Dirty Laundry (A Tucker Springs Novel) by Cullinan Heidi

Author:Cullinan, Heidi [Cullinan, Heidi]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2013-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

A week and three days after his Sunday outing with Adam, Denver did laundry with El at Tucker Laund-O-Rama and received a thorough ribbing because he’d confessed to his friend on the phone that he was, officially, dating someone.

“Denver Rogers, dating. And a grad student at that. My, my, my.”

The ribbing was good-natured, though, and anyway, El was probably going to run off to Washington or Canada or Iowa or somewhere to get married any second now. “Yeah, well. I saw how much fun you were having and figured, why not.”

“Are we going to double-date now? Have barbecues on the patio? You never did come over, you know.”

Denver hesitated with some towels halfway into a washing machine. “Well. We could do the double-dating, but the other might be a problem. And actually, I been meaning to pick your brain about that.”

El raised an eyebrow. “He has a thing against barbecues? Patios? If he’s vegetarian or something, we can work with that.”

“No.” Denver grimaced and glanced around the room to ensure they were alone, which they were. “The thing is, he’s funny about coming over to my place. And I can’t go to his. At all.”

“What the hell?” El demanded.

Denver held up a hand. “No. Don’t. There’s something more to it, I can tell. I work hard not to bring it up, but last night I suggested very casually we have dinner at my place, thinking we could have us some nice dessert on the couch, and you’d think I asked him to go to a war zone. And that’s just the thing. It’s like it scares him.”

“And it’s not sex?”

“Fuck no.” Denver got hard just thinking about all the creative places they’d had sex. “It’s something about my place. Or his place.” He paused, hating that he had to voice this out loud, to share Adam’s business with El, but he needed advice on this. “I think something happened to him. I think somebody abused him or freaked him out bad. Because it’s about being alone in an apartment with me. I don’t think it’s me, either. I think it’s guys he’s dating, period.”

“You said he had another boyfriend, an ex that was driving you batshit.”

“Yeah, and I think he might be part of the problem. It’s bigger than that, though, I swear. But something’s up, that I know. I can’t figure out how to get around it. I don’t want to bring it up and upset him. But I can tell it’s the elephant in the room, that our not going to each other’s places is upsetting him because he thinks it’ll upset me. What the fuck do I do, El?”

El leaned against a set of dryers and looked thoughtful. “That’s a tough one. You probably need to let him bring it up. Nothing says you can’t lay the groundwork, though. Make sure he hears you saying you’re understanding, or some shit like that.”

“I been trying.”

“It might just take some time.”

“Yeah.” Denver dumped the soap into his machine, punched it up to start, and watched the water gush into the clothes through the door.

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