“Date?”
“You know what I mean,” Sully hemmed with a slight blush, matching Dean’s expression to a “T.”
“Speaking of,” Dean pressed, seizing his opportunity to hear the story’s end at last.“You were saying?About your date that wasn’t quite a date?”
“Was I?”Sully teased.All the same, he snatched a fried green bean from the platter between them and nibbled it contentedly.“Anyway, Grady and I drank and ate, kind of like we are now.Casual, chill, friendly enough...”
Dean waited for Sully to complete the thought and, when he didn’t, nudged once more.“Friendly enough to talk about...?”
Sully nodded, swallowing the last of a chunk of fried okra.“Drinks, at first.My job, his job and then, after a slight pause where maybe I had made it clear I didn’t want to talk shop, he talked about ...his family.”
“Family?”Dean sat up straight.Sully noticed with a wry, sheepish grin.
“Relax, Columbo,” he chuckled, big hands up as if to ward off Dean’s irrational defensiveness.“His kids.”
“Okay, but still.”
“He was divorced,” Sully explained.“Almost a year before we met.Hence the change of area code, new bachelor pad and entry level career in a brand new town.”
“And a brand new boyfriend?”Dean hedged, struggling to keep the first hint of jealousy out of his tone.
“Not hardly,” Sully harumphed.“Once he got to talking about his kids, it’s all he talked about.Except his ex, who he talked about even more.The ex who’d cheated on him.Why?Because she’d found out he swung both ways and, well, a good Christian girl like her wasn’t quite ‘up to that emotional challenge,’ as he put it.”
“But she was up to cheating?”
Sully clucked his tongue and glanced away.“Trust me, after an hour with Grady?I didn’t blame her.”
Dean snorted, surprised by the comment and, if he was being honest with himself, relieved.The thought of Sully with another man had him suddenly, irrationally jealous.“How do you mean?”
“Listen,” Sully sighed, sitting back in his booth.“I was flattered, really.He was clearly hot to trot.Said he’d had false starts with other guys but always chickened out at the last minute because, well, married man.Two kids.He kept getting cold feet.He figured an old country boy like me might be just the ticket to, uh, break him in, per se?”
“And?”Dean had folded his arms over his chest, like a grumpy father interrogating his virgin daughter after getting home late on prom night.“Did you?Did he?”
“No, Dean, I didn’t.He didn’t.We ate dinner, laughed, talked, and left together.He had parked a little away from the diner, and I had parked a lot away.There’s a little side street around the corner.Not a lot of light, lots and lots of trees for cover, you know?Just in case.He followed me there.We stood by my truck for a long time.It wasn’t unpleasant, it just wasn’t ...sexy.”
Dean had to disagree, at least mentally.He was squirming in his seat, hot under the collar just thinking about leaning against the side of a truck peering up into Sully’s deep, rich brown eyes as the dark, velvet night surrounded them, inviting them to inch closer with every sliver of moonlight and rustle from the overhanging branches.“You sure?”
“Certain.And when we finally kissed?It was ...stiff.Awkward.Wrong.I broke it off, probably hurt his feelings but, in the end, it was clear he just wasn’t ready.For me, or any guy, for that matter.”
“Bummer,” Dean mused.
“For which one of us?”
“Both of you, I guess,” Dean mused quietly.“I feel like, as first times go, for someone in Grady’s position, you might have made a great one.”
“You think?”
“You don’t?”
Sully smiled.“Sure I do, but timing is everything, you know?It just wasn’t Grady’s time yet.”
Dean nodded, silently recalling his own almost first time in much the same bittersweet way Sully was glancing out the window beside them, as if Grady might show up at any minute, ready for a romantic do-over.“And now?”Dean asked, already stuffed and they hadn’t even ordered dinner yet.
“What now?”Sully asked, pushing his plate away.“This is now.You’re now.We’re now.That’s all I’ve got.”
Dean hoped he wasn’t blushing, even as he felt the heat rise to his cheeks just the same.“We?”he asked, nailing the central hypothesis of Sully’s reply.
Sully winked, then steadily met Dean’s curious gaze.“I was hoping you didn’t hear that part, City Slicker.”
