Accidentally in Love (10 page)

“Derek? It’s Cal here. Thought I’d just touch base with you about the cake photos.” Cal walked around the kitchen, the phone against his ear, tidying up in a desultory fashion. One-handed, he couldn’t accomplish much, and he wondered why he was even bothering. It looked okay to him, and he was pretty sure Tom would agree.

“Oh, Tom mentioned that, did he?”

Cal frowned. “Yeah. What’s the matter? You sound kinda down. Did you change your mind? I know I did them last time, but if you want to use someone else, I get it.”

“No! No way. You did a great job, and there’s no one I want more. It’s not that.” Derek took a breath that Cal could hear over the phone. “You and Tom… You’re getting along?”

“We had a few wobbles at the start, but yeah, we’re friends now. Or at least I’d like to think we are.” Telling himself that Tom wouldn’t get Derek to pass on a message if that had changed—and Cal’s conscience was clear—he cleared his throat. “Uh, Tom’s okay, isn’t he?”

Derek didn’t answer, and Cal’s mild, unfocused worry sharpened into genuine anxiety.

“Shit, he hasn’t been in an accident, has he?”

“No, nothing like that. He’s in the office working on whatever he does. It’s just…well, this guy came around at lunch. Joe?”

“Joe, yeah… He’s, well…they’ve been on a few dates. Nothing serious.” If saying it made it true, Cal was happy to say it as often as he needed to make it
come
true. Selfish of him, totally, but that was how he felt.

In the background, Cal heard a woman’s voice say something, followed by Derek’s muttered curse. “Well, that explains it,” Derek said. “Apparently, they broke up.”

“Apparently according to who?” Cal asked, a complex mix of emotions welling up inside him. He discovered he could be glad Joe had broken it off with Tom and furious with him for hurting Tom at one and the same time. Or had it been Tom who’d called it quits? Shit, he really hoped Tom wouldn’t clam up about this and refuse to talk it through.

“Heidi. She’s one of the new bakers, who, by the way, is hoping you’ll take a few photos of her for the Web site. Anyway, sorry to bug you about the Tom thing. I didn’t know that he and Joe had called it quits. Now that I do…”

“Is he okay?”

“Not particularly, I don’t think. I mean, he’s working; he just doesn’t seem happy to be here. He’ll get over it, I’m sure. I feel better now that I know it’s boyfriend troubles and not anything going on between you and him.”

Cal sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Trust me,” he said. “There is nothing going on between me and Tom. Thanks for calling. I’ll see what I can do to cheer him up tonight.”

* * *

The sun was setting, but the hood of Tom’s car was still warm underneath Cal’s thighs. He’d been waiting for at least fifteen minutes for Tom to appear in the parking lot outside the bakery. When Tom finally did and spotted him, Cal experienced a moment of anxiety that maybe he wasn’t doing the right thing.

Tom smiled tiredly at him. “Boy, am I glad to see you.”

All worry fled in the face of that smile. “Right back at
ya
, big guy. I had kind of a cruddy day, and I was hoping maybe we could go grab a burger or something?”

“You too, huh? Must be something in the water. Or maybe we both got out of bed on the wrong side.”

Cal had woken up next to many men, but generally done no more than smile sleepily at them and slide gracefully out of bed. The right side of the bed had been the one nearest the door. If he and Tom ever—

He shut that line of thought down firmly. The idea of waking and staying where he was, only moving closer for a kiss with the sure knowledge that this was just one of many mornings that would start that way was simultaneously appealing and terrifying.

“You can tell me all about it when we’re eating, but only if you let me go first,” Cal said, shamelessly appealing to Tom’s innate willingness to help to get around his equally strong resistance to sharing his troubles. “I hope you’re hungry, because I more or less worked through lunch.”

“Yeah, I didn’t really have much of an appetite myself.” Tom glanced around the parking lot. “Where’s your car?”

“I walked,” Cal said. “I took the path along the river, and it was really nice. I think I got bitten by something, and I know I got mud all over my shoes, but it was kinda primal. Back to nature.”

Tom snorted. “I run that path,” he reminded Cal. “It’s not exactly pristine wilderness. There’s a bench every few hundred yards.”

“Hey, I exercised,” Cal said indignantly. “Sweat may have been involved. I deserve a thick, juicy burger, a mountain of fries and a, hmm…a chocolate shake, the kind you have to suck so hard at that you go light-headed.”

“We can go to the diner a few blocks over and get all of that, if you want to,” Tom said.

“I don’t know if I can walk that far,” Cal said. He laughed when Tom looked horrified. “No, I’m kidding. Sure, the diner sounds great.”

He waited while Tom locked his laptop in his car and then set off beside him. They walked along companionably on the sidewalk to the diner. It was crowded, but there was space at the counter, so they took it. It was the kind of place where a customer didn’t feel on display even when he was surrounded by people, and the general vibe was one of good-natured patience. Cal hoped Tom would feel relaxed here, because he looked worn out.

“You really did have a bad day,” he said once they had ordered their burgers.

“You have no idea.”

“So tell me.”

“Won’t change anything,” Tom said bleakly. Still, he offered Cal a strained smile. “What about you?”

Cal manufactured some minor difficulties that he could complain about until their food had arrived. Tom didn’t seem inclined to share his own news without encouragement. Cal dipped a fry in ketchup and tried to figure out how to tell Tom that he already knew. He wanted to get Tom to open up and start seeing him as someone he could get personal with. Before Cal could come up with a solution, Tom put his burger back on his plate and sighed.

“I don’t think I can eat.” He gave Cal a doubtful look. “I broke it off with Joe today.”

“Things weren’t working out?” Thank God it’d been that way around.

“I told him that I wanted to be friends,” Tom said. “Someone should have warned me that it’s code for ‘tell me I suck and walk away.’ At least, that's what Joe did.”

“He did
what
?” Cal stabbed another fry into a pool of ketchup and bit it in half. It gave his mouth something to do other than talk, because he was so pissed off at Joe right then that he wasn’t sure he could speak calmly.

“Not those exact words,” Tom clarified. “Just the general idea.”

“I thought that you two were doing okay.” Cal picked up the paper napkin by his plate and wiped his fingers clean before he picked up another fry anyway, just for something to do with his hands. “Was it—”

“The sex thing. Yeah.” Tom glanced around, but they were both speaking quietly, and the fifties background music provided plenty of cover. “I told him that it wouldn’t be happening for a long time, and he wasn’t prepared to wait. To be fair, I also said…well, I kind of implied…”

“What?” Cal felt a small amount of sympathy for Joe, who’d probably expected to sweep Tom off his feet and onto his back by the second date and would have been left doubting his own appeal. The sympathy faded quickly, though. Joe was the kind of man who was too secure not to rebound from a single rejection. He’d probably be back at the club and scoring in no time.

“I told him that I wasn’t invested in him, and it’s true,” Tom said in a rush. “I want what he was offering. I’m not some kind of freak—”

“Hey,” Cal said as Tom’s voice rose. He put his hand over Tom’s and squeezed it reassuringly. “No, you’re not. You just have a really strong idea of what you want in a man and you won’t settle for second best. That makes you a perfectionist, not a freak.”

Tom turned his head to meet Cal’s gaze. The gray of his eyes looked darker today, or maybe Cal just hadn’t been this close to him before. “I hurt his feelings.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Cal said and meant it.

“You should,” Tom said. “It probably means I’m not a very nice person.”

“Are you kidding? You’re the nicest person I’ve ever met.” Cal meant that too. “You didn’t hurt his feelings on purpose, did you?”

“No.” Tom picked up his fork, stabbed it into the pile of fries on his plate, and lifted the ones he’d speared, looking at them as if he’d never seen fries before. “I don’t know if that matters. It doesn’t make him any less hurt, that it was an accident.”

“Maybe not, but he wasn’t a prince to you in return, was he? He’s not perfect, and neither are you. You can’t tell me you’re actually surprised about that.”

Tom shook his head. “I know I’m not perfect.”

Of course, hearing Tom say that made Cal want to reassure him that he was perfect, or as close to it as anyone Cal had ever known. “You’re okay,” he said, keeping his tone casual. “So Joe wasn’t the guy for you. No big deal. We’ll find you someone else. Someone better.” When he looked up, Tom was studying him. “What? We will.”

“I’m not so sure,” Tom said. “Look, let’s give it a rest, okay? Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure. Hey, isn’t your birthday coming up? What do you want us to do?”

“You want to hang out with me on my birthday?” Tom asked, sounding surprised. “You don’t have to just because you’re living with me, you know.”

“Tom, if you haven’t seen by now that I don’t do anything that I don’t want to, then you haven’t been looking. It’s your birthday on…Friday, right?” Tom nodded. “So we do something special. Whatever you want.”

“You always go out on Fridays with your friends,” Tom objected.

“You make me sound so boring and predictable,” Cal complained and stole a fry off Tom’s plate, even though he had plenty left on his own. “It’s your birthday. We’ll do whatever you want. If that’s staying in, well…”

“You’ll persuade me to do something else.”

“See?” Cal said and smiled brightly at him. “You do know me!”

Tom turned to face Cal, who mirrored him, so that their knees touched. “I want…I want to try one of your birthdays,” he said slowly. “Mine are just boring. I either stay in, or if my parents are in town, they take me out to some restaurant, and we try to talk to each other between courses and usually end up fighting. I bet you have fun, don’t you?”

“On my birthday? Absolutely. I celebrate it for the whole twenty-four hours. It’s a nonstop party of Cal-pampering.”

The grin Tom gave him was an uncertain one. “You get hot guys to feed you peeled grapes, don’t you?”

“I wish.” Actually, on his last birthday, Cal was pretty sure he’d licked whipped cream off a guy he’d never seen before that day, so as far as guesses went, it was a little too close for comfort, and definitely not the kind of thing Tom would want to hear. “Is that what you want? Because I can probably arrange it.”

Tom grinned, his depression seemingly gone, and shook his head. “I just want to go out and have a good time. A few drinks, lots of people around. Do you think we could do that?”

Cal nodded. “Clear your calendar for the day, okay?”

“Okay.”

Cal hoped that whatever he could put together would live up to Tom’s expectations.

* * *

“I can’t believe I’m getting a pedicure,” Tom said. With his long legs bent, he looked even taller than usual. His feet were pale and not particularly attractive. Cal felt that way about most feet. They had too many toes to look anything but weird.

“Well, you never have to get another one if you hate it,” Cal told him.

“No, it’s not that. I don’t hate it. It’s just new. You know, something I never thought I’d do.”

Cal had felt that way about it once, but now he liked it. There was something cathartic about sitting with your feet soaking, as if any lingering negativity was disintegrating, leeching out into the water.

“Sometimes it’s good to do something totally outside your comfort zone.”

“I’m not sure getting a spa treatment is up there with white-water rafting,” Tom said drily. “This kind of defines being inside the comfort zone, if the faces those women over there are making are any indication.”

Cal had closed his eyes, relaxing into the huge leather massage chair that was gently pummeling his back, but he opened them a crack to squint at the women across from him. Clearly friends from the way they’d been chattering, they were at the same stage in their pedicures, with lotion being smoothed into their feet and calves. Cal knew how good that felt: long, firm strokes from strong hands, his skin tingling deliciously.

“Promise me you won’t moan that loudly, even if it is your birthday.”

“It is my birthday, and I’ll moan if I want to,” Tom said loftily. “Or scream. Some of those tools on the towel look scary. Are you sure they’re just planning to trim my nails?”

Cal grinned as the two men assigned to them walked over, their faces animated as they talked. “It depends who you get. I hear Jake once got carried away with the cuticle remover and the customer needed a stitch or two, but I’ve always been very happy with
Hyo’s
work.”