Page 23 of Built to Last

“My phone is in the RV,” I answered, calmly as I could.

“And I don’t have your number,” Gilbert said, finishing washing his hands and grabbing a handful of towels from the dispenser.

“We’ll have to do something about that,” Sean said with a smile. “Although it might not matter, now that the season is over.”

“You should get it anyhow,” I said, nodding to Sean as I grabbed paper towels, too.

“You definitely should,” Sean said, pulling out his phone as Gilbert and I left the bathroom. “We wouldn’t want a repeat of tonight, would we.”

The man had no idea what he was talking about. But as the three of us gathered up our things and left, I exchanged a look with Gilbert. The question hung in the air between us. Did we want a repeat of tonight? And did that mean I was ready to take the giant leap to come out fully and deal with whatever happened next?

CHAPTER 7

Gilbert

Not since Diccon walked in on me with my dick out while watching Adam Lambert videos my freshman year of high school had I walked away from something feeling like I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. The weird thing was that I didn’t want to hide from everything Kyle and I had done.

Was it embarrassing getting off with the guy you hated in an abandoned locker room you’d been locked in together? Yes. But the kissing had been spectacular. The energy between us had been even better than college, which I didn’t think was possible, given how horny both of us had been back then. Having my hand around Kyle’s dick and his around mine and both of them rubbing together was pure, raw pleasure.

It wasn’t just the act and the chemicals zipping through our brains, though. It was the closeness, the sense of breakthrough and accomplishment. It was the two of us on the same wavelength for a change, a sexy wavelength at that.

It was Kyle’s confession that he’d been about to come out in college, that he felt the need to stop hiding and put it all out on the line now, that had tipped me over the edge and made me take a chance. The door hadn’t been slammed in my face forever the way I thought it had. It might have never been shut to begin with.

All those things and more wrestled through my head as I helped out with the Saturday morning shift the day after the fireworks.

At least, I was trying to help out.

“I’m not going to do Diccon, Brian, and Hannah’s whole thing of calling out customer orders and driving everyone crazy,” Chase said loudly, jolting me out of staring at the middle distance while absently wiping the espresso maker, “but I might have to figure out something if you’re just going to stand there and flake out when there’s a line.”

I blinked and twisted to see three people standing on the other side of the counter, watching me like I was holding up their weekends. “Sorry,” I apologized to them with a lopsided grin, then turned to Chase. “I’m your boss, you know. You can’t talk to me like that.”

I was kidding, and Chase had been teasing when he’d called me out. I was pretty impressed that I was even capable of joking when my insides felt like they were melting under the heat of a flame I thought had gone out years ago.

“Caramel latte with oat milk,” Chase told me with a wink, then focused on the next customer, upselling them one of the pumpkin muffins Hannah had baked at the end of her shift the day before.

I sighed and moved fast to fill the coffee order, and the next few after that. I’d gotten my start in Common Grounds working as a barista in high school, and I still helped out when the regular staff needed a day off, like Leighton did that weekend.

It was a good thing I could make most of the coffee orders quickly and without thinking too much about them. Sundays tended to be slower anyhow, but I needed all of my brain cells to make sense of what had happened the night before.

Kyle and I had kissed. We’d been intimate. We’d fought, but it was one of those fights that cleared the air and made you rethink things you’d taken for granted. He’d claimed he wasn’t interested in Marco, but I found that hard to believe for some reason. Or maybe that was my own thoughts about how cute and perfect Marco was getting in the way?

Fuck. What if by mentioning Marco I’d given Kyle the idea that he could date the man? Date him instead of me. I’d been nothing but a problem since the day Kyle had shown up in the empty lot beside the café. I’d broken up with him right at the moment when he’d needed me the most. I’d⁠—

Steam from the espresso maker burned my fingers when I swiped for a cup too quickly. I hissed a curse as I jerked back from the machine.

“Whoa there, boss,” Chase teased me. “Cursing behind the counter is strictly forbidden.”

I laughed, hoping it would shake my spiraling thoughts off. “Sam is the rules guy, not me. I don’t care what you say back here.”

“That’s awesome,” one of the young teens crowded around the counter, poring over the coffee menu and drooling at the pastries in the cabinet said with a delighted snort.

“On second thought,” I said, raising an eyebrow and sending Chase a pointed look.

We made it through what counted as a weekend rush, and when Amy and Caroline showed up to take over for the afternoon shift, Chase and I headed toward the office. I didn’t have much work to do, but I wasn’t really keen on the idea of rushing home to where Diccon and Theo were probably snuggled up on the couch together and Sam and Brian could be upstairs, completely heedless of how thin the wall between Sam’s bedroom and mine was. I could find some work to do or I could grab my bike and go for a ride on the Pennypack Trail, or I could just flop in my chair in the office and stare at the wall until my life wasn’t so confusing.

Chase didn’t head out once he’d punched his code into the digital timecard. He stood where he was, looking at me like he was waiting for me to tell him the punchline of a joke.

“Can I help you?” I asked him sardonically.