As Big As The Sky Page 3

  He waited another ten minutes but when Sam still didn’t show, he left the house and cut through the path in the hedges between his and Sam’s front yards. An unfamiliar car in Sam’s driveway made him pause. Whoa. Sam must know someone in a really high place if the look of the sleek Jag was any indication. It was a far cry from Sam’s dark blue SUV, which sat like a less-than-favored uncle next to the shiny Jag.

  If Sam had previous plans, why had he agreed to have dinner with Bo? Had he forgotten he was supposed to have company tonight? Or had he forgotten he was supposed to meet Bo? The note Sam had left with the flowers on his porch said “See you tonight.” What had happened between then and now to make Sam forget about him?

  What was so wrong with Bo that nobody wanted to spend an hour with him outside of a screw and an orgasm?

  Blinking past the burn in his eyes, he trudged back through the hedges the way he’d come. The kitchen smelled amazing when he walked back in. He wasn’t in the mood to eat anymore but he spooned himself a small bowl of stew to quiet his grumbling stomach. Purposefully bypassing the table set for two, he sat on the couch in the family room and turned on the TV. With nothing on except the news and game shows, he picked a channel at random and forked a bite of stew. Let’s go with “Why is Bo such a loser?” for two thousand please, Alex.

  Bo wanted to be angry, and he was sure that’d come later, but for now he ate his meal, watched dumb TV, and pretended he wasn’t sad.

  Chapter Three

  The sun was starting to set by the time Sam showed his lawyer out of the house. Leaning back against the door, he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. Fuck his life. Seriously, he didn’t know whether to worry or laugh his ass off at the whole situation.

  He headed for his office on the second floor. The legal papers still sat on his desk where Michelle, his lawyer, had left them. They’d spent three hours going over everything. Three hours that would cost him almost five hundred bucks. Three hours that made him want to tear his hair out. Three hours that made his head hurt.

  He tucked the papers away into a folder, shut down his laptop, and flicked off the desk lamp. Even that small amount of light pierced his eyeballs and made his head pound. He rested his forehead against the office window and let out a sigh that fogged the glass. He needed to get his records together for Michelle. Her hope was that if they could provide enough evidence to support Sam’s case against the claimant, then maybe they’d finally see reason and back off. He wouldn’t be getting to that tonight though, not with the throbbing headache that made it impossible to think.

  Movement in the yard next door had him glancing over. Almost as soon as he saw Bo sitting on his porch steps, Sam was down the stairs and out the door. Fuck. How could he have forgotten dinner with Bo? Poor Bo probably thought he’d been stood up. Damn it, poor Bo had been stood up. Sam mentally kicked his own ass on the speed-walk to Bo’s.

  Sam came to a stop in Bo’s yard, in the same place he’d eavesdropped on Bo’s conversation with his sister from earlier. Bo was fiddling with a telescope. Sam had never seen him dressed in anything but cargo shorts and T-shirts, yet tonight he wore clean dark jeans and a polo shirt. Had he dressed up for Sam? Double fuck.

  “Bo.” Sam strode forward, coming to a stop next to Bo. “I’m so sorry.”

  He expected anger from Bo, disappointment, a fierce glower to accompany the fire in his brown eyes. He expected to be told to go to hell. What he got was…nothing. No fiery temper, no feistiness. In the four weeks Sam had known Bo, he’d never seen him turn off his emotions so completely.

  “It’s fine,” Bo said woodenly. He inserted a small lens-type thing into the telescope.

  “Really,” Sam said, “I’m sorry. I got an unexpected visitor and…”

  Bo had yet to look at Sam.

  “…I got distracted and…” Sam rubbed his aching temples with a thumb and forefinger. “My lawyer had a lot of documents to go through—”

  “Your lawyer?” Bo finally turned to him as the sun slipped below the horizon, revealing the first hint of stars. “Is everything okay?”

  Sam sighed and sat on the porch steps. “I’m being sued.”

  Bo’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, what’d you do?”

  Sam snorted; if he couldn’t find humor in what was happening he’d go insane. “I didn’t do anything,” he said, glad to see Bo’s personality make a reappearance. “There’s a new company…newish, anyway; it’s only been around for a couple of years. Anyway, they think I stole their logo design, so they’re suing me over it.”

  “Did you steal their logo design?” Bo sounded gleeful. “You can tell me, I won’t tell.”

  Man, if Bo thought the drama going on in Sam’s life right now was interesting, he clearly wasn’t getting out enough.

  “I did not steal their design,” Sam said. “The logo they’re suing me over? I created it almost eight years ago.”

  “Did you copyright it, or trademark it, or whatever it is you do?”

  “The company I designed it for did that.”

  “So…” Bo fiddled with a dial thingy on the telescope. “If you created the logo eight years ago, and the company that’s suing you is only two years old…that doesn’t make any sense. If anything, you should be suing them for stealing your logo.”

  “That’s what I said.” Sam placed his elbows on the stair behind him and leaned back.

  “You should sue them,” was Bo’s opinion.

  “Honestly, I just want the whole thing to be done and over with.”

  “If you go to court, can I come watch?” Bo asked.

  Seriously, Bo really needed to get out more.

  “It’s not going to court.” Sam hoped. “My lawyer says if I can show when I designed the logo, they’ll realize their mistake and back off.”

  “Can you show them that?”

  “Oh yeah. I keep all of my old projects and I have backups of my backups, date and time stamped by the computer. Plus, the company I designed the logo for? The founder is an old school buddy of mine. He’s going to send me the information he received when he trademarked it since it has the date on there and everything.”

  Bo looked disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to sit in on a court trial.

  “You really need to get out more,” Sam told him.

  “And go where?” Bo said. “The only places I know how to get to are the grocery store and the highway.”

  “Dude, Toronto’s only, like, half an hour away.”

  “Yeah, but what would I do there?” Bo asked.

  “Seriously?”

  Bo stopped doing whatever it was he was doing with the telescope to stare at him, eyebrow raised. “I’ve already done all the touristy stuff when I visited Laura before. What else is there?”

  Oh, Bo.

  “What do you do in Ottawa for fun?” Sam asked.

  Bo shrugged. “Go out with my…friends mostly.”

  Sam caught the pause before “friends” and wondered what that was about, but didn’t press.

  “We go to restaurants,” Bo was saying, “or the bar. Sometimes we stay in and play video games.”

  Sam tried to think of something fun for Bo to do while he was here. “Ever been to a baseball game?”

  “Nope.” Bo stuck his eye up to the telescope lens. “Never lived in a city with a team.”

  Blasphemy. That was blasphemy, right there. Sam made a mental note to look up game times before he went to bed.

  “What are you doing?” he asked Bo.

  Bo waved him over without removing his eye from the lens. “Come see.”

  Sam went. He stood close enough to Bo to smell his aftershave, to see the small freckle on the side of his jaw, to notice how his hair curled at the base of his neck.

  Not your type, not your type, not your type!

  Sam was big enough to admit that maybe he’d been wrong about his type for the past twenty-seven years. He’d dated tall, buff guys ever since he’d started dating, yet for some reason Bo’s ti
ght build in a compact body was turning his crank.

  Bo turned a dial, said, “Ah ha!” and took a single step back. “Take a look.” It was almost fully dark now, the sky littered with stars. Sam bent at the waist to peer through the lens. “Just don’t touch the telescope,” Bo said. “I’ve finally got it in the right position.”

  Sam didn’t know what to expect—a spaceship?—but what he saw made him grin. “Holy shit! Is that Saturn?”

  “Cool, huh?”

  “Holy shit,” he repeated. “You can see the rings and everything.” Saturn was a magnified dot in the telescope, its rings clearly distinguished. Sam took his eye away from the lens and peered at the sky, trying to determine which of the stars above was the one he was peering at through the telescope.

  “It’s that one,” Bo said, pointing at the sky. There were so many stars in the cloudless sky, Sam couldn’t tell which star Bo pointed at. He was highly impressed Bo had managed to find any one particular tiny star among hundreds and focus on it.

  “Laura never mentioned you’re into astronomy,” Sam said. He almost regretted the words; they made it sound like he and Laura talked about Bo all the time.

  But Bo just shrugged. “She doesn’t know.”

  Sam couldn’t imagine that. He and his siblings had always lived out of each other’s pockets. He wanted to ask Bo about it, about his relationship with his sister and his friends in Ottawa, but he didn’t think they were quite at that stage of friendship yet.

  “Show me something else,” Sam said.

  Bo grinned and focused the telescope on the moon. It was almost full, a bright beacon in the sky. Through the telescope it gleamed so bright, Sam nearly had to squint.

  Bo spent an hour showing Sam different stars and planets. Eventually he went inside for a sweater—without the sun, the temperature had dropped—and came out with a beer and bowl of stew for Sam. He lit a few citronella candles and placed them around Sam to keep the bugs away while he ate. Miraculously, Sam’s headache was gone. As they sat on the deck chatting about nothing, enjoying the quiet night and the sound of crickets in the field beyond Bo’s yard, Sam couldn’t help but wonder how he’d let a month go by without getting to know Bo.

  “Bo’s a good guy and I love him to death,” Laura had said when she’d told Sam Bo was moving in to take over Big Sky while she took a course in BC for four months. “But he’s a bit of a flake. He sucks at making decisions and he’s never really there when you need him.”

  Everything Sam had seen in the past month proved the opposite. Bo had dropped his entire life in Ottawa to come help out his sister; he was great with the animals; generous with his time and affection. Sam was embarrassed to admit that instead of forming his own opinion, he’d let Laura’s perceptions about her brother color his own. He’d basically judged a book by its cover. If Bo’s cover was shiny and loud, his inside pages were fragile, vulnerable to rough handling. He had a feeling Bo’s book was only half finished, the story stalled in the middle, the blank pages in the second half of the book just waiting to be filled.

  “Thank you,” Sam said.

  “For the stew?” Bo yawned loudly. “I have plenty more. Want to take some leftovers?”

  “Not just for the stew,” Sam corrected. “For tonight. Thank you.”

  Bo smiled at him. “You’re welcome.”

  Chapter Four

  Bonobo: I went on a date last night.

  Bonobo: I think…

  S.P. McAuley: You think?

  Bonobo: *sigh* Fine. I had a friend over for dinner, though I use the term ‘friend’ loosely. We don’t know each other that well.

  S.P. McAuley: Well isn’t that the definition of a date? Getting to know someone?

  Bonobo: I don’t even know if he’s gay.

  S.P. McAuley: Ask him?

  Bonobo: I don’t want to get punched in the face.

  S.P. McAuley: Have experience with that, do you?

  Bonobo: How come the new chapter isn’t up yet?

  S.P. McAuley: Ah, changing the subject I see. OK, I’ll go with it. I’ve got it scheduled to upload tonight.

  Bonobo: Nooooooooo. Why??????? I have a thing tonight. Won’t be able to read it till tomorrow :(

  S.P. McAuley: Oh, the horror!

  Bonobo: [sends an emoji of a middle finger]

  §§§§

  He would. Not. Laugh.

  Sam watched from the entrance to Bo’s backyard as the man chased after a chicken, swearing like a sailor with constipation. It was the same damn chicken that had somehow managed to escape a locked chicken coop yesterday and wander its way into Sam’s garden right before the magazine journalists had arrived.

  “Get back here you hideous, jowly fiend!”

  Sam snorted a laugh. From the look of things, it appeared the chicken had ignored the smattering of feed Bo had scattered in front of the coop to distract it and decided to carry on a mutiny all by its lonesome. It seemed to be faring much better than Bo, who was all adorably growly as he tried to corner the chicken.

  “Try that song you were telling me about yesterday,” Sam called to him. He winced when his voice startled the chicken into making a run for it, right between Bo’s legs, heading for the pig pen with a high-pitched cluck.

  “Oh no you don’t, you turd!”

  Bo took off one of his work gloves, removed his phone from his pocket, and hit some buttons. Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” started to play, somewhere in the middle of the song. The chicken froze on the other side of the yard.

  “Damn right I never miss a beat!” Bo, work glove back on, calmly walked across the yard, snuck up behind the chicken, and nabbed it. “Ha!”

  Sam unlocked the chicken coop for him.

  “Get back in there, you mangy cur!”

  Bo threw the feisty chicken inside and Sam slammed the door shut behind it.

  “You have chicken feathers on your shirt,” Sam pointed out.

  “Damn it! Don’t go anywhere.” Bo disappeared into his house.

  Where was Sam going to go? They were driving to the baseball game together.

  He’d spent all day putting his portfolio together to send to his lawyer. She had an appointment with the claimant in a few days, where she’d provide them with all of the evidence Sam had put together in an effort to get them to drop the case. Sam was dying to be a fly on the wall in that room, but Michelle had advised him to stay away from the meeting. She didn’t want it devolving into a shouting match.

  Sam had never shouted at anyone in his life. He was better at sitting and quietly fuming.

  “Please,” Michelle had said. “I’ve seen your I’m-wholly-unimpressed look. It could scare the pants off a hardened war vet.”

  “Maybe it’ll help sway them into dropping the case,” Sam had argued.

  “No.”

  Fine. Sam wouldn’t go. He’d just sit by the phone, waiting for news as if he was waiting for a crush to call. But this wasn’t about his love life, this was about his career. Which, despite reassurances from Michelle, he was afraid would go down the tank if the claimant didn’t drop their case, joining his love life at the bottom of the shit pile.

  Bo came out of the house. Sam’s love life perked up. Bo was wearing a new T-shirt, light blue, and carrying a light jacket in his hands. The tight T-shirt hugged Bo’s chest and arms. Bo wasn’t tall, only about five seven or so, but what there was of him was compact and tight and, and, and…Fuck. The top of his head would fit right under Sam’s chin and was that the perfect height, or what?

  Sam cleared his throat. “Ready to go?”

  “Yeah.” Bo grinned at him. “I can’t believe you got such last-minute tickets. I thought you were joking when you texted me this morning.”

  “They’re not good seats,” Sam warned him. “They’re up in the nosebleeds. Only cost me eleven bucks each.”

  “Still,” Bo said as they climbed into Sam’s SUV, “I appreciate it. Do people actually sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at baseball games?”


  “Yeah, they do.”

  “Really?” Bo looked delighted at the prospect. “Did you know it was written in 1908? That’s…” He appeared to do some quick math. “A hundred and nine years of people singing that song. That’s so cool.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know things.” Bo said. Sam got on the highway and headed east. “Like, did you know about seventy baseballs are used during a typical major league game?”

  “Did you do some Googling?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Which team has won the most World Series?”

  “The Yankees.”

  “You’ve done your homework.”

  “Damn straight. I don’t do anything without being prepared.”

  Sam laughed. “How did you prepare for taking over Big Sky?”

  “I didn’t really need to,” Bo said. He took a pair of sunglasses out of his jacket pocket and slipped them on. “I’ve run Big Sky without Laura before. Granted, not for four months. Usually for only a week or two when Laura goes on vacation.”

  “So you just…drop everything in Ottawa, and come to your sister’s rescue?”

  “No, I just schedule my vacation for the same time as hers and spend mine here.”

  That didn’t seem fair, for Bo to give up his vacation time for his sister. Sam kept going over and over in his head how Laura had described Bo: “He’s a bit of a flake. He sucks at making decisions and he’s never really there when you need him.”

  Someone who gave up his vacation time for his sister was someone who wasn’t there when you needed him? Laura was living in some kind of freaky delusional world Sam couldn’t wait to poke holes into when she got back. Bo deserved better than a sister who didn’t appreciate him. It bugged the shit out of Sam for reasons he didn’t understand that Bo’s sister thought so poorly of him.

  “How did you manage to swing four months’ vacation this time?”

  “I didn’t,” Bo said. “I took a leave of absence.” He shifted in his seat. “I don’t remember seeing you on my previous visits here.”