Page 17 of Give Me What You Will

He was behind the bar as usual. His black hair had tumbled over his forehead as he was dragging something out of the walk-in fridge that cooled the kegs. His arms were a delicious olive-gold color that most Californians worked all summer to get. The thick corded muscles of his tattooed biceps and forearms strained as he yanked the keg upward, then dropped it with a thud, letting out a cursing sigh.

“Has anyone seen the goddamned dolly?” Frankie shouted irritably, glancing around the bar and freezing the second he saw him.

His aching, stupid fucking heart flipped when their eyes collided.

Fuck. I shouldn’t have come here.

Refusing to run away now, he carefully slid his sunglasses off, hanging them on the collar of his T-shirt. It was impossible to look away from him. No one else in the bar or outside mattered. All he saw was him, and that was always the problem, he thought irritably. He’d always been so obsessed, so fixated that he never saw anyone else but Frankie.

It was pathetic.

I am pathetic.

And it needed to change, which meant ignoring his fluttering heart and burying it in a fucking cave with the rest of his emotional baggage.

“Let me take your bag, Sammy. I’ll put it behind the bar,” Tina said, and he followed her, swallowing the nerves that had knotted in his throat.

Frankie was usually the most stylish man in the room. Sam used to tease Frankie about his vanity, saying it was the inner peacock in him that liked to flash his feathers to the rest of the regular birds. Today, however, Frankie’s outfit looked like something a kid would pick out, or an uncaring American tourist on vacation, and Sam couldn’t help but smirk, taking him in. He wore a white tank top with a palm tree and pink flamingo-printed button-up shirt over it, along with matching pink swimming trunks and flip-flops.

Frankie straightened as Sam approached, shifting on his feet, glancing away and back, as though unsure where he was supposed to look.

He frowned. He rarely ever saw Frankie nervous, and trying to appear casual, Sam leaned forward, assessing the keg between Frankie’s legs. “Need a hand?”

Frankie's jaw twitched, and he nodded, still not looking at him. “Yeah, all right.”

Something inside him danced with pleasure at Frankie letting him help, and he immediately squashed it. He rounded the bar, having done it over a million times over the course of his life here, and grabbed the side of the keg with Frankie.

“Where’s this going?” Sam asked, already preparing his back for the heavy lift.

“Bar outside,” Frankie instructed. “Already ran out of the half-barrels.”

“Sounds about right.” Before he lifted, Frankie’s hand suddenly reached out and slid Sam’s sunglasses off his T-shirt and placed them next to the cash register.

“Don’t wanna break the doctor’s fancy glasses,” Frankie drawled smoothly, finally looking at him.

They were surprisingly close, bent over the keg and about to lift, their foreheads nearly touching, and all Sam could do was stare into those warm brown eyes, completely consumed by how much he had missed him and how much…

He wanted to kiss him again.

Stop. Stop it right the fuck now.

He tracked Frankie’s lingering gaze over his face, watching as his eyes dipped down to his lips, as though recalling their final moment together, his hot breath fanning Sam’s face.

Holy shit.

Sam’s gut twisted, and the tingling jolt between his legs made him sway forward into him, catching a scent of beer, spicy aftershave, and sunscreen. Why did Frankie have to smell good, too? Couldn’t he have one damn flaw?

“Kiss and make up already, Frankie!” Tina announced as she made herself a cocktail behind the bar. “You’ve been pouting for months! What did you expect Sammy to do when he became a doctor, stick around here forever?”

“Hey!” Frankie shot up, glaring at her. “I wasn’t pouting.”

“You were so pouting.” Tina slipped the black straw between her brightly painted red lips, grinning. “It was adorable, Frankie.”

“Shut it,” he snapped irritably. “And who gave you permission to come behind the bar?”

“Sammy’s back there!”

“Because he earned his stripes workin’ this place. You haven’t, princess. Now get out.” Frankie flicked a dirty bar towel at her, and she hurriedly grabbed her half-finished cocktail, sloshing it around her hand.