Page 70 of Just Past Two

“It’s mostly Rangoon. I like ’em like that.” Phil scanned the menu. “I’m going with a lunch combo. Those are always good.”

After the waitress took their orders, Isabel folded her hands and gave Matthew a mischievous look. “So, is the DiceCon scavenger hunt back in play this year?”

Matthew laughed, a little uncomfortable. He had been thinking on and off about this bit of debauchery, where the PI Games attendees competed against each other in a scavenger hunt filled with some pretty dirty, scandalous challenges, but strangely enough, all his thoughts had ended up back with Silas and how much more fun debauchery would be with his latest one-night stand. “I don’t know. We’ll see.” At Phil’s questioning look, he waved a hand dismissively. “We can talk about it at DiceCon. Don’t worry about it.”

“Hey, Phil, whatever happened with your date last weekend?” Caleb turned his attention across the table. “I totally forgot to ask you.”

“Ooh, you had a date?” Isabel perked up. “Yes, tell us everything.”

“Oh man.” Phil ran a hand through his shaggy brown hair. “She was so hot. You have no idea. And a total freak. We had a great time, she stayed over, it was un-fucking-believable.”

Matthew shifted to see Phil better. “You gonna see her again?”

“Yeah, I asked her out for tomorrow night, and she said yes. We’re going to do minigolf or something. I don’t even care, man, as long as it ends up where it did last time.” He shook his head.

“Got any pictures?” Caleb raised his eyebrows.

“Nah, but I’ll see if I can take some tomorrow.”

“Clothes on, please.” Isabel held up a hand. “We don’t need all the details.”

“Clothing optional. Your pick.” Caleb grinned, and Isabel shoved him playfully.

“What about you, Matthew?” Isabel asked. “You seeing anyone?”

The short answer, of course, was no, but he was disappointed to say so. He hadn’t heard anything from Silas since putting his number in the guy’s phone almost a week ago. That was a clear indicator that no matter how hot the sex had been, they weren’t about to start dating.

“Not really.” Matthew refilled his tea, the steam curling in the air above the teacup.

Isabel and Caleb exchanged a look. “That’s not a no.” Isabel raised an eyebrow. “Come on, Matthew. Out with it.”

Matthew scratched his jaw. “There was this guy last weekend. Things got a little intense at the club, we had a pretty good time.” Understatement of the week. They’d had an amazing time. “But I gave him my number and he hasn’t called, so . . .” He shrugged. “Guess that’s it.”

“Sorry, man.” Caleb gave him a sympathetic smile. “Can’t win ’em all, right?”

“Guess not. It’s okay, though. He was so uptight.” Matthew grinned at the memory of making Silas come. Silas might have been uptight, but that made it even more fun to watch him fall apart. “The guy’s a total workaholic. Needs to loosen up.”

“I’ll bet you helped with that, yeah?” Isabel waggled her eyebrows at him.

“Oh my god, don’t ever do that again.” Matthew shook his head. “No. Just no.”

Isabel laughed. “Come on, lighten up. DiceCon’s in a couple of weeks. You can—how did you put it last year?—score all the Beantown gays? Something like that.”

“Yeah, we’ll see.” Matthew looked for a way to change the subject. “Anyway, who has plans for the weekend?”

Matthew half listened as his friends shared their upcoming social calendars, but his mind was on Silas. Honestly, he didn’t actually find the idea of a Boston fling nearly as appealing as he would have a few weeks ago. Despite Silas’s neuroses, Matthew had been thinking about him a lot all week, including when he’d jerked off over the past few days. It wasn’t even necessarily Silas as much as the contradiction he represented. On one hand, he was irritating, reminding Matthew of his own inadequacies and fears of failure. On the other hand, he was intriguing, a decadent temptation that Matthew could lead into sin and depravity. Those kiss-swollen lips, those moans, that carnal response to Matthew’s roughness—these were not memories that faded away easily. He hoped time would put enough distance between Matthew and that night, and he could move on.

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By quitting time that day, Matthew hadn’t completed enough of his work to avoid taking it home over the weekend, damn it, so he packed up his laptop and went right to the Brass Buckle for a coffee and a quiet workspace. If he had to take work out of the office with him, he preferred that it wasn’t done at home. The white noise of a coffee shop, the steady flow of food and drink that he didn’t have to prepare, all were beneficial to a working environment. He took the booth under the front windows, which he preferred for the natural light still spilling in, and set up with a cup of tea and a large chocolate chip cookie.

The prickle down his spine was the only indicator that something was amiss, but it was enough for him to stop work and look up. Silas was standing just inside the doorway, motionless as if frozen there, staring at him.

The odds of this happening were so bizarre that at first Matthew couldn’t even react. Silas looked like he’d just come from work, wearing a pair of khakis and a polo shirt, the nerdy intellectual who was only missing the horn-rims to complete the image. Too bad the image worked so well on him. It had only been a week, but he’d forgotten that Silas was pretty damn hot.

Silas seemed just as stunned as Matthew, but he recovered first, walking over with the expression of a person who just wanted to get something over with. “I’m out of coffee,” he said, as if that would explain everything.

After a moment, Matthew put the pieces together. “I recommended the coffee beans here. That’s why you came.” It wasn’t some weird sixth sense that had brought them together after all. It was beans. The thought made Matthew smile.