Page 4 of The Stargazers of Copper County
As I held the note, I glanced again at the windows on the back of the big old house. All of them were closed up, which had to mean he was truly out of town. No one around here had the windows closed during this unusually cool week in late June.
I blew out a breath and tried to tamp down my disappointment. After catching him in the middle of the big “O” last week, I’d been looking forward to seeing just how awkward and blushing the man could become. I completely understood why he’d be too embarrassed to show his face, but I wished he’d realized just how much ithadn’toffended me.
I’d liked it. I’dmorethan liked it.
And I wanted a repeat as soon as possible. Preferably with my own manual involvement. Or oral. Or… various other options. I was flexible.Versatile, you might say.
I’d spent three weeks in May trying to get the gorgeous man to finally notice me. And I’d triedeverything. Mowing shirtless despite the temps only rising to the upper sixties. Leaning over to tie my shoelaces several times an hour as if I’d never learned how to employ a double knot. Wiping my face with the hem of my shirt while flexing my abs and making sure I was facing his office window.
Hell, I’d even “accidentally” turned the hose on myself one day when he’d been carrying in the groceries. He’d walked right past me without even blinking. I’d spent the entire rest of the afternoon cursing the resulting chafing from my shorts.
That’s when I’d learned to douse myself at the end of my visit. The entire reason I visited Bennett last thing on Friday afternoons was in hopes he’d ask me to stay. Maybe have a beer or sit out by the pool. Or strip down and skinny-dip together while watching the sun go down behind Copper Lake.
Okay, to be honest, I hadn’t thought of the skinny-dipping thing until I’d heard his niece had gone to Europe for the summer. And by then… well, by then, my fantasies had gotten a little out of control.
I’d first seen Bennett four years ago at the Hive, a local bar. He had wavy golden-brown hair and a matching beard and slight crinkles around eyes that were the exact gray-green color of Copper Lake before the morning mist blew off.
Those crinkles, man, they got me. They spoke of maturity but also of laughter, and kindness, and warmth. They drew me in like a moth to a flame, and I would one thousand percent have sidled up beside him at the bar, bought him a drink (nonalcoholic, since I was underage at the time), batted the dark eyelashes my mother said were my very best feature, and wooedthe heck out of him right there, the same way my brother Con had wooed Micah, the shit-hot man who’d become his husband.
But…
At that time, Bennett was what the locals called “Copper-plated”—a guy who spent his summers in his vacation home on the lake, then disappeared back to “the real world” by Labor Day. Anyone who lived in Copper County or O’Leary knew better than to develop a crush on a Copperplate unless they were looking for something temporary, something purely physical. And I hadn’t been. Not then. In fact, that particular summer, I hadn’t wanted anything at all with anyone.
Because four years ago, my best friend, Rae—the person I’d grown up with, the person who’d clued me in to my own pansexuality back when I was a newborn infant of fifteen, the person who’d taken me seriously when the rest of O’Leary insisted on thinking of me as “Julian and Constantine’s little brother” and “the baby of the Ross family”—had packed up and moved themselves to the Northwest. And I’d spent the first six months of their removal so heartbroken I’d mistaken it for lost love.
But then I’d gone to visit them in Seattle over the holidays and realized they were not, in fact, the love of my life. They were the same wonderful bestie I’d always known, and they’d found such incredible joy and belonging in their new neighborhood I couldn’t have been happier for them.
I’d come home by way of an overnight layover in Manhattan and burned up my Grindr app, turning my layover into a debauched weekend during which I’d almost made up for the lost months of zero action.
And the following summer, I’d taken one look at Bennett Graham and decided to add him to my metaphorical bedpost notches. He was still a Copperplate, sure, but temporary andpurely physical was precisely what I was looking forthen. Win/win, you know?
Except… Bennett hadn’t noticed me.
Like, at all.
I’d been twenty-one and newly legal. I’d hung out at the Hive again, drinking with my friend Sam and her girlfriend, Marni, shooting pool with my oldest brother Jules and his boyfriend, Daniel, who only ever had eyes for each other, dancing with Jana and Sawyer and anyone else who asked, being the best and brightest and bubbliest version of myself and… nothing. Zip.
Not a glance. Not a flicker.
Week after week.
I’d been so desperate to make contact with him I’d even re-downloaded Grindr, though in the past, I’d always sworn off using it within the boundaries of O’Leary and Copper County for fear of seeing things I didn’t want to see—namely the profiles and, potentially, dick pics of my brothers, their partners, their friends, and God only knew what other O’Leary gays I didn’t even know existed yet. It would be worth it, I told myself, if I could connect with Bennett Graham.
But he hadn’t been on the app.
And that had been fine. Eff-Eye-En-Eee, fine. Because it was just… lust… anyway. No big.
I’d easily brushed it off. So what if he and those crinkly eyes of his had featured front and center in my nighttime fantasies for the following nine months? A man had to keep warm somehow in a New York winter.
And so what if, the following spring, I’d convinced my brother that Ross Landscaping should offer Bennett half off our standard rates for summer lawn maintenance? It had nothing to do with anything other than wanting my hometown—or, you know, the townnext tomy hometown, since the tiny town ofCopper County technically wasn’t part of O’Leary, but neighbors were neighbors, right?—to look their best for summer.
The homes around Copper Lake were the jewels of the area in summertime, and what better property to show off our services than the historic Observatory House?
And it was none of my business if the Observatory House happened to be currently owned by the hottest member of the third generation of Grahams.
Coincidence, really.
But that summer, two years ago, Bennett hadn’t come. I’d heard a rumor he was here for a week in July, but I’d missed him, too busy helping out at the hardware store. Bennett had come for the Christmas holidays, but I’d been working for my mom at the Christmas tree lot, so I hadn’t had a free moment to stalk… er… run into him.
