“Alfie is the opposite hitter on our team.”

  “Wait, wait. I know this.”

  “We went over positions on Monday.”

  Patrick scrunched his face like he bit into something sour, trying to remember. “Opposite hitter is the guy on the right side up by the net.”

  “You got it.” Spencer pointed at him with two finger guns, a corny move that he didn’t feel the least bit self-conscious about around Patrick. “Anyway, so Alfie posted this forty-five minute Instagram Live video about how he caught Bill and Austin hooking up in the bathroom of McGinley’s during a bar crawl.”

  “Forty-five minutes?”

  “He had a lot to say. It was oddly captivating. He said he was being a good teammate, coming forward with this information about our captain cheating on his boyfriend...”

  “Who was your other co-captain.”

  “But we all knew Alfie had a major crush on Bill.”

  Spencer watched Patrick piece the whole sordid story together in his head, as if he were trying to solve a math problem from Good Will Hunting. He was smiling the whole time, his pink lips stretched into a thin line that was holding back laughter at this ridiculous scenario. It was making Spencer want to laugh, too.

  In that moment, Spencer realized that commuting with Patrick had turned into the highlight of his day.

  “So your team’s co-captains were dating, and then one of them cheated, and a totally different player not involved at all aired all the dirty laundry online?”

  “That about sums it up,” Spencer said.

  “Da-rama. Now I get why you don’t do relationships.”

  “Alfie is a freaking CPA, and this drama completely fried his circuits. It turns people to mush, making them act like they’ve lost their minds.”

  “Or it makes people move halfway across the country,” Patrick said, staring straight ahead, his smile a thing of the past.

  Oh shit. Spencer got the feeling he just stepped in it. He quickly put two and two together.

  “Who was he?” Spencer asked.

  “A giant fucking asshole. Los Angeles is filled with them.”

  “Chicago isn’t in short supply either.”

  “LA has a particular breed. Extra self-absorbed, extra gaslight-y. The kind of guy who’ll put down your job because it’s not in film or television, a.k.a. ‘The Industry.’ The kind who will fuck your friend but somehow make it your fault.”

  Spencer’s mind went into a white-hot rage. He could’ve ripped off his cast and run to LA to track this guy down off of pure adrenaline.

  “And I got mushed. I believed him.” Patrick straightened his tie as he maintained his composure.

  “You know him cheating was not your fault, right?”

  “What if it was? What if he was right, and I wasn’t exciting or challenging enough?”

  “That’s what he said?” The glowing ball of fury in Spencer’s chest continued to grow. It was its own power source. “That’s complete bullshit. My life has been way more exciting with you in it.”

  Patrick cocked a skeptical eyebrow. And what a delicious eyebrow it was.

  “It’s true! Every day, we battle commuters on the El. You brandish my crutch like King Arthur’s sword. And as for challenging, you’ve come up with a scholarly analysis of fall. What’s this guy ever done? Written a cliched screenplay?”

  “God, it was awful. Derivative would be a compliment.”

  “Maybe the fall spirit pulled you to Chicago.” Spencer rolled his eyes at what he said, as did Patrick, but a part of him sort of believed it.

  Patrick burst out laughing. “Wow.”

  “Shut up.” Spencer gave him a playful nudge with his elbow before breaking into laughter, too. He was not one to spout to stupid lines like that.

  “I’ve gotten inside your head,” Patrick said.

  You have, he realized with a lump in his throat.

  The train pulled into State and Lake.

  “Hey, have you been to that new falafel place by your office?” Patrick asked. “I was thinking of checking it out for lunch today.”

  “I haven’t been yet. I hear it’s good.”

  Patrick paused. They both knew the subtext here. One of them just had to say it.

  “Do you want to meet up for lunch?” / “Wanna go there for lunch?”

  Their words overlapped over each other.

  Lunch was a step forward in their friendship. They were taking it outside the train, Spencer thought. But it felt natural. And Spencer really did want to try this place.

  “Cool,” Spencer said.

  Patrick stood up when the doors opened. He straightened his tie once more. Spencer had a flash of fiction in his brain of grabbing it and pulling Patrick toward him to…

  To what?

  Spencer shook the thought out of his head.

  Spencer woke up on Friday morning thinking of Patrick. Gray clouds rolled across the cityscape. Patrick would be thrilled. According to him, cloudy weather was synonymous with fall because they allowed the colors of the fall leaves to really pop.

  Sure enough, Patrick had a wide smile stamped on his face when they met up in the hallway outside their apartments. It sent a familiar flutter through Spencer’s chest that occurred each morning when they met up. The cloudy weather also helped his green eyes shine even brighter against his light skin.

  “I’m surprised you’re not wearing flannel,” Spencer said.

  “It’s still warm. At least it’s cloudy,” Patrick said with a relieved sigh for added emphasis. “I’ll take it.”

  “You poor thing.” He handed his crutches to Patrick on instinct as they descended the stairs. They had it down to a science. Spencer knew how hard to hop so he wouldn’t lose his balance.

  “What are you doing on your lunch break?” Patrick asked. “Do you want to go to the Yankee Candle?”

  “There’s a Yankee Candle in the Loop?”

  “Yes,” Patrick said as if it was something every Chicagoan knew. “It’s the last week of July.”

  They got through one flight of stairs and wound their way around the banister to the next.

  “The countdown to fall is right around the corner.”

  “Otherwise known as August.”

  “August would be proud to be known at the countdown to fall. What else is in this month? No holidays, no seasonal change. ‘The Dog Days of August.’ That’s its claim to fame.”

  Like Spencer found more often than not, Patrick actually had a point. The Dog Days of a Chicago August could be brutal. The humidity and heat swallowed the city, the sun especially unrelenting. And was it just him, or did August go by slower than other months?

  Patrick really was getting inside his head.

  “I see I’m making some sense.” Patrick looked at him, reading his expression. Spencer didn’t mind having those eyes on him.

  They reached the bottom of the stairs, and like a perfectly timed clock, Patrick opened the front door with one hand and handed off the crutches back to Spencer with another. Muscle memory at its peak powers.

  “Yankee Candle will have their fall scents out, and they’re still running their Christmas in July sale, too. We can get lunch after.”

  Spencer smiled to himself. Patrick’s arguments always started out ridiculous but then wound up convincing.

  A few hours later, Patrick blew through Yankee Candle like the Tasmanian Devil, every piece of merchandise fighting for his attention. The center of the store had a massive fall candle display. The pyramids of burnt orange and cranberry and dark green candles were like altars to pray at for Patrick. Altars that one could freely touch.

  Spencer acted cool and collected behind Patrick. He was on crutches surrounded by glass. No sudden moves for him.

  Patrick opened the glass jar of a beige candle. “Pumpkin Patch,” he read off the label then smelled. “A good standby.”

  He held it up to Spencer’s nose without warning. Spencer jolted back at the violation of personal space.

  “It’s just a candle,” Patrick said.

  “Maybe for me.” Spencer took the candle from him. “For you, this is a gateway drug.”

  Patrick creased his forehead in this crazy adorable way. “Just smell.”

  Spencer did so, mostly to stop looking at Patrick and his nicely-fitting chinos and the way his tucked-in shirt accentuated his lean torso.

  The scent of pumpkin filled his nose, drowning out whatever train of thought Spencer’s dick was taking him on. His mind flashed back to having pumpkin pie at his grandmother’s house when he was a kid. He didn’t remember when it was, only that it felt warm and homey and full of love.

  Damn, that was a powerful candle.

  “Thoughts?” Patrick asked.

  “Smells nice.” Spencer put it back on the display. Patrick picked it right back up and put it in his basket.

  Patrick gasped and beelined to the other side of the display. “Autumn Leaves and Harvest Wreath! I love these!” He double fisted the candles the way Spencer’s friends handled two beers at the bar. “Oh, and MacIntosh. Although, I found the candles that go full-on apple are a bit too sweet.”

  Spencer shrugged. He needed a PhD in Autumnology to have a conversation with Patrick analyzing fall scents. It was fun watching him get so excited and be thoughtful about something he loved. Spencer loved summer and volleyball, but probably couldn’t articulate why in as much detail as Patrick could about fall.

  Patrick juggled four different candles in his arms. He was on the cusp of challenging their “You break it. You buy it” policy. Spencer held onto MacIntosh and Crisp Fall Night.

  Patrick opened the Autumn Leaves candle, inhaled, and let out a low, growly moan that nearly made Spencer drop the candles in his arms.

  Holy. Shit.

  “Oh, just as I remember,” Patrick said. He opened Harvest Wreath and held it to his nose. Another moan escaped his lips.

  Spencer pitched a tent in seconds. It had to be one of the sexiest sounds he’d ever heard, and it made him think about other places where Patrick could emit those moans.

  He felt himself turn a deep shade of MacIntosh red at the erection that threatened to knock over a row of candles.

  “Good?” Spencer asked. “Why don’t you pay for those and we can go grab lunch?”

  “I haven’t smelled these since last November.” Patrick gave each candle another smell, emitting another low, rumbling moan. And the fact that he didn’t even know he was being sexy made it even sexier. Spencer shifted behind a display of wall scents to hide what was going on downstairs.

  “What do you have there?” Patrick asked.

  Spencer gulped back a lump and desperately averted his eyes from looking down at his hard-on.

  “What? Nothing.”

  “Crisp Fall Night.” Patrick read the label off the jar in Spencer’s right hand. “What’s this one?”

  “I don’t know. You gave it to me.”

  Patrick removed the lid, completely oblivious to anything else going on with Spencer. He took a whiff and let out a moan of approval. It had a little bit of a grunt to it that made Spencer dizzy.

  Lord, give me the strength to not bust a nut in Yankee Fucking Candle.

  Spencer imagined he was the one causing Patrick to make those sounds. He tried to shake the image out of his head.

  “You don’t like it?” Patrick asked.

  “It’s, uh, good.”

  Patrick held it up to his nose. It had a vague outdoor smell. Some campfire, some leaves, some pumpkin. Nothing strong enough to evoke a feeling. Basically all the scents that fell on the factory floor got cobbled together into this generic scent.

  “Actually, I feel like there are better ones.” Spencer didn’t know what was more surprising: that he had an opinion on fall candle scents or that he had an erection. “What about Apple Pumpkin?” He nodded at a jar on the display wall. “You like pumpkin, but you don’t like too strong of an apple scene. It could work.”

  And it would give Spencer a minute to cool down whatever the hell was happening in his crotch. Though of course, Patrick walked to the wall, and Spencer’s eyes drifted to his ass, perfectly framed in his chinos, like his body was purposefully messing with him.

  “You’re right. It’s nothing special.” Patrick said upon a second smell of Crisp Fall Night before returning it to the display. “I must’ve gotten excited too easily.”

  Yeah, same.

  The rest of the day dragged. Spencer’s office didn’t believe in summer Fridays. He texted with Ryan about going to the volleyball game that night, his first since his injury. He would be cheering and coaching the team on from the sidelines. After reading random articles on the internet and doing the bare minimum of actual work, he found himself on Patrick’s Instagram feed, scrolling through pictures of his life in Los Angeles and then before that, here in Chicago. He wanted to run his fingers through the waves of blond hair rolling across his head.

  “What the hell,” he said out loud to a mostly empty office. His co-workers had smartly put in for paid time off, leaving him one of a handful of people on his floor.

  Patrick was his neighbor and was being nice to him helping him out. That was it. He didn’t have any interest in Spencer. And Spencer had ruined any chance of anything else potentially happening when he mocked him to Ryan at the Fourth of July party.

  Still, he felt his body get just a touch lighter when he left his office to meet up with Patrick for the commute home. He walked up State Street, which was crowded with people enjoying the delightful weather, and stopped in front of an Old Navy. He snapped a pic on his phone and smiled to himself.

  “Check it out.” He showed Patrick the picture a few minutes later on the El platform.

  “Is that a cranberry cable knit sweater?” Patrick’s eyes looked to jump out of his head and right into the photo Spencer snapped. “And dark khaki corduroys?”

  “I’d call this a prototypical fall outfit.”

  “Right in their front window.” Patrick shook his head in disbelief. “Amazing.”

  “Are you going to spontaneously combust?”

  “It’s very possible.” Patrick put an instinctive hand on Spencer’s chest to keep him back as the El rolled into the station, packed to the gills more than usual. The train car was an explosion of red and blue.

  Patrick sighed. “Cubs game.”

  “Yep.” Spencer loved summer, and he loved the Cubs, and he loved summer baseball games. But he, like all Chicago commuters, hated how Cubs fans made the Red line extra crowded on game days, a hellish hurdle for regular commuters just trying to get home. They didn’t follow proper commuting etiquette. They were loud, took up too much room, and were resistant to squeezing together to fit more people in.

  All right, so maybe this was one thing that sucked about summer.

  He didn’t know if both of them could fit into the train car. Before he could suggest they wait for the next one, Patrick grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him flush against his body. Their left sides leaned against the plastic partition between the doors and the first seat. The El door closed behind Spencer.

  He gulped back a lump in his throat. Patrick’s green eyes were on him, not looking away. They glowed with intent inches from his face, a glint of light as they traveled through a dark tunnel. It sent a warm feeling through Spencer’s chest.

  Spencer had never been this close to Patrick. He noticed little details that made Patrick so Patrick: the shaving nic on his throat, the way his nose bulbed at the end. His fresh body wash scent fluttered up his nose, distracting Spencer even more.

  He’s my neighbor. Sort of my friend. He’s just helping me out for a few weeks.

  His reasoning couldn’t hold a Pumpkin Apple candle to the feeling of Patrick’s body heat.

  “It’s the last Friday in July,” Patrick said, lips pulled into a sly smile that sent another warm zing through him. “You know what that means.”

  “What?”

  “Next week is August. Let the countdown to fall officially begin.”

  August

  a.k.a. The Countdown to Fall

  4

  Patrick

  Patrick felt each of the thirty-one days of August. He sweated them out literally, as the dog days of August proved especially dogged, the heat a thick blanket from which you couldn’t untangle yourself. The three flights of stairs he faced each morning and evening might as well have been an elliptical machine.

  Patrick celebrated the small milestones of calendar movement. He breathed an excited sigh when it was August tenth (double digits!), then August fifteenth (halfway there!). The paper shopping bags from his trip to Yankee Candle sat in the corner of his living room, staring at him, tapping their imaginary feet at him.

  Not yet, he told them and himself.

  He couldn’t blow his autumnal load too early. Fall did not start until September. The Tuesday after Labor Day to be specific. It was so close, yet so far.

  Patrick could get things ready, though. He might’ve made an excursion to Home Goods for some fall decor to prepare. Better to be early than to go to the stores when everything’s been picked over, he rationalized with himself.

  By celebrating his first fall in Chicago and being witness to crisp fall weather, it would be the final nail in the coffin on his time in California. He would escape the endless summer he’d been stuck in and could move on with his life.

  Would that new life involve Spencer?

  He wasn’t just sweating out the August weather. He found himself in a mental tug of war over his neighbor, fighting between him being a fun train buddy and someone he wanted to climb like a tree.

  Spencer was objectively attractive with a dentist-approved smile. Patrick had known that from the get-go, but recently, his thoughts had drifted to that objectively attractive body lying on top of him and that dentist-approved smile gazing down at him like he was the only guy in the world. He had almost been late to meet him in the morning a few times because he was jerking off to some variations of this fantasy in the shower. A part of him wished that Spencer would break down the door looking for him, find him in the shower, and take it from there.

 

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