Any Closer

But I saw a grin I had never hoped to see.

“What did I ever do to you to make you treat me like a fuckin’ leper?”

“It’s not you,” he promised me. “Though you did just manhandle me.”

“Because you don’t respond to anything else,” I barked at him. “I have done everything else I can think of besides knock you out.”

“Leo—”

“I can’t get through to you,” I told him, “I can’t get you to trust me, and honest to God, Charlie, if you don’t trust me, you can’t be here. Nobody works here. We live here. You get the difference?”

He had nodded.

“Whatever shit you’re carrying around, you gotta cut it loose, ’cause you can’t be part of the team if you’re gonna stand off to the side and just watch us live and breathe. It won’t work.”

His eyes were searching my face, but I had no idea for what.

“Talk to my mother.”

“You were serious about that?”

I was always serious about my mother.

True to my word, I dragged him home to see Donna Foster. She took one look at him and decided that she was going to adopt him. It was fine with me—anything so he’d stop being startled, stop turning like a deer caught in the headlights whenever he didn’t know I was there, and stop catching his breath all the damn time. My mother explained that I was a slob, that I ate like a frat boy, and that I didn’t have a pet because I kept letting my plants die. I was good, she told him, inside and out, even if the outside needed a haircut.

Six months later, I suggested he take some self-defense classes, and you would have thought I came up with the cure for the common cold. I was told I was brilliant. But I knew that already.

I had seen a slow but steady change in Charlie Ryerson over the past two years. His confidence in his work translated to an ease with clients that I liked so much that I moved him into the foreman position a year later. Even though he was young, twenty-three then, twenty-six, close to twenty-seven now, he had the respect of the men because he could do their job if he needed to. He could still get dirty, even though he had never really been blue-collar like the rest of us. He was charming; he could finesse clients, whereas I ended up barking at people. He was sleek and gentle; I tended to yell. Paul wanted him to take on the liaison role between us and commercial customers, the larger scale clients, and put away his tool belt forever. It wasn’t sales, it was wining and dining and schmoozing, and I wasn’t sure he would go for that. I had been secretly glad that Bill, another one of my guys, had taken a weeklong vacation so Charlie had to fill in for him. I thought maybe he breathed better when he was outside. He was going to have to make a decision soon, though, because Paul had offered him an important place in our company, and Charlie couldn’t draw out the decision indefinitely.

“Leo?”

Back in the present, my eyes flicked to Charlie’s face, and I noticed that those stunning eyes of his were rimmed red and watering. I waited.

“He—” Quiet cough. “—your friend, he recognized me?”

“He did.”

Charlie took a deep, shaky breath, leaning back from the table. “Do you want me to work through the end of the week, or just leave now or—”

“What’re you talking about?”

He squinted at me.

I crossed my arms and waited.

“Leo, you can’t, I mean, I… I’ve been talking to people.”

Now I was confused. “You talk to a lot of people, Charlie.”

He caught his breath.

“No, don’t start that shit again.”

“What shit?”

“The whole being afraid of me bullshit,” I growled at him. “I’ve never done anything but be nice to you, asshole, so don’t start getting skittish now. I don’t deserve it.”

He was stunned.

“I’m warning you.” I pointed at him.

His hands came up in defense. “No, I know, you don’t deserve—”

“And,” I cut him off, nearly snarling, “I would have never even brought the porn crap up, but if you found out down the road that I knew, it would be like I was keeping something from you, and then you’d be wondering what kind of man I was all over again when you know already. So that’s why I told you I know, and it doesn’t have to go any further than this.”

He stared at me.

“Speak,” I ordered angrily.

“I’m just afraid that—”

“Afraid of what?” I dared him to say me.

“Not you!” he squeaked out, and it was funny, the noise, coupled with his denial. The timing, his words and mine, were strange, making it sound like he was lying.

“Charlie—”

“No, I swear, Leo,” he assured me, leaning forward, his eyes locked on mine. “Even at the beginning, I was never scared of you.”