to have stalled. The rain punctuated the silence, and I grasped for something to say. Did I want to stay in the past, or was it time to move into my real reason for being here?
Neither felt right.
“So, how about this weather?” I asked.
Clint chuckled. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t pretend to make small talk. it’s not you.”
No. But I’d learned over the years. I’d perfected the art of pretending I wanted to be discussing the banal. “Sometimes I genuinely want to show my appreciation for the weather.” That was also true.
“And those times, you tend to say something like the sun is gorgeous today or isn’t this great rain for fucking in,” Clint said.
He had a good point. “It’s not, though.”
Clint smirked. “You’ve gotten picky about the rain you fuck in?”
“I’ve lived in a place where they have more than icy rain.”
“You do a lot of fucking in it?”
No. I rarely dated. When I did hook up with someone, when it got physical, that was all it was. In the bedroom, getting off. Moving on. “No. But I have a balcony that runs along one side of my condo, and looks over the entire city. Most of it is covered, but when it rains, there’s one spot that always gets wet. I keep a set of lawn chairs out there, to enjoy the warm rain. No one but me sits in them.”
Clint tilted his head and trailed his gaze over me, his mouth twisted. “Sometimes I can see where you’re going with a thought, but this time…”
“I’m not going anywhere with it. I like sitting in the rain when it’s warm.”
“And that has what to do with fucking?”
I was riding a roller coaster of emotion, and loving it. This back and forth with Clint was fun. “Because it’s real easy for me to picture you and Aubrey joining me. And I have to imagine, that being high above the city, on display but not, while the sky showers you, it would be the perfect place to watch the two of you fuck in the rain.”
Clint let out a huff that might have been amusement, but his eyes darkened, and his smile changed. He gave a brief but subtle shake of his head.
What was going on in his mind?
Clint rolled onto his knees and crawled toward me, stopping when our noses were almost touching. He searched my face.
I could barely breathe, but I was captivated by the man in front of me. “I forgot how much I love the color of your eyes.” I couldn’t pull my gaze from the flecks and the way the dim light reflected off pools of blue.
“I forgot how much I missed you. Fuck you for making me remember.” Clint slid his hand to the back of my neck, holding me captive. The kiss was soft—raindrops beading on waterproof fabric. Then he dove his tongue into my mouth and dug his fingers into my skin.
I kissed back as if nothing else mattered. This wasn’t like when we were teenagers. It was more intense. More experienced. There was more desire. More everything.
The rain hammered on the roof above us, beating in time with my roaring pulse. Dripping around us. On us.
This wasn’t a good position for anything but kissing, and my cock was half-hard. Should we shift our angle? Go somewhere else?
“Oh.” Aubrey’s soft voice shattered the moment.
I broke away from Clint to see her standing in the doorway, a short distance away, watching us with an unreadable expression.