Page 70 of Out on a Limb

Walker

Despite running on minimal sleep, Walker bopped along at work. He scanned those spreadsheets and worked on those reports with glee. Not like anyone could notice. Not like people around here looked up from their own computers ever. He enjoyed the personal moment.

“Tell me everything,” Lucy said the second he came into the breakroom for coffee, almost like she was waiting to pounce.

“About the Radiance consumer reporting?”

“No, about the sweet, sweet loving you got.”

Walker’s coffee nearly dropped out of his hands. Lucy was a mother of four. She went to church regularly.

“Yeah, that’s right,” she said with a rueful smile. “I can tell.”

“Are my cheeks still flush?”

“Worse. You were smiling while reading an email from Patricia.”

Walker told Lucy the whole story of his night. He didn’t dish every detail. He doubted she could really handle that. Her eyes lit up as she lived vicariously through his experience.

“Holy shit.” She leaned back in the creaky breakroom chair. “I need a cigarette.”

Walker kept picturing Cameron’s face, right up against his, as everything between them connected. Even though his feet hung off Cameron’s bed and the sheets were barely Target-quality compared to his threadcount, he slept like a baby. And he got to wake up next to Cameron. That was the best part and what he remembered most from all of his experiences with Cameron. Those first few moments when Cameron was natural and exposed, before he suited up with his snark and the armor of who he was trying to be.

“Is this…this can’t work, can it?” he asked.

“Sounds like it’s working.”

Walker smiled, mostly to humor her. He felt unease churn in his stomach.

“Stop that,” Lucy said.

“Stop what?”

“What are you thinking?” She asked in a concerned tone.

He couldn’t get anything past her. Lucy had a high-strength bullshit detector, honed from having to deal with four teenagers. She took the least amount of crap from the Radiance client.

She nodded at him to sit at a corner table. They had the break room to themselves, as they learned to hit it between coffee rushes.

“You like him,” she said. It wasn’t even a question.

“We crossed a line last night.” He wasn’t just talking about sex. “Lucy, we can’t do this. He’s fifteen years younger than me. I can’t be falling for the guy.”

“Enough!” she snapped. Walker inched back in his chair. “You’ve been mentioning his age ever since you first met him. My husband is seven years older than me, and we’ve been going strong for decades. Age is just a number, as long as that number is above eighteen.”

“Which it is. It most definitely is.”

“Then stop making it into such a big deal. Is he a good guy?”

Walker nodded.

“And you care about him?”

Walker nodded again.

Lucy rubbed his hand with that perfect amout of motherly warmth. “Then that’s all that matters.”

And Walker was smiling again, really smiling. His unease turned to butterflies in his stomach. He liked a guy who liked him back. It was such a simple concept, but so hard to find.