Just One of Those Things Ch. 03

But when I walked in I was met immediately by Vince's gaze when he looked up from his seat to see who had arrived. When his eyes met mine he got that look again. I gave him a quick nod then took my seat at the other end of the table. I sighed. No reprieve then.

Julian's coffee machine had broken the last time we met and someone had brought coffee from the café on the corner. There was a cup at my spot, so I offered it to Lisa, my recent study-mate. She acted like a total valley girl, but was a wolf in sheep's clothing to anyone that underestimated her. She refused the cup, turning it so I saw my name printed on it.

She pointed to Vince by way of explanation. He gave me a little smile, and I tried to return it.

I took a sip and found that it was hot chocolate. He knew that caffeine affected me like cocaine. It was a small, thoughtful gesture, and it made me feel like absolute crap for ignoring him.

At the end of the meeting everyone but Vince - who always stayed a little later to organize his notes - filed out in a group. I tried to sneak out with them to avoid being alone with Vince, but Julian cornered me to talk about this indie band concert he had convinced me to go to this weekend. Frankly it sounded awful, but he was always a good sport about staying in when I wanted to, so I agreed and tried to be enthusiastic about it. I kept hoping Vince would leave, but he seemed oddly interested in our conversation.

Julian ended up showing us out at the same time so there was nothing to do but share an elevator ride to the ground floor. I swear it took twice as long as usual, and not just because of the awkwardness. It was a small compartment and we were standing close enough I could smell him. Which made me think of the last time we had been this close. Great, now I had a hard on. I bit my lip and tried not to think of it, of the man just inches away, that I had almost gotten so much closer to...But finally we arrived at the ground floor.

I took a deep breath of cold air as soon as I was outside and walked quickly toward my car, not daring to say goodbye, but Vince was right behind me. I had gotten into the habit of parking in the opposite direction from his Beamer to avoid this sort of incidental contact.

But then he stopped at a shining new Mercedes CLS with the temporary license in the window, right behind my beat up Chevette.

His eyes met mine, then darted away again. This was getting ridiculous. Better say something.

"So." I said. "New car."

"Yeah. For my birthday."

"Oh. Happy birthday."

"Thanks."

"Twenty six, right?"

"Yeah."

I couldn't seem to get my keys out of my pocket. I pulled off my glove and ended up dropping my books. I cursed and knelt down to pick them up. One slid under the car. Vince seemed to be having similar problems finding his keys, so he was still standing there, not sure whether to ignore me or help.

"You need a hand?" His voice was shaking slightly, trying to suppress a laugh. This was so painfully awkward about all you could do was laugh.

"No, I'm good." I muttered from half way under my car.

I finally gathered everything up. Vince was still standing there. Should I talk to him? All I wanted to do was get as far away as possible. That or push him up against that shiny new car and work out five weeks of sexual frustration on him.

The uncomfortable silence was broken by the sound of an engine revving and then quickly dying. I looked around and saw Lisa from the study group at the wheel of her car. I walked over, Vince following behind me.

Lisa saw us and rolled down her window and smiled. "Hi Jack. Hi Vince."

"Hey Lisa." I replied. "Car trouble?"

"Yeah. It's been acting weird all week. Guess I'm going to have to call a mechanic."

"Let me take a look." I offered.

Lesson number one when you're dirt poor is know how to fix your own shit. I had bought my piece-of-crap Chevette for a song when I was fifteen from a neighbor who had given up half way through a half-assed attempt to convert it for dirt track racing. It was a total redneck bastard that I had kept staggering along since then by a combination of creativity, force of will, and reckless disregard for vehicle inspection laws.

"Oh," Lisa implored, "I don't want to be a bother..."

But when I made a 'pop the hood' gesture she was quick enough to comply.

I told her to start the engine, and when she did I heard a definite hiss right before the car sputtered roughly and stalled out again.

I came back to the window. "I think it's the intake manifold."

A worried crease formed between her eye brows.

"I can find out right now. I've got some tools in my car." Since my car was almost always in some desperate state of disrepair I kept enough equipment in it to outfit a small garage. Vince didn't seem to be going anywhere, so I sent him to get one of the tool boxes and flashlights. Only too late did I think of a couple old porno magazines I had back there. I flinched. I had been going through a man-in-uniform phase when I got them. Apparently Vince didn't mind because when he came back he was suppressing a smartass smirk.

I told her to turn the engine again, and I sprayed a small amount of starter fluid on the seals. Sure enough the engine sped up briefly before stalling out again.

"Definitely the intake manifold," I told her. "You'll need a new hose."

"How much?" she asked. Like me Lisa was a full ride scholarship. Unlike me she was comfortably middle class, but she couldn't afford to throw money away.

"Including the tow, six hundred, maybe eight. Assuming you find an honest mechanic. Some of those assholes bend you over and fuck you good."

"Oh." She murmured, eyes wide. Vince jabbed me in the back with a disgusted grunt.

"Ow. What, this isn't fucking high tea...Ow!" That time when he jabbed me it hurt.

"Jeez, sorry," I scowled at him before turning back to Lisa. "You know any good mechanics?"

She just shook her head with a blank-eyed stare. "Not here. At home I'd take it to the dealership but..." she drifted off with a helpless gesture.

I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. City people. "Look," I said, "all that's a real a pain in the ass. The hose only costs forty dollars. I could replace it right here."

After some token resistance, and an uncalled for offer to pay me something for the labor, she agreed. She didn't have any cash on hand, so she jogged off down the block to an ATM machine, leaving Vince and me once more alone in silence. I called up to Julian to get him up to speed, then we were back to staring at our feet.

"So," Vince said after a couple minutes.

"So."

A shit eating smile crept across his face. "Got a thing for military men, huh?"

I sighed and shook my head.

"No, really, I feel the whole manly man thing. So, I'm curious, Marines or Army? I'm partial to Air Force, actually, I sawTop Gunfor the first time when I was twelve and..."

"Shut up."

"Although, technically, I don't think actual soldiers would wear uniforms quite so revealing..."

I punched him in the arm, but not with much conviction. By the time Lisa came back we were both laughing.

Vince offered to take her home and we made arrangements to meet bright and early the next day.

I guess I was going to get my first test of whether I could handle being around Vince, whether I liked it or not.

Vince

At six the next morning I picked up Lisa and arrived to find Jack already waiting with the new hose and a couple rusty boxes of tools. It was bitter cold so we chivalrously convinced Lisa to go up to Julian's apartment. Jack only needed one other set of hands, and Lisa being a SoCal girl I was pretty sure they weren't going to be hers. Of course only once she was gone did I realize that I now had a couple hours alone with Jack.

But if he minded much he didn't let on.

I didn't have much to do at first besides hold the flashlight, hand him tools, and take parts from him, so I was left with nothing to occupy my mind except for Jack bent over the engine, jerking and grunting as he loosened fittings between the engine and grill and giving me some extremely impure thoughts.

"Vince. Vince."

"Huh, what?" I stuttered.

"Watch the flashlight."

"Oh, sorry." I pointed the light back to where he was working. I cleared my throat. This seemed like as good a chance as ever to try to make friends. "So, how'd you learn about cars?"

"Back home I worked in a shop summers and evenings. Dirty work, but the pay can be pretty good if you know your shit."

"Yeah. Can't really say cars were included in my education." I admitted.

"You don't say?" he laughed. "But you had bigger fish to fry helping your dad save the world. No time for this piddley practical crap, huh?" He was teasing, but not in a mean spirited way. I started to relax a little. We fell back into silence, but this time it was more comfortable. Once more I was left with nothing to do but try to look anywhere but at his ass.

Aside from his smile, I couldn't pin down what it was that made him so sexy to me. (Though right now his blue collar thing was doing it for me big time. I had always had a thing for working men.) He was five seven and couldn't weigh more than a hundred and thirty pounds, but it wouldn't be appropriate to call him small. Small implies soft, weak. But while I shivered in my expensive fleece lined coat the cold didn't seem to touch him through his ratty sweatshirt or ungloved hands.

After ten more minutes dancing foot to foot, I made another attempt at conversation. "How can you stand this?"

"Stand what?"

"What do you mean 'what'? The cold. I'm dying out here."

"I thought you were from New England." Jack laughed in triumph. My home state of Connecticut's status as a New England state had once been a subject of heated debate between us. "This is New England in winter. So suck it up Yankee boy."

"SouthernNew England." I qualified. "Where are you from then, the Yukon?"

"Northern Maine."

"Northern Maine?" Finally we were getting somewhere. Still, I waved dismissively. "That's French Canadamonsieur, not New England."

Jack gave me a scathing look that said my comments were not appreciated. "Let's not get into who the real New Englander is here, because you're not going to win." He retorted in a perfect (if exaggerated) Massachusetts/Maine Coast accent.

"Seriously?" I laughed. "That's good, better than your Vincent Price. But nobody under sixty still talks like that." For some reason it didn't stop me from getting an instant hard on.

He grinned in response, and just like that I was fully hard.

"Honestly," I followed up, "I didn't know there was anything up there."

"Not much," Jack agreed. "A few little logging towns."

It actually made sense. It would explain his manners anyway. The opening strain toDueling Banjosflitted through my head.

"Hey!" Jack barked. I realized I had been humming out loud and smirked at him.

"You better watch yourself there city boy or you're liable to get your ass whooped," he threatened, waving a wrench at me.

I was pleased that he seemed willing to talk about himself, so I decided to push forward.

"So, any family still there?"

"My brother Alan."

"Parents?"

He shrugged. "Kind of."

"Kind of?" I urged.

He gave a short pause before explaining. "Our mom died when we were kids. Dad couldn't handle it. He fell apart. Started drinking. He wasn't the sharpest tool to begin with, and then he pickled half of what brain he had." He handed me a couple bolts before continuing. "But the worst was when he got 'born again.' And I mean the real fundamentalist, bible thumping, Army of Christ kind."

"Shit."

He gave a derisive laugh. "Pretty much. He's not a bad guy, really. But he's got the wherewithal of a fucking houseplant."

"How'd your mom die?" I'd say it was an overly blunt question if Jack hadn't once asked me exact same thing.

"Breast cancer."

"Oh. How old were you?"

"Twelve."

"That must have been rough."

He shrugged. "It was. But I could hardly remember a time when she wasn't sick, so it was kind of a relief. But it could have been worse. You never even got to know your mother."

You're not turning this back on meI thought. I had spent countless hours telling him about me and my family, now I wanted to know about him.

And he was relatively forthcoming. The first and most obvious thing I learned was that he thought his brother Alan walked on water. Alan was three years older, and, though he didn't exactly say so, I got the impression he really stepped up when their mother died. He also had a couple of childhood friends he was still very close to and talked about like family. His father, on the other hand, seemed to be a non-entity in his life. After their mother died, the word "us" applied strictly to him, his brother, and their friends.

We talked like that for half an hour. Eventually Jack broached a topic that had obviously been on his mind. "So," he said, "I guess it's back to the pick-up bars now, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess so." I didn't tell him that I had been so horned up during the last few weeks that I had actually tried a couple places. But, despite being in constant danger of busting my zipper, nobody had piqued my interest even a little bit. It was not a problem I had ever encountered before, and it was maddening.

Jack let out a long breath and shook his head. "Fuck, Vince, I don't want to beat a dead hose, but promise me you'll be careful. Really, really careful."

"I will," I responded, a little miffed that he was still on about this. I'm not a slouch after all.

Jack read my mind. He turned and caught my gaze. "Don't you dare think it can't happen to you, because it can. And with that attitude it probably will. You hear me?"

"Yeah," I responded. "I promise."

He frowned, and I think he was going to say more, but it was at this point that Julian came down to check on our progress and bring us hot chocolate.

"Sorry, the coffee machine's still on the fritz," he apologized to us.

Jack took his cup with relish. "How about I come by tonight and see if I can fix it?"

Jack obviously didn't notice the way Julian stood a little closer to him than necessary, or the way brightened up when he replied, "Yeah, that'd be great. I want to try out a new chicken recipe and I need someone without any tact to tell me how it turns out."

Jack sputtered laughing. "You got my number. I'll come by around six."

I was struck by a sudden, intense desire for Julian to go away.

This was my chance to patch things up with Jack, I didn't need him butting in with his hot chocolate and dinner invitations and innocent, wholesome good looks...I'm not really sure why, but I couldn't help but feel a certain satisfaction when Jack remained inexplicably blind to Julian's interest.

Julian lingered a few minutes more, feigning interest in the proceedings, until the cold got to be too much and he returned to his apartment. I had to stop myself from pointing out Julian's wussiness to Jack. I shook my head. IlikedJulian. I didn't know what had gotten into me.

I had been leaving it up to Jack to make a move to renew our friendship. I still didn't know what his issue was, so I didn't know how to approach the situation other than wait for him. But now I realized my time might be running out. If/when he started dating Julian he wouldn't have time for me like he used to. I needed to re-insinuate myself, and now.

"So," I asked once we were alone again, "you had enough time yet?" It took Jack a moment to figure out what I was talking about. He was silent for so long that I spoke up. "What's the problem? I thought we were friends..."

"Of course we were friends," Jack shot back with an irritated expression, like I had been fishing for an obvious compliment. He shook his head and went back to work under the hood, so he didn't see me break into the biggest smile of my life. I had never really known until now what people meant when they said they were so happy they could burst.

I was too damned jazzed at the moment to really wonder why the hell he had ignored me for a month and a half if he considered us friends, but I would get my answer eventually.

"So..." I tried again, attempting to keep the smile out of my voice.

I was beyond relieved when he finally nodded. "How about I give you a call." He paused. "Next week. Is that okay?"

"Yeah." I didn't bother to suppress a laugh this time. "That would be fine."

Fortunately Jack's head was back under the hood so he didn't notice my reaction. Not so fortunately for me his ass was once more on display, now covered with grease and grime, and I was left fighting a vivid fantasy of dragging him out from under the hood, shoving him up against the car, ripping that raggedy sweatshirt over his head and...

"Vince, flashlight."

"Oh, right."

Jack

I hadn't realized until now just how important our friendship had been to Vince. It explained why he was pushing things in spite of my feelings for him. It also busted down the last of my resolution to stay away from him. I cared about him too much to hurt him like this.

But I couldn't pretend that this was just for his sake. The truth was that I knew it was right, almost the moment I gave in. The real giveaway was the complete absence of warning bells from my heart or mind. Every bit of logic I possessed told me that it was a bad idea, that it could only end badly. But no matter what I tried I just couldn't convince myself of it deep down. Being around Vince just felt right.

In fact, the only thing about it that seemed wrong was the inevitable call I would have to make to my brother. For the first time I was actually glad there were three hundred miles between us.

So I gave myself a week to get used to the idea. I wasn't a wishful thinker, so I knew that as long as I fully understood the situation, and my own feelings, I would be okay.

************

That night when I went over to Julian's apartment to fix his coffee machine he was acting weird. He was restless, couldn't sit still. And he seemed more uncomfortable around me than he had since we first started hanging out. Maybe he had a date?

So I gave him an opening to get rid of me. "You know, it's getting kind of late."

Which apparently was the wrong thing to say. "Nah," he replied quickly, jumping off the couch to stand between me and the door. He recognized his own odd behavior and smiled sheepishly.

"What's up with you tonight?" I asked. "You didn't get one of those iced espresso things from down the block, did you?"

He shook his head. "It's only seven. Come on, I'll show you how to playCall of Duty."

A half hour later I had just blown us up with a hand grenade for the third time in a row, and Julian finally broke down laughing.

One look at him and I couldn't help it and cracked a smile. "Shut up, it's not funny."

"You're doing that on purpose," he accused as he got up to get fresh drinks. "Nobody's this bad."

"Hey, look," I pointed at the screen while the game reloaded," we can play online."

Julian gave me a dubious look.

"Embarrassed?" I laughed. "Can't take me anywhere, can you?"

"Oh yes I could."

He set the drinks on the coffee table and sat back down. Much closer than before. So close our thighs were touching. His expression was now serious, and his gaze was turned inward, like he was hyping himself up for something. I meanwhile was getting a sinking feeling in my stomach, only partially tempered by disbelief.

He glanced down at my mouth and there was no doubt what was going to happen.

Oh hell.

As he leaned in close I frantically raked my brain for any of the hot achy feelings I used to get around him, to conjure up any one of the dozens of fantasized he had once starred in.