Page 21 of Under Construction

How many times you gonna block me?

Dennis’s cheeks burn hot enough to rival the afternoon sun streaming through the window. He keeps his eyes glued to his screen, refusing to look up, when he types:

Blocking you now.

"No you won’t," Chris says from the doorway, all swagger and confidence. The kind that comes from knowing he’s right.

Dennis doesn’t, but Chris doesn’t need to know that.

"Get out of my office."

"It's a site office. Shared space." Chris's fingers drum against the doorframe, a rhythmic tap that somehow manages to sound smug.

"Out!"

Chris chuckles, then pushes off the doorframe with his shoulder, work boots scuffing against the floor as he takes two steps into the hall, disappearing from Dennis’s sight. Then he's back, poking his head around the corner, safety vest catching on the edge. "Is that a ‘no’ to drinks then?"

Dennis grabs the nearest object—a stapler—and hurls it at the door.

Chris ducks away, laughing, as itklunks against the temporary door frame—precisely where he had been just a split second ago. The sounds of his amusement trail behind him down the hall.

Dennis shoves his phone into his back pocket. There's work to be done. Plans to finalize. A rebellion to organize.

He tries not to think about drinks. Or dimples. Or dick pics. Or the way Chris's laugh reverberates in his chest long after the sound has faded.

Who is he kidding? It's all he can think about.

09Dinner

The Sacramento Kim family estate looms against the evening sky, all glass and steel and impossible expectations. Dennis is barely through the door when his mother engulfs him in a hug.

"My baby!" she coos in Japanese, squeezing until his ribs protest. "You're too thin!” She grabs him by the cheeks, smooching him all over his face so he flails, flapping her away. “Aren't you eating?"

"Mom, I could put on a hundred pounds and you’d say I’m too thin!" But he's smiling despite himself. Her warmth is exactly what he needs after the day's tensions.

“How was the trip to Singapore,” he asks, kissing her back on first one cheek, then the other. “Did you convince those healthtech guys to sign on?”

"Come, come." She drags him to the kitchen, work talk flying over her head as she starts piling appetizers onto a plate. "Tell me everything. How's the project? The apartment?" She pauses in her meticulous arrangement of delicate salmon tartare bites, eyes sparkling as she glances sideways at him. Her perfectly groomed eyebrow arches in that elegant yet gossipy way his mother saves for dating talk—rare as it's become these days. "Are you seeing anyone special?"

"Mom!"

"What? A mother worries!" She balances a quail egg topped with caviar precariously on the edge of the plate, her free hand fluttering dramatically. "Sometimes I wonder if my only child—flesh of my flesh, blood of my loins—"

Dennis inhales his bite of tartare at the word 'loins' and scrambles for the crystal water pitcher, hacking and coughing as it goes down the wrong pipe. He knocks over an empty glass in his haste, miraculously catching it before it shatters, and somehow manages to pour himself a shaky glass of water. His chest burns as he gulps it down, his mother's voice never missing a beat—

“—is training for the priesthood,” she complains.

She sets down her masterpiece of appetizers to peer at his now-red face. "Oh! You're blushing!” she exclaims, oblivious to his near-death experience. “Who is it? She? He? They?"

For some bizarre, revolting, and inexplicable reason, Chris's dimples flash through Dennis’s mind.

He pushes the image away, stunned and alarmed.Whatthefuckwasthat?Ugh, eww! Gross. Vomit!

He schools his face into something less horrified, though his stomach still churns at the unwanted thought.

"There's nothing like that, mom, I'm busy all day, you know!Andnight!" he throws in when her eyebrows don't lower.

"Mmhmm." Her eyebrows waggle instead. "Is it someone at work?"

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