Page 15 of Good Friends
And usually did.
Fuck, I miss that guy. Why thehelldid I let him go to Costa Rica?
Then again, maybe Gavin had met someone else and was trying to figure out how to break it to him.
It’d be less painful if Gavin would simply get it the hell over with and tell him. Like ripping off a bandage.
It was nearly one in the afternoon by the time he pulled into his own driveway and unloaded the truck. He dumped his implement bag, which he hadn’t even unzipped that weekend, into the unused second bedroom and yanked the door shut harder than he intended.
Fuck it.
He was angry, he was lonely, and he wasn’t doing himself any good stomping around an empty house. Instead, he pulled on work clothes, grabbed his security badge and keys, and headed over to Lakeland Linder Airport.
He was the head mechanic for Lakeland Wings Aviation, an aircraft repair and maintenance company operating out of LAL. He’d worked there for ten years now and it wasn’t the worst job in the world.
Wasn’t his preferred location to live, because Lakeland wasn’t exactly the most liberal or progressive of places. But he hadn’t bothered trying to find a better job. They paid enough, it was inexpensive to live there, and he could easily drive an hour either way to Orlando or the Tampa Bay area for fun. Plus, finding a new job and moving was a pain in the fricking ass.
It was the first job he’d taken after moving back from four years spent working in Puerto Rico. Which he’d done because of—
Don’t think about Dane today.
Man, he was really all up in his feelz this weekend. The double-whammy of seeing Ivan again, combined with thinking about Gav and what he was—or wasn’t—doing, had totally fucked him in the head.
I need to work.
At least if he was doing that he could take his mind off what was going on in his personal life.
Or, rather, whatwasn’tgoing on in his personal life.
One of his guys was there doing a routine maintenance service on a Cessna that belonged to a regular private aviation customer who usually kept their plane at a smaller private airport in the area.
“Hey, Mike,” Porter called out as he walked into the hangar.
Mike was a father to three young kids, but he usually worked weekends and took Thursdays and Fridays off because of his wife’s work schedule, so they could have two days off together. Both sets of grandparents took turns watching the kids for them on weekends while they worked.
He looked up as Porter walked over. “Thought you were out of town this weekend, boss?”
“Me, too. Plans fell through. How we doing on this?”
“I’ll be done by this afternoon and have it cleared.”
“Excellent.” He headed into the office to complete a few reports before he got started on another maintenance job he could knock out by that evening. It’d free one of his guys for a more profitable repair job on Monday if he did, and the customer would be happy they could pick it up earlier than originally promised.
As he sat there working, his cell rang. At first he didn’t plan to answer it, until he glanced at the screen and realized it was Kevin Axelrod. He’d known Kevin since they’d gone through training to become airplane mechanics, both of them just out of high school at the time. He hadn’t talked to him in over a year, though, now that he thought about it.
He leaned back in his chair as he answered. “Hey, asshole. How’s it hanging?”
Kevin laughed. “Hutchinson, you prick, you haven’t changed, have you?”
Porter grinned. “I hope not. How you doing?”
“Good…” They chatted for a couple of minutes, while Porter increasingly got the idea Kevin had called for a specific reason.
That reason soon made itself apparent. “So, listen. How they treating you over there in Lakeland?”
“‘Over there’? I thought you were working up in Ohio?”
“Well, that’s why I called. I’m back in Florida now…”
