Cost of Repairs #3
Gavin Perez is fully aware that he's kind of a cliché. He works a dead-end job, shares a trailer with his waitress mom, has an abusive, absentee sperm donor, and he's poor. So color him shocked when middle-class, white-bread Jace Ramsey agrees to hang out with him. Granted, Gavin is trying to make it up to Junior McHottie for dumping a bowl of cranberry sauce on him at Thanksgiving dinner. And boy does Jace forgive him, over and over again…until he goes back to college and stops returning Gavin's calls. Oh well. Life goes on.
After living through the semester from hell, Jace Ramsey doesn't want to do anything more complicated than sleep through winter break. He has no idea how to come out to his family, never mind tell his parents he wants to quit college. He also has zero plans to socialize while he’s home, but Gavin's ready forgiveness draws them back together—both in and out of bed. But Gavin is out, and Jace knows he won't be able to stay in the closet much longer.
Gavin isn't good enough for Jace—at all—but Gavin simply can’t stay away from the younger, haunted man. Something happened to Jace during those weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Jace trusts Gavin with his body. He might even trust Gavin with his heart. But can he trust that a devastating secret that’s eating him up inside won’t destroy everything—and everyone—he loves?
NOTE: This book was previously published under the same title. It has updated cover art and has been re-edited. 3700 words of new content has been added, including a brand-new epilogue.
You can't help but love both Jace and Gavin. They both seem so disheartened by life but in each other they find a little piece of what life could really be. But are they both too jaded to take a chance on love and each other? For that you have to read Weight of Silence for yourself but trust me, you won't regret it. Definite win all the way around.
**Blogger Note: I reviewed the original published version in 2013, since then the author has released a re-edited version with a new epilogue which I have not read.**
RATING:
One
Thanksgiving Day
At precisely 1:21 p.m., Gavin Perez dumped an entire serving bowl’s worth of cranberry sauce on the most adorable boy he’d ever seen. Gavin knew the exact time of the saucing because his mother had just asked him for it (the time, not the sauce), and the only reason he wasn’t looking in front of him was because he’d glanced down at his cell phone.
Head down + Push door = Disaster.
He couldn’t blame his mother. She’d asked an innocent question. Gavin should have stopped walking long enough to check his phone and answer her question. Should have. Did not. Usually did not and/or could not. They’d never had the money for an official doctor’s diagnosis, but Gavin had all the major traits of adult hyperactivity.
Plus he’d read a bunch of books on the topic. After twenty-three years, he figured he knew a heck of a lot about himself, including his incurable need to multitask from waking to bedtime. He also had a long mental list of mishaps and accidents caused by his need to be on the move and going at optimum speed. The cranberry sauce collision just jumped to the top of said list.
And to be fair to himself, the incredible cutie he’d sauced hadn’t seen him either, or gotten out of the way. They were both trying to go through the same door at the rear of the diner—Gavin into the back room and Cutie Pie out of it and into the dining room. The door had a wide window at eye-level, probably to prevent such accidents during regular business hours, and neither of them had used it.
Gavin had stopped short the moment he realized he’d caused an accident, and Mama ran right into his back, which nearly made him ram into the door a second time. He grabbed it as it swung back at him, ignored Mama’s curious squawk, and peeked around the corner.
Cutie Pie gaped down at the huge splotch of red goo clinging to the front of his white dress shirt. Most of the sauce was still in the bowl, but some had dripped to the floor and onto his shoes. He hadn’t even looked up yet to see who’d dressed him up like a Thanksgiving turkey. But in a diner as small as Dixie’s Cup—and with so many people rushing around getting food out to the counter—they’d already drawn a small audience.
“Dios mio,” Mama said. She’d inched around Gavin to see what had stopped him. “Oh dear, that’s going to stain.”
“My mother made this from scratch,” Cutie Pie said to the bowl of sauce.
“Most of it is still in there,” Gavin replied.
He thought it sounded helpful, but Cutie Pie gave him a sour look. “It splashed all up on my shirt. Do you think people want to eat cotton fibers with their cranberry relish?”
“Sorry.” That sounded horrible, even to Gavin’s ears. “I mean, I’m sorry about hitting you with the door.”
“My fault too.” He gave the cranberry relish such a forlorn, kicked-puppy look that Gavin was struck momentarily speechless—and that didn’t happen often.
“Look, dinner doesn’t start for twenty minutes,” Gavin said. “I’m sure we can find some canned sauce somewhere.”
“On Thanksgiving Day?”
“No need,” Mama said. “We have some in the stock room. We can doctor that up and use it for today.”
Cutie Pie blinked. “Why does Dixie have canned cranberry sauce in stock?”
“For Barrett’s Gobbler Panini. It’s a lovely sandwich he does on special once a week.”
“Oh.”
Gavin gave himself a mental head-knock. Ever since Dixie had splurged on a Panini press two months ago, her night cook Barrett McCall had been experimenting with combinations. The Gobbler had been a success from the first day. Mama had called Gavin in to taste test it before it went public, and he’d called it “Thanksgiving on a bun”.
Barrett had corrected him and said it was “Thanksgiving on ciabatta”.
“Great. Problem solved,” Gavin said.
Mama ushered the three of them into the small, cramped back room of the diner. She took the bowl of ruined sauce from Cutie and stuck it in the large industrial sink, then disappeared to root around for the canned sauce.
“Half the problem is solved,” Cutie said. “I need to change.”
There is absolutely nothing wrong with you, sweetie, very nearly popped out of Gavin’s mouth. That would have been incredibly embarrassing. The simple fact that Cutie Pie was here helping out with Dixie Foskey’s annual Thanksgiving Feast meant she knew his family, which meant Gavin should know him too. After all, Gavin’s mom had worked for Dixie for over ten years and Cutie Pie was awfully familiar.
“I mean, my shirt’s ruined,” Cutie added.
“Not necessarily,” Gavin said.
“So big red spots on white shirts are fashionable now?”
The light-hearted tease gave Gavin hope that he hadn’t made a total disaster of a first impression. “Well, maybe in a hipper town than Stratton, but we can save the shirt.”
“How?”
“Take it off.”
“Hey, Jace, what’s—oh.” A brown-haired girl stopped in the back room doorway, eyes wide as she took in the pair of them. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Minor accident,” said Cutie Pie, whose name was apparently Jace.
Light bulb!
Gavin knew exactly who they both were now. Jace and Rachel Ramsey, twins, college sophomores, children of Keith Ramsey, local police officer. The Ramseys had been staples of the diner for years, and Gavin had seen Jace dozens of times before without getting lost in the dark shaggy hair, the wide brown eyes or the dimples that wanted to say hello even when he wasn’t smiling.
College had been good to Jace Ramsey.
“But we’re going to fix it,” Gavin said, giving Rachel a bright smile.
“How?” she asked. “With blindfolds?”
“Cute. No.”
Gavin rescued the ruined cranberry relish from the sink, grabbed Jace by the wrist, and dragged both items around to the small bathroom. He ran the water in the sink until it warmed up, then pulled the stopper and dumped half the cranberries into it.
“Take your shirt off, please,” he said again.
Jace gave him a dubious look but unbuttoned his shirt. Gavin reigned in his instinctive need to check him out—ogling while trying to be helpful was rude—and took the shirt once Jace had stripped it off. Gavin shoved the whole thing into the pink water, which enticed an adorable squeak of protest from Jace.
“Trust me,” Gavin said.
“Do I have to?”
“It’s too late now.”
When the sink was half-full, Gavin turned off the water and swirled the shirt around in it. He realized too late he should have been using gloves, because the water quickly stained his cuticles pink. After a minute of soaking in silence, he released the stopper.
“There should be a hair dryer in that basket of stuff beside the toilet,” Gavin said. “Can you find it and plug it in?”
Jace hesitated then turned around to rummage. He bent over, instead of squatting down, and the narrow room gave Gavin a lovely view of his ass in those black linen dress pants. An ass that was connected to a trim waist and a lean, smooth back… Nope. Gavin snapped his attention back to rinsing out the shirt. The white material was now stained pink all over, instead of only on the front, and by the time the rinse water ran clear, Jace was back with the hair dryer at the ready.
They tag-teamed the shirt until the newly pink fabric was dry enough to wear and only smelled slightly of fruit.
“That was kind of brilliant,” Jace said after he’d put the hair dryer away.
“I was an accident prone kid. Sometimes you have to get creative when there’s no money to buy new clothes.” Gavin wasn’t ashamed of growing up poor. Most people in Stratton knew him and his mother, and they also knew his father was a deadbeat asshole who Gavin had vowed to kill if he ever laid a hand on him or his mother again.
Jace eyed the shirt but didn’t put it on. He didn’t seem to know where to focus his attention—the shirt, the floor or Gavin. The bizarre nervousness made hopeful little butterflies spring loose in Gavin’s stomach. He hadn’t actually lucked into meeting someone his own age in town who was—
“Hey, you guys coming?” Rachel asked. She appeared in the doorway, and her thin eyebrows shot up when she saw the shirt in Jace’s hands. “Wow, you fixed it.”
“Kind of,” Jace said.
“It’s all one color now. I call that fixed.”
“It’s pink.”
“Yeah? So are roses and baby butts. Suit up, bro, I’m hungry.”
Gavin laughed before he could stop himself. He liked Rachel already.
Jace gave him a look that seemed to say, “Don’t encourage her,” then put on the shirt. Gavin didn’t say it out loud, but he allowed himself a moment to appreciate the fact that Jace looked very good in pale pink. It lightened up his brown hair and made him even more boyishly adorable than he already was. Gavin, with his mixed Mexican and Hawaiian heritage, never had the complexion for pastels.
“All you need is a black string tie,” Gavin said once Jace buttoned back up and presented himself for inspection. “And maybe a jacket to sling over your shoulder. It’s very Sinatra.”
“Great, I’m channeling a dead singer,” Jace said. He was smiling though, which gave Gavin hope that he hadn’t made a complete fool of himself.
“A dead singer who had men and women falling all over him.”
Jace’s eyebrows jumped. “And probably a mafia boss or two puppeteering his entire career.”
“A man who knows old Hollywood.” Gavin had to mentally stop himself from falling head over heels into insta-crush with Jace. “Where have you been my whole life?”
A clever comeback failed Jace, and Rachel turned away with a soft giggle that made the hairs on the back of Gavin’s neck prickle. Gavin had come out to his mother when he was fourteen, and he’d never been shy about his sexuality around his peers. A small town like Stratton left him with few dating options, which mean frequent trips into Harrisburg for more exciting weekend entertainment than watching his straight friends get laid. But Jace Ramsey, who Gavin had always considered a straight WASP from the suburbs, was actually blushing over Gavin’s comment.
Jace + Gay = Too good to be true.
“Anywho,” Gavin said, “they’re probably ready to start serving out there.”
“Yeah, we should go.”
And they did, out into a diner full of people chatting in small groups. Dixie had begun the Thanksgiving Day tradition more than ten years ago when she found out her recently hired waitress Lucìa and her son Gavin didn’t have money for even a basic Turkey Day meal. She invited them to eat with her and her nephew Schuyler, who was home from college with a roommate who couldn’t afford the trip home to be with his own family. The following year, Dixie held the dinner in the diner and invited more people. By its fifth year, Thanksgiving at the diner was a tradition, with more than a dozen families coming to eat. Most contributed some sort of side dish or dessert, and all of the food was set up at the counter assembly-line style.
Schuyler Rhodes, local art teacher and snazzy dresser, was in his usual spot at the far end of the counter, ready to carve the first of two turkeys. Several other folks were lined up with him to help serve different dishes that included sweet potatoes, cracker dressing, cornbread dressing, several different kinds of vegetables, macaroni and cheese and a green bean casserole that Barrett McCall had deconstructed and remade from scratch.
Deconstructed for the fun of it, he’d told Gavin earlier that morning, to which Gavin had rolled his eyes. His own culinary endeavors extended to frozen dinners and instant rice. The microwave was his best friend in the kitchen. He was the only person he knew who could burn water.
Jace and Rachel rejoined their family—Keith and his wife, Becky, and their older sister Lauren. The five of them made a perfect middle-class unit, with their nice clothes and matching brown hair and smiles. Gavin was used to sticking out in a crowd, but for some reason, today his unique look and the thrift store dress shoes made him feel uncomfortable. He hadn’t felt so uncomfortable in a crowded room of people since he’d presented an eighth-grade science project in front of an auditorium full of his classmates.
Gavin joined Dixie, Schuyler, Barrett, Mama and their overnight cook Old Joe behind the counter to serve. Gavin had volunteered to serve this year when Rey King bowed out of the entire dinner. Apparently he’d gone to New Mexico with his boyfriend to spend time with Samuel’s family; but nice guy (and fantastic chef) that he was, he’d left a cold broccoli slaw behind to be served to Dixie’s guests.
A new bowl of cranberry sauce sat next to the other cold salads. Gavin glanced down the line to Mama and she winked.
After a piercing whistle quieted the room, Dixie stood up on a chair to address everyone. Her wild, frizzy white hair was tied back beneath a pilgrim hat-printed bandana, and she was wearing her favorite turkey apron. “Hey, everyone,” she said. “Welcome. As always, we’ve got some new faces, and we’ve got some old faces. We’ve also got some really old faces—” she pointed at herself, and everyone laughed, “—and a few faces who aren’t here this year. But now that we’re together under one roof, let’s celebrate what we’re thankful for and eat some fabulous food.”
Dixie went on to say a brief grace, which Gavin tuned out—he didn’t see much point in thanking someone who never seemed to pay much attention to him or his mother—and then it was time to serve. He chatted with everyone who came through the line. Even if his mother didn’t still work here, he’d been a busboy all through high school, so he knew pretty much everyone anyway.
The Ramseys came through with their plates and Gavin doled out spoonfuls of their chosen vegetables. Jace was last, and he couldn’t seem to look Gavin in the eye, which Gavin found incredibly endearing. Jace did, however, manage to ask for a little extra of the candied carrots and creamed spinach, which Gavin filed away for future reference. He never knew when favorite foods might become useful information.
Once the line was down and everyone else was served, the servers grabbed plates and helped themselves. Gavin loaded his with turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, and as many of the other sides as he could handle without it all spilling onto the floor. His somewhat plump mother always bemoaned his bizarre metabolism and ability to eat anything he wanted and still stay thin as a rail. Gavin blamed it on being tall. And hyperactive.
All of the tables had been arranged in the center of the diner as one long, continuous line so they could eat community-style. Gavin was mildly disappointed that Jace was sandwiched on both sides by his sisters, so Gavin took a seat near the far end with Mama, Schuyler and Barrett.
“—swear his shirt was white when they got here,” Schuyler was saying when Gavin sat down.
“Whose shirt was white?” he asked innocently.
“Jace’s. It was white and now it’s pink.”
“Are you sure?”
Mama laughed and covered with a cough. Barrett patted Schuyler’s shoulder and said, “It’s okay. I think you’re just getting senile.”
Schuyler frowned. “Look who’s talking, old man.”
Gavin grinned. The pair were nowhere near old, but they were pretty funny to watch together. Outside of his art room at school, Schuyler had always been so stiff and boring. Barrett seemed to bring out his fun, livelier side.
Gavin was too busy stuffing his face to contribute to the various conversations happening around him. He ate fast, always had and always would, because he hated sitting still for too long. Even for meals. Mama said he’d been a terror as a toddler, never wanting to stay put longer than three minutes at a time before running off to play. It had been hell on his father’s temper, though, which he’d take out on Mama, and that was one of the few things Gavin actively regretted.
He’d filled his plate so well that he didn’t need to go for seconds, but the opportunity to chat with Jace presented itself when the object of his attention stood up and headed for the food. Gavin grabbed his plate and quickly excused himself. His stomach was tight and full to bursting, and his neck prickled with awareness when he stood next to Jace in front of the vegetable dishes.
“So how’s the cranberry sauce?” Gavin whispered.
Jace choked and nearly dropped the carrot spoon. “Apparently your mom explained the accident to my mom, and now my mom is considering the merits of natural fruit fabric dyes.”
Gavin snickered. “I didn’t know your mom was that crafty.”
“She’s not, she just spends too much time on Pinterest.”
“Ah.” He watched Jace scoop up more carrots, spinach and someone’s three-bean salad. Gavin’s stomach hated him for the spoonful of carrots he added to his own plate. He would never take food he didn’t intend to eat, but he didn’t want to be so obvious about why he’d returned to the counter.
“So you go to Temple, right?” Gavin asked, hoping to stall the conversation a while longer.
“Yeah, Rachel and I both go there.”
They moved out of the way of some other folks who wanted food and stood off to the side with their plates.
“Do you like it?”
Jace hesitated. “It’s okay. I’ve never been the academic type like my sisters, so it’s hard for me. We’ve got finals two weeks after I get back.” He said the word finals like it tasted nasty in his mouth.
“I was never great at school.” Gavin got in trouble so often that he was lucky he’d graduated on time with his classmates. “Loved sports, though.”
“Yeah?” Jace gave him a once-over—probably confirming that yes, Gavin had an athlete’s body—but it came off as checking him out. And Jace blushed for the second time that day. Adorable. “What sports?”
“Football, basketball, baseball, you name it and I’ve played it. I wasn’t great at all of them, but I tried them all at least once.”
“It’s good to try new things.”
“So I’ve heard.” Jace seemed to correctly interpret the flirty line. Only instead of getting embarrassed, his awkward smile actually looked interested. Even though this was too good to be true, Gavin sped forward because he had nothing to lose. “You’re home for the whole weekend?”
“Until Sunday morning, yeah,” Jace said. “It’s not a long drive to Philly, but I have a paper due Monday and I didn’t want to bring the work home with me.”
“Makes sense. Look, my buddy Casper is having a party tomorrow night. Not a huge one, but some people I know, so if you’re interested it could be fun to hang or something.” Gavin was babbling, so he shut up and let his offer stand.
“You have a friend named Casper?”
“Nickname. Dude wouldn’t tan if you spray-painted him.”
Jace laughed, then his smile turned upside down. “You know I’m only nineteen, right?”
“Oh, well, you don’t have to drink. I usually don’t.” And that wasn’t a line. He hated alcohol—yet something else he could thank his jerk of a sperm donor for. “It was just a thought.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
Jace grinned. “I don’t have any plans tomorrow. What time’s the party?”
“Nine-ish. I can pick you up.”
“Okay, cool. I’ll get your number before I leave today.”
“Sure, awesome.”
Gavin stood there for several seconds after Jace walked back to his family. He wasn’t going to make anything out of the “date” until something actually happened, but the fact that he was going to hang out with this crush-worthy boy for a few hours was enough to float him through the rest of the afternoon.
College had definitely been good to Jace Ramsey.
Saturday Series Spotlight
A.M. Arthur was born and raised in the same kind of small town that she likes to write about, a stone's throw from both beach resorts and generational farmland. She's been creating stories in her head since she was a child and scribbling them down nearly as long, in a losing battle to make the fictional voices stop. She credits an early fascination with male friendships (bromance hadn't been coined yet back then) with her later discovery of and subsequent love affair with m/m romance stories. A.M. Arthur's work is available from Carina Press, SMP Swerve, and Briggs-King Books.
When not exorcising the voices in her head, she toils away in a retail job that tests her patience and gives her lots of story fodder. She can also be found in her kitchen, pretending she's an amateur chef and trying to not poison herself or others with her cuisine experiments.
Weight of Silence #3
Cost of Repair Series
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