Page 3 of Small City Heart
“Ok-ay,” Charlie said slowly. “Well, we graduated the same year, and our class only had about seventy kids in it, so … I was …” His voice, which Patrick had expected to be self-assured, wavered.
“Popular?” Patrick asked. “The center of attention?”
“Yes. And you were the beautiful boy with painted fingernails I couldn’t keep my eyes off.”
Patrick froze. He was suddenly light-headed.
Was that a come-on?
Charlie smiled, and it was devastating. “Cat got your tongue?” All the confidence Patrick had been expecting wound its way back into Charlie’s voice, and the man flicked his gaze up and down Patrick’s body in a way that was distinctly intimate.
“What the fuck, Charlie?” he finally managed. His face was hot, and he wanted to pretend it was the pounding Kansas sun, but he knew better. He was flustered by his high school’s golden boy, and he wanted to sink into the sidewalk and disappear. This could not be happening. Charlie had to be messing with him, which made the guy a complete asshole.
“You do remember me.”
Patrick huffed. “That’s my bike,” he repeated. He didn’t like Charlie leaning on it. Or touching it. Or in the vicinity of him or his belongings.
Maybe he just didn’t like Charlie.
“I remember.God, you were something else in high school, pulling up to school on this thing. Your mom told me you still ride it, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what a grown Patrick Pearl would look like astride this baby. I think about it a lot.”
“Bullshit.”
Charlie stood up to his full height. His dark hair was neat with a razor-sharp part, and his teeth were white in his sun-tanned face. There were adorable dark freckles on his nose, and he had a chin dimple.
A chin dimple, for fuck’s sake. Why was the world cruel?
Patrick tried not to stare at Charlie’s face; it was too much. Instead, he zoned in on the veins roping around his forearms dusted with dark hair and the sweat stains in the armpits of his SCFD T-shirt. Patrick wanted to bury his face there and inhale.
Fuck, Charlie had grown up hot.
“It’s not bullshit, Patrick,” Charlie said, his voice too close and warm. “Your bike is going to get a ticket.”
A noise similar to a popped balloon exploded in Patrick’s brain. “What?” He was breathless, and he hated that.
“Check out the sign.”
What sign? There was no sign. Never had been a …Oh.
Expectant Mothers and Family Parking Only.
Patrick took a step back to see there was now a similar sign in front of every business next to the handicap parking spots.
“When didthathappen?”
“About two years ago.”
He hadn’t been home in as long. A weird jolt of shame hit Patrick, and shame made him do funny things like lash out, or lie, or make ridiculous assertions.
“There is no way a police officer could look at my bike and deduce I’m not an expecting mother,” Patrick said.
“Gosh, you weren’t always this prickly.”
“You wouldn’t know,” Patrick said viciously. They hadn’t been friends. Charlie had been friends with everyone except him. “Watch out.”
Charlie stepped away from Blue as Patrick hustled her into an empty spot nearby. Then Patrick walked right into Charlie’s space.
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m not some dumb kid. I’m just trying to get through this reunion bullshit intact.”
Charlie’s chest rose and fell, his breath choppy, and he lifted his hand slowly. The tip of his finger twisted the end of a lock of hair that had fallen over Patrick’s shoulder.
“I like prickly.”
