Chapter 9 #2
“What?” Jasper asked, making his way off the ladder to march towards Ryan, the other man following close behind.
“You were way too close to the ladder, buddy,” Ryan said, pointing at the other guy, angry heat rising in his chest as he got closer.
The guy was sickeningly attractive up close, dark hair that curled at the nape of his neck from the damp air, broad shoulders that strained the sleeves of his shirt, a jawline that could cut glass.
Ryan considered smashing a beer bottle into it, just to see.
“I was holding it still!” he said. “Is there a different way to hold a ladder?”
Ryan glared even harder. “Holding it is only part of the role of spotter.” He looked at the ladder and scoffed. “Look—the back leg is on top of a tree root. He could have died.”
“He wasn’t going to die falling three feet onto a pile of leaves. What—who even are you?”
“Who am I? A better question is who are you, and what are you doing to my tree?”
“Your tree?”
Jasper rubbed his face. “Stop. Maverick, this is Ryan. He used to live here.”
Ryan’s gut turned on itself. Used to.
“Oh, okay. Right on. Nice to meet you,” Maverick said. He put his hand out to shake Ryan’s, but Ryan didn’t reciprocate.
“Maverick is a real dirtbag name,” Ryan said. “Sorry your parents hate you.”
“What the hell is your problem?”
“Ryan, stop. I hired Mav to help me with the trees,” Jasper said. “That’s what we were doing when you interrupted us.”
“Oh, I interrupted you?” Ryan asked. “I interrupted you and Mav?”
Jasper rolled his eyes. “Thanks for your help, Mav. I think we’re just about done. Are we on for tomorrow at eight?”
Maverick nodded. “Yeah, for sure. I’ll pick you up.” He stepped closer to Jasper and smiled at him flirtatiously. Ryan knew it was, because it was the exact sort of smile he gave Jasper when they first met.
Ryan pushed that aside, though, caught off guard by the offer to give Jasper a ride to the park. “Where’s your car—"
Maverick spoke at the same time. “Do you want a coffee tomorrow? I usually stop on my way out of town.”
“He doesn’t like coff—"
“Yeah,” Jasper said. His elbow reached out to gently bump against Maverick’s forearm, turning the heat in Ryan’s chest into an inferno. “You know I’ve been into lattes lately.”
“Since when?” Ryan asked. “And why is he picking you up? Where’s your car?”
“Since the other day when I met up with Logan and we got coffee to go over the list of projects. Maverick was there. They’re friends. He’s helping with the trees at the park. Anyway, I had a latte, and it was good!” He turned to Maverick. “I’ll have whatever we got that day.”
“Sounds good. I’ll see you at eight. Nice to meet you, Ryan,” Maverick said. “Uh, I guess.”
“Sure. Nice to meet you.” Ryan scratched the side of his neck before turning towards Maverick’s truck. “Nice truck.”
Maverick nodded. “Thanks, man.”
“Drive carefully,” Ryan said.
He gave Ryan an awkward smile. “What?”
“I hope you get home safely. Be careful out there.”
“I mean… okay. Yeah, I will.”
“Good,” Ryan said. “Make sure you wear your seatbelt.”
“I always do,” Maverick said, eyes darting to Jasper.
“Ryan—"
Ryan nodded. “Hope your brakes are up to the weather.”
“Um, Jasper—"
“You just never know what might happen. Life is unpredictable, like brakes in trucks.”
Jasper pinched Ryan’s arm, hard, and smiled at Maverick. “You’ll be fine. Sometimes the driveway gets slippery in heavy rain, but it just started raining. I’ll see you at eight. With coffee, right?” he asked, waving at Maverick’s slowly retreating figure.
Maverick didn’t reply again, just nodded and climbed into his truck, starting down the driveway at a snail’s pace.
Jasper didn’t waste any time before spinning around and glaring at Ryan. “What the hell was that?”
“What was what?”
“Be careful out there? Brakes are unpredictable? Who says that to someone they’ve never met?”
Ryan scoffed. “I’m sorry that I wanted the arborist you hired to survive the trip down our driveway, which you know gets sketchy in rainy weather.”
“You are ridiculous.” Jasper turned sharply and walked towards the house. “Such a fucking baby.”
“Because I care about safety?” Ryan yelled, chasing after Jasper. “I’ve always loved safety! You know this about me!”
Jasper shoved through the front door and made his way towards the basement stairs, then started stripping off his wet clothes.
The rain wasn’t falling too heavily, but he’d been outside trimming dead branches, most of which were dripping wet from overnight rainfall.
Jasper’s clothes had been sticking to his body when Ryan arrived, but Ryan hadn’t been able to pay any attention since his focus had been on Maverick.
Who, for what it was worth, did not seem trustworthy at all.
He seemed like a conman trying to get into Jasper’s damp, plastered-to-his-ass pants, and that was the sort of thing Ryan needed to pay attention to.
For evidence. In case this guy was, in fact, a conman. Like Logan.
“You are so embarrassing,” Jasper said, pulling off his shirt. He wadded it up and threw it down the stairs where they kept multiple dirty laundry baskets. Next were his jeans, which he pulled off one leg while he balanced on the other. At the top of the stairs.
Ryan reached out and grabbed Jasper’s arm to pull him away from what he worried would be certain death if he fell over.
“Stop!” Jasper said, shaking Ryan’s hand off his arm.
“You were near the top of a staircase!”
Jasper huffed and pulled the pants off his other leg and threw them down the stairs, too. His socks followed closely after, and then Jasper was standing there in just his underwear, arms crossed and face scrunched up angrily.
“Mav is a perfectly nice guy just trying to help me fix the park.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s all he wants,” Ryan said, his eyes trailing up and down Jasper’s body. “Forget the saws and ladders, he was looking at you like he wanted to throw you into that pile of leaves and fuck you hard enough to knock the branches down.”
“First of all, that’s an insane thing to say. Second, I was wearing jeans and a turtleneck outside. Are you kidding me?”
“Are you kidding me? You’re not an idiot, and neither am I.”
Jasper made his way to the sink to get a glass of water. “No, I’m not.” He took a sip and sighed. “Why are you here, anyway?”
“You said you’d be out of the house at eleven, but you’re still here. I guess you got distracted by Ladder… Ass… Guy,” Ryan said. He rubbed his forehead, really wishing he’d come up with a wittier comeback.
Jasper choked on the water he had in his mouth before letting out a hoarse laugh. “Ladder Ass Guy?”
As much as Ryan wanted to show zero amusement at anything related to Maverick, seeing Jasper laugh at something he said—and in an affectionate way, not an irritated one—was too precious to ignore.
He laughed a bit, too. “His face was so close to your ass, and you were on a ladder. That’s what I meant. ”
Jasper was still laughing, each breath out flexing the muscles of his stomach deliciously, drawing Ryan’s eyes to the firm lines of his belly and the hair spanning the length of his chest, disappearing somewhere behind the elastic of his wet boxer briefs.
He let his eyes linger, focusing on the outline of Jasper’s cock, the shape of his balls cupped by soft blue fabric.
Ryan cleared his throat without thinking, ending Jasper’s laughter.
“Hey! Don’t try to make me laugh,” Jasper said. His scowl started out half-assed, fighting against a grin, but then he snapped back to anger. “Why are you here?”
“Your text said you’d be gone by eleven. I came to get some tools out of my workshop. I didn’t know you’d be here,” Ryan said. “Not that I don’t want to see you. Of course I do.”
“My text said tomorrow. Did you even read it? Or did you come here specifically to catch me doing something you could be a jerk about?”
“No, I—” Ryan paused. He hadn’t actually read the text, too focused on the optics of read receipts and texting frequency—specifically, the uncomfortable disparity between theirs. “I misread it, I guess.”
“Okay.” Jasper headed towards the bathroom. “I’m taking a shower, then hosting a few people for a game night. No need to lock up when you leave.”
The door closed behind him, leaving Ryan with a jumble of emotions clawing at his insides.
Anger at Jasper’s attitude, confusion at his playful laughter, embarrassment that he'd acted like a possessive asshole moments before Jasper’s reminder that he wasn’t Ryan’s to possess.
Even curiosity about who was coming to the game night, and how long he’d been doing it—he’d mentioned it once ages ago, but Ryan wasn’t sure he’d ever brought it up again.
He made his way to his workshop, where he kept both his tools and his model landscape supplies. Jasper had been so busy the past few years he wasn’t making anything, claiming he’d fallen out of love with the artform, but Ryan knew better.
About a year ago, he’d started a landscape of Jasper’s theme park—the plan was to give it to him as a Christmas gift to reignite Jasper’s passion, but time got away from him. Now it was half finished, sitting uncovered beneath a hole in the roof he hadn’t noticed before.
The falling water had dislodged several of the attractions, washed away most of the vegetation, and drowned several model animals that now lay on their sides, wedged under toppled buildings.
The model of Jasper, painted as realistically as Ryan could manage—with a pathetic, scrawled smiley face—stood by the park’s office.
He thought the Ryan figurine was missing entirely until he stepped forward and heard something crunch under his shoe.
“Oh,” he said to himself. He knew exactly what it was but couldn’t bring himself to look down.
Twenty minutes later, he'd dried the landscape with rags and secured most of the buildings. He picked up what he could, shoved it into his car, and left before Jasper’s friends arrived.