Nothing but Smoke (Fire and Rain) (2 page)

“Least you could do.” The kid took the cloth and rubbed it between his fingers before getting a small bottle of hand sanitizer out of his pocket to finish the job.

Laughing, Nicky accepted back his handkerchief. “You need a throat lozenge too?” He tried not to notice, but Strawberry was still half-hard, even when he was tucking himself into his shorts.

The kid would probably head off to find some other guy to blow him for a second round.

Nicky felt a pang of…something. All the shit he’d been thinking about came crashing down—how he shouldn’t be at this park, and how he definitely shouldn’t be letting guys go down on him. He should have been home, making sure his mom had eaten enough for dinner.

“I gotta go.” Nicky pushed off the tree and buttoned his pants. He couldn’t look at the kid, though those blue eyes danced in his memory.

“Yeah, I figured.” Strawberry scoffed lightly—the sound halfway between amusement and disgust. “Well, see ya around.”

Nicky wished he could say something to make it seem like he wasn’t running away with his tail between his legs. He picked his jacket off the ground. It was still warm when he put it on, and smelled like forest and Strawberry’s cologne.

He wanted to rib Strawberry about it. Who the hell wore cologne to go running? But Nicky was too chicken to say anything.

“Yeah, um… Have a nice night.” Nicky wished he could hold the guy again, pull him into a hug. Maybe even give him a quick kiss goodbye. But that was out of the question. Nicky ducked through the trees and didn’t hear footsteps, so he figured Strawberry hadn’t followed.

Nicky told himself he was glad.

Chapter Two

Three weeks later

Michael surveyed the table laid out with barbecue chicken, rows of hot dogs and grizzly-looking hamburgers. The Seattle Firefighters Annual Potluck was a heart attack waiting to happen, and he wished he’d brought a salad in addition to his bean-and-rice casserole.

“Are you here for the food or just to pass judgment?” His friend Henri sidled up next to him, plate overflowing with chips and some kind of dip that was probably entirely comprised of trans fats.

“I’ll eat.” Michael glanced away from the table, and his eyes landed on a firefighter standing a distance away, plate in hand and talking to some men Michael didn’t know.

For the space of half a minute, Michael tried to figure out where he knew the guy from. The firefighter was about five-eight, built like a body builder, curly hair…

Maybe Michael had met him through Tomas or Logan? Those were the only firefighters Michael knew. His friend Jesse had been dating Tomas for going on a year, but Michael hadn’t been to any other SFD events that he could remember. Not unless he counted Tomas’s birthday party.

Where would I have seen…?

The answer snapped into his head, like a whip cracking against his consciousness.

Leather Dude from the park. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Michael dropped his gaze to his plate.

“Well, hurry up, or we’ll be done by the time you get around to eating.” Henri grabbed a chicken leg out of a bucket and headed to their spot.

Scooping casserole onto his plate, Michael snuck another glance at the man he’d blown in the park.

The guy’s friends moved away from him, leaving him standing awkwardly on the outer edge of a conversation between a middle-aged man—who Michael figured was a boss of some kind—and a couple women.

Not that Michael cared, but he couldn’t help wondering if the younger woman was the guy’s girlfriend. He guessed not, since Leather Dude didn’t lift his chin when she said something to him. Instead he kept his eyes on the grass like he was measuring its growth for a science experiment.

In the bright afternoon, Leather Dude’s bulk was even more pronounced than it had been at the park. His shoulders and chest strained his shirt, his biceps so pumped they barely fit through the sleeves.

With a nervous scratch to the back of his neck, the guy darted his gaze Michael’s direction before dropping it back to the grass.

What…? Oh!

Michael spun away, realizing the guy was ignoring him on purpose. God, that was weird. Normally when Michael ran into guys he’d messed around with, Michael was the one ducking behind trees or slipping into the nearest coffee shop to avoid conversation. He headed back to his friends before he was tempted to stare at the guy any longer. Something about Leather Dude had Michael wanting to twist around again, check out the guy one more time.

Blankets stretched out across the Beacon Hill field. Firefighters and their friends and families ate potato salad and grilled meat, while laughing with their kids. Henri and the others were at the east end, gathered on a blanket.

“Glad you finally joined us.” Henri scooted closer to his brand-new boyfriend, Logan. Skinny despite his horrific diet, Henri didn’t take up much space, but Logan was taller than Michael and had enough bulk to fill a good section of the blanket’s surface area.

Michael should have brought one of the waterproof throws from his house. This was what happened when he let other people be in charge. “Don’t worry about it.” He waved at Logan, who seemed to be a really nice guy, despite being Henri’s flavor of the season. “I’ll sit on the grass.”

He folded to cross-legged, managing to get a bite of casserole in his mouth before the dampness seeped into his hiking shorts. A few weeks into the sunny season, the ground should have been drier. The city must have watered the park some time recently. Talk about wasteful. Michael wished they’d let the grass go brown and save water.

“So who were you checking out over there?” Tomas, Jesse’s boyfriend, bit a section off a chicken breast, smirking.

When Michael had taken Jesse under his wing at the coffee shop where they worked, Michael had figured the soft-spoken kid would be an easygoing friend. Michael hadn’t counted on Jesse acquiring a winking Latino boyfriend who got off on rubbing Michael the wrong way.

“No one.” Hell if he’d let his friends tease him about ogling an obviously straight dude. Some guys he’d known in undergrad enjoyed chasing unattainable men, but Michael refused to play that game. Closet cases were good for blowjobs. That’s all.

“Yeah, right.” Tomas tilted his chin, nodding in Leather Dude’s direction. “I saw you looking. Pretty sure he works at the 13.”

“Jeez, will you stop staring? You’re going to give the guy a complex.” Michael tried to keep his gaze on his food. Maybe it was Tomas’s commentary, because Michael couldn’t stop his attention from drifting to Leather Dude’s body. Okay, fine, the guy might not have been someone he’d date, but Michael wondered if Leather Dude would be up for round two.

Tomas chuckled. “You should talk to him. He looks lonely.” At the last bit, he snickered into his hand. “Maybe he needs a friend.”

“Fuck you.” Michael got on his knees and leaned across the group of them to grab a napkin out of the middle of the picnic blanket. He needed to get his mind off the fit of Leather Dude’s cut-offs. “He’s probably not even gay.”

Oh, he might be a little same-sex oriented. Or somewhat bi. But Michael had been through all that before. Public conversations were reserved for guys who were fully and totally self-aware. Chasing the other type was a recipe for disaster.

“Not hungry?” The fire chief’s wife’s sister smiled at Nicky with a look of concern on her face.

Women were always doing that—giving him the sympathy smile. They didn’t see that he could bench two twenty or that he’d carried a buddy out of a blaze the other day. All they saw was his mom’s cancer.

“Uh, no.” Nicky’s stomach was too tied up from seeing that strawberry-haired kid to think about eating. “I should get home. See how my mom is doing.”

“Oh, yeah. How is she?” The sister-in-law touched his arm, her skin soft and cool.

Her name was Becca, if Nicky remembered right. Blonde-haired, she’d been nice to him at last year’s picnic too, and also at the station Christmas party.

The way her hand lingered on his forearm, Nicky wondered whether she was making a pass.

“She’s doing okay. Finished up this round of chemo.” Sometimes Nicky wished the whole station didn’t know about his mother’s battle with ovarian cancer. But when he’d had to take a second leave of absence to help her recover from a surgery, word had gotten around as to why he was missing work.

“Oh. So you opted for chemotherapy?” Becca made a face like she’d tasted something bitter. “I just don’t understand how doctors can pretend that stuff works. It poisons the body. How can you heal someone by poisoning them?”

Nicky swallowed the bile rising in his throat.
Dammit to hell.
He heard this kind of crap from people constantly, but each and every time, rage boiled inside him so badly he wanted to hit something.

How could this woman stand there, smiling at him, and tell him that everything his mother had done to stay alive in the past four and a half years had been for nothing? Worse yet, how could she accuse Nicky of not having done everything he could to buy his mom more time?

“Umm…” Nicky looked in the ginger kid’s direction, spotting him on a blanket with guys who must have been his friends. The only thing that got Nicky through the day lately was sneaking a few minutes of porn at night after he got his mom to bed. Now as Strawberry got up and headed to the bathrooms, Nicky’s pulse kicked. If Nicky went over there, maybe they could… He didn’t know what they could do, but at least Nicky could see the guy up close.

“Has she considered switching to the Paleo diet?” Becca batted her eyes, like what she was suggesting might actually be helpful.

“Listen… I should get going.” He darted a glance across the field, hoping she’d think he was in a hurry to leave.

“Really? The party’s just getting going.”

“Yeah. But my mom…” His mother didn’t really need him home, but the nice thing about having a sick parent was it always gave Nicky an excuse. “I need to check that she’s taken all her meds. Sometimes she forgets.”

The way Becca’s forehead creased in a sympathy that didn’t reach her mouth told Nicky she was only feigning interest. That was okay, Nicky was faking it too. “Tell Jack I said goodbye.”

The squat, brick restroom building lay on the north end of the field, not far from where Nicky had parked his bike, and he rounded inside and washed the nervous sweat off his hands. He didn’t know what he wanted to happen with Strawberry, but he needed to see him—maybe even smell him—if only for a second.

Bending over the sink, he kept his gaze in the mirror, watching for Strawberry to come out of the stall. A tall figure passed behind him, with a head of closely cropped reddish-blond hair. Nicky smiled in what felt like the first time in weeks.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” Strawberry leaned into his back, his whisper filled with teasing.

Nicky closed his eyes, letting the feeling of those words tingle to his toes. “Yeah,” he said nervously. “Crazy, huh?”

A toilet flushed in another one of the stalls, making Nicky tense and pull away.
Shhhhhit
, Nicky mouthed more than hissed.

Strawberry smiled at him in the mirror, blue eyes sparkling like he knew Nicky was stressed out of his mind and thought it was funny.

The third guy in the bathroom came out to where Strawberry and Nicky were standing. He frowned at the two of them. “You guys done?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.” Nicky stepped over to the hand dryer. He should have walked out the door, but some irresistible force kept him in that cramped space, unable to look Strawberry’s direction as he rubbed his hands under the blowing air.

“Thanks.” Strawberry jostled Nicky away from the machine, but got between him and the door. There was a sly little smile on the edge of Strawberry’s mouth, like he knew Nicky wished he could feel that touch again.

Unfortunately, the third guy stood there, crossing his arms impatiently as he waited to use the hand dryer. The set of his mouth made Nicky nervous, like the guy knew Nicky and Strawberry were flirting and wanted to put a stop to it.

“Excuse me.” Nicky stepped around Strawberry and headed outside to the scalding sunlight.

Heart racing, he climbed the hill to where his bike stood sentinel from the parking lot. Halfway up, he spun to check whether Strawberry was following or whether he was walking the other direction back to his friends.

Strawberry stood outside the bathroom, watching Nicky leave. He didn’t look away when Nicky caught him staring, just stood there, head cocked to the side like he couldn’t figure out Nicky’s deal.

Nicky waited for him to do something—wave or smile. Anything for Nicky to hold on to for his long nights alone.

Strawberry cupped a hand to his mouth and called up the hill. “Later?”

Before Nicky could figure out what he was agreeing to, he was nodding.

With a pinch of his mouth that may have been a smirk or a smile, Strawberry nodded back before returning to the picnic.

Chapter Three

“I’m home!” Nicky called into the living room as he threw his jacket at the bench by the door.

The sound of his mother’s favorite program filled the house, but the volume lowered. “Nicky? Is that you?”