Good Bones (5 page)

Dylan’s face went redder. “I’m not. But it’s spring and I figured you’d be planting stuff. Or something.”

“Nah.” He jerked his chin in the direction of his property. “I don’t farm it myself. Lease it out to a guy who grows wheat. I just sit back and collect the bucks. Wouldn’t mind a few extra dollars, though. I guarantee you—I’m a handy man.”

Chris Nock was a gorgeous redneck who might or might not have been enjoying subtle double entendres at the faggot’s expense. Dylan should have been kicking him off the porch and tossing his cans of crappy beer after him.

Instead, he heard himself saying, “Okay.”

Chapter 4

D
YLAN
was still trying to decide where to plug in his coffeemaker when there was a pounding at the back door. He opened it, blinking bleary eyes at Chris Nock, who wore a pair of tight faded jeans and an equally tight and faded blue T-shirt. He had a leather tool belt around his waist.

“Mornin’,” Chris drawled, grinning as if there was something amusing about Dylan.

“Um… morning. Come on in.” Dylan stepped back and ran a hand through his uncombed hair.

Chris sauntered in and looked around the kitchen appraisingly. He smirked when he saw Kay’s orchid on the counter, then turned to Dylan. “Where we gonna start?”

“Here, I guess. I wasn’t expecting you quite so early. Hang on while I get the java going.” Dylan took the coffeemaker into his future study and set it atop the mini-fridge. He had to come back into the kitchen to fill the carafe with water, and when he did he found Chris gazing thoughtfully out the windows at the soggy backyard. There was something lonely about the set of those broad shoulders, Dylan thought, and then silently chided himself. He was probably just projecting his own feelings onto his neighbor.

Dylan waited in the study while his coffee brewed, munching on a cupcake and no doubt scattering crumbs for the mice. Then he took his insulated mug and another cupcake back into the kitchen, where Chris was still at the window. “Want breakfast?” Dylan asked, holding the pastry out.

Chris looked down at the cupcake—white paper with red polka dots and pale blue frosting on top—and raised an eyebrow. “I ain’t a ten-year-old girl, dude. I had sausage and eggs already.”

Dylan scowled slightly. “Whatever. There’s joe in the other room if you want it.” Then he set his coffee down and ate the cupcake himself.

The other man didn’t take him up on the half-hearted offer. Instead, he nodded his head at the toolbox Dylan had set in the corner. “You’re payin’ for my time. Wanna get going?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

After a few minutes of discussion they decided that tearing out the cabinets would be a good place to begin. It was hard work, but it was also kind of fun to destroy things. Somewhere inside of Dylan, the wolf reveled in that bit of mayhem. Chris was a hard worker and clearly knew how to use his tools. It had been a very long time since Dylan had done physical work near another man, and he enjoyed it more than he remembered. He found himself frequently distracted, however, by Chris’s rippling muscles or the little droplets of sweat that gathered on the man’s face. Sometimes Chris would pause for a moment to swipe his hair away from his eyes with the back of one dirty hand, and Dylan would find himself wondering what it would feel like to run his fingers through that hair.

Neither of them spoke much as they worked, so the main sounds were hammers clanging on crowbars and the crack of wood breaking free. But sometimes Chris made little grunts of effort or chuckled when a piece of cabinetry proved especially stubborn, and Dylan would have to hide a smile.

They took a break midmorning. Dylan slumped on the floor against one wall, mug in hand, while Chris leaned against the remaining cabinet. “We need music,” Chris announced.

“Sorry. My records and stuff are still packed away.”

“Records? As in ‘Golly gee, Gidget, come on over and listen to my keen new 45s’?”

“I like vinyl,” Dylan replied loftily. “I mean, digital’s okay, but it’s a little… soulless. The little pops and scratches—those are more like real life. They have authenticity.”

Chris rolled his eyes. “Whatever, dude. I bet a gramophone’s even better. Or… what are those things? Those pianos that go by themselves?”

“Player pianos.” Dylan chose to withhold the fact that a friend actually owned one.

Chris nodded and crossed the room, walking with his characteristic swagger. He kind of reminded Dylan of the roosters on the wallpaper, which Chris was currently picking at with his dirty fingernails. Then Chris turned around and cocked his head. “What d’you do when you ain’t destroyin’ your kitchen?”

“Told you. I’m an architect.”

For some reason, Chris seemed to think that was funny. “You get paid to draw pretty pictures of houses.”

“I get paid to
design
houses, yeah.”

“That ain’t so hard. You got walls, floors, a roof.” Chris pointed around as he spoke. “Don’t need no fancy college degree to figure that out.”

“It’s a little harder than making a box with windows.”

Chris waved his hand dismissively. “Nah. Buildin’ a house, that’s the hard part. Puttin’ the pieces together just right, draggin’ beams around, workin’ in the heat and rain.”

Dylan stood up and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve done that part too. How do you think I knew how to tackle this job?” He had put in hours every summer during college, hanging up his barista apron to work construction because he thought the experience would help him understand architecture better.

“So you swung a hammer a few times. Big deal. There’s guys, they do that every day for their whole lives, and they’re just thankful for the paycheck, until one day they fuck up their backs too bad or screw up their knees, and they can’t do it no more. And those guys never make anythin’ near as much as the architects in their fancy suits and air conditioned offices.”

“I don’t wear a suit.”

Chris nodded. “Yeah, I know. You buy your clothes at thrift stores because you want to prove that you’re anti-corporate, and then you blow six hundred bucks on a porch chair made from repurposed wine barrels. I been off the farm once or twice, you know. I seen guys like you.”

“You don’t know me,” Dylan spat back, irritated.

Chris worked his jaw but didn’t say anything. He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a pack of Marlboros, but when he shook one out Dylan said, “Hey. No smoking inside.”

Chris glared but stomped to the door. It slammed shut behind him, and Dylan peeked through the window. Chris was standing just outside in the drizzle, cigarette between his lips, hair hanging over his eyes. Dylan half expected him to go home. But instead Chris finished the cigarette and lit another, ground the butt under his boot heel when he was done, and flung open the door. Dylan pretended he’d been inspecting the window frame.

They got back to work, and at first the silence between them was oppressive. Dylan regretted the lack of music. But after a while they both loosened up a little, so that by lunchtime it was as if the argument had never happened. Dylan was relieved by the return to normalcy and also satisfied to see that Chris really did know his way around the job.

Chris went home for lunch, and Dylan ate a sandwich and the last of the cupcakes as he thought about his neighbor. He’d known from the start that Chris was eye candy, but to Dylan’s surprise he kind of liked the guy. Yes, he was cocky and a little crude, but he was also refreshingly up-front, as if he didn’t give a damn what people thought of him. Unlike other people Dylan knew, Chris certainly wasn’t wasting any effort trying to impress with how much he knew or how he’d been into certain hip things long before they were cool.

Dylan wasn’t sure why Chris was willing to spend time with him, other than the money. Actually, he’d never been sure why anyone wanted to spend time with him, unless they were family or they wanted a quick fuck.

Once upon a time, Dylan had dreamed of finding someone who could look past his skinny body, plain face, and general dorkiness and see the real him. Like a goddamn princess locked in a tower, he’d imagined his own Prince Charming coming to rescue him and to give him a happily ever after. It was a stupid thing to want—he’d known that even at the time—but he’d stubbornly held onto a little hope as he earned his good grades and got his good job and tried to live a successful life.

And then he’d met Andy, and those fairy tale dreams were destroyed. He’d gradually come to accept that he’d never get to settle for even the middle-class version of those dreams, the version with the honeymoon in Maui and the picket fence and the good-natured arguments over whose turn it was to mow the lawn. It broke Dylan’s heart a little, but he’d succumbed to reality and acknowledged that those things would never be his.

He was a brave little toaster—now sharing his life with a wolf, he’d done what he could. He managed to keep his job, cage his new murderous impulses, and smile when Rick and Kay invited him over. He paid his taxes, hung out at bookstores, shopped at the Apple store, and read blogs. He’d made what he could of his life, and he’d told himself he was content, with only the niggling fear over others’ safety keeping him from true happiness.

But that was a lie. Dylan was lonely. Not just for a lover—although he deeply yearned for one—but for a friend. Matty was cool and he had a nice time with her, but he could never quite let down his guard, never quite let her see what he was.

With all his hip urban friends and acquaintances, Dylan had never spent much time with anyone like Chris, but now he found himself wishing Chris could be his friend. “Idiot,” he said to himself, just as Chris came walking back into his house.

“Just got here and already you’re callin’ me names,” Chris said with a grin. He smelled of bacon and mayonnaise and chicken soup.

“Sorry. I was just… just remembering something I almost forgot.”

Chris quirked an eyebrow at him and then shrugged. “Consider me clocked in.”

They tore down the rest of the cabinets that afternoon, then removed the door between the kitchen and the dining room and dismantled the frame. Every now and then Chris would touch Dylan—a friendly pat on the shoulder here, an accidental brushing of hands there—and every contact made Dylan’s stomach flutter. Dylan’s muscles grew tired, but he wasn’t about to admit it since Chris was still laboring away.

At a little past three o’clock, Chris went outside for another cigarette break. Dylan waited inside with his coffee, feeling both weary and wired. Little droplets of rain fell from Chris’s hair when he came back inside.

Dylan walked over to the room’s other doorway, which led to the hall. “I think I want to take down this door too. The opening isn’t original to the house, and the door itself is a piece of crap.” He rubbed at his little patch of beard thoughtfully. “Maybe I’ll go with a curved arch instead of a square. You think you have the abilities for that?”

He turned to look at Chris and was surprised to be met with a glare. “Told ya I know what I’m doin’.”

“Yeah, okay. It’s just tricky, that’s all. You can buy kits and stuff, and that’s okay for the framing, but I think I’m going to look at an architectural salvage yard for the doors themselves. Find something more authentic, something decidedly unique.”

“Of course you will,” Chris said, confusing Dylan. What was his neighbor so pissed off about?

Dylan tried to smooth things over with a little babble. “I love old doors and how they have so much character. Or really, any interesting doors. My freshman year in college, I went on a trip to Barcelona—Spain—and we went on a tour of Casa Batlló. That’s a house designed by this famous architect named Gaudí, who was sort of the father of Modernism and….” As Dylan spoke, Chris’s brows had lowered and his expression had soured. Dylan let his little lecture peter out. “What?” he asked.

“You think I’m a moron, don’t you?”

Dylan blinked at him. “Of course not.”

But Chris’s jaw muscles tightened. He looked away, then back again. “Sure you do. You think I’m an ignorant hick who ain’t never heard of nothin’ and who thinks that tractor pulls and monster trucks are high culture.”

“I don’t—”

“I
know
where Barcelona is, asshole.”

“I’m sorry,” Dylan said. “I just thought… I mean—”

“I know what you thought.”

Dylan suddenly became angry. “You know what I’m thinking. You know exactly who I am. You must be a goddamn genius. Such a goddamn genius that you live in a shack in the middle of fucking nowhere and you don’t have a real job and you can’t even find your own goddamn toilet when you need to take a piss!”

They stood there staring at each other, both breathing hard, both with their hands balled into fists. For a few moments Dylan was sure Chris was going to come closer and take a swing at him. And then it hit him—the absurdity of it all: only one other human being as far as the eye could see, and Dylan had managed to alienate him within a single day. Dylan had to laugh.

“What’s so fuckin’ hilarious?” Chris growled.

“I am. We are.” He filled his lungs deeply and let the air out, and was relieved to see Chris’s tense posture soften. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m… my people skills aren’t that great. I didn’t mean to imply anything about your intelligence, okay? And I promise not to keep assuming that living in the sticks means you’re inbred trailer trash if you’ll stop supposing that I’m an asshole just because I grew up in a place big enough for traffic lights.”