Dirty Laundry: A Tucker Springs Novel #3

out here in a bit, but thought I’d check up on you. Busy with moths, are you?”
    “Yeah. A project is due this afternoon. I was all set to be done last night, but the data got corrupted.”
    He sounded frustrated and a little anxious. “Well, don’t let me keep you if you’re busy. Just shooting the shit is all.”
    “Oh no, it’s fine, really. I need to take a break or I’ll go nuts.”
    A pause stretched out, and Denver wasn’t sure how to fill it. “Well, good,” he ventured after a minute.
    “So. What are you doing today?” Adam asked.
    “Hitting the gym here in a bit. Then laundry late this afternoon, unless El wants to come and we go after he closes the shop. Then work at nine.”
    “Laundry. I wanted to go this morning, but I’m stuck here now. And I don’t want to run into those frat boys again.”
    “Come when I go,” Denver offered. An innuendo rose to his lips, but he let it pass. He wasn’t sure quite why, either.
    “God, you have no idea how much I’d love to, and not just because you’re starting to make all utility tables erotic. But I don’t know when I’ll be done.”
    “Well, I can go tomorrow too. No big.”
    “Except tomorrow I have to work in the insectary.” He sighed. “It’s okay. I’ll just rinse out some shorts in my sink.”
    Denver thought furiously. “How about I bring you some dinner before I head to work? I’ll text about six to see where you are and come by with some takeout at seven.”
    “Oh gosh. That would be awesome, but I don’t want to put you out.”
    Denver rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “It ain’t putting me out. I gotta eat too, you know. Besides. I want to see you.”
    He panicked a little at that, thinking it sounded too needy or weird, but it must have been good, because Adam went all soft and gooey. “You do? You want to see me?”
    “Well, yeah. I been dying to hear how the moth stuff turns out.”
    Adam laughed. “I bet you are. Okay, I’ll look for your text at six. That ought to motivate me to get my crap done, if anything will.”
    “Sounds good. Talk to you then.”
    When Denver hung up, he was grinning from ear to ear, and when he got to the gym, he still was.

    The worst part of having to redo the data he’d lost was that it meant Adam had to spend the day with Brad.
    He didn’t want to be one of those in their group, one of the exes who made everything difficult by refusing to be in the room with his old boyfriend, and he’d been working hard not to end up in that place by simply removing himself from the equation most of the time. Like doing his data late last night so he could turn it in right away on Friday morning. The problem was that Brad kept wanting to talk things through, to make them okay, to get back together, and Adam didn’t want to be together. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be okay. He wanted his space, because he couldn’t figure out what was right and what was wrong, what he was justified in feeling and where he was being a princess.
    Brad spent the whole of Friday in the lab fucking these fragile thought patterns up in Adam’s head, so hard he wasn’t sure he could ever straighten them out again.
    “I never meant for us to stay apart, not like this. And you know you can’t be on your own. You scare me when you try.” Brad leaned over Adam’s workstation, putting his hand on Adam’s notes. “Come on, hon. I still care about you.”
    “Right now I really care about this data.” He shoved Brad’s hand away—his own shaking—and glared at the columns of numbers, willing himself to focus so he could plug them back into the spreadsheet.
    “It’s not due until midnight.”
    “Well, maybe I have things to do before midnight.”
    Brad snorted. “What, laundry?”
    Adam could feel his ears heating, and he focused hard on his computer screen. Brad probably didn’t sound as smug as Adam was hearing him sound, but it didn’t matter. He hated this, feeling like the pathetic loser Brad was trying to mother. “If you must know, I planned to go out.”
    The thrill of Brad’s surprise was worth the lie. “Out where? I know you don’t have a date.”
    Adam put his pencil down. “You know, do you? Because I’m so pathetic?”
    “Because I know you, Adam. Better sometimes I think than you know yourself.” He pushed Adam’s laptop and lab notes aside and sat down across the table from him. “Seriously. You act like we aren’t even friends anymore. Any of us.”
    Yes, he did. And it was