“Sold!” He slapped the bed like an auctioneer with a gavel. “McDonalds and some delicious clogged arteries, it is.” Hehopped off the bed and sauntered up to me, adjusting his glasses. Was he giving me elevator eyes? I think he was giving me elevator eyes.
I felt myself blush. “Uh, I just need my shoes, but I’m not sure where I left them.” I gestured around the room at the empty floor.
“Probably by the front door with mine,” he suggested absently, already turning and heading out of the bedroom.
Figuring he knew better than me, I followed and was relieved to see my boots indeed sitting cockeyed next to a pair of loafers near the apartment door. I bent over to pull them on and would have sworn I heard a needy whine, but when I looked up at Jamison he was pulling on his own shoes and not looking at me.
“You ok to walk?” he asked, pulling open the door. “Like I said, the McDonalds is right here but the clinic is a few blocks.” I must have looked confused at the question, because he explained, “My sister has medical stuff that means walking hurts her a lot of the time, so I’m conditioned to ask.”
I nodded, wondering what kind of medical stuff but knowing it wasn’t my business. “I’m good. Walking is no problem.”
“Cool.” And with that, we headed out the door.
***
“So,” Jamison said, waving his Egg McMuffin at me, “we might as well get to know each other while we’re here rather than continue to sit in awkward silence. What do you do, Hen?” He offered me a smile that fell somewhere between reassuring and manic.
I finished chewing my bite of egg and cheese McGriddle and took a sip of my OJ before answering. I kind of hated that question, because the reactions I got to my answer were a total crapshoot. Some people were impressed that I could work wellwith my hands; some people thought being a tradesman meant I couldn’t even graduate high school; and some people just didn’t know what to do with someone with whom they couldn’t bond over desk job stuff. And how did I explain that I worked with wood but wasn’t either a sculptor or whittler, nor did I work on construction sites? “I’m actually a carpenter.” As if to back up my assertion in case he didn't believe it, I turned up one hand to show him my calluses.
He blinked, then looked down at my hand and ran a careful finger over the tip of my index finger. By rights I should barely be able to feel it through the thickened skin, but somehow it still gave me a shiver. “Like, a carpenter who builds houses? Wait, do carpenters build houses?” he interrupted himself. “Fuck, I’m so bad at masc stuff.”
I couldn’t suppress my smirk at that. “You're fine. 'Masc' and 'femme' are bullshit, anyway. And people just don’t meet a lot of carpenters, so I don't expect them to know exactly what we do. But yes, some carpenters work on houses, though the people who ‘build’ them are usually general contractors rather than specifically carpenters. That's not the type of carpentry I do, though. I mostly build custom furniture and do moldings for home restorations.”
“Furniture?” His eyes took on a gleam of interest. “That can be really artistic, can’t it? Like, depending on what people want?”
That wasn’t where I was used to people going when I told them what I did, but he wasn’t wrong. “Yeah, actually. Some people just want a basic, say, kitchen table, but others want scrollwork or fine detailing or custom chairs. I prefer those jobs, to be honest - they’re a lot more fun - but stuff like the tables and chairs pays the bills.” I took another bite of my sandwich with my free hand, chewed, and swallowed.
He nodded and took a sip of his tea. “Gotta do what you gotta do.” Looking back down at my hand where it still lay on the table, he tapped the callus on my index finger. “Do these hurt?”
“Nah. The skin is so thick there that I can hardly feel anything, honestly. The downside of my work.” I flicked my thumbnail over the callus, catching the edge of his finger, and laughed when he pulled back with an offended noise. “What do you do? I bet it’s fancier than sawing wood all day.”
He tipped his head from side to side as if to saysort of.“I mean, I don't work with my hands as much unless you count tapping a keyboard, but my job isn’t exactly fancy. I spend my days reading people being awful to each other on the internet.” When I furrowed my brow at him, he smiled slightly. “I’m a moderation policy specialist for an online community. It means I help develop policies and processes that govern what people can and can’t do on the site, and what happens if they do something they’re not supposed to. And part of that is knowing all the things they could do wrong, so…I’m wallowing in filth at times. Which isn’t fancy by any stretch of the imagination.”
That was a job? I managed not to blurt that out, but only barely. Instead, I took a careful sip of my orange juice and nodded. “That sounds like it could get messy. And be pretty traumatic, honestly.”
He winced. “Believe me, the insurance covers therapy. Alotof therapy. For everyone on my team.”
"What's the worst thing you've seen?" I asked the first thing that came to mind, then thought better of it, grimaced, and slashed a hand through the air before he could speak. "Never mind, don't answer that. I don't want to re-traumatize you just because I'm curious. Sorry."
He gave me a soft, crooked smile. "It's ok. I know it's the obvious question. But yeah, I'd rather just…not." He cocked his head to the side. "Instead, how about you tell me what yourfavorite current project is? I'm assuming that's not gonna bring trauma the way my work does."
I couldn't help the excitement that shot through me at the opportunity to think more about the table I was working on, let alone at the notion that someone else was interested in hearing about it. "It's a side table," I blurted excitedly. "Like to go alongside a recliner. But it's elegant, not slobbish like you might picture with a recliner. The customer wanted something that looked delicate but could be sturdy enough to hold weight and stay on its legs. So it's this curvy piece with sort of lacework cut-outs in the corners and under the top surface. Right now I'm sanding it and -" I stopped, belatedly realizing I'd just word-vomited on this poor guy who had asked a polite question and who was now sitting there wide-eyed. "Uh, anyway, it's gonna be pretty," I summed it up. "At least I hope so."
He downed the remainder of his coffee and ate the last bite of his McMuffin, then smiled at me. A tiny bit of egg was caught in one of his front teeth, but somehow that managed to be cute instead of gross, and I couldn't bring myself to call attention to it. "It sounds awesome," he said. "And you sound really happy to be doing it, which is even more awesome."
I felt myself flushing slightly. He'd picked up on that, so clearly I had rambled just as much as I'd feared I had. "Sorry for going on about it. I don't get a chance to talk much about my work." I shrugged. "My family are all white-collar, and while they respect that I can make a living with my woodwork, they don't really…get it. Same with most of my friends."
He shook his head, dismissing my apology. "No, I get that. My parents keep asking me why I don't get a job that uses my degree instead of 'that internet thing'." A shrug. " 'You took out all those loans to study international business'," he mimicked in a high-pitched voice, " 'and now you spend your days looking at dirty pictures!'"
"Doyou look at a lot of dirty pictures?" I couldn't help asking teasingly.
He shook his head. "Not the fun kind. And even the fun kind get hella tedious after the fifty-seventh dick pic." He grimaced. "Somehow they're never thenicedicks. They're squished-looking, they're hairy - not that there's anything wrong with natural," he hastened to add, and I remembered that I hadn't exactly been freshly manscaped last night. Whoops? Was that considered unattractive? "And just… dick pics just aren't hot when you're not wanting to see them."
I tried to pull my brain away from the question of whether my body hair was a turn-off. It was a bit late to worry about that; not only had we already had sex (so it couldn't have beenthatrepulsive), but we were now in the post-sex awkward phase with a bonus helping of STI exposure awkwardness. The hotness ship had sailed. It was probably time to drag us back onto the most important topic of the day anyway, come to think of it; there was no point to spending brain cycles agonizing over whether he found me hot or whether he'd sleep with me again sober. Once you forgot the condom once, that decision was pretty much made for you. I glanced down at my watch. "So um, what time did that clinic open?"
He blinked, obviously surprised by my less-than-slick subject change. "Uh, I think nine." He looked down at his own watch, which was displaying a bright9:22. "Guess we should go. Might as well get this over with, huh?" He offered me a weak smile.
My answering smile was probably no more persuasive than his, but I gave it a try anyway. "Yeah, probably." I gathered my trash, then reached for his tray and piled my mess atop his and picked the whole tray up to carry to the garbage can.
