Candy Man (2 page)

Nobody knew him here. He could make a new start. He wasn’t even thirty yet—he still had things he could do.

An hour later, after he’d hauled his shit the mile from the bus station to his cousin’s apartment off of F Street in the joint-freezing cold, he was hoping one of the things he could do was shower, and the other thing was sleep.

H
IS
COUSIN
lived in half of the second floor of an old Victorian house. The house itself wasn’t in bad shape—could have used some new boards on the stairs and a new coat of paint, but Adam saw Thanksgiving decorations in all the windows, including Rico’s, and the winter lawn was neatly trimmed. Adam understood that was his job too, but he didn’t mind.

Maybe if he worked hard enough, the super would recommend him to another apartment. Who knew, right?

The thought cheered him, and he pulled the key out from under Rico’s doormat and let himself in with a little bit of optimism.

Which was quickly knocked out of him when something that looked like a cross between a boxer and a pony tried to knock him on his ass.

“
Clopper
?” he hollered, suddenly getting the name. Too compact to be a clodhopper, too massive and clumsy to be anything else, the dog wasn’t even really trying to escape so much as it was trying to crawl into the crotch of Adam’s pants nose first, entrance unnecessary. “Clopper, you asshole, knock it off!” He shoved the dog’s head aside and hoped he didn’t just condemn himself to a dog-bite neutering procedure.

Clopper didn’t wag his tail, but he didn’t growl either. The look he cast Adam was more like disappointment.
Oh. We can’t get to know each other better? That’s a shame. I wanted to be your friend. Are you
sure
you won’t let me crawl into your pants and maul your family jewels?

“No,” Adam said out loud, feeling grumpy. It was the third unwanted advance he’d fended off in six hours. “You can’t lick my balls. I have to know you longer than a nanosecond, you fucking perv!”

Clopper grunted and retreated to the far corner of the apartment, where a giant dog bed existed to serve his monster-dormancy needs.

Adam recovered his dignity and dragged his suitcase and duffel in the door, then slammed it shut behind him so he didn’t let the dog and the as-of-yet-unseen cat out. Carefully he prowled around his new surroundings, deciding they suited him fine.

The apartment had been adapted from what looked to be the bed and bath portion of the house. To his right as he entered was a small kitchenette with a counter that divided the cooking area from the living room. A small breakfast nook attached to the kitchen, with a little white Formica table complete with yellow vinyl eggshell chairs.
Classy, Rico—here’s hoping the internship pays better than the last job!
The hallway took off from the living room. From the front door, Adam could see three doors—he assumed two bedrooms and a bath.

Oh Lordy, compared to the shotgun single bedroom he hadn’t been able to afford, this was like a luxury suite at the Hilton. Adam leaned against the door and closed his eyes. Six months here. Six months running distance from downtown and Old Town, biking and bussing distance from at least two colleges and several vocational schools. He could do it here. He could get a job and get a car and get his feet back under him again.

He pulled his charger and phone out of his pocket and plugged them both in, then waited a moment for his phone to light up.

I’m here. Has your plane taken off yet?

No—we must have just missed each other. Sorry cousin!

I’m sorry too. But I’ll take care of your guys for you.

Has Clopper sniffed your balls yet?

Yup.

Good. It means you’re home. Gotta run!

Adam wasn’t sure what that feeling in his face was until he got out of the shower and went to brush his teeth.

That was when he saw it in the mirror. He was smiling.
Oh God, let this be, however temporarily, home.

Sign in the Window

“Y
OU
FOUND
anyone yet?” Finn Stewart asked brightly, and Darrin smiled at him, liking his flirty, almond-shaped blue eyes and wide-mouthed smile. Finn could probably be underwear-model material, but he could never manage the whole broody thing. He had curly red-brown hair that peeped out of a fleece cartoon character hat, the kind with the chin strap and the button underneath. His body was all elbows and knees held together by long, rangy arms and legs, with wide shoulders and a torso shaped in a perfect capital V.

But och! That grin, with the dimples and the brackets in the corners of his mouth! Could light up the sky, it could—and he flashed it
everywhere
!

Right now the boy was flashing it as he delivered Darrin’s daily lettuce-chicken wrap, and Darrin was grateful for both. True to his promise to Joni, the past two days had been almost miserably busy as people gathered big bowls of specialty candy for their Thanksgiving Day centerpieces and candy bowls. If it wasn’t for Finn’s father’s sandwich shop, Darrin wasn’t sure he and the rest of the staff would have had time to eat at all. He’d been running the store on full cylinders, working his employees as long and as often as he could, up to and including overtime, and they
all
needed a little help.

So Finn’s arrival was worth taking a little break, if for nothing else than to see that smile.

“Still looking,” Darrin said, thinking his new employee would show up damned soon. The Pixy Stix never lied. “In fact… ah! There he is!”

And sure enough, here was Tall, Dark, and Broody, with brown eyes under sunglasses, bold cheekbones, an equally bold nose, and full lips. The confidence of his no-bullshit military strut and haircut didn’t quite compensate for the lines of anxiety around his eyes and mouth.

Darrin’s next project was in dire need of some fixing up.

Finn looked over to where Darrin was looking, and in spite of the fact that the store was full of people, his little gasp of “Oooh” was unmistakable.

The door closed behind the newcomer, and Darrin raised his eyebrows. “Oooh” indeed.

Finn turned to Darrin with big, infinitely blue eyes. “Can I come back?” he asked, his knockout grin lighting up the store. “I want to meet this guy!”

“I don’t know, sugar,” Darrin drawled, playing for time. “Do you work tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday, so that’s a yes! See you then if you don’t need me before!”

Finn saluted over his little puppy-dog hat (something to do with a cartoon show—Darrin was not ashamed to say he was too old to follow it) and hustled out of the front entrance, past Darrin’s soon-to-be new employee. The store was crowded, and although Finn made an attempt to sidestep, the two of them were jostled together—and that was when Darrin saw it.

New Guy’s eyes popped open just as he was raising his sunglasses over his head, and when he met Finn’s merry blue eyes, a look that Darrin could only describe as wistful crossed his face. The whole world seemed to hold its breath, whether the people in the crowded store knew it or not. It didn’t breathe again until Finn flashed his grin at Tall, Dark, and Broody and then skedaddled, dynamite in jeans and a hooded Sac State sweatshirt, delivering sandwiches from River Burger to the cobbled streets of Old Town.

Tall, Dark, and Broody had a moment of visibly pulling his shit back together, and then he seemed to remember the Help Wanted sign in his hand and the thing he’d set out to do.

A
DAM
LOOKED
around the bustling little candy store, and he had to agree: Candy Heaven was
definitely
in need of help. He remembered visiting Rico on leave. Adam had liked the charm of Old Town Sac, the little tourist trap across the bridge from Raley Field. After a day of rest (and a chance to coax Rico’s skittish tiger-striped cat, Gonzo, from under the bed), he figured he’d take a bus and start there.

This was the fifth place he’d gone into with a Help Wanted sign, but so far all the positions had been filled. He’d been a little disheartened—and very hungry—when he’d seen the sign in the candy store. And the kid he’d run into—the one with the bright eyes and knee-melting grin?

Yeah. That kid had smelled like sandwiches.

At least that was what Adam told himself, because the sizzle-spark-
zing
that had traveled his spine when he and the kid had danced, trying to get around each other, had no business taking up residence anywhere in his body.

Home. Job. School. C’mon, Adam—remember the basics!

So basically, Adam had to find the boss and ask for a job, and to that end, he had to find….

Well, the boss, right? Apparently, the boss was the guy on all of the little canvas candy bags, with the long hair and the Willy Wonka hat. And
that
guy was standing behind the counter and waving at him.

In that moment Adam had a supreme instance of dislocation.

He pointed dizzily to himself and looked behind him to see if Willy Wonka—or the guy with the long layer cut standing behind the counter—wasn’t talking to somebody else.

But the guy kept smiling and gesturing, and then he reached behind the counter and pulled out an apron.

Adam drew nearer and the guy said, “You’re here for a job, right?”

“Uh, yeah—”

Six people suddenly cut in front of him to wrap the already present queue around the stack of candy-filled barrels near Adam. He had to cut
back
through the line to get to the counter.

“Well great!” the Candy Man said. “Here, put this on so people know you work here. I’ll clock you in later for twelve thirty, and what I need you to do is stand by the scale and weigh the candy while I check people out. Can you do that?”

“Uhm, yeah—”

Oh geez. Adam didn’t even know how much this job
paid.
But at this moment, it
was
paying, and when Adam had walked through the store, he’d been making precisely dick.

“Okay, folks,” he said, using his military training to sound like he meant it. “Everybody stand aside, coming through, we’re gonna move this line a little faster, how’s that sound!”

The huzzah of the crowd sounded good-natured and excited, and Adam figured what the hell. Even if he walked out of here with one day’s pay to find a better job, one day’s pay would at least buy his dinner and his bus fare, right?

S
EVEN
HOURS
later, Adam wasn’t sure he was going to make it until dinner.

“Uhm,” he said, a little desperately, recognizing hunger spots in front of his eyes. “When do we close again?”

Darrin (his boss—he’d figured that out in the first hour) looked at him with worry in his eyes. He was actually taller than Adam, which was a feat in itself, but that didn’t stop him from seeming really… kind. “Sweetheart, when did you last eat?”

“Last night,” Adam confessed. Rico didn’t have much in the cupboards, and Adam didn’t have much in his pocket. He’d been going to buy a sandwich or something after he’d found a job.

“Oh Glory! Here, you go help Joni stock that barrel, and I’ll call Finn for another delivery.”

“Finn?” Adam asked, feeling hazy. “Like the cartoon character?” The kid he’d bumped into, the one who’d smelled like sandwiches, had been wearing a hat like that.

“Yup—our resident sandwich boy. Get some of the others to help you, and scoot. We need to stock or people are going to start eating the wood!”

He wasn’t far off. Candy Heaven was one of those candy by weight places: on the bare floorboards sat big wooden barrels, each one filled with a different wrapped confection, and tied-dyed flags decorated the loft, where Darrin kept stock. For those (like Adam, actually) whose taste went more toward chocolate, there was a glass-covered refrigerated display cabinet in the back where a customer could pick truffles, fudge, or chocolate, along with a small refrigerator case with sodas and water. Darrin had purchased a bunch of canvas bags and had them stamped with his likeness—a thin-featured man with a winsome smile and long-layered red-brown hair—and gussied the image up with a purple top hat and tails. Those were a real plus. People would fill one of those and call that a quickie Christmas or Thanksgiving gift. It wasn’t until Adam looked up in the middle of weighing what seemed to be his one-thousandth canvas bag that he realized, omigod, they were almost
out
, and many of the barrels were down to the last inch of candy.

Adam looked around as he walked the short distance from the register to the loft stairs. He saw a surprising number of employees in this little operation—he was pretty sure he’d counted at least five other people wearing brown Candy Heaven aprons, and they were all doing different things. The squat dark-haired girl with the crew cut and glasses was handing out free taste coupons, the sour-looking boy with the nose ring and goatee was behind the counter with the chocolates, and the foxy-faced girl with the skunk-stripe in her dyed red hair was currently stocking from the last batch that had been pulled down from the stairs. A good-looking kid with brown hair and big brown eyes was cleaning out the old boxes from the loft and throwing them out back, presumably to make it easier for Adam to get up there to stock.

Two new boys had walked in while Adam was working, both of them with sienna skin and curly, shiny black hair. The taller one had a mustache and the shorter one had a jowly face—every now and then when they weren’t taking care of customers, they spattered Hindi at each other in an effort to give directions. In fact, they were the only two people
besides
Darrin whose names Adam knew. The tall one was Ravi and the short one was Anish. Adam had no idea how they were related, but he knew they probably couldn’t exist for longer than an hour outside the other’s pocket.

And given that he was going to need help and theirs were the only names he knew, they were about to become his new best friends.