Jacob's Ladder by Z. A. Maxfield

Author:Z. A. Maxfield
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: M/M Contemporary, Source: Amazon
ISBN: 1607377454
Publisher: Loose Id LLC
Published: 2010-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

We ordered carnitas, and they came in a heaping plateful with delicate corn tortillas that tasted handmade. We got rice and beans on the side and a bowl of pico de gallo and one of red hot salsa, chopped extra fine but not quite pureed, smoky with chipotle and maybe a hit of habanero, but bright with fresh tomatoes, cilantro, and sweet red onion.

Cam could eat, and I liked that on a guy since I’m somewhat handy in the kitchen. I often expressed myself with food, and Cam—he could really put it away. He grinned around great mouthfuls, bluff and hearty, but still boyish and maybe a little impudent in his worn cowboy boots and formfitting jeans. He dared me to drink three shots in succession—the time-honored way with a lick of salt and a bite of lime—and eyed me with the kind of intent that made the hot sauce seem tepid by comparison. At least four times I sat there silently wishing that Cam were the one. That my focus didn’t stray to the quiet corner of the bar where JT sat with his homecoming queen, hand on his chin, hanging on her every word. At least that many times I begged the Fates to turn me around, to cause my heart to quicken when I looked at Cam the way it did when I caught sight of JT lifting his wineglass to his lips.

All the same, while I chatted and ate, I felt JT’s gaze on me, as if he was as drawn to me as I was to him, and I felt sorry for him.

Cam’s appeal was in-your-face, and JT’s was as subtle as a whisper. JT lacked Cam’s cowboy charm. He lacked Cam’s humor and bravado, yet I couldn’t keep from looking over at him again and again, until JT and Elaine shared a dessert and then paid their tab and got up to leave. By that time I’d had plenty to drink, and his presence seemed funny, if a little sad. My own pathetic state didn’t bear thinking on.

“So then”—Cam was telling the story of a dramatic 911 call that involved downed electrical wires and rain—“we have to rescue this guy in a pickup truck, and we discover that he’s been riding around, naked from the waist down, flashing truckers. Started the whole damned thing.”

“What a mess,” I agreed, grinning now because JT was finally gone and I could breathe again. “It’s a nightmare when you’re doing something dumb and you need to be rescued.”

“What dumb thing have you done?”

“Me?” I remembered a time when I was about twenty-three. “I was in a bar getting shitfaced, and a bomb went off outside the disco next door. It just decimated the crowd waiting to get in, blew out all the windows on the block.”

“What were you doing that was so stupid?” Cam asked, frowning.

“When the blast went off it was total chaos. I’d been trying to forget whatever was bothering me at the time by getting drunk, and the end result was that when the chips were down, I couldn’t help anyone.

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