Spencer Cohen Series, Book One (The Spencer Cohen Series 1) (7 page)

“You didn’t sound ungrateful,” I told him. “More shocked that someone would do something like that for you.”

He bit his lip. “No one has.”

“I really need to speak to this Eli of yours,” I said jokingly. “Because that is a crying shame.”

Without another word, he pushed on the door and held it open for me. I gave him a nod, “Thank you, kind sir.” He rolled his eyes.

“Hey, here they are,” Emilio called. He was leaning over the front counter with a pen in hand, working on some tracing paper. He stood up straight and stretched his back. “Whatcha got there?”

“Record player,” I said. “Andrew didn’t have one.”

Andrew held the two LPs like they were a shield. “Spencer bought it for me.”

Emilio laughed, but there was a curious look in his eyes, which I very astutely ignored. “Well, plug it in and let’s listen,” he said.

I put the record player on the coffee table and took the cord out from the back. “Well, I bought one LP for Andrew and one for me.”

“He got a Jeff Buckley for me,” Andrew said. He was nervous but making an effort.

I plugged the player in. “And Andrew chose some
Jazz Piano: Funk and Crap
for me.”

Andrew narrowed his eyes at me. “It’s not crap.”

“Oh, is that what I said? I meant to say
Jazz Piano: Funk and Fusion
. Crap must have just slipped out.”

Grinning, Emilio told Andrew, “He gets away with saying shit like that because of his Australian accent.”

I scoffed. “Like you can talk. You get all suave with your Spanish when you’re sweet talking Daniela.”

Emilio gave me a shit-eating grin, and Daniela called out from the back cubicle. “And it works, every time.”

Emilio replied to her, something in Spanish about tonight and the rest I chose not to follow. But by the way Andrew blushed, I’d say he understood every word. He cleared his throat and handed me the two records. Figuring I’d be polite, I chose the Jazz record and slid the vinyl out of the cover, putting it on the turntable and carefully lowering the tonearm.

The familiar crackle sounded, then a piano intro played. It reminded me of those old movies of a Ray Charles type, sitting in a dive bar in New Orleans. I was intrigued. Then a double bass thrummed in, followed by what sounded like a whole brass section. “Hey this isn’t bad,” I told him.

Andrew looked a little smug and a lot cute, so I pretended to be grossly interested in the album cover. And when I looked up again, Andrew was standing over near the counter, watching Emilio draw.

It was easy to forget, with one being tattooed and a little rough around the edges and the other being clean cut and Ivy League that they were both artists.

I should have realised that they would have a lot in common.

I left the music playing and joined them at the counter. Andrew was just watching as Emilio drew waves and the sun, and after a while Emilio looked up at him. “It’s very good,” Andrew said.

Emilio shrugged the compliment off. “Thanks.”

“Andrew’s an artist too,” I reminded him.

Emilio looked at Andrew, like he’d forgotten that too. “Cool. What do you draw?”

“Character story boards,” he said like it wasn’t remarkable. He couldn’t take his eyes off the stencil paper. “Your freehand technique is incredible.”

“Freehand is what I do,” Emilio said. “It’s easier on paper than on skin, but sometimes to get the rise and fall of the body, I need to freehand directly onto the skin.”

“Jesus,” Andrew whispered. “I couldn’t ever do that.”

“Character story boards sounds pretty cool though,” Emilio said. He grabbed a slip of tracing paper and pushed a pen to him. “Show me what you can do.”

Andrew looked at me, the corners of his lips pulled down. Then he smiled and put pen to paper. In what was seriously no more than a few swipes of the pen and an endearing pout as he drew, he pushed the piece of paper out. It was very simplistic but equally identifiable. It was the head and shoulders of a guy, cartoon-like from a movie, but this guy had his hair styled up, short on the sides, and stubble on his jaw. But it was the suspenders I wore on the day I met him that gave it away.

He’d drawn me.

Emilio burst out laughing and offered Andrew his hand in a brother’s type of handshake.

I scowled at them, feigning offense, when really it was pretty freakin’ cool. “Oh, look! It’s the guy from page four of
Trendy Living
.”

Andrew laughed and snatched back the paper, and above the little guy he drew the words
Trendy Living
, like it was a magazine cover. He wrote Spencer Cohen underneath it. “There. Now he’s on the cover.”

I laughed, and before I could snatch up the drawing, Emilio took it. “This is going on our Wall of Fame.” He pinned it among the other photos of tattoos.

Just then the door opened and two women came in and smiled at Emilio. “Just finishing up the drawing now,” he told them. “Take a seat. Won’t be a minute.”

One of the ladies bopped her head. “Cool music!”

Andrew whacked my arm. “Told you.”

I laughed but said, “Come on. We’d better leave Emilio to it.”

“You can stay if you like,” one of the ladies said suggestively. She looked between me and Andrew. “You both can.”

Figuring it was a good time to test him on public displays of affection, I slid my arm around Andrew’s waist. “Sorry, ladies. We have
things
that need doing.”

Andrew blushed, and he might have held his breath, but he didn’t flinch.

“Oh,” she said, getting the point. “Shame.”

“Not for me,” Andrew said, shocking the hell outta me.

I burst out laughing just as Daniela came out from the back. She looked at me with a weird smile on her face, and as Andrew and I collected the record player and the two LPs, I noticed Daniela give Emilio a questioning look. I ignored it, and thankfully neither one of them said anything. Not in front of Andrew anyway. I knew I’d probably get roasted later.

Andrew really was a surprising man. His appearance said he should be straight-laced, a good all-American boy, mild mannered, shy, and even a bit nerdy. But his sense of humour, his taste in movies and music, and his intelligence made him intriguing to me. He would come out with the least expected comments and lines, and I was really starting to think that Eli must be fucking crazy to have walked away from him.

“Aren’t we going this way?” Andrew asked, nodding toward the back of the shop.

I walked to the front door. “Nope. We’re going to your place. Buses are this way.”

Andrew shrugged but didn’t move. “Well, you can catch the bus if you want, but I drove. My car is this way.” He pointed to the back of the store.

Emilio laughed, and I flipped him off. Raising my chin, I walked past Andrew. “This way then.”

“Bye, boys,” Daniela said. “Lola said she’d call you tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” I said, giving her a smirk on the way out. I held the back door open for Andrew. “You could have just said you drove.”

He smiled as he walked out into the sunshine and over to a BMW parked in the lot behind the row of shops, where we’d walked past earlier. “You didn’t even say ‘Hey, that’s my car’ when we walked right by it.”

He unlocked it and opened the driver’s door. “Can’t go telling you all my secrets in two days, can I?”

“The fact you drive a car isn’t exactly a secret.” I put the record player on the backseat, and got in the front passenger seat of his immaculately clean car.

“Well, you never asked me if I drove,” he said, shifting the gearstick into reverse. “What if Eli had asked you about my car? You’d have failed.”

“I would have told him I was too busy letting you fuck me in the backseat to notice what kind of car it was.”

He grinded the gears, and his mouth fell open.

I burst out laughing. “Just kidding. We’d never fit back there. Reverse cowboy on this seat, however…”

He narrowed his eyes at me, put the car into first, and swung it around neatly. “Do you always go for the shock value?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s just funny. Like now.”

He shook his head at me and pulled the car out onto the street. “Was that funny?”

“Yep. And it also told me something without having to ask.”

“What’s that?”

“You didn’t correct me when I assumed you’d top me,” I said, going for casual, though my dick wasn’t casual about it at all.

“Ah, veto.” He cleared his throat and blushed a palette of reds. “Veto, veto, veto.”

I laughed. “Fair enough. But I can tell you’re totally imagining it right now.”

He glared at me.

I pointed to the road. “Watch the road. Jesus!”

He did, thankfully. “Would you like to drive?”

I snorted. “Hell no. Wrong side of the car, wrong side of the road for me.”

He grumbled something that sounded a lot like ‘Freakin’ Australians’ as he weaved in and out of traffic. I had to admit. He was a good driver. And his car was very nice.

“I haven’t driven a car since I got here,” I admitted.

“Not at all?”

“Nope. I either bus it or walk. I live central to everywhere I want to be. I kinda miss it though, to be honest.”

He considered this for a while. “I was only joking before, but I could pull over if you want to actually drive?”

“No,” I said, smiling at him. “I’d rather not crash your car on our second date.”

“Date?”

“Well, you know what I mean. For all intents and purposes, and if Eli asks, then yes. It’s a date.” This seemed to shock him, so I added, “Don’t panic though, I don’t expect you to put out on the second date.”

He shook his head at me. “You are insufferable.”

I hummed contentedly. “Thank you. You did well back there, by the way. When I put my arm around you. You played it cool.”

“I uh, I wasn’t expecting it.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to tell that lady it wasn’t a shame for you that I was gay.”

He checked his rear vision mirror and changed lanes. “Yeah well, that annoys me. Saying it’s a shame someone is gay.” He scowled. “It’s disrespectful.”

“It is,” I agreed.

“I hope Emilio didn’t mind me saying that to his customers.”

“Not at all. Emilio has no qualms with putting rude people in their place.”

“He’s very good at drawing freehand,” he said. “It just surprised me. I guess I’ve never thought of tattoo artists as
artists
.”

“He sure is. Except his drawing board is the human body.”

That made him smile. “What are we doing back at my place anyway?” he asked. “Aren’t we supposed to be going out tonight?”

“Yep, we sure are. We need to get your record player all set up because you haven’t listened to Jeff Buckley sing Nina Simone.”

He pulled the car into a spot not far from his house, and he just sat there for a second like he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure if he should. In the end, he said, “Sounds good.”

He was a bit reserved after that. Kinda like he was the very first day I met him in the café. God, was that really just two days ago? He seemed to have a defensive wall up now, the kind that made his smile not quite right and his conversation a little stilted. He put the record player on his dining table. “Wanna plug it in?” I asked.

He wiped his hands on his trousers. “Maybe later. Want a bottle of water?”

“Uh, sure.” I gave him my best smile. I don’t know why that bothered me so much and why I wanted more than anything to right whatever I did that was wrong. He offered me a drink but genuinely looked upset by something. I wanted to ask him if he was okay, but I didn’t want him to tell me the whole deal was off. I didn’t want to stop spending time with him. So I pretended there was nothing wrong and charted the mood back into safer waters. “Have any movies?”

What the fuck was I doing?
My brain was telling me to leave. My stupid heart was telling my stupid feet to stay right where they were and telling my stupid mouth to ask him stupid questions.

“Ah, sure,” he called out from the kitchen. “In the cabinet underneath the TV. Or there’s Netflix.”

I opened the cabinet, wanting to see what his movie collection said about him. I smiled when I saw the first DVD.
How to Train Your Dragon
. I pulled it out and held it up as he walked back into the room.

He smiled a genuine smile. “The second one’s in there too,” he said. “I thought you said you’ve seen the first, not the second.”

I opened the case and slid the disc into the machine. “I have seen this one. But we need to watch them in order.”

He chuckled and plonked himself on the sofa, looking more relaxed. Whatever was bothering him just moments ago seemed forgotten and that made me happier than it probably should have. I collected the remote controls from their neat little row underneath the large flat screen and handed them to him when I sat at the other end of the sofa. I was going to plant myself right next to him but figured I wouldn’t risk him freaking out on me again. He gave me the bottled water. “Thanks.”