By the time he ran into the father and son who lived at number 211, Ian had already heard a few things about them. The father had moved there for work. He was some kind of supervisor at the HCL Testing Service Lab out toward Lambton. The kid went to the local kindergarten and to daycare at Ruth Miller's.
This was another day when Ian roamed the town and the countryside, trying to clear his head of all his worries about his dad. He slept better if he did that. Afternoons were a good time. That's when his father rested quietly.
On his aimless walk through town, Ian turned a corner and almost collided with the father and his little boy in front of Ruth's front gate. It looked like they had just come out from the daycare place.
"Oh, you guys," Ian said. He turned his eyes from the blond kid to the guy he had only seen from a distance until now. Up close, he was kind of stunning. His face was chiseled. His eyes were light blue, catching flashes of gold from the afternoon sun.
Ian extended his hand for a handshake. "Hi. I'm Ian Warwick. I live up the road. And you're Jake Conroy, right?"
"It's Jacob," he corrected him, shaking his hand.
"Oh. Sorry."
"I'm Toby," his son said, looking up at Ian, not wanting to be left out.
"Nice to meet you, Tony," Ian said.
Toby made a face at him. "He got my name wrong too," he complained to his dad.
"I think he's just kidding around," Jacob told him with a smile.
"A joke? Good one!" Toby told Ian.
Ian gave him a wink. He decided to walk along with them as they went toward their house. Toby walked ahead, exploring the bushes, and poking into hedges. He was a little boy on a mission.
"He's looking for frogs and grasshoppers, anything that jumps. But they're all gone," Jacob told him. He looked at his son and smiled.
The two of them didn't look very much alike except for the eyes. Their eyes were exactly the same. That prompted Ian to ask, "How did you get him?"
Jacob grimaced at him. "Get him?"
"You're gay, aren't you? Were you married once or something? To a woman, I mean."
Jacob didn't confirm he was gay, but he looked at Ian like he was wondering how he knew. He did answer his question about his son. "I had him with the help of in vitro and a surrogate."
"I could tell he was yours because of the eyes," Ian said. He wondered how far that went. What did Jacob Conroy see when his kid talked to invisible people in the back garden?
"And do you live here?" Jacob asked, maybe just to stop Ian from staring at him.
"Not really. I'm taking a year off from school to be with my dad. He's sick. Lung cancer."
"I'm sorry."
"I don't need condolences. He'll beat it. Or I hope he will. He was never good about taking care of himself. He ignored his health no matter how bad he felt. By the time he was diagnosed, his cancer had spread."
"It's good of you to stay here and be with him."
"I know where I need to be, but my dad keeps trying to send me back to school. I'm not going anywhere. We do have help. Mrs. Astor comes by to check on him. She's a retired nurse. We're lucky she lives just down the road. Our house is outside of town so we don't exactly have next door neighbors." Ian rattled on, but Jacob didn't seem to mind.
"One of those old houses you can see far back from the road?" Jacob said.
"That's us. If you ever want to drop in just look for the name Warwick on the mailbox," Ian said with a grin. And there he was, flirting.
Jacob gave him a wry look, not exactly warning him off but close.
*
When he first arrived in town, Jacob only had a few days before he started his job. He had the kindergarten sorted out, but he had to go and check out the daycare place. Toby loved it at first sight. Not the place so much as the two dogs that came to greet them. While Toby played with the dogs, Ruth, the owner of the small daycare center, told Jacob, "It's not me that babysits them. It's the dogs."
That didn't give Jacob a ton of confidence, but the place had a great reputation and the dogs were two sweet, little terriers. Toby loved them already. It turned out that they really were useful when it came to watching the kids. The dogs were trained to bark if the kids went anywhere near the gate.
That wasn't the way a daycare was supposed to be run, but in a small town, Jacob figured he would have to put up with a few small town quirks. At least Toby liked it there, and that was the main thing. After work, when he walked to Ruth's to pick up his son, Jacob got to see it for himself. He always hung back for a few minutes and watched Toby playing with the other kids. He was a happy boy.
Today was supposed to be another routine day of work then picking up Toby from daycare and going home. But then Jacob's day hit a snag and now nothing was going the way it was supposed to. First he couldn't remember how to unlock his phone because someone's dark blue eyes looked too long into his. With those eyes on him, it was impossible to remember his own name. Jacob stood just inside his front door, trying to remember a pattern he used countless times a day. Finally he got it, and managed not to lock himself out of his phone.
Making dinner turned into a major challenge too. He spent about half an hour looking for the ground beef in the fridge and the freezer. Finally he realized he never bought it. That wouldn't have happened if he wasn't imagining what Ian might smell like. He wore a black pea coat, and the space between his collar and his neck was irresistible. Jacob could just bury his face there and breathe him in forever.
After he settled for ground turkey, he burned the meatballs and filled the house with a terrible stench. He had to serve plain spaghetti and sauce. Being a big meatball fan, Toby was not happy with him.
And it was all because Jacob had met that intense young guy on the walk home. Scruffy, dark brown hair, dark blue eyes, tall and wiry, and possibly gay – almost certainly gay – he was definitely bad news. Why did he have such a strong effect on him?
Jacob had been hoping to find a gay guy nearby, but someone like that was not what he had in mind. That guy couldn't be more than twenty, and Jacob was looking for someone who wanted to get serious. After just one quick conversation, this guy was already causing him trouble.
OK, maybe it wasn't fair to blame him for his own overactive imagination. Maybe he just needed to get laid. At this point, he'd kill for a hand job. But not from him. Damn it. Too late.
Now he was thinking about that guy's hand wrapped around his cock. Bet his grip would be loose at first then slow and tight while his eyes burned into him like blowtorches. Blow. Why settle for a hand job? His mouth would be even better. Wide and expressive, it would feel amazing on his cock.
And this is how meatballs get burned. Balls. Don't think about balls. Jacob looked down at his plate of plain spaghetti then over at the trashcan full of ruined dinner. He needed to get a grip. Grip. No. A tight grip on his cock. No and no. Why was the English language booby trapped. Good thing the word booby did nothing for him at all.
"No meatball sandwiches for lunch," Toby said as Jacob started to clear the table.
"Sorry," Jacob told him. "I'll try again tomorrow. Maybe we'll have meatball sandwiches for dinner."
"Yes. Try to do a good job and not mess up again," Toby instructed him. Then he told him a story, or at least a series of words.
When he came from daycare, Toby was always full of stories. They spilled out of him in a high pitched torrent broken up by laughter. Jacob could never get more than half of what he was talking about. Today, Jacob had no hope of making sense of any of it. How could meeting some random guy scramble his brain like this?
"Can I go and play outside?" Toby asked.
Jacob had no reason to say no, but he hesitated. "Help me with dishes and we'll go together. We can kick the soccer ball around. We don't want you to forget how to play," Jacob told him.
Toby used to play soccer at his preschool. His kindergarten here wasn't much into soccer. That made soccer their special father son activity. But today Jacob had only used it as an excuse. Since he had seen Toby talking to his imaginary friend out there, leaving him alone in the garden made him uneasy.