Tipping the Balance (14 page)

With
a brimming commuter mug in one hand, Brad drove down to Suburban Graveyard to spend his Saturday watching tumbleweeds blow by in the hot summer wind. Lately, he did his best thinking in the car. It was relatively free of distractions, and thanks to the ban in California on driving and cell phone use, he had an excuse for turning his phone off.

At least one of us has a chance to get away from him.

Philip’s words were fresh in Brad’s mind. He and Philip had been close as kids but had grown apart as they grew up. Once their mom died, Philip had clung pretty tightly to their dad. No, he corrected himself, that was when Randall began grooming Philip to take over the business. By any objective sense, Philip had done well at Sundstrom Homes, working his way up to a vice president.

It had never occurred to Brad that Philip’s place in their father’s regard came at a price, although, he thought dryly, the fact that Philip still lived at home, too, should’ve been an indicator the two were in the same boat.

But Philip had gone to bat for him. He still couldn’t get over it. It made him all the more resolved to strike out on his own.

He got the office open, the signs out, the jaunty helium balloons filled from the small tank in the back room and out by the road, bobbing in the breeze. “Pig, meet lipstick.”

The morning startup routine observed, Brad sat down at his desk and fired up the computer. While he waited for it to boot, he pulled out his phone to call Drew.

Then he stopped. No. He’d spend the weekend doing some research on contractor’s education and licensing and on the preservation of historical buildings. Then he’d call Drew Sunday afternoon.

Pulling out one of the ubiquitous pads of paper unused to work out deals with nonexistent homebuyers, Brad started feeding terms into a search engine. Even though the hits came back almost instantly, he sat back in his chair to think.

He’d been told most of his life that he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, just as he knew he had the rep for being even dimmer than that. But some of that was an act, and sometimes he thought before he acted, or thought while he acted, or thought by acting. Try something, see what happens, assess. Repeat as necessary. It had worked up until now.

But maybe it was time to try a little harder, to think things through before he made big changes. He was finally striking out on his own, at least a little, if you didn’t count that he was still working for his dad’s company and living at home.

It was a process that he’d started when he joined crew, something he’d picked out on his own and done pretty well at. His dad had chosen his college for him because of its proximity to home and its lax admissions standards, but crew? That’d been his and his alone. He’d thought maybe success there would earn him Randall’s notice or even his respect. The fact that it hadn’t didn’t change how Brad felt about rowing.

This offer to come work for Drew on a job that might lead to bigger and better things was his chance to build on that, and Brad knew it. The questions were, how and what were the implications? The how seemed to be working itself out. He would work part-time for his dad and the rest of the time for and with Drew.

Brad figured it was the “with Drew” part that might be interesting. On the one hand, he’d be working with someone who made him laugh and smile. Someone he had fun with, like that time at the water slides. The thought that coming to work might be fun and not like walking into a cellblock energized him. Even more than that, he’d be working with someone he liked at something that might be really satisfying, that might matter more than suckering fools into buying a home in this disaster of a subdivision.

Brad exhaled noisily, spinning himself around in his desk chair. But there were the implications to think about. They made him nervous. Drew made him nervous. Drew raised feelings in him that he wasn’t prepared to admit existed. He’d always thought of himself as straight, but on some level, Drew made him question that. Instead of running the other way, which was what he should’ve done, he was running right for Drew.

That didn’t make sense to Brad. When there was something dangerous in front of you, you turned and ran the other way. Duh. Instead, he was charging ahead at full speed to work with someone who made him feel things he didn’t know how to feel.

Brad rested his head on the desk. He’d gotten a boner thinking about Drew in that Speedo, for fuck’s sake. Hell, he was getting one right there at his desk. He just wasn’t ready to deal with feeling like that about another guy or what it said about him.

So why do this? Why push through the fear to take this opportunity that put him in the gay lion’s den? Because that was what he was doing when he stopped to think about it, and why he didn’t stop to think about things very often. He was afraid of what he felt and what that meant, but he was going to do it anyway.

When Brad thought about it, however, he knew it wasn’t a lion out to devour him, it was Drew. They had similar professional interests and got along well. Drew had offered him a job and a chance to get away from his dad. He’d be a fool to turn those down because of that other thing. He could control those feelings. He knew he could.

He lifted his head off his desk and shifted around, trying to make his cock behave. Damn, he was hard. That Speedo….

Brad shook his head. Research. He needed the details of what getting a contractor’s license involved. Then he could call Drew like he knew what he was talking about, like he had something to bring to the table too.

Brad’s
week started out decently enough. He called Drew on Sunday evening after finding out everything he could, from the options available for getting his contractor’s license to going to the public library to read up on historical preservation.

Then he met Emily and Drew for an early breakfast on Monday, and they’d gotten on well enough, he and Emily. She seemed nice, and he figured that once he got to know her, that impression would hold. For her part, Emily had no problems with him. He could be charming when he wanted to be, even if it was a hassle to keep it going for too long.

The only odd thing was Emily was the kind of woman he’d usually have noticed for her looks, since she was a sizzling blonde and all. But strangely enough, her looks weren’t the hot issue that Monday morning. He barely noticed them, and he only realized he hadn’t noticed when she got a wolf whistle from some construction workers as they approached the Bayard House behind its chain-link hazard-zone fence.

“Nice manners,” Brad said.

Emily rolled her eyes. “It happens.”

“Yeah, but it’s gross,” Brad said, looking around for the jerks responsible.

“What’re you going to do?” Drew said to Brad.

Brad smiled. “I’m going to ask them not to do it.”

And off he went. He knew how to play the game, and he might’ve worn chinos, a blue shirt, and his second-best of two neckties, but he still looked like a bull moose on the rampage.

“Hey, asshole! Leave her alone! She’s a lady. She doesn’t need your kind of crude,” Brad said.

“You wanna make something of it?” the worker said.

Brad bared his teeth and puffed his chest out. And out. And out. The buttons strained across his pecs, and his neck bulged over the collar of his shirt. “If I have to,” he bellowed.

That was when the construction worker—and the one person nearby—realized that Brad was a lot bigger, certainly a lot louder, and that in this case, ceding ground was the better part of valor. “Tell her I said sorry.”

“Damn straight,” Brad said, nodding.

He turned around and saw that Drew had shielded his eyes in embarrassment. But Emily was grinning broadly. “Oh, you’ll do fine,” she laughed, hooking her arm on his, “just fine.”

“Yeah, great, can we please hurry up and get in there before we miss the site tour?” Drew said.

“I’ve been around construction workers all my life. You can’t let them get away with shit like that,” Brad said, sparing a wink for Drew. Then he looked at the woman on his arm. That was when he realized he hadn’t noticed just how hot she was. But he also noticed Drew glaring at him, and he was suddenly afraid. What if Drew was mad at him? What if Drew was reconsidering him working on the project with him?

Brad spent the tour on his best behavior and the rest of the day seriously worried he’d pissed off Drew. For some reason deep down in his guts, that was something he really didn’t want to do.

Worrying
about whether he’d offended Drew turned into a weeklong project, punctuated by bursts of reluctant activity at Suburban Graveyard.

Thursday morning, he was in the midst of compiling reports requested by the sales division of Sundstrom Homes when his cell phone rang. His personal phone, not the corporate one that no one ever called.

“Brad Sundstrom,” he said.

“Hi, Brad, it’s Pete Rancilman.”

Brad wracked his brain to figure out why that name sounded familiar. Oh, yes. “Hi, Mr. Rancilman. I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to you about the alumni oversight committee. I—”

“Not a problem. I just wanted to call and personally extend the invitation,” Pete said. “We’re very keen to have you, and I hope you’ll consider joining the committee.”

I just bet you are
, Brad thought, Philip’s comment about their dad’s money springing to memory. “I’ve certainly been giving it some thought, but I’m not sure what I have to offer, since I just graduated.”

“That’s precisely what you have to offer, Brad,” Pete said. “Most of us are long out of college. You’ll bring a fresh perspective and ideas as we deal with the coaching situation.”

“Coaching situation?” That was the last thing Brad expected to hear.

“Indeed. As you know, there were reports of an inappropriate relationship between the men’s varsity coach and one of his rowers, one of your teammates, in fact.”

Brad’s mind kicked into overdrive. “I thought the school dropped the matter.”

“CalPac may have dropped its investigation into the matter, but the NCAA has not,” Pete said firmly. “The oversight committee takes this kind of thing very seriously, and we want to make sure this deviant behavior isn’t part of a larger pattern.”

They were after Coach Bedford, Brad realized. He’d been looking forward to lunch, but no longer. “Deviant behavior, huh? I’m in. Tell me when and where.”

This was so not good. This was the opposite of good, he thought miserably, resting his head on the desk. They were after Coach Bedford, the man responsible for some of the best years of his life. He just couldn’t let this happen, but he had no idea what he could do. This was like… grown-up stuff, committees and planning and strategy. He was good at the physical stuff, the in-your-face threat of grievous bodily injury, not this.

Like Monday, when he’d gotten in that construction worker’s face. Brad groaned. He could really use Drew’s input, but Drew hadn’t called all week, hadn’t even e-mailed him. Drew would know what to do but probably wanted nothing more to do with him after that mini-rampage. But this was new territory for Brad. He could e-mail Coach Nick directly and warn him, but what if this was nothing, or at least nothing as bad as he was making it out to be?

He spent the rest of the day staring at his computer but not accomplishing much. The thought of the oversight committee upset him, and working on what he needed for the Bayard bid made him think of Drew being mad at him.

Friday was more of the same. But after a sucktastic day at work and a fight with Randall when he got home, he needed to hear a friendly voice.

He sat his armchair in his room, staring at his phone, wondering who he’d become. He’d never been one to hesitate before. He was Brad Sundstrom, force of nature and bull in a china shop. But where Drew was concerned, it seemed like he was becoming someone else.

“Man up, you puss,” he muttered, picking up the phone and stabbing the button for Drew’s number in the autodial. “Hi, Drew, it’s me.”