him. I bit into a pepperoncino in an attempt to fry my nasal cavity so I wouldn’t have to smell him.
“Circle jerks?” he asked with a salty grin.
“Exactly,” I deadpanned. Carter thought I was living some sextastic lifestyle when it was actually the opposite. I was going to have to seduce a priest before long.
“You on Grindr?” he asked.
I shot him a look. “Why would you care?”
He shrugged and went back to pounding a slab of dough against the counter in a steady rhythm. His back was to me, so I could watch him work without him noticing. Was it my imagination or was he really putting his ass into it?
“Hey, do you still have those cat funerals?” he asked over his shoulder, then chuckled. “That shit was crazy.”
I glared at his back. Whenever I’d hosted a social event as a kid, Papa made me invite everyone in the class. The truth was that I still held cat funerals, but they were private affairs, with just me and my cats.
“My cats don’t die anymore,” I told him. Technically only one of my cats was immortal, though I’d tried unsuccessfully to replicate it with the others.
Carter turned around to stare at me quizzically. I reminded myself to blink. I didn’t want to accidentally seduce him.
“You know your uncle came to school once and threatened me?”
“That must have been my dad.”
“No, it wasn’t your dad. Or your other dad. It was that big, pro-wrestling-looking dude. The same guy who was at your birthday party sniping us with Nerf guns.”
I remembered cutting Carter’s knuckles with my teeth, then licking the wounds—one of the few times I’d had access to fresh human blood—but I’d somehow forgotten your role in it. I glanced at Carter and wondered if he was thinking about it too, a strangely intimate thing for kids to do.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He threatened to kill my dog.”
“What?” I smiled. It was somehow so on-brand for you. Mild-mannered Henri, until something set you off, and then you were a lunatic.
“You think that’s funny?” Carter said. “He scared the shit out of me. Whenever I let Rocky out after that, I brought my bat with me.”
I laughed. “A bat wouldn’t have helped much.”
“Yeah, no shit. That guy would have destroyed me.”
I leaned back against the counter, sucked the juice from the pepper, and tongued the seeds while thinking about how protective you could be. Missing you. Missing us.
“What’s he bench?” Carter asked.
I laughed. “Does it even matter?”
“Um, yeah.”
“I don’t know. What do you bench?” I knew already. The weight of everything was relative to how much Carter could bench press—ten boxes of cheese, 100 bags of dough…
“245,” he said.
“You gain some weight?”
“Fuck no. I keep this machine lean.” He smoothed a hand over his flat stomach in a way that left me staring at the handprint of flour on the red material. He complained about the color of our shirts all the time, said there should be a uniform exemption for gingers.
“You said before you could bench press your weight, and you said you weighed 215 pounds,” I said to test him.
Carter gave me a self-satisfied smile. “Been paying attention, Rodrigues.”
I rolled my eyes at his arrogance and wondered if that was his intention all along, to show off how strong he was. “I’m sure my uncle could bench at least that, but I wouldn’t know because he’s out of the country.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all night.”
He snapped his fingers, did a little head roll, and went back to kneading the dough. I watched his ass twitch as he tossed it from hand to hand, and the way he rolled his hips while spreading it across the circular tray. Was he performing for me, or was I just really horny?
Then he spun around, startling me, and I stuffed the pepper into my mouth, stem and all. He handed me the platter so I could add the toppings. Instead of hanging back by the dough counter, he stood so close I had to reach around him to get at the pepperoni. My hand was grasping; the bin was empty.
“So, do you…” He made an obscene hand gesture that was supposed to represent topping, “or do you…” and there was the other.
I shook my head at him. Just when he’d started acting like a gentleman.
“We’re out of pepperoni. Meet me in the walk-in if you want to find out.” I left him with a stunned expression and a ringing phone as I