Chapter 1
“Talk about a seven-point-five,” Chuck Miller grunted, watching the blonde in a skintight red dress walk across the street from the construction site. The high-rise apartment building was only halfway built, a few weeks behind schedule, and Chuck was at least partly to blame for that.
The foreman was in his late fifties, with more scalp than hair, but he smoothed down the gray strands all the same as he watched the young woman stroll by.
“You kiddin’?” Evan scoffed. He was a burly twenty-something going on forty, but he was never shy about his opinions on attractiveness. “With those ankles, she’s a five at best.”
A few feet away, Colt could hear them perfectly, but he was pretending like he couldn’t. He loved his job, and he liked Chuck and Evan well enough when they weren’t being jackasses, but he could do without the commentary they felt the need to make on every woman who passed by, as if they’d both taken the job for the sole purpose of proving the stereotypes correct.
“Hey! Colt!” Chuck barked. “Come over here and settle this.”
“Kinda busy, fellas,” Colt said, jotting down a couple of measurements before he grabbed another board to lay down on his table saw bench. “It’s called work. You should give it a try sometime.”
No response. Just footsteps in the gravel. Colt sighed and straightened up. It was hot, and he already had a migraine. Looked like it was about to be a worse one.
“Colt’s a pretty boy,” Chuck said, giving Colt a pat on the bicep, as if to illustrate his point. “A real solid ten. Guy like that can afford to be picky.”
Evan squinted at Colt and cocked his head to one side like he was doing the math. “Eh, I’d say he’s more like an eight-point-five.”
“Thanks, Evan,” Colt said dryly.
“My point is, our friend here is more equipped to give an objective assessment of the situation,” Chuck said with the air of someone conducting a scientific experiment.
Evan grumbled a reluctant acknowledgement.
“Therefore,” Chuck continued in his most mockingly proper tone, “It falls to the objective third party to break the tie.” In his thick Cranston accent, it came out more like thoid pahty. “If Colt here says the lady’s a seven, she’s a seven. So what is it, Colt? On a scale of one to ten, what’s she rate?”
Colt let out a heavy sigh. “You guys are pigs, you know that? I give any woman who can put up with either one of you for five minutes a ten.”
“But if you were gonna give a rating,” Evan pressed.
“Oh, for God’s sake. If it’ll get you idiots to go back to doing your job, fine. She’s a nine. They’re all nines, now grab a board and start cutting,” Colt said, shoving a plank into Evan’s chest.
“Ha!” Chuck cried victoriously. “Fuckin’ told ya she was at least a seven. Picky bastard.”
“You can’t ask him that shit, anyway. He’s of that persuasion,” said Evan, pointedly wiggling his little finger in the air.
Colt cocked an eyebrow. “You wanna say that shit again, fuckface?”
“Hey, no disrespect!” Evan said, holding up his hands in defense. “I got a gay sister. What you do with another man between the sheets and otherwise ain’t none of my business. I’m just sayin’, maybe you ain’t exactly the best source of objectivity for this sorta thing.”
“Don’t be ignorant,” Chuck scolded. “Colt swings both ways. He’s fancy like that.” He gave Colt’s arm another demonstrative swat. “Y’know, in a good way.”
“Thanks, Chuck. You’re a real forward thinker.”
“Damn right I am,” the foreman said, puffing out his chest proudly. Whether Chuck was impervious to sarcasm or simply oblivious to it, Colt was never sure. He’d been working for the guy for the last six years. Long enough to know he meant well. Usually.
“Now that this all-important matter has been settled,” Colt jeered, “you guys mind if I knock off a little early around four?”
Chuck and Evan exchanged a knowing look.
“What for?” Chuck asked with a taunting lilt to his tone. Colt had never so much as taken a sick day, so he knew his boss didn’t actually care where he was going.
He’d hoped he would be able to get out of it without an explanation. He wasn’t sure why he’d hoped. After six years, he should have known better, but that never seemed to stop him. “Just a belated birthday thing. Dinner.”
“Birthday?” Chuck asked sharply, looking at Evan. “Did you know this douche was havin’ a birthday?”
“News to me,” said Evan.
“Man, we gotta do somethin’!” Chuck cried.
“This is exactly why I didn’t say anything,” Colt said, tossing a couple of split boards into the growing pile. At the rate they were going, the damn high-rise wasn’t going to be done anytime in the next decade. “It’s not even my real birthday. It’s just some random date my first foster family picked, and everyone insists on making a big deal about it.”
“Oh, yeah. I forget you’re adopted sometimes,” Evan said, scratching at his scruff. “How’d they not even know when you were born?”
Chuck gave him a withering look.
“Because no one gave me up. They just dumped me,” said Colt. Everyone he’d known for long enough asked about his origins eventually, and Colt knew it was better to be blunt about it. Secrecy only invited more questions.
Subconsciously, he knew it was probably part of the reason he avoided forming close attachments. At least, that was what the court-assigned shrink he’d seen from the ages of ten to eighteen would have said.
“The cops found me wandering around on the side of the road in Exeter when I was two. For all I know, Colt’s not even my real name, just some word I was babbling,” he snorted.
“Damn,” Evan murmured, shaking his head. “That’s some real Little Orphan Annie shit, bro.”
Colt snorted. “You’ve got the soul of a poet, Ev.”
“Hey, it’s their loss,” Chuck said, shaking Colt hard enough by the shoulder that he nearly tripped. “All the more reason to celebrate. You guys still like strip clubs, right?”
“Dude, he’s bi. He likes all the strip clubs,” said Evan. He paused, as if he was weighing the benefits of non-heteronormativity for the first time in his life.
“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” Colt said, rolling his eyes. There was only one person he wanted to disrobe, but it was always a fifty-fifty shot as to whether that someone was going to turn him down or not. “Like I said, I have dinner plans.”
“Dinner,” Chuck sneered. “You hear that, Evan? Our boy’s got a dinner date.”
Evan grinned. “Ooh la la.”
Colt rolled his eyes. He wished it was a date. With Jason, he could never be quite sure. They had been best friends ever since the Jagers had adopted Colt and taken him into their home at the age of eleven. Even though they had grown up next door to each other, their relationship hadn’t changed much. Jason was the only living child of a “good Catholic family,” and he had been doing the hokey pokey in and out of the closet since his teenage years.