Page 41 of Single-Minded
Heading back to the office, I resume taping off the built-ins so I can finish the painting before I go to sleep. It’s slow progress. I’m positive that tequila will do nothing to improve my already-sloppy technique, so I’m careful with the tape.
“Nice color,” says Nate, poking his head inside the doorway. “Although I can’t decide if it looks better on the walls or on you.”
“Fortunately, there’s both.” I laugh, posing dramatically with my paint-speckled arms. “Are you finished already?”
“Cutting a hole in the door and installing a few screws is not exactly the most challenging thing I’ve done all day,” he says, helping himself to my paint supplies and coming up with a small trim brush. “You’re going to be up all night if you tape off every shelf,” he says. “I’ll cut in, and you do a second coat with the roller.” My mind wanders at the thought of Nate up on a ladder.
“You don’t want the tape?” I ask. He shakes his head no, and steps up a few rungs on the ladder, easily reaching the crown molding. His technique is perfect, quick and methodical, with great attention to detail.
***
“You’re really good at that,” I say.
“I went to art school at Ringling,” he says. “Construction is just how I pay the bills.”
He’s halfway around the room before I finish rerolling even one wall. By the time I’ve finished two walls, he’s done the upper and lower trim for the entire room, and is working on the wall behind the built-ins.
I stand back, ostensibly to survey our work, gratuitously admiring Nate’s sculpted back, his legs, his, er, ass.
Nate turns around, and the doorbell rings just in time to save me from having to awkwardly explain why I’m staring at the guy on the ladder rather than, you know, painting.
“Do you want to eat in the kitchen, or here?”
“If you don’t mind, let’s eat in here,” he says. “That way we can finish this up tonight.” Now you’re talking, buddy.
Heading to the front door, I pay the Solorzanos delivery guy for the pizza, grab paper plates and napkins from the kitchen, and bring the whole shebang into the office. Nate puts the lid on my bin of paint supplies for a makeshift picnic table, and settles himself, cross-legged, on the floor.
“Can I get you a drink?” I ask as I set the pizza box on the bin. “Beer? Wine? Water? Tequila?”
He laughs. “Beer is good. Tequila too.”
On the ten-second walk back to the kitchen, I try to figure out exactly what he meant. I should just ask him, but I’m feeling stupidly self-conscious. Either beerortequila? Both beerandtequila? I hedge my bets and bring both. Grabbing a cold six-pack of amber ale from the fridge, and the bottle of tequila off the kitchen countertop, I’m already back to the office before I realize I’ve forgotten glasses for the tequila. Oh well.
“Please help yourself,” I say. He opens the box and grabs a couple of slices. It’s almost nine-thirty and we’re both famished. I can’t remember eating anything since breakfast. Unless you count the tequila.
I eat three slices of the large pizza, which is some kind of new world record for me; Nate polishes off the rest. I finish my first beer too fast, weirdly nervous. After Nate’s second beer, he says, “What’s your story? You just got divorced?”
“It’s a long story,” I say, “and not a very fun one.” There’s nothing to do with my hands and I need a diversion, so I grab another beer out of the cardboard holder. “How ’bout you, Nate? Have you ever been married?”
I gaze just a second too long at his mouth, waiting for him to speak. He grins. “I’m not really that guy.”
“Neither was my husband,” I crack. Don’t go there, I admonish myself. This little paint and tequila dinner party feels sort of promising, and the last thing I need is to start bawling into the pizza box.
Nate laughs and reaches for the bottle of tequila.
“Should I go get some glasses or are we drinking this right out of the bottle?” I ask.
“Let’s do,” he says, bringing the tequila bottle up to his lips, his perfect lips, for a drink and hands it over to me. I try my best to take a ladylike swig, but such a thing isn’t possible with a half-gallon bottle of tequila. F-ing Costco. I settle for not dribbling any on myself. I start to hand the bottle back to Nate, and instead of taking it, he pulls me to his body, and kisses me softly on my lips.
At first, I’m unsure whether or not I should kiss him back—my brain takes a microsecond to do a pros and cons matchup to determine whetherdrinking tequila and making out with someone who is indirectly sort of an employee, but technically a subcontractor so not really, is advisable. The tequila wins, and I kiss him back with a steamy intensity I’ve never experienced before.Oh. My. God. So this is what kissing a straight guy is like.He brings me closer to him, his mouth hot and insistent and all over mine—and I end up sort of sitting on his lap, and suddenly I’m straddling him, the two of us surrounded by paint stuff and pizza crusts. We’re kissing frenetically, his hands all over my body in the most delicious way, on the small of my back, along the curve of my waist, centimeters away from my breasts. I’m pawing at his shirt, like some sex-crazed lunatic. He pulls the shirt off in one swift motion, revealing his chest, muscled and lean—it’s as fantastic as I’d imagined. Hello, Adonis.
“Oh my God,” I inhale. I’ve spent my entire adult life with a gay man, and yet I’ve never seen a chest like this outside of a multiplex.
He reaches toward me and tugs gently at the tank top I’m wearing, pulling it off, over my head. My ponytail holder gets caught in one of the armholes and I’m suddenly straitjacketed with one arm up in the air with my face wedged close to my armpit, blinded by my own top, the other arm down, while Nate laughs and attempts to unstick me. I feel my skin turning crimson, burning with humiliation, when suddenly I’m free, my dark hair falling down over my shoulders and my tank top in Nate’s hands.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, studying my face, then letting his eyes linger on my black lace bra. He tosses my shirt to the floor, and kisses my shoulders and décolletage, softly at first and then more insistently—one hand holds me close around my waist, the other slides over my breast against the lace of my bra.
His breath is heavy on my skin, my panties are soaked, and my entire body is electric with anticipation. My hands are all over his chest, stroking the muscles in his back, and I nuzzle his ear as he works his way down my neck. Deftly, he unclasps my bra, and lifts my breasts to his lips, and runs his tongue teasingly over each nipple, one, then the other, as I arch my back in ecstasy. I can’t stop myself from watching him take my breasts with his mouth, grazing his lips back and forth across my hardened nipples, until I’m wet and ripe. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.
