Except he was too amped up to go back to his mom’s house and deal with his family. It felt claustrophobic just standing in one place, like his skin was a size too small. Never mind being stuck in a kitchen while his mom cooked eggs—badly—and made veiled suggestions about him getting a proper job.
Staying in town.
Meeting aniceboy.
And at this point the hints were about as veiled as the dancers on stage with Dory at the Choke. Grade didn’t know what conversation pasties looked like, and he didn’t want to find out over burned scrambled eggs.
The best way to burn off nervous energy was sex, at least it was for Grade, and he could prove he didn’t care some other time. When it was convenient.
It wouldn’t be hard. Grade had done it to lots of people over the years when it felt like they might get too close. He doubted Clay would be any different.
People, in general, weren’t.
Grade left the chemicals to work on the rugs as he climbed up into the driver’s seat. The engine grumbled to life, but he left the lights off as he bumped out of the old building and along the rutted, broken-up road. The bat and bottles rattled around in the back with each pothole he hit on his way down to the highway.
He stopped on the way to toss the bat into the charity collection and the bottles into recycling. Business before pleasure.
***
Clay opened the front door.
He’d not changed out of the suit or rolled his sleeves down. The sketchy red-and-black lines of his ink looked very dark in the last of the moonlight. Clay leaned against the doorframe, arms folded and one leg crossed in front of the other. His feet were bare.
Grade’s breath caught in the back of his throat, suddenly dry and scratchy.
“I wasn’t sure you’d still be up,” he said.
Clay looked amused as he tilted his head to the side. The throb of industrial music leaked out of the house from behind him. It was a good thing his neighbors were a fair distance away. “If I was a fan of early nights,” he said, “I wouldn’t take the sort of shit I take.”
That was the other reason to be grateful this thing wasn’t anything real. Otherwise Grade couldn’t have just ignored that. Where they stood right now, he could. And did.
“You going to invite me in?” he asked. “Or not?”
Clay glanced over his shoulder and hesitated for a beat. Then he shrugged and stepped to the side.
“What the hell, the hookers should have made themselves scarce by now,” he said and gestured grandly with one arm. “Mi casa es su casa.”
“If that was true,” Grade said, “you’d do your recycling.”
Clay laughed and headed back into the house, the door left open behind him.
“Considering the number of laws you break,” he tossed over his shoulder, “you worry an awful lot about following the rules.”
Grade stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him.
“You know how many people end up in prison for a felonybecausethe cops pulled them over for a bald tire and then found other evidence?” Grade asked.
Clay turned away and kept walking backward. “One,” he said. He was right. That was annoying. Clay grinned smugly at Grade. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Maybe,” Grade said sourly. “But I’m not going to make it two.”
Clay laughed at him and turned back around. There was a bottle of bourbon and a half-full glass on the coffee table, close enough to the speakers to make the liquid ripple. Clay grabbed another tumbler from the drinks cabinet and splashed a shot into it.
“How’d the cleanup go?” he asked as he held the glass out to Grade. He raised an eyebrow. “Everything done and dusted? No loose ends?”
The urge to check his phone—in case a message had come in from Harry in the last minute—made Grade’s fingers twitch.
“Nothing that worrying about it will fix,” Grade said as he stepped forward and ignored the glass. He grabbed the front of Clay’s shirt and pulled him into a hard bourbon-sweet kiss, the flavor of it chewed off Clay’s mouth. Before Clay could respond in kind, Grade pulled back just enough to ask against the damp seam of Clay’s lips, “So why don’t you take my mind off it?”
