Second Hand: A Tucker Springs Novel 2

even deeper confusion, El reached for his cigarettes and lit up. “It’s a joke. I told a friend of mine we shouldn’t try to make hookups in bars but at regular places, and now it’s kind of a running theme.”
For a second, El worried Paul might think that’s what this was, a hookup, but then he remembered Paul was Captain Clueless. He seemed to be considering El’s theory of relationships, though, and after a few moments of drunken pensiveness, he nodded. “That’s true. I met Stacey in the school commons. She needed someone to hold her books while she wiped up a coffee someone had spilled across our table, and she bought me lunch as a thank-you. Everything sort of happened from there.”
It was his face, El decided, the way you could see everything he thought about as it passed between his ears. Guileless, simple thoughts. For example, right now Paul was trying to figure out how he could repeat that kind of scenario. El would’ve bet money on it.
Too bad he wasn’t the relationship type. Too bad Paul was straight.
Too bad no relationship ever worked out, period.
El wondered about Paul being entirely straight, though, like when El’s conscience got the better of him and compelled him to shuttle Paul back to his house. It wasn’t the fact that Paul clung to El while he held him up—he was drunk; that came with the territory. The glances, though, made El pause. Paul checking the way El filled out his T-shirt. Staring at El’s waist after he’d poured Paul into bed. Simple things that were almost guaranteed to be El reading into his intentions.
Simple things, though, that fucked royally with El’s head.
He stopped by Rosa’s the next day and listened to her carry on about her man of the moment, listened as she spouted the same lines she always did about how they’d made a connection, about how there was something special about this one, about how she could tell by looking into his eyes that he understood her in a way no one else had. El wished he had the other seventy times she’d told him that on tape to play back to her, but it wouldn’t have mattered. She’d still be convinced this was The One, right up until the moment he cheated on her or left her without warning or some new twist proved he was The Same One as Always.
She never listened because she was lonely. El knew that. As he thought about it, he realized that was his problem too, though not in the same way. He was plugging into the same bullshit, thinking someone who felt off the beaten path could work some kind of magic and fill his life with cheesy soundtracks and longing glances.
Which was crazy. El liked his life. It was the way he wanted it. He hated cheesy soundtracks, and he never glanced longingly at anything. Paul was amusing and entertaining. Adorable too, yes. And straight.
Not that any of it mattered, because El didn’t do relationships, and he wasn’t going to be doing Paul.
So there wasn’t any harm in enjoying his company, because Paul didn’t have a pond and El didn’t want to go fishing.
Or something like that.

chapter 5
    T
    he morning after my night with El at the bar, I woke feeling thick-headed and groggy. The beer had been a bit too dark and intense for me, much like Emanuel himself. Still, I felt better for having spent time with him. Somehow lighter for having spilled my guts to a man I barely knew. It seemed like I should feel awkward about it, but I didn’t. El’s simple acceptance of it all, as if it were a story he’d heard a hundred times before, made it easier. It was like having gone to confession, but without any of the Hail Marys.
    My mom called early in the afternoon and asked to talk to Stacey. “I thought I’d wish her a happy birthday.”
I debated lying and telling her that Stacey was out for the day, but that would only delay the inevitable. I hated to disappoint my mom, but there was really no way to avoid it any longer.
“She doesn’t live here anymore, Mom.”
A heartbeat of silence, then, “What do you mean?”
She knew what I meant. Her question had more to do with filling an awkward space than with needing an explanation, but I gave one anyway. “She left me.”
It made me sad how Mom almost sounded relieved. “Did the two of you have a fight?”
If only it had been that simple. “She decided we were going in different directions.” What that really meant was that she’d decided I couldn’t give her what she wanted, but no need to be too blatant about my shortcomings. I