Chapter 2

For if there was one thing that a vegan restaurant that roasted its own coffee and put deep-fried pickles in its Bloody Marys attracted like flies, it was hipsters. The art on the walls oozed multi-media angst. The music was mostly old-time country, Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash remixed with ever so much irony. The bartenders wore second-hand saddle shoes and ostentatious handlebar mustaches, the waitresses pedal-pushers and tattoo-highlighting thrift-shop blouses. On hot, sunny days there was invariably a row of laptop dudes at the bar in knit winter hats. But The Road had cold beer, amazing fries, and the best macaroni-and-fake-cheese in town, so Cassidy was rarely the only stiff in a suit to trickle in from the neighboring government offices.

While he’d only ever really dated two guys, both more handsome-haircut and button-down than he was, he’d always had an eye for the renegades. Put another way, the implied mixture of danger and don’t-give-a-fuck in a tattooed, crooked-toothed, smoke-too-much, drink-too-much, cuss-too-much, jailbird-lookin’ hardscrabble bad boy turned his conservative crank. And he’d never seen an ink-smeared, buck-toothed dipshit smoke as much, drink as much, or cuss as much as Buford L. Jackson III. Cassidy figured that was saying something, considering Jax was at workmost of the time Cassidy spent drooling over him. At least, Cassidy assumed he was a cook. His narrow waist was usually wrapped in what looked like the apron he’d worn for a food fight, and the auburn-splashed mess of his hair was wrangled away from his long, square face in a blue bandana. But for every five minute stretch he spent in the kitchen, he seemed to spend twenty smoking out in the alley or slapping backs and stealing shots at the bar. He had to be at least six-foot-six, although he couldn’t have weighed a buck and a half. Drenched in tattoos from his pencil neck down to his fingertips, he was twenty-two years old at the outside, and smelled like armpit, smoke, whiskey, and grease. And Cassidy wanted an ass-full of Jax so badly he sometimes honest-to-god whimpered when Jax walked by.

He coulda been gay. He coulda been straight. He might have fallen somewhere on that spectrum to which urban youth seemed to have access that Cassidy, growing up in a small mountain town ten years earlier on the gay-rights timeline, had been denied. He didn’t flit about the bar on twinkle toes like some kind of princess, but he was physically affectionate with most of his guy friends, and the couple times he’d set down Cassidy’s food, he’d tossed in a wink. In fact, Cassidy purposely picked a table on the path between the kitchen and the creaky swinging door to the alley whenever possible, and Jax had a smile or a wisecrack almost every time he scampered by. Cassidy definitely had the kid’s attention—whether this was because of the pull of his own charm and good looks or because he gawked at Jax like he was the main event at a carnival sideshow wasn’t always clear.

And so he set out to find out. He’d grown up in the mountains where there was fuck-all else to do: like his brother and all their buddies, he’d lived on cheap beer and cigarettes from the time he was fourteen until he finished college. He hadn’t had so much as a puff in ten years, but Jax never even slowed down when passing by, even when seeming kind of flirty. If it was to be up to Cassidy to make the first move, he’d just have to ball up and do it. He wasn’t gonna get lung cancer if he bummed one smoke.

“I get it,” Jax said, shaking an American Spirit out of its greenish pack with a grin. “You’re one of those ‘quitters’ who just quit buying.”

Guilty, Cassidy let his own smile say. Now that it was May and Denver was having halfway reliable springtime weather, Jax and the rest of the gang of smokers tended to leave the door to the alley wide open. When Cassidy saw Jax light a second butt off the end of his first, he had ever-so-casually strolled out and hit him up. He hadn’t really thought about where he’d go from there, but for a second—his mom would kill him—it was just nice to get in a couple good drags.

They stood for a spell in companionable silence, Jax tipped against the brick wall, eyes closed, offering his toothy, equine face up to the sun. Cassidy ran his eyes up and down Jax’s louche, slender body and picked a stray flake of tobacco off his tongue. Jax opened his eyes, clocked Cassidy checking him out, and offered a sly smile.

“So, what?” He engaged Cassidy, but closed his eyes again, in case Cassidy wasn’t done looking. “You work around here?”

Cassidy nodded.