Any Closer

“That’s crap. You used to all but jump out of your skin whenever I walked in the room.”

“It was never what you thought, not ever.”

But I sure as hell knew the truth.

“But beyond that, I-I…,” he stammered, “I’ve been talking to people and networking and—you can’t possibly want me to stay on and be, like, the one person people know in your company.”

“Why not?”

“I was….” He trailed off, raking his fingers through his short, thick hair.

I tipped my head at his hand. “I saw a picture of you with long hair and a goatee and what I guess could pass for a mustache if I was squinting.”

“I’m sorry? I’ll have you know that my facial hair was––”

“Is that why you keep your hair short and shave every day now, so you don’t look anything like Chaz?”

His eyes stayed on mine.

“Do you do it on purpose, or did you just this second figure out that you’re doing it?”

He cleared his throat. “No, I do it on purpose.”

I shrugged. “I can’t say I’m a fan of shaving every day”—I grinned at him, running my hand over the stubble on my face—“but I get keeping your hair short. That would be a pain in the ass to get plaster and paint out of it.”

He was staring at me like I’d grown another head.

“Are you done bein’ all weird about this? ’Cause I gotta stop at my folks’ place and drop off something for my dad and put in a can opener for my mother.”

He was still looking at me when I got up and pulled my knit cap out of the pocket of my heavy-lined beat–to-crap Carhartt work jacket and pulled it down over my hair. I needed a haircut bad; my own thick, wavy hair was at my shoulders.

“Leo,” he croaked out, finally getting up, his eyes again locked on mine.

“What?” I asked, shivering. Even in the diner, it was still cold.

“Everything just stays the same?”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“Are you gonna tell Paul?”

“If you wanna tell Paul, you can, but I really don’t think it will matter to him. I think he’d see it as more of a selling point than anything else.” I chuckled. “You know him; he loves a good story.”

I hit his shoulder and dropped two twenties on the table, leaving Molly, our waitress, a twenty-five percent tip, and headed for the door.

“Wait.” He caught up with me. “Leo, you—”

“Stop,” I cut him off, grabbing him and pulling him out of the way of the stampede of people coming into the diner. It was the morning breakfast crowd, and it was survival of the fittest.

“Leo,” he sighed, and I coiled the arm I had around his shoulders a little tighter, my mouth close to his ear.

“Let it go, Charlie. Whoever you were isn’t who you are now.”

He stiffened in my embrace but didn’t move away. “You think I’m ashamed of what I did for a living?”

“Not at all,” I assured him, fisting my hand on the open flap of his parka for a minute before dropping my hand off him. “Why should you be?”

He turned to look at me. “Then what’d you mean?”

“I meant that you seem to like what you’re doing now better than doing porn, so the new guy you are now is the guy you really are.”

He squinted at me. “Do you even know what you said?”

I thought about it a second. “Maybe.” I grinned at him, arching an eyebrow. “Before I go to—”

“No, I wanna talk to you some more.”

God. Talking. So not my favorite thing.

“Bye, Leo!” Molly called out from the kitchen as I reached the front door.

“Thanks, Mol; thanks, Abe,” I called to her father, who gave me the spatula wave from the other side of the grill. Stepping outside, I held the door open for Charlie and then for Jill Keaton, who reached up and patted my cheek as she went into the diner with her brood in tow. Her husband, bringing up the rear, I just laughed at.

“Dick,” he muttered under his breath as he passed me.

“I distinctly remember saying maybe you shouldn’t make a bet that big, Tom,” I teased him, cackling.

He flipped me off at the door, cracking a grin. “At least I have kids, Foster.”

“You have a baseball team, Keaton,” I commented, laughing, giving him the finger back. “And when you need that second job to put them all through college, I’ll be here to give it to you.”

I was kidding; we always went back and forth, so I was surprised when he suddenly jogged across the space that separated us.

“What?”

“I actually wanna talk to you about maybe helping me out on some contracts I have now. I don’t have any electricians, and since that’s your thing, I was thinking I’d call you.”

“That’d be great.” I smiled at him.

He put a hand on my shoulder. “Jill was pissed about that bet.”