Rock Bay 2 - Letting Go (2 page)

He liked boys.

Shit. Fuck. Damn. Every swear word known to man. Could there be anything worse?
There had been inklings, hints, but nothing definable until just a few minutes before, when in a flash of holy shit, it had hit him like the side of a careening freight train. His friend, his closest damn friend in the world, football star and legendary pussyhound of Rock Bay High School, Tallis Carrington had leaned his head back and laughed out loud at some dumbass thing that Brock, another of their other friends, had said. The light from a dusty overhead window had hit his brown hair in just the right way, and out of nowhere Drew’s stomach clenched, then exploded into a mass of giddy bubbles.

Over Tally. His friend. Shit. Fuck. Damn… again.
“Seriously, Drew. What’s your problemo?” Brock aimed a piece of celery at him and fired. Drew caught the celery and dropped it on his tray with the rest of his uneaten food. His stomach was coiling itself into tighter and tighter knots.

“I guess I was just thinking about that chem midterm,” he lied quickly.

The last thing he needed was for them to start teasing him about being a space cadet or a dumbass, because invariably space cadet or dumbass turned to gay. Every insult turned to gay eventually. No matter what, in minutes, whatever you were doing wrong evolved into taking it up the ass from some unsuspecting nerd who happened to be passing by.

Thank God the guys were distracted by their favorite target, who had walked into the cafeteria at that moment, head bent over a book. James Barry. The poor chubby little freshman had been tormented since the first week of school. Drew tried to stay out of it, but he didn’t stick up for him either. Wouldn’t want the focus to turn.

“Ooooh look, it’s Butters!” Brock crowed. Drew thought Brock was a tool most of the time, but he was one of the crowd. Drew had to be friends with him. It was the way things were. He kind of felt bad for the little Barry kid too. Didn’t seem like a bad guy. Drew thought he saw Tally flinch, but then he joined in the fun, heckling the red-faced underclassman.

No, Tally. You’re better than that.
“Drew, I bet you’d be all over Butters, huh?” Brock made an exaggerated spanking motion and pumped his hips. Drew felt a panicky little flutter, but made a big show of rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, I totally wanna do him.” Drew tried to go for sarcasm and was rewarded with one of Brock’s braying laughs.

“You’re such a homo, dude.”
“Whatever. You gonna eat those carrots?” He didn’t want them either, but he did want a distraction.
Brock shrugged and pushed the carrots toward Drew. “Here, take them. They make me fart.”
Tally chuckled under his breath. “Nice,” he muttered.
Drew tried not to notice Tally’s deep, mellow voice or the way he felt that chuckle against the side of his arm… or how damn amazing Tally all of a sudden smelled.
Oh, God.
Suddenly the school year couldn’t end quickly enough. Drew needed to get the hell away from Tally before he did something stupid like lean over and lick him. He wondered if he’d gone insane.

“Hey, guys, I think I left a CD out in the courtyard. I’ve gotta go get it before some bitch steals it.”

“Is it The Cranberries?” Tally asked with another low chuckle.

“No. Smartass.” Drew couldn’t help laughing as well. He and Tally grinned at each other. He tried not to feel any different about the smile than he always had. No luck. Damn. “I'm gonna take off. I’ll see you in history.”

Drew passed by the Barry kid again, who was sitting at a table with a rather ferociouslooking girl in jeans and a sweatshirt with long, sandy pigtails. She glared at him. He shrugged apologetically and headed for the cafeteria door.

Rock Bay—Present

“
T
HAT
guy is a total fag! He needs to take his flaming ass out of this club.” Brock’s voice rang loud and clear over the milling crowd at the city building’s main meeting room. Drew cringed.

Club?
They weren’t in a club. They were at a damn city council meeting! How drunk was Brock after all? He was slurring, listing to the side, and being an asshole. As usual. Drew shook his head and tried to maneuver Brock over to the refreshment table. If he could just get him to eat some bread to soak up whatever he’d been most likely chugging in the parking lot.

Brock’s comment had been aimed at Lex Barry, who'd been coming to the city council meetings for a few years. Brock had been a total asshole to Lex for far longer than that. Ever since he thought Lex’s name was James and Drew’s friends called the poor kid Butters. Drew had to credit his old crush Tally with starting the torturing, but Brock was more than happy to continue it ad nauseam.

He wished there wasn’t any bad history between him and Lex. Drew sighed mentally and wondered why he’d ever come back to Rock Bay after college. He wondered if, at nearly thirtythree, it was too late to escape.

Drew took stock of the room where the city council meeting was being held—faux wood paneling, an accordion wall that would fold up to make the room larger if needed, cheap tables, a bunch of stuck-up country club folks. Sometimes he wondered how Lex stood it. Sometimes he wondered how
he
did… then again, sometimes he looked at Lex and thought it would be really nice to kiss him. Damn. Not a good thing to think, at least not in his current company.

Drew really didn’t fucking want to spend yet another night dealing with Brock, but he was still one of the “guys,” and the guys were Drew’s best source of business in town. He did the accounting for all of Brock’s friends and their parents—the business owners, the people with money. Without Brock, he’d be sunk. He knew that. Drew gritted his teeth.

“Brock, let’s blow the rest of this thing off. I think there are a few pints with our names on them at O’Toole’s.”

Brock wasn’t having it. “Hey, Sexie Lexie, what ya doing here? This isn’t Butt Buddies ’R’ Us you know.” He called it out loud. Several people turned to stare. Drew wanted to sink into the ground. He tried to make an apologetic face to Lex. Lex simply rolled his eyes.

“AA is down the hall and to the left, Brock. You might want to make a stop in there on your way out.”

“Oh, fuck you!” Brock yelled. Drew made a pleading face at Lex.
Please don’t say anything else to him!
Why did Lex have to go there? He started herding Brock toward the door.

“Lex was just joking around, B. Let’s get out of here before they start the speeches.”
He thought he saw Lex roll his eyes again and wished he could go back and say something, anything, to take Brock’s dumb comments out of the guy’s head, but he had his hands full of slobbering drunk asshole. As usual.
It wasn’t easy, but Drew managed to get Brock to the door. It would’ve been nice if one of the other guys had been at the meeting to help him haul Brock’s heavy butt around when he wasn’t in the mood to cooperate. Drew wished he had the balls to say something when Brock was messing with Lex Barry, just like he’d wished it back in high school. But he hadn’t had the balls back then, and he didn’t have them now. Brock was still an asshole, Drew still felt like he had to do what Brock said so he’d stay in the town’s good graces and…
fuck
. Nothing ever changed, did it?

Well, nothing other than Lex Barry.
Damn
. What used to be five and a half feet of pudgy freshman had turned into nearly six feet of lanky, gorgeous hotness. Drew really tried not to stare. Really. All the stuff that woke up back in high school when he looked at Tally, though? It never exactly went back to sleep. Which was a problem for him, since all his closest friends were homophobic pricks.

“We going to O’Toole’s?” Brock asked as soon as they were out in the fresh air.

 

“Don’t you think we should get you home,

B?” Drew tried not to roll his eyes.
“No. I don’t want to go there. Sucks. Letsh go
to the bar.”
Drew sighed, pulled his phone out of his back
pocket, and searched through his menu while trying
to hold the phone with one hand. It was awkward,
but Brock kept swaying toward him.
“Hey, Rick?” He was really glad that Rick
had picked up. Drew wasn’t a big fan of Brock’s
other right-hand man, but he’d get the job done. “I
need backup.”
Sometimes Drew wished their friend Tally
hadn’t left town back in high school. He knew the

guy couldn’t stay, what with the monstrous shitstorm that had swirled around his family at the time: his father’s affairs, the suicide, all the money disappearing. He somehow thought that Tally wouldn’t have let Brock turn into such a mess. There had always been something decent about Tally—hidden perhaps, but there if anyone chose to look.

“C’mon, B. I’m going to take you to O’Toole’s, and Rick will meet us there. Is that cool?”

“Rick’s so gay,” Brock murmured. “Yeah, it’s cool.”

If Drew knew his old buddy, Brock was about a half a beer from passing out. He sure as shit hoped so. He wanted to get the night over with. He had a ton of work to do when he got home.

Drew was grateful to Rick for coming to his rescue. He helped the grumbling Brock back to Drew’s condo, where he was deposited on the couch. They covered him with blankets that probably saw more of Brock than the ones at his own house and waited until he was snoring and dead to the world before they both breathed a sigh of relief.

“He’s getting worse.” Rick kept his voice low so they didn’t wake the sleeping beast.

Drew reached up and shut his kitchen window against the late winter chill. They’d had an unseasonably sunny day, but the warmth was long over. “Yeah, he is. He sure doesn’t listen to Lindsay, though, just bitches about her trying to control him.”

Rick shrugged. “He doesn’t listen to me either.”
“Or me.”

“God, where’s the power of Tally when we need it? Brock used to do whatever he said.”

Drew chuckled to cover up the way any mention of Tally still made his breath catch in his throat… like he was going to be caught thinking about how hot Tally used to be. “Tally? What made you bring him up? We haven’t seen him since high school.”

“I know. I wish he had a bat signal or something. Then he'd swoop into town and deal with Brock, and we could have a night off.”

“Rick, Brock’s your best friend.” Drew felt guilty talking about the guy behind his back, and he’d never really even liked him. It kind of sucked that Rick would do the same.

“What? Do you like running cleanup every weekend? It’s not even only weekends now. How many nights has he slept on your couch this week?”

Drew shrugged. The guy had a point. “Three, I think.”

“Listen, I gotta go. Jill’s waiting for me to start
Dexter
. You cool watching him?”
“Yeah, he’s just going to sleep it off, and I’m going to go to bed. I have a really long day tomorrow.”
Rick punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Night, dude.”
“Night, Rick. Thanks again.”

Chapter Two

 

M
ASON
flopped back onto his couch and stared up at his new ceiling. It was a weird feeling, to be on the same couch but in a new room—both comfortable and unfamiliar. He had the weekend to unpack all the boxes that were stacked around his furniture before he started work at the hospital.

Ugh. Unpacking. Tomorrow is another day.

He wished he’d hired the guys who’d moved his furniture to do all the unpacking too. Unfortunately, he didn’t think they’d appreciate the contents of some of his boxes of, um, hardware, though. Or was it software? Either way. Mason grinned at idea of the superstraight moving guys he’d hired coming across that one double-headed dildo he’d gotten for a birthday present, or his favorite graduated plug that vibrated and—
ooooh
.

Maybe he did need to do some unpacking. It would help him sleep better, after all, if he had some of his personal belongings in their… places. The dishes and towels could wait. The goodie drawer could not.

M
ASON
hadn’t slept very well the night before. It was that whole first night in a new place thing, he imagined, or maybe because it was so damn quiet. Hopefully after a shift or two at the hospital, he’d be exhausted enough that he’d just pass out, change of scenery or not. He’d only been in the city for a few years, but he’d grown to appreciate some of the parts of it. He kind of expected the usual noise of the 45th Street thoroughfare in Seattle, clogged with traffic sometimes even before the sun rose. Instead, he heard birds.
Birds
. And other than that, it was oddly, disconcertingly, quiet. Part of him did miss the city already, the knowledge that he could walk downstairs and a half a block to a great French bakery, Dick’s drive-in, family owned Thai or Mexican… even his friendly neighborhood gay dive bar with five-dollar mini pitchers filled with all sorts of yummy cocktails. They’d always let him in even though he was clearly underage. He missed all of it already.

But he’d made the right choice.
Mason realized the city and the bars and the dating scene weren’t going to be what his life was

about anymore. Not for a while at least. A long while. His career was more important, and he totally wasn’t going to miss the dating drama in Seattle. It was good to be away. It was. Mason sighed.