Suddenly, an idea strikes me. An idea that sends a thrill shooting down my spine, but before I propose it, I want to make sure it’s okaywith Colton. “If I promise to keep your dad out of your hair, would you be okay if I offered him a maintenance job here?”
“You want to hire… my dad… to stay here all summer and fix shit?” Colton asks, grimacing slightly. “Like, he’d be here… all summer?”
“I mean, only if it’s okay with you,” I assure him with a grin. “I’m allowed to make up bogus policies about being an overprotective parent to one of my camp counselors, if need be. You’re the boss though. If you don’t want me to extend an offer to him, I won’t. It’d give him some time away from doing a job he clearly doesn’t want to do. Would that be okay?”
He picks at his cuticles again, clearly mulling it over. “He’d be helping you out?”
I nod. “He’s already fixed a bunch of things that have been on my to-do list for years. And he’s keeping Kai out of my hair by making him actually put in some work here, which I find endlessly amusing.”
Colton chuckles with me, and his expression lightens visibly. “It’s okay, I guess, but please don’t let him get all up in my shit.”
I grin. “I promise you, Colton, I will not allow him to getall up in your shit.”
One more idea strikes me as Colton pushes to a stand. One that Kai would reprimand me for, if he knew I was about to offer this for free.
“Oh, hey, and one more thing,” I tell him, before he steps out of my office. “If you do want someone to talk to, but don’t feel comfortable initiating that with your dad, come see me. My door is always open. Whatever you wanna talk about, it’ll all be confidential.”
Confidential and maybe a little self-serving, honestly. In helping Colton work through his issues, I can satisfy that inner nag that I’m somehow repaying the self-imposed debt on the internal tab I’m keeping of all Evan’s help around here. I have my doubts he’ll even accept the position, so I have to repay him somehow. I don’t expect him todo all this for free, but he hasn’t accepted a dime from me, though I’ve offered many times. No, in fact, all he’s asked for in return is to use my personal washing machine for his clothes, all while he repaired the leaking gasket on the camp’s industrial one.
A flitting expression of appreciation graces Colton’s face. “Thank you, that’d be awesome,” he says, before turning and leaving.
I manage to catch Evan right as he’s about to head out. As in, leave to go back to the coast, all without saying a word. As quietly as he came, he was about to slip out. Just like that.
That hurts, because I felt like we had a bit of a friendship forming between us. But I guess that was all one-sided.Sigh.
It’s almost obnoxious how much I want to pick him for details—any scrap of information—to get to know him. I don’t know if it’s the mystery surrounding him or what, but it’s not doing anything to help tamp down this simmering attraction I feel for him. In fact, it’s fanning the embers.
Maybe Ma’s right, I’m drawn to project men like a moth is to a flame.Kai, for example.
Despite how infuriatingly intriguing and handsome the man is, however, Evan is my forbidden fruit. As with everything else, I simply don’t have time to chase an attraction. Probably one that’s dead in the water, anyway. Either I’m wrong, and he wears that ring because he’s already spoken for; or I’m right, and he wears it as a visual representation that he’s emotionally unavailable.
Both ways, however, don’t take into consideration that he may not even be attracted to men. In fact, I’m quite certain he’s not. The almost pained look he gave me yesterday—while he was doing his laundry and I had just gotten out of the shower with only my towel wrapped around my waist—is probably a pretty good indicator that he’s not interested.
Could be that or the fluff I’ve put on over the last few years. I could probably stand to get back in the water and swim more. If only there were more hours in a day.
But Kai, an objectively very good-looking man, has been trying to work his magic on Evan, and has gotten the cold shoulder from him every time. That’s per Kai, though, so it’s debatable if it’s distaste for men in general or just distaste for Kai’s flamboyancy. Either is plausible.
What’s not plausible, however, is my ability to feed into this attraction anymore, which leads me to why I’m currently throwing myself behind Evan’s truck before he has a chance to back out of here. I’m about to see if Evan wants to be my employee. If he’s officially on the payroll, I can’t go mingling work with pleasure, but Icanrepay the IOU.
Purely transactional. Right.
His giant tires skid to a quick stop. “What the hell, Brooks? I almost just backed into you!”
I step up to his open driver’s side window, feeling tiny next to his giant truck, and am met with an even scowlier scowl than his usual. “Well, a couple things,” I tell him, “First, are you really just taking off without saying goodbye?”
He arcs an eyebrow up. “Bye. Happy now?”
I snort. “No. I also wanted to say thank you to you before you left. What you’ve done, you’ve helped me tremendously.”
He shrugs. “It’s fine. Kept me busy this weekend; seemed better than going back to an empty apartment.”
Alright, nowthat’ssad. I’m a hermit because I don’t have time for social outings. He’s, what… purposely secluded himself? No friends or anything? I shake away those thoughts, because I still have to ask him what I threw myself in front of his monster truck for.
“Well, so that brings me to my next thing,” I explain. “I caught up with Colton earlier. He mentioned something about how he got you fired from your job. Are you still looking for one?”
“I’ve got something for now,” he furnishes.
“Colton mentioned that too. He told me you don’t really like going out lobstering…”
