Second Hand: A Tucker Springs Novel 2

not each other, that El was just teasing when he kissed him, that nothing El did meant anything at all because they were just friends, Paul was straight, and El didn’t date. Except El wanted to be more than friends, wanted desperately for Paul to be gay, and despite all his protestations, yes, he wanted to date. He wanted to bring him to the family party and show everyone his adorable new boyfriend.
    Which meant first he’d have to ask Paul to be his boyfriend. Which meant he’d have to give up his vow to never date anyone.
    El thought about his mental one-eighty a lot when he went over to Rosa’s to help her get ready to host the Fourth party and found Noah there yet again. It turned out he’d asked to be allowed to help, and he’d kept asking until Rosa had caved. Right now he was setting up a second grill in the backyard, next to the one El had already loaned her from the shop. Noah said it was his, except he was unpacking it brandnew from a box. And it was a damn nice grill.
    Rosa still didn’t notice how hard Noah had tried to impress her, just as she hadn’t noticed the long, lingering looks he’d been giving her. She was too busy needling El about his unnamed date and complaining about what a disaster the last boyfriend had been. She regaled him with stories, too, about this new guy she’d spotted when she’d met some of the girls for drinks at the martini bar. It seemed the cluelessness-inlove thing was going around.
    What sent El over the edge, though, was when he ducked out of the shop to grab some lunch on the day of his dinner date with Paul, and saw Paul seated at an outdoor café.
    Smiling. Laughing.
At his lunch date.
A girl.
El ducked behind a bush and watched them for half an
    hour, keeping MoJo quiet with biscuits he’d started storing in his pockets. El didn’t go up and say hello to Paul, no matter how MoJo whined and tugged on her lead, because he wasn’t sure he could do it without dumping coffee into the lap of that dizzy bitch with nerd glasses and a bowl cut. The dizzy bitch who smiled and flirted with Paul, who kept touching his arm, who Paul didn’t withdraw from, who seemed to make Paul flustered and nervous.
    The dizzy bitch Paul wasn’t oblivious to.
El stayed there so long he ended up having to whip together peanut butter and graham crackers in his own kitchen so he could get back to the store in time for an appointment with a guy who wanted to pawn a vintage jukebox. He smoked his way through a whole pack that afternoon, until he felt like the big, messy crap MoJo made after eating the pile of biscuits he’d fed her while they spied on Paul. He made a bad deal on the jukebox because he was too preoccupied with the way the nerd glasses and bowl cut had undressed Paul with her eyes.
    Then he stood in the shower until MoJo whined at the door and the water ran cold, his head against the wall, acknowledging he didn’t just have a crush on Paul. He was head-over-idiot-heels.
He was going to have to do something about it.

chapter 17
    I
    got home from work late because Brooke had called in sick again and Lorraine had found me on my lunch break and held me captive, talking about Bill and his yard and how she’d suggested all these things to help him make it better. I’d assumed it was to make me jealous over her defection to him for the contest, which completely worked.
    Brooke being out meant I got to help Nick with the animals again, but it also meant I ended up covered in hair, slobber, and vomit by the end of the day. Even though I was cutting it close, I decided to run home and change before meeting Emanuel for our date.
    If that’s what it was.
What if it was a date?
The idea made my heart do strange, acrobatic things inside
    my chest, dredging up feelings long, long since packed away in the deep recesses of my mind. I remembered my fumbling encounters back in high school with a neighbor boy. They had been fun. Thrilling, even. The bright, heart-racing excitement of discovering something new. Of course, everything had been new back then. I was older now. No longer a virgin.
    How much different would it be with a man? And especially with somebody as confident as El?
The panic returned in force, the chipmunk finally finding its feet in this argument. No, no, I didn’t want to be with a man. I’d turned away from that a long time ago. It was a good thing, too, because being with a man was the wrong track to take in life. With Stacey, I would have had all the things I