Covet Thy Neighbor

It’s you.” He laughed. “Sorry. I, um, I smelled the smoke, and just wanted to make sure some kids hadn’t come up here or something.”
    “Nope. Just me.” I cringed inwardly. “Surprise?”
    He laughed again. “Didn’t realize you were into that, but . . .” He shrugged.
    “Eh, I’m an artist and a musician.” My turn to shrug, and as I tried to get comfortable with my nerves and this goddamned erection, I added, “What do you expect?”
    Darren grinned. “Kind of a cliché, don’t you think?”
    “Very funny.” I gestured at the joint and smirked. “Care to join me?”
    I must have been stoned out of my goddamned mind. Completely FUBAR in the head. Because there was no way in hell the Reverend Darren Romero just strolled his fine ass up to my little plastic table and picked up my lighter and that half-smoked joint. No fucking way.
    I swore I was getting higher just watching him. Not just the utter shock that he was smoking, but the sheer sexiness of it. The lighter’s flame reflecting on his face. His mouth around the joint. His long fingers holding it steady. The way his cheeks hollowed slightly as he pulled in the smoke. Holy fuck. So to speak.
    I’d been doing a piss-poor job of getting my mind off him as it was, and he hadn’t helped matters by showing up. Now he was taking a hit off the joint that had, so far, just made me hornier, an effect he wasn’t doing a damned thing to improve.
    Darren turned his head and blew the smoke out one side of his mouth. His eyes flicked toward me through the thin cloud. “What?”
    “Um. Well.” I laughed. “ That’s definitely not a cliché.”
    He chuckled. “Not a sin last I checked, either, so . . .” He took another drag.
    And I just stared at him, wondering what the fuck was in this weed that was making me hallucinate. It also occurred to me that he’d just taken a second deep hit, and hadn’t coughed at all. His eyes weren’t even watering. Not much, anyway. Dude had some experience with this shit.
    Darren laughed. “Something wrong?”
    “Uh, well, no.” I cleared my throat. “I just didn’t think you’d actually take me up on the offer, and . . .” I trailed off, shaking my head, and it wasn’t the marijuana that had killed my ability to form a coherent thought.
    I’d left the tarp half draped over the chairs, and Darren took one out from under it. He set it a couple of feet from mine, and took a seat. “You’ve got the wrong idea about me, Seth.” He crushed the remains of the joint in the ashtray. “I’m not a saint.”
    “Yeah, I’m . . . kind of starting to pick up on that.”
    He didn’t say anything, just closed his eyes for a moment, probably letting himself drift. After a while, he said, “So you’re an artist and a musician.” He folded his hands across his lap, watching me with heavy-lidded, blissed-out eyes. “What kind of musician?”
    “Everything but the employed kind.”
    Darren laughed. “Could you be a little more specific?”
    “Not really,” I said. “I’ve played jazz, grunge, symphonic . . . you name it, I’ve probably done it.”
    “What do you play?”
    “Bass guitar.” I sat a little deeper in my chair, getting comfortable. “Trumpet. Piano.”
    “You sing?”
    “If I want to clear out the house, yeah.”
    “That bad, huh?”
    “Worse. Trust me.”
    “Well, that makes two of us.” Darren shook his head. “I am absolutely not a singer.”
    “We should try out for one of those TV talent shows together,” I said. “Do a godawful duet and wind up on the ‘Best of the Worst’ highlights video.”
    Darren laughed. “There’s an idea.”
    I just chuckled. “So how in the world did a straightlaced, good ol’ boy like you wind up a pothead?”
    “I’m not a pothead,” he said with as much indignation as someone in his state could muster.
    “This isn’t your first joint, Reverend.”
    “No, it’s not. But I’m not a pothead.”
    “Fair enough. Neither am I.” I rested my head against the railing. “Okay, so how did you end up smoking pot?”
    Darren eyed me. “I grew up in Oklahoma, Seth. What else was I supposed to do?”
    My shoulder was unusually heavy when I lifted it in a shrug. “Cow-tipping?”
    Our eyes met. He snorted, and we both burst out laughing.
    “That doesn’t work, by the way,” he said.
    “What?”
    “Cow-tipping. Doesn’t work.”
    “Really? They do that on MythBusters or something?”
    “Dunno,” he said, his voice slightly