Page 10 of Steam

“No need to get uptight about it,” Josh said, stepping closer to the man. “I keep an open mind, Princess.”

“Excuse me?” The man flushed a deep red and Josh realized how much he enjoyed teasing the guy, getting a rise out of him.

“I’m just telling you that your secret’s safe with me,” Josh said. “Although I guess I would’ve pegged you more as a Bruiser or a Rex than Princess.”

“You think this is for me?”

“Why, you got a dog with a neck that big?” Josh asked.

“I’m getting one,” the man said quickly.

“That’s a little convenient, don’t you think?” Josh asked, knowing he was pushing his luck but loving the way the man got more and more indignant with every insinuation. Whatever the guy did for a living, it seemed like people didn’t get him flustered often. This was fun.

“I don’t—You’re—“

“It’s no business of mine what you get up to in your own unit,” Josh said. “Unless of course you want to invite me in sometime.”

The other man coughed hard, his eyebrows knit.

“Either way, there’s really no need to get a dog to hide your hobby, Jacob,” Josh said, practically purring. “No judgment here.”

“Jesus Christ,” the man said, shaking his head and recovering himself from the coughing fit. “It’s Barrett, by the way. Nobody calls me Jacob but my mother.”

“Unless they’re calling you Princess… right?”

“I don’t appreciate the insinuation, and I don’t see any reason to continue this conversation,” the man had said, straightening up. The blush was still high on his cheeks, though. “Make sure you actually read the label next time you snap up a package.”

Josh had rolled his eyes.

“You do read, right?” the man had asked, raising an eyebrow.

So, the guy had a little fight in him after all.

“I read enough to be able to make out your special nickname, right Princess?”

* * *

When Barrett gotto his apartment that night after getting his package from Josh the asshole, he anxiously waited for his upstairs neighbor to start his nightly concert.

And yes, his. Though Barrett had never heard the man upstairs talk, he’d heard him cough and clear his throat often enough to determine that it was a man who lived above him and played the piano.

Maybe Barrett had started eavesdropping… a lot. He put the details together about his upstairs neighbor slowly. The man lived alone and hadn’t had a guest since Barrett moved in. He paced sometimes—mostly at night. He left his condo and sometimes he was gone for long stretches, but he always came home for his practice at eight.

And though Barrett wasn’t exactly ready to admit it to himself, he’d formed a crush on the idea of the man upstairs.

He had a very active imagination. You needed it in Barrett’s line of work, where plenty of hours were spent in very boring rooms at the courthouse, just waiting. His neighbor could be awful in real life, but part of Barrett wanted to believe that anyone who played so beautifully, so lovingly, was a good person.

It was a nice little fantasy, after all: the tortured pianist, alone in his perfect condo, pining away, waiting for the public defender of his dreams to show up and change his life.

Barrett knew he was just projecting his own sad little life onto the man because he was an easy, faceless target. It had been rough to watch Vance—the physical therapist he’d met online and initially hit it off with—fall in love with the man of Vance’s dreams. He and Vance had such chemistry together, and Barrett had been so patient, thinking that surely Vance would come around to him. Vance had been the first man Barrett had connected with in ages.

So naturally he’s in love with someone else,Barrett thought.

If fantasy helped him get over Vance, Barrett told himself that it was a good thing—even if it was a little weird.

In addition to his normal practices, Barrett heard his neighbor playing some songs he didn’t recognize, tinkering around with melodies—and Barrett suspected he was a composer, too.

Maybe after we meet and he realizes I’m the man he’s been waiting for, he’ll compose something just for me, Barrett thought, not bothering to cringe at how head over heels he’d managed to be for someone he’d never even met.

---