Diving In (Open Door Love Story) (9 page)

“So you talked to Izzy and what? Paid her off? Scared her into another bender?” I back away from him, suddenly not feeling as friendly as I had earlier.

He takes a deep breath. “I told her I’ve been thinking of turning myself in and if she wanted to press charges against me she could and that I was sorry for all the pain I’d caused her.” Travis nods at me. “And the same goes for you. That afternoon was the weakest moment of my life and my friend has to pay for it the rest of his.”

“How did you know about Liam? I barely knew then.”

Travis shrugs. “He told me. There was this party in a field out by Lance Suzuki’s place and everyone was doing tequila shots.” He closes his eyes. “I told Liam that I was gay and he said that was cool, and that he likes to wear dresses.”

“You’re gay? Then why all the … does Gabe know?”

Travis nods. “You guys are the only ones that know in Boise. I’m very much out at school –

I’m still working on coming out to my family. I thought I’d start with the higher priority secret first.” He takes a deep breath. “Look, all I ask, and Izzy agreed to this as well, is that we all tell Gabe together what happened. He needs to hear it from all three of us or he’s not going to believe it. Gabe thinks the best of people, but you and Izzy know the real me, the worst part of me.”

I cross my arms over my chest, defiant. “No. I don’t want to tell him. Ever. It’s selfish of us to want to put our burden on him. If you really care about him, think about … his mom said he’s doing so much better now and any setback would just … we can’t. We’ve lived with it this long. I mean, if Izzy wants to press charges against you and needs my testimony about what explicitly happened between you two, I can help, but otherwise, count me out. He means too much to me and I’m not going to let anyone hurt him.”

“You don’t think he’d be glad to know it was you that saved his life?” Travis asks, his voice soft.

“I don’t care if he knows it was me and not you!” I says, as loud as I dare. “I want to be responsible for his happiness now, not what I did back then.”

Travis stares at me hard and runs his hand through his hair. “I get that,” he says through gritted teeth, “but I don’t think I can keep the secret anymore. It’s tearing me up inside.”

I shrug. “Then find yourself a $300 an hour psychiatrist and tell him. Learn to be uncomfortable for once. That’s how everyone else goes through life.”

Gabe rolls into the lobby, clapping his hands together. “Okay, where we gonna eat? And, Travis, if you dare say something foul like between my mom’s legs I swear to God I’ll have my girlfriend kick you in the nuts.”

Chapter Twelve

Thankfully, Travis goes back to school on Saturday morning, so I only have to endure one last dinner with the guy, pretending to like him for Gabe’s sake. The problem is, he’s not the worst human ever – he’s trying to make amends in the way he thinks is best and I can’t hate him for that. I simply don’t agree with him. At. All.

Saturday night Gabe and I go to the movies like regular people on a regular date, except we have to sit in the first row aisle and people are real jackholes about not noticing us sitting there. They stand around chatting about where they’re going to sit or look for their friends. Meanwhile, the opening credits begin and we’re stuck staring at a bunch of indecisive asses and muffin tops.

We go to the rooftop after and make out in the cold. I bring a jacket this time, so we are warm until we are hot.

Sunday, Gabe’s mom makes him stay home to rest up before work on Monday. He listens because I think he
is
tired. Jokes are made via text about me being too much woman for him. I fear maybe it’s true. Things between us have moved fast and are intense.

I’m feeling, not quite overwhelmed or unsure, but definitely like I haven’t given things any sort of thorough consideration. I want him and I found a way to be with him. It is more initiative than I usually take with anything. Most of the time, I lay the groundwork and then wait to see what will happen. Gabe is different. I hadn’t planned anything. I hadn’t evaluated the best way to snag him for a boyfriend – he just became my boyfriend. Even breaking up with Andy hadn’t been that troublesome.

It is funny to think about Andy now, a few days later. He’d been a little jealous of my feelings for Gabe, which made me feel like maybe I’d tried more with Andy than I’d given myself credit for. I know, without a doubt, that I can count on Andy if I ever need him to help me out as a friend. Not everyone gets to have that kind of relationship in their life. Liam and Ari certainly don’t. She’d done the opposite of protect what they’d had together.

Being Andy’s girlfriend has been a good training ground and can only help me with Gabe. My feelings for Gabe are all over the place and crazy and not the stable, constant feelings I’d had for Andy, but that is also good. I’m diving in, as Gabe says, and I’m bound to be a bit afraid of the water coming at me so quickly.

Monday morning arrives and I do my routine, apart from checking Facebook, because seriously, who gives an eff? Streak across my room, slight thrill, turn on shower, brush teeth and lay out clothes, shower, dress, eat cookies, fill up the coffee cups. I use my spare for Gabe. I haven’t even asked him if he likes coffee, never mind how he likes his coffee, but I’m betting on him being a member of the human race and requiring its caffeiney goodness to wake up.

I go downstairs and find Gabe and Junnuen by the back door waiting for me. They’re both holding Venti cups from Starbucks and letting the steam from the hot coffee warm their faces. I notice Gabe has another cup sitting in a beverage holder on his lap.

“Morning! Looks like we’re going to be super caffeinated today,” I say.

He offers me the coffee. “Isn’t that the only way to be? Take this will ya, I’m pretty sure I’m burning my leg through the fabric of these slacks.”

“Steam press,” Junnuen remarks and giggles.

“Junnuen! I knew you habla’d the ingles more than you let on.” I hand her my lowly homemade coffee before taking the one that Gabe is offering. I line the three cups up against my chest and hold them pinned with one arm while I fish the keys from my jacket pocket and unlock the door. Junnuen goes through and then I nod for Gabe to go next, but his chair is about a half inch too wide to make it through.

“Shit, I was afraid of that. You’ll have to go through the front door until I can figure out a fix. Sorry.”

Gabe smiles up at me. “No biggie, boss.”

I lean down to kiss him and feel the burn of hot coffee on my arm too late before I dribble it all over Gabe’s unzipped jacket and white button down shirt.

“Good thing I work at a dry cleaners, eh?”

“Good thing.” I set the coffees on the concrete. “I didn’t burn you, did I? I could feel it through two layers of fabric.”

Gabe shrugs his jacket off his shoulders some and then begins unbuttoning his shirt stripper style – complete with grindhouse music.

“You are one sexy crippled guy, you know that.”

He looks down at his chest. The skin is red, but not blistered or anything. “Either that or you’ve got a fetish you never knew about.”

“Oh, I knew about it. I telepathically willed you to come into this store so I could get some of your sweet, sweet wheelchair lovin’.” I pick the coffees up. “Meet you around front.”

“Work is awesome so far,” he says over his shoulder as he rolls around the corner.

I go inside and set all of the coffees down on my desk in the office, then start looking through the unclaimed clothing box for a white shirt or even just a plain button down Gabe can wear. Sometimes people don’t pick up their clothes. Maybe they switch cleaners and are too embarrassed to come back and get that one thing they left with us. People die and no one bothers to get their dry cleaning. All sorts of reasons. My grandpa is fond of saying you can learn a lot about people’s dirty laundry from their dirty laundry. I pull out a light blue shirt that will work well enough and run to meet Gabe at the front.

“You do know I roll in this thing literally as fast as I used to walk.”

“Sorry. I was getting you a clean shirt.” I drop it in his lap as he rolls past me.

“Ooh, blue, I don’t think my boss will like that. She was pretty specific that I needed to wear a white dress shirt. So much so, my poor mother was at Ross the Saturday after Black Friday picking through the leftovers.”

“Your boss sounds like a real bitch. Just put on the blue shirt. Feel free to keep it.”

“Score! Second awesome thing about working at a dry cleaners and I haven’t even been here for ten minutes.”

I smirk at him. “So, we don’t have a break room. You can either hang your jacket up by the back door on the hooks that are…” Well, those aren’t going to work. “…out of your reach. Or, you can stick it underneath the counter, here.” I point to the space underneath the register.

Gabe takes off his coat and then his shirt, stuffing them under the counter. I can’t help but stare at him in his white undershirt and think things that could definitely be called workplace sexual harassment. This may have been my worst idea ever. How am I going to concentrate on business when I’m spending my days next to my source of pleasure?

“Hey, I know I look good, but at some point a customer is going to come in and you should probably show me how to do something.”

“Probably.”

We go through the rigmarole of getting the register started and the cash drawer in. There’s a bit of trouble regarding the safe, in that my office is tiny and it took him some maneuvering to even be in the office with me to see the counting in and safe procedure. But, I assure him this is something he won’t have to do that often, only in the event that I have to be somewhere else and I am never somewhere else, so he doesn’t even need to worry about it.

Next, we get to the nitty gritty of his job. Customer service.

“When you came in—”

“And you womanhandeled my junk.”

“Aaaaaafter that,” I drawl. “I looked up your account on the computer like this.” I show him our super easy account set up. “Now, if you hadn’t had an account, you can create a new one like this.” I have him set up his own account for practice. He catches on quick and it’s a breeze. “After you locate the customer, you find what kind of garment or whatever they’ve brought in on the form and you click on that…and then quantity, good, and then their starch and hanger preference.”

“No kidding you’ve been doing this since you were a kid,” he jokes. “I’m embarrassed that I was so worried.”

“Well, it will be busy very soon and when you get to clicking and trying to talk and listen to what the customer is saying about, ‘don’t forget to mark the stain on the collar’ for the fourth time since they walked up, things get a little hectic. You’ll still be fine, and with two of us working, we’ll speed through. Grandpa’s bringing me an additional register this afternoon.”

“What you’re saying is if there was a contest for how awesomely people could get checked in at the cleaners, we’d win it?”

“That would be the most boring contest ever, but yeah.”

“Okay, so what’s next?”

“The last thing you do is take this blue tape and put a bit of it next to every stain. And then, if they have big or fragile, like mother of pearl, buttons, you slip these button covers on them. If they’ve got a bunch of tiny buttons, we take those off and they get sewn back on by Junnuen’s sister when she comes in Thursday.”

“Wow. Someone’s whole job is sewing buttons back onto things?”

I laugh. “She also does all the hemming and other alterations. She’s a prime seamstress. And a stay-at-home mom who only wanted to work one day a week.”

The bell on the door jingles and I have to keep myself from making a yuck face at Gabe. Randy Buterbaugh.

“Good morning,” Gabe says, eyeing the dirty gray laundry bag Randy hoists up onto the counter.

“Buterbaugh,” Randy says.

“Come again?”

“Name’s Buterbaugh.” He looks me up and down and then clicks his tongue at me. “What’s happenin’ Brynn?”

“Hi Randy,” I say, watching Gabe for any indication he’s about to burst out laughing. Randy Buterbaugh is a forty-year-old divorced guy who thinks he’s God’s gift and is pretty sure that I want to do him. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

“All right, Mr. Buterbaugh,” Gabe starts.

“Call me Randy. My dad’s Mr. Buterbaugh.”

“All right then, Randy. Forgive me, today is my first day, so I may be a bit slow. It looks like you bring in a bag once a week with five undergarments, light starch, folded, seven shirts, heavy starch, on a hanger, and four pair slacks, on a hanger. Correct?”

“That’s what’s in there.”

Gabe starts to unload the bag, but I stop him. “Like you said, Randy brings in the same thing every week and so to expedite his order, we just print off his ticket. He drops off on Mondays and picks up on Wednesdays.”

I finish printing off the ticket and hand it to Randy. He clicks his tongue at me again, says “Have a good ’un,” and leaves.

“Somebody’s got a cru-ush,” Gabe sings.

I dump the bag on the counter. “We don’t mark the stains on undergarments.” I use my covered forearm to sweep them into the washing bin. “Regular laundry goes in here.” Then I throw the rest of his shirts and slacks into the dry cleaning bin.

“Don’t you want to mark those?”

“Nope. There’s nothing on them. I’m not even sure he wears them. Also, you may have noticed he only brings in five pair of silk boxers when there are seven days in the week.”

“Hey, Randy likes to free ball on the weekends, what’s the big deal?” Gabe grins. “Randy is the third awesome thing about working in a dry cleaners. He is ripe for some speculation. We could essentially become Buterbaugh conspiracy theorists.”

“Yeah, you can help him from here on out ’cause I’m pretty sure he gets off on my handling his drawers.”