Second Hand: A Tucker Springs Novel 2

table. For one second, I thought he was going to stand up, but he didn’t. He crushed his cigarette butt out in the ashtray between us, then leaned his elbows on the table to stare at me. “You know what the root of all evil is?”
I blinked at him, trying to figure out where he was going with the question. “Money?”
“No, man. It’s stuff. Possessions. Things. All that crap money buys. All the shit we tell ourselves we need. You have any idea how many people come into my shop every week and they got to trade in some gadget so they can pay the rent? The thing is, you ask them, ‘Did you know rent was due?’ Of course they did. ‘Did you realize you didn’t have another payday between now and then?’ Yeah, they knew that too. ‘So why’d you decide to drop five hundred on an iPad?’ And they don’t got an answer, and if they do, it’s something ridiculous. It’s new. It’s hip. It’s shiny. It’s loud. Their neighbor has one, or their sister, or their boss, and they can’t stand to let others have things they don’t. They’re so afraid of what others might think. Their kid is sitting there in a dirty diaper and a T-shirt two sizes too small. Thirty degrees outside and they didn’t bother to put pants on the poor kid, let alone socks and a jacket, but they drove right down to Best Buy the minute it opened to buy the newest Xbox, and now they’re scratching their heads wondering why they can’t pay for heat.
“You fell into it, Paul. Into the mindset. Into the lie. But it’s not just you. Not just Stacey, either. It’s almost every other red-blooded American out there. Now you’re at the end of it, and you can’t beat yourself up. There’s no point in punishing yourself, because it’s over. The thing is, now you know the way out.”
“I do?” I wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or him that had me confused.
“Yeah.”
I sat there, stunned, baffled, a bit amused. I had several questions I wanted to ask, not the least of which was, What the hell are you talking about? What I ended up saying was, “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Hanging out with me. Buying me drinks.”
“Is it that much of a mystery?”
“Kind of, yeah.”
A ghost of a smile played over his full lips. He raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re not worried about the fact that I brought you to a gay bar?”
Alarm bells went off in my head, but I chastised myself. Surely he was just teasing me. “Should I be?”
This time he really did smile, a mischievous one that caused butterflies to take flight in my chest. When was the last time somebody had bothered to flirt with me? Even as a joke?
Emanuel slid one of his two untouched beers my way. “Here,” he said as he leaned back to light his next cigarette, “have another drink.”

chapter 4
    W

    hat are you doing?
    The question kept rattling around El’s head as he watched his adorable, straight, hot mess of a redhead finish off his first beer and blithely accept another when offered it. El told himself he was amused, that was all. Bemused, actually, because he couldn’t quite make Paul out. Which meant he was bored and feeding Paul drinks and watching what happened as a way to pass the time.
    Except he watched the way Paul’s lips clung to the glass and had to check urges to skim his knuckles down Paul’s sharp, innocent cheekbones.
    What was he doing, indeed?
“So what are you going to do?” El asked, forcing himself to stop having idiot fantasies. Maybe if Paul talked about his ex-girlfriend enough, El could write him off as another sorry sap serving as a walking advertisement for why not to have relationships. Not to mention that if they both said girlfriend often enough, maybe El would cotton on to the fact that Paul was straight.
Paul blinked at El in drunken confusion. “Do?”
The more clueless Paul got, the more adorable he became. “About Stacey,” El prompted.
“Oh.” Paul stared sadly into his half-spent glass. “Nothing, I guess.”
Right. Obviously. “Moving on then? More fish in the sea?” El nodded wryly at the door throbbing with club music. “Should have taken you to your kind of pond.”
Paul blinked as if he didn’t understand. “Pond? Oh.” His gaze returned to the glass again. El began to wonder if Paul thought it might be some kind of alcoholic gazing glass. “I don’t think I have a pond.”
“Oh yes. That’s right, I forgot we were supposed to be picking up people at the laundromat.” When Paul registered