Chapter One
Darren
This gorgeous stranger—Brandon? Braydon? Brendan?—has said plenty all night, but now he can’t do much more than hum around my dick while he takes me deep in his mouth. Both of us are fully aware that I’m close. I’ve told him as much, and even if I hadn’t bothered, he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who couldn’t have figured it out on his own.
One of my hands rests against his perfectly styled, jet-black hair, careful not to muss it during the last minute or so we’ll be together. I keep my other hand curled around the top of a nearby keg, the grip familiar to me when I’ve used it dozens of times for this same reason, and I’m struck by the fleeting thought that I should take the next guy somewhere else just for the thrill of a new view.
Mine, not theirs. The keg room at Trailhead is always new to them.
But there are only so many places I can go in the middle of my shift, and the walls of all of them were stained with Beau’s handprints years ago, so maybe it doesn’t matter. The keg room is good. Convenient. Fine for the purposes it serves.
Supplying draft beer to the bar and getting me off.
“Fuck,” I moan. “That’s—”
I’m not sure what I was about to say, but once I start to come, I don’t care about words anymore. My fingers fall from my acquaintance’s head before he’s fully swallowed, but he’s smiling up at me as I tuck myself back into my briefs and zip my jeans, no shirt to worry about while I’m at work. There’s muffled laughter from the bar, the music turned low for now, and I need to get back out there before the next break, when everyone will want another round between rounds.
Brendan—I’m almost positive it’s Brendan—cleans his own mess with a towel I’ve dropped into his hand, and when he stands, he keeps a step between us. Kissing isn’t an indulgence meant for whatever we’ve been up to, and maybe he thinks there will be time for one later.
“How much longer ‘til you get out of here?” he asks.
I shrug. “Another couple of hours, probably.”
“So, I guess there’s no reason for me to stick around,” he says. It could sound pathetic, like he’s just waiting for me to pull him closer and tell him he’s wrong, but his smile hasn’t gone anywhere, and he’ll leave as gracefully as anyone ever has. “Well, I might stick around for one more cosmo, but that’s just because I’m still thirsty.”
He licks his lips, and I laugh, and there’s nothing more to talk about when I lock the keg room behind us. I return to the bar just as this week’s trivia night host—one of a dozen nameless college kids all too happy to keep queer cowboys entertained in exchange for a few free drinks—clears his throat to ask the final question in this set of ten.
“What’s the name of the scale used to measure the spiciness of foods?”
I watch as Jake writes his answer on the scoresheet neatly folded next to his nearly empty pint glass, the last sip or two of Guinness bound to be gone in another minute. Noah and Riley are already looking at me, and as soon as Jake’s pen lands on the bar, I grin and accept the challenge.
“It’s the Scoville scale.”
Jake finishes his beer, conveniently hiding his smile, and Riley swipes the empty glass before I can. The quietest of my coworkers is gone after that, off to make a cosmo and anything else the Trailhead trivia night crowd might need. There’s a third shirtless bartender working the tables throughout the room—an adorably awkward 20something named Zach who looks kinda cute in his rainbow bandana and tight jeans—but I barely know him. It’s not a position we’ve been able to keep filled for more than a few months at a time, so other than making sure he’s not a walking disaster, I focus on my own shit.
I pour another Guinness without asking first, and as soon as I’ve delivered it, I pop the caps on five beers for a group waving to me from where the mechanical bull sits silently. Someone comesaround to collect the trivia scoresheets, and I wipe my hands on a towel just as Noah bumps Jake’s shoulder.
“How’d you guys know that?”
“I eat a lot of spicy food,” I tell him.
“And I cook a lot of spicy food,” Jake adds.
I file that sliver of Jake lore away with the hundreds of others I’ve collected since he started hanging out at Trailhead—made even easier since we kicked off these trivia nights in the spring—and then I do the quick math on just how long it’s been since Jake first walked through our big barn doors.
Eight years, give or take?
Christ, I think only Beau’s been around longer, but I was married to him long enough for his presence at the bar to be the one vow we didn’t break. I guess Noah has been around about the same amount of time—mostly since he turned 21 and could spend more than an excusable few minutes at the place his mother owns—and for a straight kid, he’s probably here more nights than makes sense. But other than Beau and Noah, Jake Callahan is my most regular regular.
I grab good tequila for a couple of women who've been showing up on trivia nights and pour it while I glance at Jake again. “How’d you do that round?”
Noah snorts. “Go ahead, tell him your brilliant ass knew most of them, and I got, like, three.”
“Can I also tell him his brilliant ass would’ve done just as well if he hadn’t taken most of the round to change a keg?” Jake asks, air quotes accompanying his last few words.
“Hey, now. Ididchange the keg. Quickly, even,” I add. “But then, as long as I was already in there—”
“And not alone,” Jake interrupts.