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“No one’s in the office, right?” I asked, shooting a glance at the closed door.
“Darien left for the day. It’s just us.”
“Good,” I said, kissing my way down Austin’s chest, down his taut stomach, kissing the dark happy trail that led me toward my pot of gold.
Judging by the twitching outline in Austin’s pants, I had a few hefty handfuls of gold to look forward to playing with.
But before I could even get my hands in the pot, the worst thing imaginable happened: the door handle turned.
What happened next shocked us right back to flaccid-town.
13
Austin Romero
Charlie’s kiss brought me back to the days we’d sneak off to find a closet or bathroom stall we could stuff ourselves in. He always knew exactly how to move his tongue, where to put his hands, how much pressure to lay on me. He was made to kiss me, and I felt made to kiss him. There was less guilt, too, now that we had talked about Dean and Charlie understood a piece of what I had been through. It didn’t feel like I was cheating on Dean—which was a stretch to begin with, but death sometimes caused those illogical thoughts to take root and flourish.
Charlie’s kiss took a weed whacker to that garden of toxic thoughts. I wanted to dive right into him. I was seconds away from dramatically clearing my desk and sitting him on top of it so that we could test the sturdiness of the rest of the furniture when, suddenly, the door swung open.
Charlie and I jumped off each other. “Are you kidding me?” I asked.
“Houston, go, go,” Charlie said, shooing away the cockatoo perched on the door handle. Houston was making a sound very similar to a laugh as he bobbed his head up and down, waving his yellow crest and opening his white wings.
“When did he learn how to open doors?”
Charlie laughed as Houston flew over to his shoulder and started preening his hair. “A few months ago when Shelly thought she could also teach him how to do basic chores around the store. All he learned was how to open doors and how to turn on the microwave.”
I gave the parrot a couple of chin scratches, earning a couple of gracious chirps. Charlie glanced at the clock on the wall. “I need to get home and pack a bag for the cabin. You sure you want to come?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Just going to finish up some things here, and then I’ll get home and do the same.”
Charlie smiled, his lips still shining wet from our kiss. Heat coursed through me, and my briefs felt tight, the pressure inside me only building instead of diminishing. If Charlie stayed in my office for one minute longer, we’d be sending Houston on whatever errand Shelly trained him for.
They both left, and I went to sit back down at my desk, thinking I could take care of the throbbing issue Charlie’s touch left me with.
“Ah fuck,” I said, getting down on my hands and knees so I could pick up the mess of the broken chair.
Charlie’s cabin was tucked away in the White Mountain National Forest, a short drive away from our town, in the always scenic state of New Hampshire. I remembered coming here during college on a couple of unforgettable weekends. We’d spend the day kayaking and fishing and sunning by the lake to come back to the cabin and get in the hot tub together, our clothes never staying on very long. We’d get out of the hot tub, still dripping wet and kissing and rubbing, and we’d move over to the outdoor lounge area, looking out over a sea of rolling trees. It was completely private, and the only way anyone would spot us was if they had a drone, which back then was unheard of.
We’d hook up on that outdoor bed for hours, watching the sun slowly creep down the sky, talking about the stupidest shit and laughing until our faces were cherry red.
Then we’d go at it all over again, making our faces red for entirely different reasons.
“Stunning, huh?” Charlie asked, hand on his backpack strap. “They renovated it last year, so there’s no way you remember any of this.”
He was right. The cabin definitely looked different with its modernized facelift: a new screened-in porch, the new dark blue paint job, the sunroom that wasn’t there before, a fire pit that looked perfect for s’mores and ghost stories. The landscaping, which had never been maintained when we were younger, now looked magazine ready with large pebbles, ferns, lavender, and more things I couldn’t name swirling together to create a beautiful painting.
“It still feels the same,” I said, even with all the changes. I looked around, my sneakers crunching on the gravel driveway. “We played cards for hours under that tree once, and we had a picnic over there—across the street and next to the river. And we would take naps together on those chairs on the porch. They look like the same exact chairs, actually.” I walked onto the porch, wood creaking under my steps, and I touched the wicker chairs.
