Waiting for Clark (4 page)

I pulled the spandex fabric away from his arm best as I could. “I can do a better job tonight,” I offered. Man, he smelled so good. Being this close to him was torture.

“It’ll be fine.” His eyes flicked from copper to gold as I tightened my grip on his bicep.
Bingo.
I wasn’t alone in being affected by our proximity.

“And I really can get a hotel room. I don’t mean to impose.” I took little stitches, careful not to nick his golden skin.

“Tony’s right. It’s a huge house. No reason for you to pay for a hotel.” He didn’t lie and say I wasn’t an imposition. I’d always liked that about him— he was polite, but never false.

“Well, let me pay you back by doing a better sewing job tonight.” I took a final stitch, tied the knot, then did what I did instinctively when sewing my own stuff and broke the thread with my teeth.

Which put my lips about a millimeter from Bryce’s arm.

“Clark? What are you doing?” Bryce’s voice went deeper than usual and he peered down at me. Our faces were close enough now that I could feel his warm, coffee-laced breath. Even that scent was familiar and I wanted to taste him so bad.

He didn’t pull away. Instead our eyes held, and the entirety of our friendship played out in two deep breaths.
Inhale. Freshman year. Wanting Bryce so badly but wanting his friendship more. Exhale. All the bad experiences dating guys who were never going to live up to my Bryce-sized expectations. Inhale. The Kiss. Exhale. All the years of missing him.

And still he didn’t move. And neither did I.

Another breath. This one closer. One of us moved, or maybe we both did. His stubble brushed my cheek and—

“I can’t do this. Not again.” Bryce shoved me out of his personal space, sending me crashing into the car door. My efforts to keep my balance and stay upright failed and— very un-Superman-like— I landed on my ass on top of my backpack.

“Hey, you guys okay?” someone called from the vicinity of the other row of cars.

“Peachy,” I said, standing up. By the time I dusted myself off, Bryce was gone in a swish of black cape and heavy-booted footsteps that echoed through the cavernous garage.

****

Chapter Three

Bryce

Nearly kissing Clark wasn’t the stupidest thing I did that day. The almost-kiss was rather predictable— get anyone that close to Clark and they’d be tempted by his perfect, full mouth. His cheekbones were angled in a way that emphasized his chiseled jaw, and when he concentrated on something like sewing, there was something almost otherworldly about his looks. All hard angles and icy eyes and warm body way too close…

So maybe my momentary lapse could be blamed on basic human instinct and not on stupidity. No, what was stupid was how I lurked around him and listened in on his conversations the rest of the day. I didn’t actually
talk
to him myself, mind you. I carefully avoided him as much as one could in a tiny booth with far too many bodies per inch. Our booth was so crowded with costumed friends coming and going that it was sometimes tough to spot the actual customers. And everyone wanted to catch up with Clark.

Most of Tony’s Nerd Army had stayed local after college graduation. A few people went on to grad school in Eugene or Corvallis or the Seattle area, but they all came back for big events like PDX Comic Con. Clark, having won the Rhodes Scholarship and then going on to MIT, was something of a conquering geek hero. I’d take a crowbar to the Vectrex before I admitted how much I stalked him on social media, but knowing in theory about his life at Oxford and in Boston was different than hearing the stories in person.

Hence, the eavesdropping. And it paid off when Karen, Tony’s girlfriend, asked Clark, “So you seeing anyone?”

“No. I was seeing a biomedical engineer for a bit at MIT, but we broke up in September.”

“Tell me about the British guys. Do they all have those yummy accents?” She leaned forward, Wonder Woman costume straining against attributes even I found impressive.

“Um. The ones native to England do.” Clark rubbed his mouth, trying not to laugh. “But there’s a lot of variety in the accents— Oxbridge, Geordie, Scouse, Cockney, Welsh—”

Karen cut off his classification list with a high-pitched laugh.
Thank you, Karen.
Clark’s ability to classify
everything
with precision and exactness was a trait both maddening and endearing. “Come on, dish on the hotties. Did you hook up with anyone there?”

“I dated a bit. I was more concerned with getting my doctorate done in three years.” Clark managed to sound disinterested and kind at the same time. Karen had come around after Clark had left for Oxford, so she didn’t know that hookup was not part of Clark’s extensive vocabulary. He was totally a serial monogamist, and he only dated guys similarly inclined. Freshman year, he was more serious about the “three-date rule” than a lot of our female friends. My own rule back then was a bit more… flexible. My allergy to dating was a big reason why I didn’t pounce on him while we were roommates the first time around.
Idiot.

The fact Clark had no current boyfriend was of zero interest to me. Zilch. And if I repeated that enough times I might actually start to believe it.

****

I still didn’t believe it by the time the dealer room closed and we ended up back at the bar.

Charles left the booth at 4:30 to get back to the bar for the dinner crowd, and Tony headed there around six to set up the bar’s private party room for a post-con after-party. Clark stuck around the whole day, although he did wander the convention for a bit, returning with comics and T-shirts for his nieces and nephew back in central Oregon. We attended the same midafternoon panel on science in comics, but I very deliberately did not sit next to him.

Which really only hurt me, not him. I missed getting to hear his comments on what the panel got wrong, his little huffs about lack of precision. If you asked Clark, he’d never own up to being a talker, but he was, especially compared to me, and I loved the way he muttered comments under his breath almost more than if he’d tried to engage me in a lengthy discussion. In the years since he’d been gone, I’d gradually stopped hearing his voice in my ear at things like a conference or while watching documentaries on TV, but all it took was a few hours back in his presence to have me craving his words like a drug I’d thought I’d long since quit.

By the time I stripped off my costume in the bathroom back at the bar, my nerves rattled like change in the tip jar, and I felt more in need of a few shots than my thirstiest customers. But I never, ever drank on the job. I reminded myself of this as I put on my black jeans and black “Gotham Coin” T-shirt and tied on my half apron.

I stopped in the party room where Charles had set out a buffet of bar food for our friends who had been to the con, particularly those who had helped at the booth. Supposedly, they were chipping in for food and drink for the after-party, but I had a feeling the jar at the end of the food table would come up short at the end of the evening. Oh well. Wasn’t like I wasn’t used to floating my friends. I just thought more about money now as a business owner, knowing that my cushion of savings couldn’t subsidize the bar forever. We were close to finally turning a profit, and I took pride in that.

I grabbed a plate with some wings and potato skins to help fuel my shift behind the bar. I ate standing up, avoiding the long table filled with old friends where Clark was holding court. Clark had also changed and looked both older and more handsome in a red polo and blue jeans, hair more messed up than the slick Superman-style.

“Hey, Bryce. This fish and chips is
amazing,
” he called to me. “Best I’ve had since England.”

“I’ll tell Charles,” I said gruffly.

“What does he use in the batter? I swear I taste hints of coriander and cumin.”

I laughed because it was such a Clark thing to remark on. I had only a vague notion of which spices were which, but Clark’s taste buds had the precision of a gas chromatograph. “Fish. He uses fish.”

Then he laughed too, and it was like the years slipped away and we were back in the dining hall at Reed, me eating noodles while he sussed out the notes of basil and red wine and garlic. My dad had loved taking Clark out to dinner with us because Clark was a natural-born foodie while I was only really good for cleaning my plate and determining when a steak was done to my liking. My chest got a strange ache as I realized the two of them would never share a meal again.

I should take Clark to the Thai place Dad discovered right before the last illness—

No.
No, I was not traveling that path. Sharing a meal with Clark, however pleasant the thought, would not be as easy as catching up with one of my other friends.
Clark dates. I don’t.

And on that note I gave his table a mock salute and headed out to the bar area. The party room was in the rear of the place, opposite a long alley of video games and pinball machines. Chrome, high-top tables and stools filled out the area in front of the huge glass windows overlooking 23
rd
and the rest of the Alphabet District. The large wood-and-chrome bar in the center of the room anchored the whole space, and I felt some of my tension bleed away as soon as I stepped on the rubber flooring behind the bar.

We were hopping with a post-convention crowd of costumed cosplayers and the regular Saturday night crowd that was a mix of singles and couples out for date nights. I’d never seen us so busy before, but I quickly fell into my rhythm of taking drink orders from the servers and patrons at the bar. I loved mixing drinks. Some people might have said I was wasting my degree, but they likely didn’t understand the sense of peace I got tending bar. My dad had taught me how to mix cocktails long before I could legally drink, and I took pride in handing out quality drinks, in making people smile when I flipped a bottle or did a little showy garnish.

But that night was insanely busy, no time for flair bartending or anything more than keeping my head above water. Our two servers were struggling to keep up with the traffic, and I had to help bus tables more than once.

“How can I help?” A familiar voice sounded in my ear as I wiped down a four top near the bar.
Clark.

“Just enjoy yourself,” I said, channeling my dad when he hosted a big party. It was easy to forget Clark was taller than me until he loomed over me, all broad shoulders and disarming smiles.

Clark snorted. “Seriously. You’re swamped. I’ve talked to everyone. Twice. Put me to work.”

I regarded him through narrow eyes. I knew his tolerance for small talk wasn’t much more than my own. He liked to be busy and useful and his open smile said the offer was genuine and not coming from some sort of guilt.

“Can you wipe down tables?” I hated giving him grunt work, but I didn’t have time to talk him through mixing drinks.

“Sure. Tell me where there’s a bus tub and I’ll clear glassware too.”

And so we passed several hours in quiet synchronization, just as we had at the conference booth once Charles and Tony had cut out. We didn’t need to talk to work well together. Clark handled being personable and putting people at ease while I kept the drinks coming. He proved himself to be a very capable pinch-hitting server, keeping the tables and ledges where people set drinks clean and even taking orders once one of the servers showed him our system.

Things started to slow down as we neared closing. The kitchen shut down at eleven and that was generally when people started clearing out. We weren’t a late-night haunt, at least not yet, and we’d been sticking to a midnight closing time.

“You can take a break,” I said to Clark. “And remind me to give you your share of the tips.”

“Absolutely not,” Clark said, taking the stool in front of me. “I’m just helping out a friend. It was fun.”

“Fair enough,” I said because I knew I’d say the same in his shoes. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t give you a drink on the house. What’ll it be?”

I readied a glass for a Ninkasi Pale Ale, the local beer of choice he’d drunk all through college. But he surprised me by asking, “What do you have that’s dark and bitter?”

Me.
“Not on tap, but I’ve got Vlad the Imp Aler in bottles,” I said, citing a local dark and sour ale our regulars clamored for. I pulled one out for him. “Glass?”

“Bottle’s fine.”

“You’ve changed,” I said, watching his throat muscles work as he took a long swallow.

“Yep.” He regarded me steadily over the rim of his beer, ice-chip blue eyes almost silver in the light of the bar. “But not as much as you might think.”

“I don’t know, man. A switch from pale to dark is pretty serious,” I wisecracked, mopping down the bar in front of him, mainly to have an excuse for not moving away.

“I also do more trail running than road running. Did two mud runs last year. And I eat whole-wheat bread.”

He’d been on the track team in college and also had run a number of charity 5k and 10k races. And his love of plain sourdough bread made into cinnamon toast was something I teased Mr. Budding Foodie about a lot.

“My.” I pretended shock. “Tattoos can’t be far behind.” His open curiosity about my ink had been a serious balm to my ego. Made me feel like maybe I wasn’t alone with this strange need to know every way he’d changed and every way he was still the same.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” His expression was pure sin and hit me like a shot of Pappy Van Winkle.

“You’ve got ink?”

“You going to show me yours?” he countered. Like his taste in beer, the look in his eyes was new. Different. More adult and predatory. And I liked it far more than I should.

“Nope.” I scanned the thinning crowd. “Better see if anyone else needs a refill.”

I strode away, trying not to scurry like a spooked cat, even though I kind of was.

****

I left the bar at the same time as Charles and Clark, and after making the short drive in separate cars, we arrived at my house within moments of each other. We came in through the mudroom off the kitchen. No one used the ornate double front doors unless it was a party.