There's This Guy Page 15

  Jake couldn’t see the room. His eyes were too wet. His soul floundered in the ocean of savage emotions and conflicting thoughts. The keys were tempting. What Evancho offered seduced him. Trailing his fingers over the ring, he shook his head.

  “I can’t. It’s too much. The cost of running the—”

  “What I pay for that is nothing compared to how it will heal you. Because I see you, Jake. I see your mother looking back at me through your eyes, and I see how haunted you are. I told myself before it is none of my business. You are a full-grown man, but I was wrong. That is another thing I am begging forgiveness for. And now I need to make it right. Do right by you. Like you’ve always done right by me.” Evancho stood, then walked around the desk to sit on its edge near Jake’s chair. Placing his hand on Jake’s shoulder, he gripped him tightly, giving Jake a quick, light shake. “You take the keys and work here, where I know you are safe. And one Sunday, you bring your friend Dallas around my house for dinner. At six. I insist. Tasia insists. And if you have to, bring his loud friend too. I know someone she might like because I know him, and he will definitely like her.”

  Fourteen

  THE KEYS in Jake’s pocket weighed down his every step. It was stupid. He knew it was silly to think two slivers of metal would add much to what he carried, but it felt like he’d loaded a boulder into his jeans pocket, and every step forward took more effort than he had in him. Crossing the street toward Dallas’s building was a struggle. He was torn between heading back to Evancho’s office, to do what he didn’t know, and the beckoning peace he only found when Dallas was around.

  Traffic was thick, and he’d dodged a line of motorcycles zipping through the intersection, blowing the red light with a cop hot on their tail. Hot, he supposed, was a relative term, considering the cop meandered by, his siren on a low wail and slowing once he crossed into the intersection. Once clear, the squad car zoomed off, its screaming klaxon echoing between the low-rise buildings.

  Celeste’s car was parked on the side of the building, a sure sign she was going to bail halfway through the day, and Dallas’s Tesla glistened in its spot at the curb. It was odd seeing the building stripped of the faux-adobe someone had slapped on its exterior at some point in its history, leaving it bare-faced and tippled with baby pink patching lines near the side and front windows.

  The exterior grates were gone, in time for the cooler weather and the air-conditioning unit install. He’d left many of the interior mesh screens in place until a security system could be wired in, and he was done fabricating the panels to weld onto the jalousies’ new glass panes. The sheer organization of everything boggled Jake’s mind, but Dallas appeared to thrive on it, juggling schedules and work crews in an odd maniacal glee.

  Even though he’d admitted to Jake Bombshells was probably the biggest project he’d ever taken on and probably would ask Jake to tie him to a chair if he ever considered something like it again.

  “Like he’d listen to me,” Jake scoffed. Taking in the reworked jalousies, Jake pursed his mouth. “Okay, maybe on a few things. Definitely not about any buildings. He likes bossing people around.”

  “Talking to yourself, honey?” Celeste came around the corner, hefting a pair of paint cans up for Jake to see. “Look! Goodies for the painters.”

  “Let me get those for you.” Jake reached for the cans, then cocked his head when Celeste shook him off. “What?”

  She studied him carefully, one hip canted out, her overalls and tank top as spotless as they’d been the first time he’d seen her in them. “If I were still a guy, would you grab them from me?”

  Pulling up short, he considered it, then frowned slightly. She had a point, a valid point, but the urge to help her lingered. “Nope. But from now on, I’ll ask even the guys, okay?”

  “Didn’t think so—okay, valid point. It’s good to always ask. No matter who’s carrying the damned things if it looks like they need help.” She nodded toward the door. “You can get that for me, though. Hands are full, and there’s way too much jelly here for me to make it through that crack Dallas left me.”

  “So many land mines,” Jake muttered to himself, swinging the heavy front door open. “I need a manual or something. Anything.”

  “You’re doing fine,” she assured, slipping by him with a quick smile. “You’re also hot as fuck, and that goes a hell of a long way. Believe you, me. Oh, and heads-up, we’ve got company—”

  “Celeste! I told you I’d help you with those,” an unfamiliar older woman called out, emerging from the hallway leading to the back of the building. “I was just coming outside.”

  She was blonde, dressed down in jeans and an old long-sleeved shirt, and she reminded Jake of his neighbor’s long-boned Siamese cats, elegant and poised, with clear pale blue eyes. Very familiar blue eyes. The hair color was wrong, those eyes belonged with pitch-black hair, and the look in them lacked the smoldering humor Jake was used to, but the color—that vivid, sun-kissed sky color—was definitely recognizable.

  “And the pudding thickens,” Celeste murmured to Jake. “Gird your loins. Life is about to get really fucking interesting for you, honey.”

  “Why hello.” Her smile was an echo, a bit of a quirk to the side and rich with warmth, a melted butter pat on a fragrant golden cake. There was a hint of a husky drawl with a curl of upper-class tea and cut glass to her voice, for all the casualness in her stride, and the hand she thrust out to Jake sparkled with silver rings, thick bands studded with gems or flourished designs. “I’m Martha, and you must be Dallas’s Jake. I’ve heard practically nothing about you, but I’m certain you can fix that, can’t you? Let’s you and I talk.”

  THE DAY got stranger with each passing second. It hadn’t started out that way. When dawn crept into Jake’s apartment that morning, he’d gotten up, showered, and headed in, only stopping long enough to grab a large cup of coffee from the shop across the street. Within the course of a few hours, his changing life went from unsettled following the death of his father to a straight-out tsunami of chaos.

  Between Evancho and Martha Yates, Jake didn’t know which way was up anymore. Dallas’s mother was sweet, poking in a very gentle way, coaxing bits of information out with a delicate hand. Celeste mentioned Jake reworking the building’s ironworks, restoring the pieces back to their original condition, and the conversation veered off into history and art.

  It’d been an eye-opening ten minutes. Perhaps even fifteen. She’d listened. Like Dallas listened. Leaning in and eyes on him, intent on what he said and then weaving back in with more questions. Martha seemed at home amid the art deco faded glory, her blonde bob swinging gently about her sharp jaw, softening her chin, and when she spoke, her hands flitted about, dabbing at the air and skimming over his arm, much like her son did whenever he was nearby.

  Dallas came in with a bit more of the paint, and he’d paled, setting the cans down, then excusing himself to talk to Jake in the office. He’d made some excuse. Jake was sure of it, but he’d been too entranced with Martha, much to Celeste’s amusement.

  “She’s not supposed to be here,” Dallas said for the fifth or sixth time since he pulled Jake into the office, closing the door behind them. “I’m—”

  “Don’t apologize again,” he cut Dallas off. “She’s your mother. Don’t apologize for having a mother. It’s fine. She’s fine.”

  “But are we fine?” Dallas stepped in close, hedging Jake into the desk. “Are you fine?”

  It was hard to think with Dallas standing next to him, and he rested his ass on the desk’s edge to give him a bit of breathing room, but that only made things worse. With his legs stretched out, Dallas straddled his shins, the lingering heat of Dallas’s body traveling up Jake’s length and burrowing into his center. He couldn’t not respond to Dallas anymore. Every glance, each touch, and sometimes even simply the sound of his laugh tickled Jake’s senses. There was a brightness about the man, a lemony drop of color on the gray of Jake’s thoughts, and he instinctively seemed t
o turn toward Dallas, a rain-drowned flower seeking the sun as it crested over the horizon.

  Then Dallas leaned over, shuffling closer, and put his hands on the desk, his thumbs brushing Jake’s hips. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  Jake wanted to drown in Dallas’s eyes. He’d never thought about anything like that before he’d seen the man climbing out of his sports car and lowering his sunglasses to stare at the battered art deco building on the corner. When he thought of his world before Dallas pushed his way past the thick membrane Jake lived behind, he had to admit the changes were startling. He woke up in the morning… anticipating the day. Took time to have a cup of coffee, then study the sketches he’d done for the pieces he wanted to work on later. He looked forward to the text he’d get an hour later from a groggy Dallas, a half-kidding demand for a bagel with cream cheese and a gallon of hot, sweet coffee to be delivered to his apartment before Jake went over to Evancho’s.

  The day he’d walked across the street with a cream-cheese-slathered bagel and an enormous cup of java earned Jake a brush of Dallas’s lips across his cheek and a smile he still carried inside of his heart when he was feeling down.

  “I’m okay.” There were needs in Jake, lingering threads whispering to him, begging him to respond to Dallas’s casual touches.

  He risked lowering his hand, trailing his fingers over Dallas’s palm, then hooked a thumb around his. Jake felt Dallas’s heartbeat pulse through where they touched, and he nearly drew away, except Dallas crooked his finger, tightening the bond Jake’d begun.

  “Evancho… he did something today.” Jake dug the keys out with his free hand and dangled them for Dallas to see. “He gave me shop keys. Told me to clean out the back room so I don’t blow my apartment up. And he invited me… us to dinner at his house this weekend. Or any weekend. Celeste too. I think he’s going to set her up with someone. Hopefully not Frank because—”

  “Wait, let’s go back to the keys.” Dallas’s grin stretched wide over his face, plumping his cheeks. “Tell me everything he said. Slowly.”

  They stood, barely touching while Jake spun out every detail he could remember of the conversation. There wasn’t much. He’d stammered through most of it, and when Evancho began talking about his mother, his thoughts flatlined, taking in nothing more than the fierceness in Evancho’s voice, then the tenderness when he spoke of his son.

  “He told me he was proud of me.” Jake turned the idea of Evancho’s pride over in his head. “He likes the things I do, and he talked about me with his wife. I don’t know how to take all of it, Dal. It’s not real, you know. This conversation I had with him confuses me, and at the same time, I feel tight in my chest because I’m scared of failing him, of failing his trust. I like the man. He’s been good to me. Better than I deserve—”

  “You deserve everything, Jake.” Dallas slid in a butterfly of reproach. “You’ve got to—”

  “Remember that,” he finished the litany he heard from Dallas’s lips at least twice a week. “I know. I know. It’s just… too much sometimes, this time. Everything he said to me, layered on top of the next like he was gilding pot metal, and pretty soon I couldn’t tell what was gold and what wasn’t. My head’s not on straight, and after I’m done here, I’ve got another therapy appointment.”

  “Want me to come with you?” His thumb tightened again, pressing into Jake’s.

  “It’s got to be as boring as hell waiting for me.” Jake liked walking out of the therapist’s office and seeing Dallas’s smile. He loved Dallas’s hand on his back when they left, and he exulted in the feel of Dallas’s arms around him after a couple of the tougher sessions, but asking the man to wait forty-five minutes just so Jake could get a hug out of the deal seemed a bit too much to ask sometimes.

  “I don’t mind, besides not like I don’t work on stuff while you’re in there.” His grin was fleeting but deep. “Okay. I kind of work, then read or watch an episode of something. It’s like a bit of downtime for me, and being there for you is as important to me as you being there for you. Tell you what, we go to the therapist—well, you go and talk to her—and afterwards, how about if you and I go out?”

  “Go out?” Jake’s brain glitched.

  “Yeah, like a date. Okay, not like a date. An actual date, J.” Dallas’s expression changed, growing somber and tender. “Since we’ve been kind of dancing around each other for the past few weeks, and I’ve been thinking, let’s go do something fun.”

  “A date?” He’d been wrong. The day could get more overwhelming. It all became too real, too quickly. He’d turned a corner someplace, before his father passed and after he’d seen Dallas’s sexy curve of a smile. Now Dallas opened a door, leaving Jake to walk through it.

  He didn’t know if he was ready. Didn’t know if he’d ever be ready. It was a trust moment, something his therapist challenged him to experience. Today had already blown through so many of those goddamned moments he wasn’t able to choose to take, and now Dallas was dumping the most important, most real moment right in his lap to keep or throw away.

  “Yeah, J, a date,” Dallas repeated. “Might be kind of fast. I don’t know. I just feel like today… with everything… we’ve gotten to a point where we decide what we want to do… what to be.”

  Jake took a breath, and his fear found its own voice, slithering out of the darkness inside of him. “Suppose I fuck it up. Suppose I fuck us up? I don’t want to lose you, Dallas. I don’t want to risk you.”

  “Babe….” Dallas rested his forehead against Jake’s, bringing their noses together, the barest of touches. “You’re not going to lose me. No matter what happens to us… there will always be an us. I will always be your friend first. Even when or if we become lovers, I will always be your friend. I just… hope for more. I want more, and I’m kind of hoping you want more too. So… a date. Doing something fun with maybe a lot of fried food and possibly cotton candy.”

  It was still in his lap—that moment he’d longed to take—and Jake swallowed, unable to meet Dallas’s eyes. Trust. Having faith in someone, believing they wouldn’t do anything to hurt him on purpose, was more frightening than a set of keys, a weekend dinner with a man he respected, or the mother of a man who made him joyful inside.

  “I’ve never had cotton candy,” Jake confessed, his breath rippling through the space between their mouths. “Or I don’t think I have.”

  “That’s just a crime, babe.” Dallas’s voice dropped, roiling with a deep velvet promise Jake felt down to his toes. “We are definitely going to have to get you some cotton candy.”

  “Okay, then.” Jake exhaled, letting go of the knot bundled up tight inside of his chest. “You’ve got a date.”

  FROM THE outside, Doctor Val Shiga’s office looked like every other door along a long corridor of doors. The building was a standard cement-and-glass office structure, perhaps with more parking and a bit more landscape, but it didn’t stand out from any of the other thousand buildings dotting Los Angeles’s busy streets.

  It was hard for Jake to believe the seventeen-story building next to a taco joint and a muffler shop would become a Mecca and his salvation.

  There was nothing personal in the waiting room. It was simply four walls with thick carpet, comfortable wide chairs, and a music system quietly playing soothing rainforest tracks on a continuous loop. The space’s colors ran to cool, the carpet a tumble of grays, chiseled granite and marble pile soft enough to sink into when stepped on, and the chairs were padded heavily, broad enough to sit cross-legged if he’d wanted to.

  Dallas said the chairs were damned comfortable, but Jake hadn’t spent more than five minutes in one. Dr. Shiga—Val—shared the office with two other therapists, and instead of a receptionist, they’d installed a bank of buttons with their names below for their patients to push when they came in.

  “It’s kind of weird, you know?” Dallas whispered to him once as soon as they sat down. “It’s like we’re in purgatory, waiting for St. Peter to come o
ut and give us a cat so we can head on over to heaven.”

  “You think there’s cats in heaven?” Jake eyed Dallas.

  “No, I think there’s dogs in heaven, but in order for people to get in, they have to take a cat,” he’d replied. “Only assholes don’t love dogs, but true, pure souls love cats. You refuse the cat, you don’t get in.”

  “Now I feel like I need a cat,” Jake grumbled to himself as he sat down on the couch in the doctor’s inner office. He gave the older woman a gentle smile, reassuring her of his sanity, which made him chuckle. “Sorry, something Dallas said a couple of times ago when we came into the waiting room.”

  “How are you doing with him? With your relationship?” She took up her position in a broad chair much like the ones in the waiting room and tucked her feet under the table sitting between them. “Or do you want to talk about something else?”

  “Something else.” Jake schooled his face, then remembered his promise to her about being open emotionally. “He and I are going to go on a date tonight. I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with that yet. Well, talking about it. I’m kind of….” Words were sliding around in his belly, refusing to rise to his tongue and dancing about with razor-sharp edges. “Scared? Apprehensive? I’m excited about it. I’m not scared of Dallas. I think I’m more scared of myself. For myself. I just… I guess I want to keep Dallas to myself for a bit. Because it’s like… a birthday cake. He and I. And I don’t know what it tastes like, but… it’s cake, so I know it’s good.”

  “That I understand perfectly.” Her smile reminded him of Martha’s, a warm chocolate chip cookie smile dipped in soothing, calm vanilla ice cream. “So what do you want to talk about?”

  He liked her. Liked her a lot. She was more approachable than the first therapist he’d found, a man who’d resonated disapproval when Jake began talking of his feelings regarding Dallas and his attraction to men in general. Dallas insisted he find someone he liked better, and Val was… comfortable. He needed comfortable.