Order (Tattoos and Ties 2)

Now that his old man had left the clubhouse, Keyes needed to stop by more often, make a few appearances, be a little later getting to Alec’s while continuing the month-to-month rent on Dev’s apartment. The place gave him good cover until something gave to help him and Alec be together. Maybe with business picking up like it had, he could afford to give Louis a few more dollars an hour to take on more responsibility. He had turned out to be reliable at helping him keep things running around the shop, and the guy wasn’t afraid of his brothers. That would give Keyes a chance to cruise out earlier in the day, stop by the club, then head to Alec’s place. Seemed reasonable enough. Maybe.

Keyes rounded the corner, looking at his old man’s bench still sitting against the building. What did he plan to do about his father?

Nothing.

He had no feeling about it at all.

Keyes pulled to the back of the middle school where his uncle taught, combing the parking lot for Clyde’s car. Luckily, it was still there. He pulled the bike into the parking space next to his uncle’s and cut the engine. He hadn’t told his uncle he was coming and had a fifty/fifty chance that Clyde hadn’t left for the day.

As the day wore on, Keyes found he needed to talk, and Clyde was always his go-to guy. He dropped the kickstand in place and scanned the back of the school, wondering if any of the doors were unlocked.

His boots made deep thuds as he headed for the door closest to his uncle’s classroom. It had been years since he’d been at the school, though. He tested the door handle. Locked. He reached for his phone to call his uncle, but as he scrolled his contacts, the door pushed open.

“Can I help you?” a janitor asked. His face changed from concern to recognition. “You’re Clyde’s boy.”

He nodded. The last time he’d been here, he’d been younger, maybe seventeen, and Clyde had talked him into finishing his equivalency diploma. He’d barely paid attention to the building then, and he surely didn’t remember anyone who had worked there. “I thought I’d surprise him.”

The grin was genuine as the janitor pushed the door wider for Keyes to enter. “You were tall back then. You sure kept growing.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said, sliding in past the guy who pointed him down the long hall. “His room still there?”

“Yeah, three doors down. He’s finishing up tutoring. Go see.”

“Thanks.” He walked the three classrooms down, looking in each darkened window until he saw Clyde standing at a desk, talking to a student. The best he could see, they looked to be alone. With a rap of his knuckles on the small window in the door, Clyde looked up, clearly in deep thought if the furrow in his brow were anything to go by. His aging face changed when he recognized Keyes, a grin springing to his lips, and he waved him in.

“I don’t want to interrupt.”

“No, come in. Have a seat. We’re almost done.” Clyde turned back to the student, falling easily back into teacher mode. “When you solve this system of equations, you get x equals eight and y equals twelve. Do you see?”

“Yeah…” The lightbulb must have blinked on for the teenage girl who sat up straighter and grinned.

“Try that suggestion and email me tonight if you get confused, how about that?” Clyde said.

The same care Clyde had used with him, he had for all of his students. He never got tired of teaching. Keyes looked around the room. A lot of the same math posters were on the walls. The room hadn’t changed much at all over the last ten years. Keyes walked the length of the row of desks to a back shelf, spotting a picture of him and Clyde and his Harley XR750. He picked it up, looking down at the young man he used to be. He had gotten his high school equivalency diploma on the sly and the old broken-down Harley had been his gift from Clyde. Next to that picture was the same motorcycle after he finished the rebuild. That was about the time he completed the online mechanics course Clyde had talked him into. His uncle had been so proud of him.

“So, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Keyes turned to see Clyde shutting the door after the pupil. His uncle felt like home. He hadn’t named that feeling before meeting Alec, but he understood it now. He placed the picture back on the shelf and went to the front of the classroom where Clyde leaned against his desk, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I stopped by the shop and you weren’t home.”

“This is my evening-tutoring day. I try to stay one night a week—you know all that. I haven’t seen you too much lately. Everything going okay?” Keyes stopped about a foot and a half from his uncle, crossing his arms over his chest. Of course, he hadn’t told Clyde about Alec, and since everything he thought about had Alec in the forefront, he had to get past that before he could go on.