Page 3 of Hot Mess Express (Spruce Texas Romance #9)

It’s more beautiful than I expected honestly. The house, large and in good condition, two stories tall, painted in creams with warm rose-brown trimming and brick accents, sits proudly on the corner of an intersection on the edge of town. Its big wraparound porch makes the house look like a mother hen squatting in a nest, and between a cluster of pruned fig trees to the left and a huge tree in the center with long, sprawling branches, the front lawn is shaded generously. Pete keeps changing his mind on whether or not he’s ready to go inside while I stand by the curb admiring the assortment of healthy, colorful tulips in the front flowerbed, my eyes stuck on the big white cross sticking out of its center.

I’m trying not to think about a certain gas station attendant.

And the way he got right up in my face, calling me a jack-off wagon, a psychopath—whatever other ridiculous shit he said.

I can’t stop thinking about it. My mind is stuck there, with our faces in front of each other, his intense blue eyes, his wet hair, this weird twitch his mouth was doing as he scowled at me.

How did I let that jerk get under my skin so easily? That guy rubbed me wrong the second I met him. I usually pride myself in respecting others. I understand how to treat people. Even the lady at the hotel who kept hitting on me, I stayed respectful. I was a gentleman. I didn’t torment her or call her a jack-off wagon.

But I lost myself with that guy. I gave in. Bit back spitefully.

That doesn’t feel good, whether I thought he deserved it or not. It feels downright shitty, how all of that went down, and it’s been eating at me every minute since we left that gas station.

It’s my number one rule, to treat others the way I expect to be treated myself. Respect. Empathy. Dignity. Compassion.

What the fuck got into me back there?

“You should’ve just clocked him right in the jaw for getting in your face like that,” says Pete, appearing at my side like Houdini, now also pretending to admire tulips, while I continue to secretly obsess over the blue-eyed wonder at the fuel pump.

Wait a sec . “You mean you heard all that back there?”

“Of course I did. I was in the car.”

My jaw clenches up. “You sat there … lounging in the driver’s seat … the whole time I dealt with that douchebag?”

“Or you could have bent him over the fuel pump instead and, y’know, pumped him in your own way.” Pete chuckles at his own joke, then jabs an elbow into my side. “I felt the sexual tension.”

“There was no sexual tension .”

“Told you. Everyone hits on you. Everyone, everywhere. Even sleepy-eyed gas station attendants in bad moods.” When he sees the angry look on my face, he sighs. “Lighten up, you’re always too serious. It’s probably why all of that happened in the first place.”

“So it’s my fault? I’m not too serious.”

Pete slaps his hat back onto his head. “You’re gonna fuck that guy someday.” Then he strolls up the curvy pathway to the house, I guess having gathered his courage by taunting me.

It’s by the front door that we hear the yelling inside. Pete and I exchange a look. He gives the door a tentative knock. The yelling continues. He gives a more confident knock, trying to interrupt it. Still nothing. Just when he decides to give up and head back to the car, I test the front door and find it unlocked. “We can’t just go in!” hisses Pete, and I don’t know if it’s my mood or the fact that the image of bending a sweaty Anthony over that century-old fuel pump now infests my brain, but I let myself in anyway, heedless to Pete’s protests.

The beauty of the wide, clean foyer and the upstairs banister overlooking it, and what appears to be a pristine dining room off to the left and seating area to the right, go mostly ignored as the yelling grows closer inside the house. Pete squeezes up next to me, wide-eyed, whispering that we shouldn’t be in here, as we head under the curved staircase into the living room, dimly lit by the window peering into a cozy seating area on a back porch. Opening off the living room is the kitchen, where we find the source of the yelling across a barstool-lined island. Two handsome men stand on either side, each of them equipped with a coffee mug. One’s in a heather gray t-shirt and black gym shorts, with a muscular build, chiseled jaw, five o’clock shadow, and buzzed head. The other is more slender, a pair of glasses at the tip of his nose, wearing a half-buttoned shirt and pair of slacks with the belt undone, as if he was in the middle of getting ready for the day until a seemingly minor disagreement blew up into what we’re witnessing now.

“That’s not what I heard!” exclaims the one in the glasses, responding to something I didn’t catch. “It pisses me off you’re being so flippant about this! My concerns are legitimate …”

“Trey, you got eyes, you got ears,” says the muscular one in the gym shorts—Cody, I presume. “You see how they take care of each other. Been obvious to everyone for years how they—”

“Not to me!” Trey sets down his mug too hard, causing coffee to splash over his hand. I guess it isn’t hot enough to burn, since he ignores it. They’ve probably been at it long enough for both of their mugs to go cold. “It’s one thing for our parents to be ‘there for each other’,” he says using air quotes, “and I’m happy about that. They deserve companionship. But it is—please stop giving me that look, you know I hate it—it is entirely another for them to be in a serious-ass-fucking relationship! ”

“You not only cussed, which is always hot by the way, but you said ‘ass fucking’ with a straight face …”

“Cody, our parents can not get married.”

“They’re not getting married, babe.”

“Then what were those rumors? Just more lies and gossip?”

Cody leans over the counter, his tone softening. “Don’t you know your dad is the best thing that’s happened to my mom in a decade? Look at the cute-ass pair of ‘em. They’re happy , Trey. My overworked mom and your lonely dad— happy . Didn’t you see the two of them this past Christmas? Even Nadine was smiling!”

Trey’s fingers practically dig holes in the countertop. “If those rumors are true and my dad is planning to marry your mom, that would turn us into stepbrothers , Cody. Stepbrothers! ”

“Only literally,” he grunts back, sips his coffee, then makes a face and spits it back into the mug.

“My husband cannot become my stepbrother! We cannot be stepbrother husbands! Is that what you want? To be stepbrother hus—? I can’t .” He cuts himself off with a choked, frustrated laugh, throwing his hands up. “I am the reverend of Spruce, Texas. A gay reverend, at that—with a husband, a reputation, expectations, and our neighboring town of Fairview staring judgily down at us …”

“So it’s all about optics?”

“Don’t be na?ve. You know how the news and social media can spin things like this, making Spruce seem like a weird town where anyone marries anyone and can do whatever they want …”

“Isn’t that exactly what it is?”

“That’s all we need. Every headline from here to El Paso. ‘Gay reverend married to his stepbrother in small Texas town.’ No one will care what came first, stepbrother chicken or the gay egg.”

“Egg came first, if we’re talkin’ evolution …”

“I can’t believe my dad would do this to me. I can’t believe—”

That’s when Pete barely moves a foot, scuffing it on the floor and causing Trey and Cody to turn. From the look in their eyes, I’m not sure they realize who we even are for a solid ten seconds. All four of us become strangers in a house. Cody and Trey standing at the counter. Pete and I, the invaders, creeping into the privacy of their home where we’ve just witnessed a scene not meant for anyone’s eyes or ears but theirs. No one knows what to say or do.

Until a light bulb flicks on in Cody’s eyes so fast, it practically shatters. “Pete?”

Like an actor who’s rehearsed his lines to death, Pete stiffly steps forward. “Cody. My man. It’s been a long time. I’m so glad to finally see you again. You haven’t aged a day.”

Cody looks Pete up and down, then snorts. “Well, if that ain’t a damned lie. I’m old as fuck now.”

The two men lock eyes.

Then burst into laughter.

Trey and I—the outsiders in this overdue reunion—watch as Pete and Cody crash their bodies together into an unexpectedly aggressive hug, slapping each other’s backs so hard, I hear Pete’s rubbery hotel pancakes bounce around inside him. Cody looks so happy to see his friend again, bubbling over with joy in his eyes. I can still see the tension in Pete’s face, despite his efforts to act like nothing’s up, to play it cool, to let the joy of their reunion drown out all the doubts in his head.

“Old,” snorts Pete, shoving Cody with a laugh. “Fool, you’re not even 30 yet.”

“Try 31 this fall.” His face twists with confusion. “Weren’t you coming in Saturday? Why’re you here now?”

Pete frowns. “It is Saturday.”

Cody peers across the kitchen at Trey, who has since settled against the counter with a demure smile balanced on his face, like the slightest nudge could knock it right off. “Well, I’ll be,” grunts Cody with half a laugh. “I lost track of the damn day of the week. And that oughta tell you where my mind’s at. You … didn’t happen to hear the conversation with my husband just now, did you?”

“Nope,” says Pete a hair too certainly. “Not a word.”

Cody grins. “Still a terrible liar.”

Trey takes a quick breath, adopts a friendlier face, and pushes away from the counter for a handshake. “Hello, Pete, welcome to our house. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you after all these years. I mean, other than that very bad Skype call we attempted however many years ago. I’m … oh, sorry, spilled coffee over my fingers.” He quickly retracts his right hand and awkwardly replaces it with his left. Pete shakes it. “Trey Arnold-Davis, the hubby, a pleasure.”

“Handsome fella in the flesh,” notes Pete with an appraising smile. “But I wouldn’t expect anything less from a guy like Cody.”

“Ah, shush,” grunts Cody, “stop suckin’ my dick. No, actually, keep going, I’m kinda loving this.”

“Fuck you,” snorts Pete, and the three of them laugh. “So how about this house? It’s big! Pictured something else from what you described. Weren’t you living in your grandma’s old place?”

“This is Trey’s dad’s house,” explains Cody. “We recently kind of played musical chairs with our houses …”

“You can blame me,” says Trey, attempting humor, “as I’m the one who wanted to be closer to the church, having taken over as reverend and filling in my dad’s shoes. My dad kept complaining about how much ‘house’ this house was, so it made sense that he downsize and get himself a smaller place … and we moved in.”

Pete nods. “Alright, alright, I see. So you guys kicked the old man out of his castle, huh?”

Cody laughs. “Well, it worked out for everyone. My mom sold her house n’ moved into our old place—my grandmamma’s house, now spruced up with a beautiful back patio, hot tub, and garden.”

“It really is a nice house,” says Trey with longing. “I miss our Sunday potlucks.”

“We can still have them here,” Cody points out with a smile.

Trey returns a gracious nod, then lapses back into silence.

Maybe something about mentioning each of their parents and their new living arrangements has Trey’s mind right back into the dark, parentally-romantic storms allegedly brewing.

Cody glances at me. “And who’s this guy?”

I’m about to introduce myself when Pete blurts, “Oh, this is my buddy Bridger, recently discharged, like me.” His face twists in a moment of visible panic. “Didn’t I … tell you he’s coming, too?”

A glance exchanged between Cody and Trey says that no, he apparently did not mention I’d be joining him. This is typical Pete. Absentminded at the most inconvenient times. Forgets that others beyond himself exist. I even asked him before joining him on this venture whether Cody and his husband would mind an extra guest and Pete never said a word.

“We only have one available guestroom,” says Trey, working it out in his head, determined to keep a hospitable air despite the lingering tension in his eyes from his argument with his husband, “with the other being an office and having no actual bed, but I can easily make up the fold-out couch in the den, if one of you doesn’t mind sleeping—”

“Nah, don’t worry, we can share the room,” Pete insists, his words tumbling carelessly out of him. “I’ll even sleep on the floor. I’ve slept on many floors in my life. I could manage a decent sleep on a slab of cement. Don’t go all out, please, not for us. We’re just here for a little while anyway. Right, Bridge?”

I imagine just a single night more spent tossing and turning next to the almighty dragon snorer.

“It’s not a bother at all,” insists Trey, much to my relief—and possibly reading something off my face I didn’t mean to show so openly. “The couch is arguably more comfortable than any of the beds, anyway … Just ask my husband.”

Cody laughs, until he realizes it was a jab and goes silent.

When Pete’s about to have the gall to protest yet again on my behalf, I step forward. “Thank you for the couch. It’ll be great.”

Trey smiles back at me. “A friend of Pete’s who’s a friend of Cody’s is a … a friend of mine. Wow, that was more of a mouthful than I intended it to be.” After an awkward chuckle, he gestures at the coffeemaker. “Either of you want a cup? We got off to a late start this morning ourselves, and I—”

“I’ll take a beer if you got it,” says Pete.

Everyone looks at him, silent.

“Make that two,” grunts Cody with a grin.

The rest of the afternoon, Cody and Pete are inseparable. Like brothers, the two keep one-upping each other with stories of their lives over the past six years as we hang in the living room, the TV playing some soccer game no one’s paying attention to. Now and then Pete makes me share a part of a story I tell better (or rather: more accurately, as Pete loves to embellish), but I try to keep out of the conversation, giving the guys plenty of space to catch up.

Trey won’t stop apologizing for the sleeping arrangement. I insist the couch is best, since I tend to wake up way before anyone else and go on early morning jogs to help center myself and keep my mind clear—a ritual I developed after my first tour—and I won’t disturb anyone if I’m on the couch. When he doesn’t seem fully convinced, I make a joke about needing a break from Pete’s snoring (not actually a joke) and he commiserates; though Cody is a total rock when he sleeps, Trey’s father was a buzz saw when he used to live in the house. Now the former reverend of Spruce lives down the street, barely a stone’s throw away, where he can sing the whole alphabet in his sleep for all anyone cares. “Assuming he doesn’t have any guests staying over,” Trey amends absently, then grows lost in thought—yet again drawn back into nightmares of his father’s maybe-not-so-secret affair with his husband’s mother. I quickly ask Trey if he’d give me a tour of the house while Pete and Cody are busy catching up, and I guess my instinct is spot-on because he grabs on to my request like rope, pulled out of the dark hole of his stepbrothery thoughts, and shows me around.

When Pete and Cody take their chat into the backyard in the early evening as the warm and humid air becomes slightly more tolerable, Trey wrangles me into helping with dinner. “It’s a good thing this is happening now,” he says as he checks on the brisket, which smells fucking heavenly already. “Cody has so many bottled up feelings from the Army I don’t know how to help him process, even all these years later. This is good for him, to reconnect with Pete, go through the memories. Only wish it’d happened sooner.”

“Me too.” All of the chances Pete has had to come out here to Spruce—chances Pete ignored, too guilty, postponing this reunion over and over again. I nod at a small pile of cucumbers by the sink. “Want me to chop those up for the salad?”

“If it’ll give you pleasure.” He slides a knife my way. I take it and get to work. He stops what he’s doing, watching me. “Wow … something on your mind? You’re hacking at those poor things like you see your ex’s face on them.”

I glance down. Is something on my mind? “Nope. I don’t really think about my ex anymore.” The knife gets stuck in a cucumber.

Then I see the guy from the gas station. His aggressive blue eyes. Pressing his chest to mine. Twisted lips as he snarled at me.

The red smiley sticker stuck to his ass.

“Well …” Should I even mention it? “There was this … minor, totally insignificant run-in at a gas station just outside of town …”

Trey leans on the counter. “Which one?”

“With a super old pump, the kind where you crank a lever …”

“Oh, Duncan’s spot. What happened?”

“Nothing much. Just the clerk there, temporary clerk, I guess. He was a real … well … I just …” After a moment of uncharacteristic indecision, I take a deep breath, gently free the knife from the cucumber, and shake my head. “Not worth mentioning. I’m over it. Picked out a dressing for the salad yet?”

Trey, whose mind is already working at light speed, goes to the fridge and distractedly returns with a couple options. “So the guy there … he was rude to you?”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“Happen to catch his name?”

I swallow the name right down like a literal nametag. With as small a town as this is, the moment it’s out of my lips, I won’t be able to slap it back in to save my life. “Nope.”

“Hmm.” Trey’s fingers play along the counter in thought. “I could probably find out.”

“No, no,” I quickly insist, “don’t worry about it, please. Not a big deal, really.” I chop another slice, then pause. “Some people … just go through life without learning common rules of decency.”

“Phew, tell me about it.”

“Yep.” Chop . “I mean, what even is a jack-off wagon?” Chop . “We all have bad days. Doesn’t mean we need to take everyone down around us, right?” Chop, chop .

“Right.”

I just realized I’m making a bigger deal out of something I just said not to make a big deal out of. Also, I don’t want him thinking that last thing I said had anything to do with him. I pivot. “But you and your husband seem like really great people. I’m very grateful for your hospitality, welcoming us into your house like this.”

“Oh, it’s our pleasure. We’ve been looking forward to this for a while now, and you’re an added bonus—a cucumber-massacring one at that.” He watches my hands for a moment. “I’m sorry that guy was your first impression of Spruce, though … whoever he is. Everyone’s really nice here, I promise. Even my dad whose neck I might wring,” he adds in a voice so small, I don’t think he meant me to hear it. “Duncan’s a sweetheart. I keep trying to talk him into being Santa for us at the church. He keeps turning me down.” He takes a breath and refreshes his smile. “So what about you?”

I look up from the cucumbers. “What about me?”

“I get Pete, but what brings you out to Spruce? Why’d you tag along? I get a sense you’re not just here for moral support.”

I shrug. “I guess you can say the last eight or so years of my life have been … loud.”

“So you came here for … quiet,” Trey finishes for me. I nod. “You couldn’t have picked a better place. That’s all you’ll find out here in sleepy Spruce, especially this time of the year.”

Anthony’s angry blue eyes.

Bare body drenched and dripping and stinking of gasoline.

You’re my problem, you jack-off wagon .

“That’s great to hear,” I say, mostly to shut up the guy’s voice in my head, then paste a smile over my face. “I’m looking forward to some peace and quiet.”

Pete bursts in from the back door. “Guys, Bridge, after we eat, we’re hittin’ the town with Cody! Saturday night on the town, all four of us!”

Trey and I stare at him, Trey with his blank eyes, me wielding the knife, a slice of cucumber stuck to it, then slowly sliding off.