Page 82 of Employing Patience

I’m not sure if he’s expecting me to hear or respond or what, so I keep my mouth shut.

“Do you ever see him?”

“Nah, I wouldn’t even know where he lives anymore. It wasn’t some huge breakup—we just worked out that we were idiots and moved on.”

“Fair enough.”

“What about you?” I ask, morbidly fascinated. “Any girlfriends steal your heart?”

His laugh is hollow. “None of them ever tried. They’d have to, you know, want to stick around for that.”

“Why don’t they stick around?”

“Because I work a lot and have my two sisters relying on me. Most people don’t like to come second in relationships.”

“Wow, you’re really selling me on seeing you again,” I tease. “You’re telling me that all those women you pick up in the bar aren’t dying for a second date?”

“What women?” he asks, confirming what I’ve always suspected.

“The ones you walk out at night.”

Joey props his head on his hand and gives me a soft smile. “I was making sure they had a safe ride home. Since working here, there’s only one person I’ve been interested in.”

“Oh yeah?”

He laughs. “You’re not even going to pretend to be humble and ask who?”

I run my hand from his pecs to his half-hard cock. “Nah, because then you’d be forced to lie.”

“Ask me.” He leans in a little.

“Fine.” My lips brush his. “Who is the only person you’ve been interested in for … over a year now?”

“You. And I wish as much as you do that it’d stop.”

25

JOEY

I have no idea how Art takes that, but it’s the truth. I’m feeling things for him that are big kinds of feelings, and without a guarantee of anything more, the weight of that emotion is going to crush me. In the morning, I’ll go home, shower, and get to moving on with my life, all the while remembering how he held me.

Like I’m important.

Like he can’t get enough.

“I remember you,” he says, voice dropped low. “From when we were younger.”

“What …”

“I’d see you around sometimes. Nothing creepy—my parents would just be like, ‘oh, the Manning boy is here, go say hi,’ and of course, I was a teenage shithead who was too cool to hang out with kids, so I didn’t.”

“How old were you?”

He shrugs. “I can kinda remember hearing about a baby. Then a flash of you at, like … five? And again when you were almost in high school.”

“I don’t remember you at all.”

“Not surprising since you’re like nine or ten years younger than me. There’s one moment I remember clearer than others. I’m not sure where we were. Caroline Blakely’s holiday party, maybe? You must have been about six? Seven? And these older kids kept trying to get you to steal some of the presents. So you did. Opened every single one of them.”

---