Anthony sped down the road, humming to the radio and treating the wheel like a drum kit. Brandon marveled at his business-as-usual demeanor. A pair a sweatpants and fresh socks from his camera bag and he was good to go. If Brandon hadn’t been so exhausted from his recent exertions, he would be admiring the gray Van slip-ons that alternated on the clutch and accelerator as he deftly shifted gears.

Out of the corner of his eye, Anthony must have caught him staring at him incredulously and subtly shaking his head, because the next thing Brandon knew, he was turning down the music and glancing over at him.

“What is it, bro? You look troubled.” Brandon stared ahead for a moment, not sure if he should put his thoughts into words. After all, Anthony seemed be thinking nothing of what had just transpired. Brandon didn’t want to be someone complicating something that was straightforward. But was this straightforward?

He glanced over at Anthony, wavy hair ruffling in the chilly April air as it rushing in through open window. Anthony caught the glance and grinned. “What? What is it?” he pried.

“Are we really going to do this? Pretend that didn’t just happen back there?”

Anthony frowned. “What do you mean? Who’s pretending anything?”

Brandon shrugged his shoulders and looked out his window. “I guess I’m just a little confused,” he mumbled to the glass.

“What’s there to be confused about? Didn’t you have a good time? I mean, it sure seemed like you—“

“That’s not it,” Brandon said, cutting him off.

“Then what?” Anthony’s tone was patient. Perplexed. It gave Brandon the strength to press on.

“I guess I want to understand what that…moment…meant to you,” Brandon stated carefully.

“To me?” Anthony repeated the words as though he wasn’t sure he heart them correctly. “I think you’re getting it all wrong, Brandon,” he said lightly. “That moment was about you. Not me.”

“But why?” He practically cried out the question. “I realize it wasn’t something you were doing to me as much as for me,” he clarified, softening his tone. He looked back over at Anthony, who this time remained focused ahead. “It’s not that I’m not—“ he fumbled, “—appreciative. But why would you do that? What do you get out of it?”

Anthony pursed his lips. For a minute, Brandon though he wouldn’t answer. “It makes me happy,” he finally said simply. “Pleasing other people.”

Brandon raised his eyebrows. “Happy?”

“Yeah. You know.” Anthony finally glanced in Brandon’s direction, a look of uncertainly on his face. Brandon must not have registered enough of a reaction, because Anthony finally looked uneasily down at his feet. “Happy, like the way these shoes make you happy.”

Brandon blinked. “Are you saying that it turns you on that you made me cum in my pants?” he asked bluntly.

Anthony laughed nervously. “Ho, wow. Okay, yeah. You just went for it there, didn’t you, bro?” His smiled returned. “Yeah,” he said nodding. I guess that’s what I’m saying.”

Brandon stared at Anthony for a moment, his heart pounding. There was so much about this man he didn’t know. He was still Anthony. But not straight, unobtainable Anthony. Not anymore. He swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. “Oh. So I guess we’ve each got a thing,” he concluded. Anthony nodded brightly.

“I guess we’ve each got a thing.”

---

Brandon struggled for the next several days with trying to find the right balance of how much time to spend with Anthony. Too much time and he might come off as pushy, like perhaps he was trying to convert him from his stanch heterosexuality. While Anthony had pretty much confessed to voyeurism, he never intimated a shift in orientation. On the other foot, too little time together could read as judgement on Brandon’s part—as though he sought distance following the revelation in the Jeep. He tried to keep their communications typically casual and play their schedule by ear.

One of the evening, Brandon decided to spend time at home. When he entered the lobby of his building, Dell was there perched on a ladder and tinkering with a light fixture. “Howdy, neighbor,” he called down.

“Hey, Dell. What are you doing with the light, there?” Brandon looked up. The lobby ceilings were eleven or twelve feet high. Dell’s position on the ladder put his feet right at Brandon’s eye level. He was looking at Dell’s old broken down moccasins, which could barely seem to contain his black socked feet, they were so formless.

“This damned thing hasn’t worked for a few weeks,” Dell grumbled at the ceiling. “Thought it was just a bulb, but it turned out to be more than that.” Brandon decided to do the neighborly thing and steady the ladder. He put his foot on the bottom rung and his hands on the sides, bringing his nose in within inches of Dell’s heels. Based on the arousing perfume, it had been a long day for Dell.

“I got the ladder, Dell. So what did it turn out to be?” Brandon asked Dell’s foot. The moccasin creaked lightly in response as Dell shifted his weight.

“Jumper wire slipped out of the nut.”

“Of course it did. Isn’t that always the case,” Brandon agreed, having no clue what he was talking about. Dell cursed at the fixture. “You don’t seem yourself, Dell. Has it been a day?”

“The longest. Huge pour over at a pole barn.” Brandon’s ears perked up.

“Pour? Like cement?”

“Concrete. Cement is an ingredient of concrete, actually, along with aggregates. But yes,” he said, slotting the fixture over the screws in the ceiling. “A concrete pour.”

“What’s your role in that?” Brandon probed. Had Dell been wading around in thick gooey cement today? Had those black socks been inside rubber boots that had been tromping and crouching in a gray slurry?

“Well, I do a lot of the finishing work. You know, screeding, troweling…it’s a lot of back bending shit, that’s for sure.” Brandon could see the gray spatters above his knees, where he jeans had not been covered in boots. He leaned into the ladder and pressed his cock into the rung, bringing his face even closer to Dell’s feet. What would it be like, being with other men slopping around in rubber boots all day? Men who took no notice of how sexy they were…

“Shit,” Dell exclaimed from the top of the ladder. Brandon looked up.

“What?”

“I dropped one of those fucking little screw caps. I didn’t even see it hit the ground. Do you see it?”

Brandon scanned the wood plank floors. “I don’t, but I didn’t hear anything fall. Are you sure you even dropped it?” Dell glanced around, his arms above his head holding the half fastened fixture in place.

“I sure as shit don’t have it anymore.”

“What am I looking for?” Brandon craned to see the fixture. Dell pointed to a little silver ball that stuck out from the ceiling plate.

“One of these little caps that hold the canopy in place. They’re made of metal, so I’m sure you would have heard it…” Brandon looked ahead and smiled. There, nestled alongside the outside of Dell’s foot, resting firmly between the wall of tired moccasin and his sweaty black sock was the screw cap.

“Okay, Dell. I got it. Just hold still.” Brandon made pinchers with his fingers and reached inside. It was warm and damp, just like the inside of his trousers were growing.

“What the fuck?” Dell exclaimed. “Seriously?”

“You need the screw cap, don’t you?” Brandon called up, shamelessly digging the hardware from the shoe.

“You’re gonna have to climb up here and hand it to me. I can’t let go of this thing.”

“Alright. Get a hand down here.”

Dell released the fixture with his right hand and reached down behind his back, keeping his palm up. Brandon mounted the ladder, fully enjoying the view as he got an even better angle of Dell’s feet on the way up. The soft moccasins were practically admitting defeat for as much as Dell must have put them through, the stitching pulling loose and revealing his sock nearly up to the toes. Just how many times had he shoved his feet into them after pulling his boots off at the end of the day? As Brandon set the screw cap in Dell’s outstretched hand, he caught sight of a smear of gray hardened cement—no, concrete—just under and behind his left knee. Dell must have nearly topped his boot.

That discovery in itself was stimulating enough. But as Dell closed his fingers around the hardware and reached up to place it on the stubborn screw, his left heel rose from the ladder rung and brushed against Brandon’s crotch as he was lowering himself back to the lobby floor.

He was full on hard now and, wearing a short cropped spring jacket and no way to hide it. He started making an exit to his loft door. “You got this now, Dell?”

“Yep,” he murmured as he tighten the cap in place. “Thanks for the assist. Sorry about where you found that thing.” Brandon glanced over his shoulder as he stepped into the loft, his tenting boner strategically positioned away from view. Dell started down the ladder. “A lot of weird things seem to be falling in my shoes lately. Just the other day, I found a pea in my sneaker.” He walked over to the light switch and flicked it, bathing the lobby in light.