Being the guy out with someone like Oliver, even the once, had been nice. The movie-star fantasy was fun for a while.
Nick was leaning in before the idea was fully formed in his head. If Oliver gave any indication of backing away or disinterest, Nick would have stopped. Instead, Oliver blinked, and his gaze shifted, moving away from Nick’s eyes, toward his mouth. The space between them got smaller and smaller.
The kiss started gently. Just a goodnight peck. Nick would have been happy with that. Oliver tasted faintly of chocolate and wine. A nice way to end the night.
But Oliver let go of Nick’s hand, and his arm wrapped around Nick’s body, pulling him in closer.
The feeling came over Nick fast, like a wave crashing down on them. One second, he was trying to be a gentleman, thanking his date for a pleasant night, and the next minute, he was stumbling, taking three uneven steps until Oliver’s back met the brick of the rear of the restaurant with a soft thud. They skipped right over apologies, because Oliver opened his mouth, and his tongue slid out to lick Nick’s lips while his hands cupped Nick’s head and tilted it gently to one side.
Nick groaned, his own hands wrapping around Oliver, pulling them together even as he pressed them against the building. The noise he made was dark, needy. Oliver exhaled as his tongue slipped inside Nick’s mouth. When Nick palmed Oliver’s ass through his pants, he grunted, but he didn’t move away. Instead, he turned them so Nick’s back was against the building. Oliver’s hardening cock was evident against Nick’s hip. Sparks flared under his eyelids and over his skin. Nick’s own erection wasn’t very far behind.
He could blame the wine. Or his lack of practice. One second, they had been saying their goodnights, and now Nick was grinding against a near-stranger in a parking lot. In another second, he’d be begging Oliver to touch him.
He squeezed his eyes tight and then pulled away.
“Wait,” he panted.
Oliver cocked his head back, but kept their hips pressed together. They were both hard, and a little friction would make Nick forget his protest and get back on board with whatever Oliver had in mind.
“I’m sorry,” Oliver said. “I thought you—”
“No. I did. Or I guess . . .” Nick put a finger to Oliver’s mouth, then trailed it down his throat to his chest. The fabric of his shirt was soft, almost delicate, under Nick’s touch. He let his hand drop. “It’s better if we don’t. This wasn’t supposed to be about—”
“It’s a date. It can be anything we want it to be.” Oliver reached for him, but Nick pressed as far back as the hard surface of the wall would let him, even while his body screamed at him to stop being an idiot.
“Yeah, but—” Nick shook his head. “I had a nice dinner. Let’s leave it at that.” One night had to be enough. The rest of his life was too much of a mess to drag Oliver into it.
Oliver looked like he was going to argue. He opened his mouth to say something, but then he shut it again before he nodded and stepped away. Nick shivered, even though the evening was warm.
“Fair enough. Are you okay to drive home?” Oliver asked.
Was he? He was dizzy and disoriented, with no idea if the wine or his sexual frustration was causing it.
“I’ll be okay. I can walk from here.”
It would be the better part of an hour, and Anya would probably kill him for coming home without the car again, but it would give him time to clear his head.
He was half afraid Oliver would offer to walk with him, which would have been a terrible idea, because then they would have wound up naked in the bushes somewhere for sure. Instead, though, Oliver gave him one last smile. “Take care, then. I’ll see you around.”
Nick hoped that wasn’t true.
5
Saturday morning came and Oliver was back at the market. He spotted Nick’s car parked in the far corner of the lot, as far from the stalls as it could get. He’d forgotten to ask Nick about the license plate at their dinner. It must have been an inside joke, because Nick was clearly not a party kind of person.
Oliver’s pride was still nursing its wounds over the abrupt end to their night. He couldn’t get the feeling of Nick pressing against him out of his head, or the soft groan he made when Oliver pushed him up against the wall.
Oliver hadn’t tried to take someone new home after a first date in a decade and was disappointed to find his charm had not survived intact. The way Nick managed to call it off, at the very moment Oliver would have gotten down on his knees and hoped for a few minutes of privacy, meant clearly, he had slipped.
Regardless, now was not the time for public indecency. Now was the time to woo the citizens of Seacroft with his wares. He set up his stall at the end of the row. When the market board approved his application for the season, he’d hoped the end spot would mean high traffic as shoppers came and went. Unfortunately, he had been placed at the wrong end. Parking was tightly controlled, and only vendor vehicles—and tow trucks—were allowed to enter from the road at the side closest to the town hall. The shoppers had to enter from the other side and make their way past all the other vendors to get to him, but it would be worth it when they did.
The market was an experiment, an unexpected phase in his revamped plan to launch Pulpability. He and Cooper had mapped it all out from the moment they left their jobs until the end of their second year of business, detailed down to the week and the dollar. Unfortunately, the whole plan was on Cooper’s hard drive, and he was...not someone Oliver could reach out to. He’d done his best to recreate it but, in the six months since he’d opened his doors, couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d missed something important.
The first phase was getting the storefront ready, which took most of the winter and more cash than he’d expected. That was thanks, in part, to some reprinting on a lot of his branded materials, but more due to the fact that, in his business’s short life, he’d already had to buy not one but two industrial juice presses, after the first one—purchased used from an online marketplace—had given up the ghost after only a month. In addition, he was operating on half the start-up funds, so the budget for things like advertising had been drastically cut back.
All this to say the market had been a necessary contingency to help supplement foot traffic. Deviating from the plan he and Cooper had put together—the details he remembered anyway—felt risky, but he needed to do something to get this kickstarted. Oliver had bills to pay. He’d done his best to drum up interest, but every time he saw enthusiasm die on someone’s face, his pitches felt more and more hollow.
He hoisted the aluminum bucket onto his table and filled it with ice. He’d only sold six bottles of juice the weekend before, but he’d handed out half his stack of flyers advertising his upcoming workshop—his other new addition to the business plan—and a few walk-ins to the store had followed. Not much, but it was a start.
