Fall Apart Page 7

  A handmade sign hung beside the door of Wright Sports and announced that it was open for business. Alarik could see around the advertisement posters hung in the windows, and Damon was nowhere in sight.

  Twice as nervous now as when he left the hotel, he got out of the car and tried to figure out what to say. A couple sitting outside of the coffee shop was watching him and he decided he’d simply have to go for it before he was arrested for loitering.

  There was a bell hanging on the door to announce his arrival, but when he stepped inside, there was no one around. A voice greeted him from somewhere, perhaps the depths behind the counter. It was Damon.

  “Be right with you.”

  Alarik was sweating. His underarms were overloaded. Stress sweat. He stepped up to the counter and struck a Whitlow-worthy nonchalant pose, one elbow on a stack of advertisements for surfing lessons. He waited impatiently for Damon to stand, and when he finally saw the telltale signs of auburn hair and a red face from being crouched low behind the counter, the grin he was sporting fell away. Obviously he’d wanted to see Damon badly enough that the drive wasn’t an issue, but being there, in person, separated by only a few feet, Alarik realized how screwed he was.

  I have a crush on you, Damon. And it’s baaaaad.

  When Damon straightened, he was still focused on a clipboard holding a sheet of paper covered in numbers and columns. There was a pencil tucked behind his ear. Alarik wished for the camera that was currently resting in the front passenger seat of his car.

  “Sorry,” Damon murmured, “can I help you find—holy shit!” He skipped back a step as his eyes lifted, and Alarik fought mightily to keep his expression neutral. “What are you doing here?”

  Unsure how to take that question, Alarik pretended it wasn’t asked. “Mr. Wright.”

  “You’re just here! In Ventura.”

  Alarik nodded, leaning forward to rest his chin in his hand.

  “Why?”

  Cocking his head provocatively, he answered, “I woke up this morning and I realized I made a mistake last night. Since it will directly impact you, I thought it only right that I rectify the situation.”

  Damon’s brows scrunched together as he stared. “Mistake?”

  “Indeed.”

  Tucking the clipboard against his chest, causing the sleeves of his red t-shirt to tighten over his arms, Damon waited, saying nothing.

  I love red cotton, Alarik thought. Come, be mine and I will dress you in red cotton all your days…

  “I drove to Ventura to tell you that I’m playing hard to get. I decided it was the only way to go. It wouldn’t do, you see, for me to drive down here and ask you out on a date and boldly declare my interest in your enigmatic and reserved demeanor, or tell you that your hair is the most perfect shade of auburn I’ve ever seen. It simply wouldn’t do. Instead, I am here to ignore you and drive you wild with questions about whether I’m interested in you, which I am, but you don’t know that yet, and I won’t tell you.”

  As Damon listened, his lips slowly turned upward before he stepped backward again, putting more space between them. His expression shifted, the amusement hidden behind a thoughtful gaze even as his cheeks flushed a lovely shade of pink.

  Alarik was shaking and trying to hide it by tucking his hands in his back pockets. He was nowhere near as good an actor as Zane and nonchalance was proving more difficult to carry off than he’d imagined.

  “You came all the way to Ventura to tell and not tell me this? To purposely leave me in the dark about these feelings of yours that I don’t know about?” Damon’s lips were lifting again.

  Alarik turned and feigned interest in a mannequin’s torso clothed in a skin-tight athletic shirt. Good grief, male mannequin development had come a long way, hadn’t it?

  “It’s cruel and an unfortunate game, Mr. Wright. Yet if I give away too much, too soon, it would be an embarrassment. You’ll have to forgive me because I’ve chosen to be alluring and semi-unattainable for the time being, in hopes that you will find me irresistible and return my regard, which you don’t know about yet, and I won’t tell you.”

  “Damn good thing you drove all the way here to un-confuse me, or I wouldn’t be so confused.”

  “Well, I’m playing hard to get, but I’m not entirely without a heart.”

  Damon carefully placed the clipboard on the counter and Alarik could read the Wright Sports logo on his left pectoral. His smile was now slipping out around the edges. “I should probably chase after you then, because I can’t stop thinking about you, or your accent, or your ridiculous dimples, or that sandy blond hair—As a side note, maybe you could tone down the whole beautiful man thing and the British 007 thing you’ve got going. Cut us poor, average guys some slack,” he sighed. “I’d tell you all of that if you’d stop ignoring me for a minute and give me some attention.”

  “Hmm, well…”

  Alarik turned his back and took a slow walk between racks of clothes; his grin bursting across his face the moment Damon could no longer witness it. 007 thing? God bless him.

  “I’m off about one o’ clock. Maybe we could get lunch, or you could get coffee next door and hang around a bit,” Damon spoke to Alarik’s retreating form.

  Alarik looked back with an aloof gaze and gave a vague lift of his shoulder. “I’m very busy with absolutely nothing to do. My schedule is jam packed with one fictitious rendezvous after another meant to leave your knees weak as you worry ‘Who is Alarik with? Who can it be?’ when in reality, I’d be playing Angry Birds on my mobile while sitting in a rental car. Of course, you don’t know this either, and I won’t tell you.”

  “I’m begging you,” Damon laughed, his eyes flashing in a way that made Alarik breathless. It was the same look he’d caught in the pictures yesterday. There was so much more there that he wanted to know about.

  “How do you take your coffee?” he asked, his own lips stretching wide. “Or do you prefer a mid-morning frozen yogurt?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Charm.

  A lot of it.

  Standing on the other side of the counter.

  Damon exhaled weakly and tried not to insert a pathetic grunt—the sound a man might make when he’d accepted he was fucked. So much for cutting out of the reception early and hiding from Alarik. So much for that elusive simplicity of life that he craved. Dad being sick, Jess freaking out, mom worried and trying to hide it, the struggling family business… None of that added up to simple, so Damon knew he shouldn’t be adding another brick to the wall about to topple over on him.

  But, was the cosmos, the well-ordered whole of the goddamn universe, aware of this man across from him? Damon didn’t think so.

  Alarik didn’t give up in the face of Damon’s disappearing act. Rather, he hopped in a car, drove to Ventura and hunted him down, only to deliver the most appealing come-on Damon had ever experienced. Andrew wouldn’t be original enough or honest enough to try it and Kenny was terminally frightened and crippled by emotional weakness. Such a blatant confession of interest never would’ve worked for him. Wasn’t it only right that Damon succumbed so readily?

  He was pretty much captivated at the moment. This was bad for a number of reasons, but mostly because his mother was coming in to take over the shop in less than an hour. She’d put two and two together and he’d get dragged into the stock room to endure The Stare. She was probably going to be rude to Alarik as well. What a perfect way to start out whatever this was supposed to be between them.

  Realizing that he was staring at Alarik without saying a word, Damon shook himself. If he didn’t finish running through the spreadsheet before his mom blew through the door, he’d be doubly screwed.

  He held up the clipboard and tapped it with a pen. “I have to finish checking on some inventory. Do you mind if—”

  Alarik pushed away from the counter, glancing around the store. “By all means, Mr. Wright. Do what you have to do. I’ll just wander.”

  Damon gave an apologetic nod and to
ok refuge next to the running shoes. He was supposed to be checking on clearance and discontinued items, but he had to start over three times because his eyes kept tracking every movement and every sound made by Alarik. The evening before had been so busy that it wasn’t an option to stare and focus on checking the other man out, and now that Damon was alone with him—even with four racks of clothes, a couple buff mannequins, and a golf club display between them—he was soaking in the opportunity to observe him uninterrupted.

  In a suit and tie, Alarik was distracting and sophisticated. In a tuxedo, he was predictably stunning. In distressed jeans, a t-shirt and a motorcycle jacket he was a walking sin carnival. He’d finger combed his wavy hair and that only made Damon want to run his own hands through it. It was all a deadly sex trap. The hair was the net, the good looks were the sticky sap holding him down, and the alluring personality was the gargantuan spider about to eat his insides.

  Losing count for the fifth time, he grumbled to himself to get it together and started over. When Alarik called out, he lost track again like a tiny electric shock had pranced through his body. The hair on his arms stood at attention.

  “There’s an absolute treasure trove of jockstraps over here. What luck!”

  “I told you,” Damon murmured in embarrassment, wishing he’d never blurted the word “jockstrap” at the wedding. Especially because it made him think about what a jockstrap held and how it might look on say, a six-foot, wiry Brit.

  “I could have one for each day of the week. Two even! In all the colors of the rainbow.”

  Damon knew his face was baking from the heat that rushed to it and he wished his sister were present so he could strangle her. “The colors were my sister’s idea. As you can tell from the surplus on hand, they sold like poisonous hotcakes.”

  “What’s wrong with colors?” Alarik actually sounded curious and Damon was able to consider the answer technically enough that his blush faded.

  “Our customer base is young men aged fourteen to twenty-two. The younger ones come in with their parents whenever they need something. My guess is that they don’t want to buy that kind of thing with their moms watching and they don’t want to be the only ones in the locker room after practice trying to hide their neon orange jock amongst a pack of plain old white. You live by the law of the jungle in there, you know? It’s best to blend in when it comes to whatever’s covering your nuts.”

  Damon began counting again and jumped when Alarik’s voice sounded from only a few feet away.

  “Well then, tell me this. Which do you prefer?”

  Looking up, he came face-to-face with an electric blue jockstrap and another of such a bright yellow that he had to blink a couple times. Somewhere behind the curtain of ball protectors was Alarik, smirking, then smirking some more when Damon’s eyes bugged.

  “Blue,” he croaked.

  “Excellent. I agree,” Alarik swung the blue jock around his finger before snatching it up in a fist. “It would look phenomenal with your skin tone. I’ll take it. ”

  Damon waited for the doctors and nurses to come roaring in with a crash cart as he coded and was declared dead, but nothing happened. Alarik simply grinned and walked away, humming.

  The bell over the door chimed and Damon automatically muttered the standard customer greeting. His mom swept past him, her hair windblown and her phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear. He figured she was probably talking to Jess and the next words out of her mouth confirmed it.

  “I absolutely agree with her; you’re being silly. You hired her and now you’re mad she’s doing her job and advising you. Jessica… No… Listen to me. She told you to have no unnecessary contact with Gavin. You can’t seek him out thinking that a conversation is going to clear up the pigsty he made of your marriage… No, this is not an ‘I told you so.’ Jess… Fine. Then you need to think about Davey. Okay?... Yes. I know… I’m at work now. I’ve got to go.”

  Molly hung up and let out an exasperated sigh, throwing her arms up in defeat. “Kids! I thought after you guys moved out that I’d be living the life!” She stepped forward and kissed him briefly. “You smell like a million bucks.”

  “It’s the soap of real men.”

  She gave him a look like she was impressed. “Nice. How was the wedding? Your speech?”

  “It was all good. There was crying and drama. And that was just from Luke.”

  His mom gave him a pity laugh and disappeared into the stock room to dump her things. For the few seconds she was gone he darted a glance toward Alarik who had somehow managed to make himself invisible. Where did he run off to? Damon was busy looking around racks when his mom came back out and began attacking the computer keyboard with a staccato clicking of keys.

  “What’s going on with Jess?” he asked, straightening up so she wouldn’t ask what he was doing.

  Molly let out another loud exhale and did that thing she did when she mouthed swear words. “She dropped Davey off with your dad and me last night and went to see Gavin. Again. They got in an argument in his driveway because there was another woman with him, but if you want to know the truth, I stopped listening and might be making that last part up.”

  Damon knew he should say how that probably wasn’t the best way to handle Jess, but it’s the same thing he would’ve done. His older sister was a practiced ranter. A whiner. But he loved her. Most of the time. He and his mom simply weren’t built with the requisite patience she needed for focused venting. It looked like Gavin wasn’t either.

  “She knows Gav is scum,” his mom continued, “but that doesn’t mean she wants scum to stop loving her. To her, scum love is still love. I do know she wants to do right by Davey, though. Jess can at least admit that Gavin isn’t a good father.”

  “Gavin’s a dick. He hails from a long line of dicks. He was a dick as a kid and grew into an even bigger dick as an adult. As heir to a clan of dicks, he’s taken dickery to a whole new level.”

  Molly’s eyes had squinted tighter with each use of the word dick. “I’m certain there was a better way to say that.”

  “You mean a more polite way.”

  “Yes.”

  Damon considered it, and then shrugged. “Nah. A dick by any other name…”

  “Why don’t you go somewhere else now?” Molly frowned. “Find a thesaurus.”

  Damon grinned cheekily and was about to do as he was told when Alarik casually made an appearance from behind the same display of running shoes that Damon had hidden behind earlier. Molly pasted on her business smile and gave her son a disapproving sideways glance.

  “I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “I didn’t know there was a customer in the store.”

  Alarik did credit to himself because he smiled easily, acting as though he hadn’t heard a word of a conversation that revolved around the spectacular dramas created by his well-meaning, but misguided sister. He was probably getting a good idea of what Damon’s world was all about. It had to be a disappointment.

  Damon perfunctorily consoled himself: You weren’t looking for a relationship a day ago. Therefore, you will be fine if no such thing follows today or tomorrow. You are an independent adult with a life that in essence, if not in entirety, makes you happy. Go forth and…whatever…

  Good pep talk. Moving on.

  “This is a great shop you have here,” Alarik spoke up and Damon saw his mom’s brows shoot toward the roof at the sound of his accent.

  “Well, it’s small, but it’s ours.” Her eyes were trying to bore holes through Alarik’s skin and her tone was polite, if a little cool. “Can we help you find anything in particular?”

  “Do you happen to have any blue…” Alarik began and Damon gave him a terrified look. “…running shirts? Short sleeves, wicking fabric?”

  Molly hopped into action and rounded the counter. “We have quite a few styles, but I’m not certain about the color. Let me show you.” She was bustling again, right past Alarik, and when she was out of Damon’s sight, the look he received from the
other man was hard to decipher. It was soft, kind, maybe amused. And the intimacy of it bothered Damon.

  Clearly he needed to go back and review that pep talk. Where did Alarik expect this to go? To the bedroom?

  “I don’t want to make a mistake again,” he whispered to himself in a split second of vulnerability he was glad no one was witnessing.

  Damon remained where he was, listening to whatever bits of conversation he could catch between his mother and Alarik. Molly liked the accent. She was asking a lot of questions so Alarik would be forced to answer. If she knew her son was supposed to go out with him, she wouldn’t be so Welcome to America! with her new customer. When she let out another laugh, Damon grew impatient. This was uncharted territory. Molly wasn’t the whimsical, jovial type, especially around strangers and with a floundering daughter on her mind. If someone wanted her to laugh, he or she had to earn it, and it seemed like Alarik was as good with the mother as he was with the son. They were at the man’s mercy.

  Rounding the clothing racks on her way to the register, Molly was carrying at least six running shirts in assorted colors. She looked pleased. Charmed. Alarik was oblivious to the history he was making.

  The middle ground between shadow and light… The Twilight Zone…

  Damon tried to give a look that said Alarik didn’t need to buy anything, but received the slightest negative headshake in return for his trouble. He stood stock still as Alarik obliterated his mom’s usual defenses and mowed her down with grace. She was acting like a different person.

  For a second Damon felt like he’d been inserted into the plot of a paranormal romance involving bare-chested men who practiced mind control. Not that he knew much about paranormal romances—that book he’d ended up reading when he was over at Jessica’s house didn’t count because Davey was asleep and the cable was out. But…still.