“Jordan, I can’t wear these.” It’s not because you shouldn’t match pearls with jeans, you can match pearls with anything… but it’s me. “With my luck, I’ll catch it on some low-hanging branch and snap it off.”
“Well then, avoid low-hanging branches, I guess,” he says matter-of-factly. “Are there low-hanging branches in the library?” He laughs before patting me on the shoulder and returning to his coffee. “You better go, or you will be late on your first day.” Shit, he’s right. Running for the door, yelling ‘thank you’ over my shoulder, and heading straight for my car with my pretty pink pearls bouncing around my neck, my mood is significantly better.
This is going to be a great day.
This is not a great day. I hate my job. I don’t know what I was expecting working at the local library. That maybe they would let me read all day, or I’d get to talk to people about the stories they’ve read or facts they’ve learned. Instead, people request books online, and I just have to search for them and bring them to the drop-off point in front of the building.
I’ve been restocking the shelves for the last few hours with the new releases that arrived yesterday. I really wish this library had more gay romance books with hot guys on the cover. That would at least give me something to look at while I complete this seemingly never-ending task. As I set out a display of nature and wildlife books, my thoughts drift to a bear of a different kind. Gavin, my very own big Grumpy Bear.
That man has been on my mind from the moment I laid my eyes on him a month ago. Morning, noon, and night, I think about Gavin. How big his arms are, and how much I want to run my fingers through the fur on his chest that peeks out the top of his T-shirts. His sexy beard with strands of gray running through it.
I ask Ryan about him pretty much every time I see the guy. Ryan is a tattoo artist at Gavin’s tattoo studio, Savage Ink, and my brother’s boyfriend. So far, I know that Gavin drinks espresso, his usual lunch is a club sandwich, he likes movies, and he isn’t much of a talker, even to his friends. When I tried to figure out if Gavin had mentioned me at all, Ryan just shook his head and told me, “Give it up, man. He’s not gonna change his mind.”
We’ll see about that. I do not give up.
As I’m daydreaming about his big body hovering over me, his beard tickling my neck while he growls filthy things in my ear, I lean back against the shelf I’m restocking, with a copy of ‘Discovering Black Bears’ clutched in my hands and… why do I feel like I’m falling? Not the lovesick kind of falling, I’m literally fucking falling.
Scrambling to regain my balance, my arms flailing around like a toddler on ice skates, it’s too late. The shelf is going down and… Oh my God… It’s fucking Game Night all over again. All the frames knock into one another like a giant game of bookcase dominoes. Hundreds of books crash to the floor.
Fuck, I’m so getting fired.
“What the hell happened here?” Marvin, my supervisor, yells, standing on the other side of the mess I accidentally made. A turn in his direction causes a sharp pain in my side, I must have hit my ribs on the bookshelf on my way down. I have tears in my eyes and my vision is blurry so all I can see are his general features. And since he’s dressed in all white today, he looks like a snowman to me. Who the fuck wears all white anyway? Oh, I think he asked me a question. Think of something, Pete, quick.
“Uhmmmm, I dropped a book and tripped over it. I reached out to grab the shelf, but… yeah.” I should stop talking now, or I’ll end up telling him I was daydreaming about a big tattooed older man railing me into the mattress.
As he stomps closer, practically jumping over mounds of fallen books, he starts to resemble a pissed-off snowman, so I drop to my knees and start to gather up the books. “Marvin, I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again, I assure you.” Trying to keep my tone confident is a challenge, with ‘Do you wanna build a snowman?’ now playing repeatedly in my head.
“Oh, I know it won’t happen again, Peter. You’re fired. Now put down those books before you do any more damage.” This isn’t the first time I’ve been fired for making a mess. It probably won’t be the last, but fuck, did I have to break the whole library on my first day?
Dejected, I run my fingers over the pretty pink pearls around my neck as I walk to my car, kicking the gravel below my feet. What the hell am I going to do now? I’ve had more jobs than I can count, and they all end up the same way, with me making some stupid mistake and getting fired. Job hunting isn’t easy either, and the more time I have to spend searching for jobs and going for interviews, the less time I have to put my actual fashion and textile degree to use.
Throughout college, I wanted to go into queer men’s fashion, work with drag queens, and just make Denver a little more fabulous. I even had my own Etsy store for a while, full of glitter and sequin crop tops, made to fit a male body rather than a female form. I had a few orders but with no time to invest in my designs and no money or materials I had no choice but to shut it down. When Drew and Ryan adopted Thor and Loki, their English Bulldog puppies, the idea struck me for a petwear collection. When I saw those cute little squishy puppies, my creative juices started to flow where they had been entirely out of inspiration for months.
Now, I have a tonne of sketches with puppies dressed in different outfits for all occasions. Puppies should get to be fabulous too. All I need is an income that will not only cover my rent and living expenses but also the materials I need to start making the outfits to showcase and sell. I even have a name ready for my Etsy store. 3Ps - Pete’s Pet Paradise.
Reaching Betsy, I pull on the rusty driver’s door, but naturally, it’s stuck. I try again and again before my frustration with the whole day boils over, and I kick the stupid thing, which is a big mistake because now my foot hurts, but hey, at least the door opened and just in time. Because you know what they say – when it rains, it pours. This time, literally. The heavens open with a heavy downpour that almost washes me off my feet. Quickly throwing myself into the car, I start it up and head home before I drown in rain and shame.
I’m a few miles away from my apartment when I drive toward a puddle, or what looked like a puddle but turned out to be a small lake at the side of the road. The second Ol’ Betsy dips into the unknown depth of the puddle lake, my whole car shudders to a stop and every light on the dash starts flashing like I’m at a rave. Shit, could this day get any worse?
With a monsoon happening outside, I’m not about to walk and potentially be swept into a storm drain. I have no other choice but to call my brother for help.
“Hey, little bro? How’s the new job going?” he answers cheerily. Drew is always cheery these days. Now that he and Ryan are back together, he’s rocking a permasmile.
“Fan-fucking-tastic,” I mutter more to myself than to him. “So, my car decided to take a bath in a puddle lake. Now it’s stuck. Could you pick me up?”
“Your car did what?”
“Yeah, I’ll tell you all about it when you get here. I’m at the corner of Banks and Main. I have to call a tow truck to pick up Betsy.”
“Okay, hang tight. I’m leaving the office now. See you in a bit.” He disconnects, and I call the garage I have on speed dial. I’ve called them so many times in the last six months that if I had a loyalty card, this time would be free. Looking out the window, I realize I’m going to have to crawl to the other side of the car and get out the passenger door to avoid a bath in the puddle lake myself.
I wait until the rain shower ends before climbing out and walking around to see how deep the puddle actually goes. When I see a car coming at full speed toward me, I lift my arms and wave, trying to signal that he needs to slow down, but the asshole swerves around my car, sending a wave of dirty puddle water right over me.
I fucking hate this day.
CHAPTER 2
GAVIN
