Finding Zach (17 page)

“Yeah.” Zach gave him a quizzical look. “You sound like you recognize the name.”

“Uh, yeah, kinda. Captain Rogers told me he was the one that developed the software for the locator chip that Dutch businessman had. The one we used to track him and find you.” Mike tapped himself behind the ear. “Our unit’s testing them for possible purchase by Uncle Sam. I gotta say, he don’t look much like a software engineer. He looks more like a surfer boy.”

“Yeah, he does. He’s not a software engineer—he’s mostly an artist. Got a Master of Fine Arts from UCLA. But he’s fucking brilliant. He worked for my dad back a while ago, but he’s been writing code since he was a kid. Now he’s teaching computer graphics and programming design at a local school here.” Zach pulled another beer from the bucket of ice. “You want another beer?”

“Sure. So,” Mike said as he accepted the bottle and twisted the cap off, “Taff is David Evans. Interesting.”

“Why?”

“Well, Captain Rogers said your dad said David Evans worked like crazy to develop the chip, like it would have made a difference to you. You know, more emotional involvement than is normal in stuff like programming. Can’t say as most programmers I know are emotional about other people.” Mike studied the beer in his hand a moment. “Kind of explains it.”

“Explains what?” Zach was puzzled.

“Well, I don’t get the whole gay thing, but that guy is totally into you.”

The background music of World Domination ran uncontested a long moment. Then Zach said, “Taff is not into me.”

Mike hooted in laughter. “He
so
is. My God, I thought he was going to punch my lights out.”

“He’s got a boyfriend in New York.”

“He
said
he was going on a date tonight.”

“Well, yeah… I think he thinks he’s broken up with the guy in New York, but I don’t think he really has.”

“I think he’s lyin’ about the date tonight.” Mike took a swallow of beer. “Seriously. He just said that because he’s jealous.”

“You’re full of shit,” Zach said.

“Nope. I bet he’s sittin’ at home with your picture in his hands, snifflin’ into his hankie.”

“He doesn’t have a hankie, you ass.” Zach reached over and shoved Mike playfully. “You’re just jealous that he gets to live here near me and you don’t.”

“Honey, you lack several significant attributes and possess something I don’t particularly find appealing in a lover, namely tits and a dick, in that order.” Mike took another drink of beer. “Like I said, I don’t get the whole gay thing, but as long as you ain’t trying to put the moves on me I don’t care if you fuck guys, girls, sheep, or little green men from Vulcan.”

“You’re too ugly to fuck,” Zach said absently. “Seriously, you think Taff’s into me?”

“What is this, grammar school? Shit yeah, Mary Sue. That boy has it bad. I saw his face when you introduced me. And I’ll bet you five bucks that he’s sittin’ home right now, thinkin’ I’ve done stole you away from him.”

Zach licked the condensation from the side of the bottle. “I bet he’s not,” he said sadly. “Someone like Taff could have anyone he wants.”

“He wants you. Trust me on this. I may not get the whole gay thing, but I know want when I see it.”

“You know, you keep saying that you don’t get the whole gay thing and I’m gonna start thinking you protest too much.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” Mike said with a grin, “but there’s nothing to tell if you did ask.”

Zach pursed his lips in a mocking kiss. Mike threatened him with the beer bottle. “Don’t wave that thing at me,” Zach said, “it’s giving me ideas.”

“That is so wrong in so many ways,” Mike retorted, “that I’m ditching your sorry ass and going up to bed.”

“Yeah,” Zach yawned, “it’s been a long day. What time is it?”

Mike checked his watch. “Eleven-thirty. Late when you get up at five like I did.”

“Me too,” Zach said.

“But not too late for you, kid. If I were you I’d go out and hunt down that fine surfer boy ass and fuck it through the mattress.”

“I can’t,” Zach replied. He swallowed the last of the beer. “You know I can’t.”

Mike turned serious. “Kid, I know that prick Esteban fucked you up royally, but you can’t let that stop you. If David Fucking Evans loves you like I think he does, he won’t give a shit about a couple of scars.”

“Philip.”

“What?”

“David Philip Evans, not David Fucking Evans.” Zach met Mike’s eyes. “The scars matter, Mike. You’ve seen them. And you’ve seen Taff. He’s so fucking beautiful, and he’s an artist, Mike. Beauty matters to him.”

“I’ll bet you five bucks you’re wrong.” Mike drained his bottle and handed it to Zach. “Go find out. Then come morning I’ll be ten bucks richer.”

“You wish,” Zach said. “Okay, you know where your room is, right? We usually eat a big breakfast on Sundays at about nine—DB’s a hell of a cook—but she’s here at six, so if you get up early she’ll fix you something.”

“I thought her name was Annie.”

“It is. DB’s just a nickname.”

“For what, ‘Dumb Bunny’? She seems like a bright lady to me.”

“No, it’s for Dreamboat. You know. ‘Dreamboat Annie’, that Heart song from years ago?”

“You listen to Heart? You really
are
gay.”

“Fuck you,” Zach said. “Their stuff is great. ‘Barracuda’? ‘Crazy on You’? ‘Magic Man’? Those aren’t gay songs.”

“Yeah, I guess those were okay.”

“Muwha-ha-ha,” Zach said. “My eeeevil plot to turn him gay is beginning to work.”

“Dream on,” Mike snorted with laughter.

“Well, if my mind control begins to work, my apartment’s over the garage.” Zach saluted him with the empties in his hand.

“Don’t hold your breath, gay boy,” Mike said with a grin.

I
T
WASN
’
T
working. David glared with irritation at his laptop screen and rewrote the line of code—again—before giving up and shutting down the program. He’d have to break down and call George on Monday to see if the crabby bastard could give him some help with the multiple-layer backgrounds he was working on. George would, of course, insist on Tyler Tech getting first whack at the finished results, but David had always planned to offer the program to Richard anyway. His loyalty had always been to Richard—well, to his dad first, but his dad had been dead since David was nine, and Richard was there, always there for him and his family. Richard and Philip had both gone to work for Richard’s dad at Tyler Technologies when they’d gotten out of college, and after David’s dad had died, Richard had insisted on giving Annie stock in the company, saying the company wouldn’t have been able to move in the new direction that had brought it such success without the work Philip had put into it. David himself vaguely remembered his father first teaching him to write code and laughing about the awkward early programming languages like FORTRAN and COBOL.

He checked his phone, which he’d turned off when he’d started working on his project a few hours ago. There were a couple text messages from Maggie, and a voice mail from Jerry. He hesitated a moment, then sighed and played back the message from his ex.

“Davey, it’s Jer. Yeah, I know, I know. I was right, blah, blah, blah, and I shouldn’t be calling you, put it behind us, et cetera, et cetera. But I still miss you. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that they didn’t give your job to Dickhead Dennis; they hired the guy that they interviewed before you left. Hurray for the good guys. Dickhead is pissed; he’s saying you sabotaged him, which you didn’t have to do but if you did, good for you. Anyway, that’s about it. Except that I miss you. I wish things had turned out differently. Hope that school goes well for you—you’re starting next week, right?—and that everything else works out. You know what I mean. Anyway, talk to you later. Love you.”

David turned off his phone again and tossed it onto the desk before dropping into his desk chair.
Fuck
. Maybe coming back here had been a huge-ass mistake. Zach had obviously moved on—maybe it was time for him to get a clue and move on himself, maybe go back to New York, see if he could work it out with Jerry….
Yeah,
he thought miserably. Finish out the semester, quit, and move on—again. By his own figures, he’d lived in no less than nine places in the last seven years, between college, internships, moving in and out of lovers’ apartments… he was tired of moving.

But living here wasn’t the answer, either—not so close to Zach. He booted his laptop back up and started going through the links Maggie had sent him for the apartments she’d looked at.

S
ON
of a bitch
, Zach thought. Mike was right.

The Saturn sat under the overhang beside the house, and the light in David’s room was on. When Zach walked around to the front of the house, he could see David sitting at his desk behind the screen of the laptop. He stared up at him a moment, thinking.

By his cell phone, it was past midnight; the rest of the house was dark, but Zach knew they never locked the doors, so he went quietly up on the porch, inside and up the stairs to David’s room. The door stood ajar. He pushed it open soundlessly.

David slouched back in his desk chair, his hand moving the mouse idly back and forth as he studied the screen in front of him. Again, he was wearing just pajama pants; as Zach watched, he scratched his bare belly absently, then clicked the mouse again.

Zach said, “Some date. What happened to Brian?”

He was gratified to see David jump and whirl in his chair, staring at him guiltily. “What? Who? When did you come in?”

Zach ignored his stammering and sauntered into the room. “Just now. What happened to your date? Or was your date with some internet porn?” He leaned over David to look at the computer screen. “Apartments? Not my idea of a fun Saturday night, but to each his own, I guess. Why did you lie to me?”

“I…. Shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I just didn’t want… I….” David stopped floundering. “Sorry.”

“Fuck, Taff, I thought we were friends,” Zach said, sinking down to sit on the edge of David’s twin bed. “And you lie to me. I don’t get it. If you didn’t want to stay for dinner, why didn’t you just say so?”

“I don’t know.”

“And why are you looking at apartments? I thought you were going to stay here? I thought the whole reason behind the original apartment search was that you didn’t want to be near… me….” Zach trailed off, going pale. “Oh. Yeah. So I guess that’s still the reason, huh? Sorry.” He got up and started for the door.

“No! Shit! Zach….” David bolted up out of his chair, across the room in a flash, grabbing Zach’s arm. “That’s not why I’m doing it. Okay, it kind of is…. Shit.
Shit.
But it’s not you, really. It’s me.”

“Oh, fuck that,” Zach said angrily. “Is that the line you give when you bust up with your lovers? The ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ crap?
This
is why I don’t get involved with the people I fuck. Because sooner or later one of us is gonna say that line and it’ll be bullshit, just the way it’s bullshit now. Why can’t you just admit it, Taff? You don’t want to be friends with me—this was just your way of trying to keep the peace until you could move out again.” He shook off David’s restraining hand. “Well, fuck you very much.”

“No!” David snapped. “That’s not what this is!”

“Then what the fuck is it?”

“I don’t know.” David ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “I just know I couldn’t stay and watch you with him without losing my mind.”

“Shit,” Zach breathed. “You
are
jealous. Mike was right about that too.”

“What?”

“He said you lied about going on a date, and that you said that because you were jealous. That you were hot for me.” Zach cocked his head and regarded him thoughtfully. “Are you?”

David turned and walked away from him toward the door. Shutting it, he said, “Keep your voice down; Mom’s asleep.”

“Are you jealous of Mike?”

David closed his eyes a moment, then opened them and walked to Zach. Putting a hand on Zach’s chest, he pushed him gently backward until the backs of his knees hit the side of David’s bed and he sat down. David crawled into his lap, his knees resting on either side of Zach’s hips. “Of course I’m fucking jealous,” he said. “You greeted him like a long-lost lover. Me, first you screamed your head off, then you told me to fuck off. What can he do for you I can’t? And why aren’t you with him, anyway?”

“Because he’s not gay, for one thing,” Zach said reasonably, though his heart was pounding and he was as hard as a rock with David sitting on his thighs. “And for another thing, he’s not gay.”

David regarded him through narrowed eyes. “But you want him anyway.”

“No. He’s my friend, that’s all. He’s been my friend since I got back. You know, kept in touch, visited me in the hospital. We email a lot. But I’m not into him.” Zach searched David’s dark eyes earnestly. “I’m really not at all into him.”

“Any more than you’re into me. I got it,” David said wryly, but before Zach could protest, he went on talking. “Okay. But before I let you up, I owe you one.”

Zach frowned. “One what?”

David planted his hands on either side of Zach’s face, turning it up toward his. “Return of a favor seven years late,” he breathed, then touched his mouth to the corner of Zach’s. Zach went still, feeling the soft brush of David’s lips on his, first the corners, tenderly, chastely; then closer in, warmer and more firmly; then at last settling fully on Zach’s, his tongue pressing gently at Zach’s lower lip. Zach let him in, meant to let him explore at his leisure but somehow his own tongue was curling around David’s, stroking and flirting, and his hands were on David’s waist, feeling the taut, smooth skin under his fingers. David kept the kiss slow and exploratory, nothing touching but lips and tongue and the firm, gentle hold of his hands on Zach’s face. His eyes were closed, as if he could better appreciate the territory he was investigating by touch alone.

Pushing beneath the waistband of David’s pajama bottoms, Zach slid his hands over the bare skin of David’s ass. David jerked back, his eyes glittering fiercely. “I am
not
one of your anonymous fucks,” he snarled.