Chapter Four #2
"No, I do. I just don't know what it's like.
" He picked at the crust of his sandwich, not really eating it, just needing something to do with his hands.
"My whole life's been the opposite. Every day's supposed to be bigger than the last one.
More responsibility, more people depending on you, more things that'll fall apart if you're not five steps ahead of them. "
"Sounds exhausting." The same word Hayes had used in the dark the night before, and it landed the same way now — not sympathy, just an accurate read.
"It is." Avery looked down at the water, at his own reflection breaking apart in the small ripples off the dock pilings.
"I run infrastructure planning for a mid-sized city.
Traffic grids, utility routing, zoning projections.
Everyone's life runs a little smoother if I do my job right, and nobody notices unless I do it wrong.
It's the kind of job where the only feedback you get is silence, if you're lucky, and disaster if you're not. "
"Sounds like you picked a job that never gives you a break either."
Avery huffed something that wasn't quite a laugh.
"I didn't really pick it. It's what made sense.
Steady, respectable, the kind of thing that sounds impressive at a dinner party.
" He turned the sandwich over in his hands.
"My parents wanted something they could explain to their friends without having to add a lot of context. "
Hayes didn't say anything to that. Just looked at him for a second, something unreadable behind it, and then looked back out at the water like he was giving Avery the room to keep going or stop, whichever he needed.
Avery didn't keep going. He didn't need to.
The quiet that followed wasn't awkward — it was easy, the kind of silence that didn't ask anything of him, no expectation waiting on the other side of it, and he sat there with his sandwich half eaten and the sun heavy on the back of his neck and realized, with something like surprise, that nothing in his chest was bracing for the next thing.
No itinerary. No one checking a watch. Just water and heat and a man next to him who didn't need him to perform anything at all.
***
The peace lasted through the rest of lunch and about twenty minutes past it.
Hayes stood, brushing crumbs off his jeans, and nodded toward a row of covered slips further down the shoreline — narrow wooden structures with tin roofs, boats tucked inside them out of the weather.
"Got a throttle cable to swap before the holiday traffic starts up.
Renters'll be out on the water in two days and I'm not sending anyone out with a cable that's about to snap. "
"Need a hand?"
Hayes looked at him for a second, the same assessing look from the gravel lot, except this time it didn't land on the loafers — Avery had swapped into his one pair of sneakers before coming down — and whatever he found passed some kind of test, because he tipped his head toward the slip.
"Hold the flashlight. And the tools. Don't drop either in the water. "
The slip was narrower than it looked from the outside.
Avery ducked under the low tin roof after Hayes, and the temperature inside jumped immediately, the covered space trapping heat like an oven, humid and close, smelling of gasoline and stagnant water and warm rubber.
The pontoon boat took up almost the entire width of the slip, leaving maybe two feet of walkway along one side, and Hayes crouched by the engine housing at the back, working a panel loose with a screwdriver, muttering something to himself about rust.
"Light here," he said, and Avery angled the flashlight where he pointed, into a dark recess behind the motor housing where a corroded cable snaked down toward the throttle linkage.
For a while it was simple. Avery held the light steady, handed over a wrench when asked, watched Hayes's hands work with the same economy he'd used on the toast that morning — no wasted motion, everything exactly where it needed to be.
The space was tight but manageable, both of them finding their footing along the narrow walkway without much trouble.
Then Hayes needed the bracket at the far side of the motor, the one bolted flush against the boat's inner hull, and there wasn't room to get to it without moving.
"Gonna need to get behind you," he said. "Bracket's on your side."
"Right. Sorry, I'll just —" Avery tried to step back and found the boat's aluminum frame at his spine almost immediately, the walkway giving him nowhere else to go. "There's nowhere to —"
"Just hold still." Hayes was already moving, and there wasn't room for him to go around, so he didn't — he came in behind Avery instead, one hand braced on the hull beside Avery's shoulder for balance, his chest settling flush against Avery's back as he reached past him toward the bracket.
Avery went completely still.
The metal of the boat frame was warm against his spine, humid air thick enough to taste, and in front of him was nothing but the dark curve of the hull, and behind him was the solid, undeniable weight of another body pressed the full length of his back — the heat of it immediate, the breadth of it enough to block out the low tin ceiling entirely.
Hayes's arm came around Avery's side, reaching for the cable housing near his hip, his forearm brushing along the front of Avery's shirt as he worked the wrench into place, and Avery's whole body locked up around the point of contact like it had been struck.
He could feel Hayes's heartbeat. Not hear it — feel it, through the layer of damp cotton between them, steady and slower than Avery's own, which had picked up into something close to a sprint the second the space between them disappeared.
Warm breath moved against the side of his neck, even and controlled, and Avery held perfectly still and stared at the dark hull in front of his face and tried to think about anything else — the flashlight in his hand, the smell of gasoline, the two-day-old bruise on his shin from the car door — and none of it worked, because every inch of his attention had narrowed down to the places where they were touching.
The wrench slipped. A small sound, metal on metal, and Hayes went still behind him for half a second longer than the correction required — his hand pausing flat against Avery's hip where it had landed to steady himself, fingers spreading slightly against the fabric of Avery's shirt, not moving, not retreating either.
Avery didn't breathe.
He could feel the exact moment Hayes's breathing changed — one exhale that came out slower than the ones before it, longer, like it had to be deliberately controlled instead of automatic — and the heat radiating off him seemed to climb another degree, or maybe that was just Avery's own skin doing something it hadn't asked permission for.
The scent of him filled the narrow space completely: motor oil and clean sweat and something warmer underneath both, cedar-soap and skin, the same smell that had been in the borrowed shirt the night before except stronger now, close enough to be more than a memory.
Neither of them said anything.
Avery's hand had gone tight around the flashlight, knuckles pale, and he stared straight ahead at the hull and counted his own pulse in his ears and waited — for what, he couldn't have said, only that the waiting itself had a shape to it, dense and specific, filling every inch of space the humid air had left.
Hayes finished the bolt. Avery felt it more than heard it — the small mechanical give of metal seating into place, the wrench going still — and still neither of them moved.
One more second stretched out, thick enough that Avery could have sworn he felt Hayes's chest rise once against his back, held, released slow.
Then Hayes cleared his throat, low, and stepped back.
The heat of him left all at once, cool humid air rushing into the space he'd occupied, and Avery's spine came away from the boat frame like a held breath let go.
Hayes was already crouched back at the motor housing, testing the cable's tension with two fingers, entirely business again, like the last thirty seconds hadn't happened at all.
"That'll hold," he said, to the motor, not to Avery. "Good for the season, probably."
"Great," Avery said, and his voice came out rougher than he meant it to. He cleared his throat too, aiming for something normal. "Anything else you need?"
"No. That's it." Hayes stood, wiping his hands on a rag from his back pocket, and ducked out from under the low tin roof into the full glare of the afternoon without waiting to see if Avery followed.
Avery stood there another second in the humid dark of the slip, flashlight still in his hand, his heart going harder than the ten minutes of standing still should have accounted for.
He looked down at his own hip, at the spot where a hand the size of Hayes's had rested flat against him for longer than any repair required, and felt it there still — a warmth that had nothing to do with the heat trapped under the tin roof, and everything to do with how badly he hadn't wanted it to end.