seven
Dell ranhis favorite hand plane over the western edge of Minnesota, and he thought about Luca’s ears.
It was 7:15 a.m.; his coffee was still hot. And inside his workshop today, all he had to focus on was finishing this cherry cutting board of the North Star State. He’d offered bigger pieces, when he started his online shop, but shipping them was a pain in the ass. And while the geography-based cutting boards seemed like a pedestrian thing to offer at first, he found he liked the tiny details of each custom request. Making sure, for instance, that he got all the strange grooves of Minnesota’s border with Ontario correct, the angle of its eastern shore with Lake Superior just right. He only offered natural grain cuts, liked seeing where the lines and whorls happened to line up with whatever requests the customers had made. Here, a star in Fatima and Naeem’s hometown, St. Cloud.
Dell especially liked working on Midwestern states, ones that reminded him of his own hometown in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He had never been to St. Cloud, but he’d driven across to Duluth plenty of times as a kid. He blew a patch of dust off the curve he’d just been working on. There was still a fair amount of sanding to do before he got to carving that star, followed by Fatima and Naeem’s names, but that was okay. Almost everything was okay when Dell was in his workshop.
His mind drifted when he was alone with the smell and feel of cherry, cedar, walnut under his hands. There were topics it drifted to most often: memories of his mom in the garage-turned-workshop of his childhood home in the UP, where she first taught him the basics of woodworking when he was in middle school. The sugar maple that took up the view from the window in that garage, above Mom’s sanding table. The way the light filtered in at different seasons of the year.
The noises Luca Yaeger allowed himself to make, sometimes, when Dell touched him.
Yesterday had been another Luca day. And while the sex had been more rigorous than normal, Luca seemed more absent than usual, after. Wasn’t up for talking at all. Luca never kicked Dell out, let him stay the night. Dell likely wouldn’t have kept up the arrangement so long, honestly—it would have all felt different—if he wasn’t able to sleep off the endorphins next to Luca. If Luca didn’t make him a strong cup of coffee the next morning.
And while there typically wasn’t a lot of talking done, especially over that cup of coffee, sometimes there were moments. And so Dell had tried to keep his eyes open for as long as possible last night, on the gut instinct that Luca had things he probably needed to talk about with someone. But when Dell finally gave in and drifted off, Luca was still wide awake next to him, stone still and silent, staring at the ceiling.
Dell knew it was ironic, or at the very least unfair that it bothered him a bit, now. That he’d thought, in the throes of it—in the rougher way Luca held his good shoulder, pushed his thumbs into Dell’s hips until it hurt, in the way he wanted Dell deeper in his mouth than he’d ever been able to take before, that extra round…
The noises Luca let himself make.
Dell knew it was on him, that he’d thought it’d all meant something. Dell himself had let go more than he usually did, following Luca’s lead. Releasing sounds of his own that he rather regretted now. Biting those ears, sticking out from his still-shaved head, repeatedly, among other things. Which he didn’t regret at all. Either way, by the time it was over, Dell felt strung out and half wild.
And Luca had reverted to a statue. Leaving Dell to realize that whatever had just transpired between them hadn’t been a furthering of a connection at all. At least, not intentionally.
Luca just had things he had to fuck out of his system.
Which shouldn’t bother Dell because when they first met, Dell had used Luca to fuck the darkness out of his system, too. So it was fine. It wasn’t Luca’s fault that Dell was more stable these days. That his heart, against his will, was apparently deciding other things.
Dell picked up a sander, and he let his mind drift from Luca Yaeger’s body to his own. The muscles and stretches of skin that were most sore from last night, the joints he always stressed most when he was focused in his workshop: more reminders that he was alive. That he was living.
The aches in his left shoulder and left thigh. Never quite gone, just like the scar tissue. But more healed now, less noticeable with each month that passed. Whispers instead of a shout.
Dell finished Fatima and Naeem’s cutting board, cleaned it and stained it, left it to dry. He stretched out his back before making sure power tools were turned off and unplugged. Back in the main house, he checked his email, let the dogs out once more. Picked up the two orders he’d finished yesterday, ready for the post office.
Let his mind drift until he thought about barely anything at all.
A woodworking session almost always ended this way. He wasn’t sure how he’d be functioning without them.
For the entire bumpy drive down his road, Dell knew peace.
And then he passed 12 Main Street.
He gritted his teeth as he kept driving, determined to take care of the post office first this time.
Even if he knew he’d inevitably stop on the way back.
Dell couldn’t seem to stop himself from driving past 12 Main Street at least once a day, these last three weeks. He told himself it was mostly to double check that those flags hadn’t inspired someone to smash the window in.
He couldn’t stop thinking about that woman in California. The one who had been shot to death in her store a few years ago because of the rainbow flag she’d hung in the window.
Every time he drove by 12 Main Street to see everything intact, he breathed a sigh of relief.
For Mae. For the town. For himself.
And the days he didn’t just drive by, but pulled over to stop in? Well, he did have a vested interest in this thing. The invoices Mae had been forwarding him almost nonstop weren’t easily forgettable. The plumbing repair price tag had been the most jaw-dropping, although hiring Eli Zalasky to update the electrical throughout the building had cost a pretty penny, too. Just this week, the price of hiring the Gutierrez boys to update the front porch ramp and stairs, along with the crumbling back deck, had almost doubled when they’d discovered more boards on the verge of rot than anticipated.
They had still been working out back yesterday. It made sense to stop again today, Dell told himself as he pulled into a rare spot on Main Street, to check on the progress. Mae was holding up her end of the deal in paying for half of all the work, but still, Dell hadn’t sunk this amount of money into a project since he’d built the ADU. He needed to verify the quality of the work.
“Dell McCleary,” Mae said with a smile when he walked through the front door, which Mae had recently painted bright turquoise. “Wait’ll you see. My back porch is fuckinggorgeousnow. Oh, and you should meet Gemma.”
