Dirty Laundry: A Tucker Springs Novel #3

watching?” This came from Denver as he reestablished himself on his chair. “This is a good spot for that. Jase and I place bets on who’s going to go home with who.” Denver’s eyes slid to Adam. “Or whom, or whatever. Sorry. Not used to flirting with a graduate student.”
    Adam couldn’t decide where to bloom first. Denver was trying to impress him? Flirting? There was flirting happening here? He clutched his La Croix happily. “I’m an entomologist, not a grammarian. I always mess that up anyway. That and the ‘you and I’ when it should be ‘you and me.’ Moths don’t use grammar, thankfully.”
    Denver’s seizing on the topic was almost visible. His body even turned. “That’s what you study, huh? Moths?”
    “Yeah. Hawk moths are my focus, but I’m obsessed with the entire family of Sphingidae.”
    “Well, tell me about them,” Denver urged.
    Adam gave him a long look. “You don’t want to hear about hawk moths.”
    Denver eased deeper into his stool. His expression shifted, subtly, but whatever it was made the hair on the back of Adam’s neck dance. “Tell me,” Denver said, his voice sliding into a soft drawl, laced with a thin lash of command, “everything you know about hawk moths.”
    Adam blinked, confused, uncertain. No , he wanted to argue. You’re making fun, or you will . No one wanted to hear about moths, for fuck’s sake.
    Except he couldn’t speak, not those words, because That Look was back. He recognized it from the laundromat. It was the same look that had made Adam feel perfectly fine about letting his pants hang at his knees while he got felt up and then fucked in the ass in front of anybody who came into the room. It was the look that had smoldered in the back of his brain as he’d gotten ready to come tonight. It was the look that had convinced him to overcome everything that told him this was a bad idea, too risky. Now it was back.
    Demanding he talk about moths.
    So he did.
    He started hesitantly, but all Denver did was listen. He was actually listening too, because his face would change as he digested facts, and sometimes he asked questions. Especially about the hummingbird hawk moth.
    “So you mean I might have seen one of these things, thought they were a bird, but they’re a moth?”
    Adam nodded, trying not to be too eager, but it was hard. “I wish I had a smartphone so I could show you a picture. I mean, they don’t actually look the same holding still, but when they hover, oh yeah.”
    “So they’re big?” Denver asked.
    Adam considered this. “Well—yes, for a moth, but hummingbirds aren’t big, either. Plus people are always viewing at a distance. It’s easy to mistake them. It’s this movement, see, that makes them so special. They can swing, and not many can do that. Only three nectar feeders have developed this: hummingbirds, some bats, and the hummingbird moth.”
    “Is that what you study? Their movement?”
    “Well, in a roundabout way. I’m more interested in their genes. But it’s really, really boring.”
    Denver’s eyes danced. “I love being bored.”
    Again, Adam hesitated. This never happened, and he knew damn well Denver didn’t care about moth genetics. “There are almost fifteen hundred different kinds of hawk moths, but there’s no real study in the phylogenetic framework. How they’ve evolved, and why they’ve evolved, and how those two events are related.”
    Despite all logic, Denver seemed genuinely intrigued. “So this helps you what? Figure out how to protect crops?”
    “Well, actually, yes, but not in the way you might think. I mean, biology should always be studied for the sake of studying, but this discipline could have actual purpose. We’re losing pollinators. Why? What’s driving them? Is it evolution? Is it us? Is it something we haven’t yet discovered? What can we learn by understanding how they evolved in the first place? Could that help us stop their die-off? Could it help us in some other way?” He realized he’d gotten carried away, flushed, and stopped.
    Denver finished checking an ID and glanced at Adam impatiently. “Well, don’t leave me hanging, boy. You sounded like you were on a roll. Tell me more how your bugs will save the world.”
    God help him, Adam did.

For someone who didn’t know a damn thing about flirting, Denver thought he was doing a pretty good job.
    He was even following some of what Adam was saying, and in its own mind-numbing way, it was almost cool. He