Because you shouldn’t be here.
Because you remind me of why I haven’t been able to open myself up to anyone since you left.
“How is work going really?” Sandro asked him, recalling the stress on his face when his camera guy had left the coffee shop.
“Good. Great,” Bennett said, repeating what he’d told Eli earlier.
Sandro didn’t know why he was disappointed. He’d just hoped that . . .
What?
That Bennett had learned to open up about his struggles in the past fifteen years? If Sandro hadn’t been there to coax them out of him with BJs and soft touches, then who had?
And why didn’t he want an answer to that question?
“What?” Bennett said. “Why are you looking at me like that now?”
“You have a coffee stain on your chin.”
“What? No I don’t. People don’t get coffee stains on their skin. They get them on clothes. And countertops. And somehow even on kitchen cabinet doors.”
“I told you—some of it dripped out of my mug and I didn’t notice.”
Bennett’s lips twitched. “The upper cabinet doors, Ro.”
Sandro sucked in a breath at the nickname. He’d snapped at Bennett last year not to call him Sandy, but that had mostly been from the surprise at seeing Bennett in his space.
Ro, though . . . that had been reserved for lazy Sunday mornings and gentle teasing and whispered confessions in the dark and hand jobs in the shower.
They were both probably a lot better at sex at thirty-eight than they had been at twenty-two, right?
Facing forward again, he unzipped his jacket and fanned his shirt away from his chest. “Can we turn the heat down in here?”
Bennett reached for the controls. “Yeah, sure, I’ll?—”
“At the lights, turn right,” intoned the GPS.
Bennett returned his hand to the wheel, so Sandro lowered the heat a couple of degrees himself and adjusted the fan speed. “So which is it?” he found himself asking as a distraction from thoughts he shouldn’t be having. “LA or New York?”
“LA. It seemed like the place to be at the time that I was looking to step into the film industry.” Bennett made another right per the GPS’s directions. “I worked a bunch of industry-related jobs for a few years before I met someone who was willing to fund a short film, and—oh, is this you?”
“A little bit further down.”
“Cute complex.”
Sandro lived in the end unit of a row of townhouses in a complex that included multi-story townhomes as well as one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments. Wet brown leaves littered the waterlogged lawns, and here and there were wet tricycles, three-wheeled scooters, and abandoned sports equipment leftover from the weekend. Sandro leaned forward to peer at the sky out of the windshield as Bennett pulled up to the curb. “Got an umbrella?”
“No. And if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you. What if I need it?”
“Asshole,” Sandro replied, laughing. “Give me your jacket at least. Yours has a hood.”
Bennett stared at him for a long moment. “No.”
“Man. Chivalry is dead, I tell you.”
“Here. I’ll get a little closer to your front door.” He eased the car forward a few inches, then put it in park. He jerked a thumb at his own chest. “Chivalrous.”
Sandro snorted a laugh and took off his jacket, ready to use it as a stand-in umbrella. “See ya. Thanks for the lift home, even if you won’t walk a boy to his door.”
