Single Player (8 page)

Silas nodded. “I didn't realize you'd be here.”

“Obviously. Otherwise I think that would qualify you as a stalker.” Matthew felt some of his tension ease. He hadn't expected to see the guy again, but he'd be foolish to waste this opportunity. His pleasant week overall, his repeated thoughts of Silas, his insistent fantasies, all added up to another possible rendezvous. This guy probably needed to de-stress, and he was just the man to make that happen. “So, do you want to join me?”

---

Silas had not been
expecting to see Matthew here. That was obvious, probably, from how he'd been standing frozen in the doorway for far longer than was probably socially acceptable, and how he was now standing next to the other man's table like he didn't know what to do. He'd just wanted to buy some coffee beans, and now he'd been offered the opportunity to sit down with the man who had been on his mind all week despite his efforts to move on and refocus on work, and only work. The smart, responsible thing to do would be to decline the offer, since he had had a terrible day overall and had no plans except to go home and try to get some sleep.

Matthew had his laptop set up in front of him. Silas gestured to it as an excuse. “I don't want to interrupt your game.” He didn't even know if he wanted an excuse, but he felt like he should say something.

A look of annoyance passed over Matthew's face. “I'm working, actually. Some programming.”

“Oh.” Silas tried to keep the surprise off his face. He didn't think of a game programmer as someone who had to take work home with him. “Well, that's even more of a reason for me to leave you alone.”

Matthew rested his chin on his hand. “Listen, I invited you over. If you don't want to join me, just say so, but don't pretend you're doing it for my benefit. If I didn't want you to sit with me, I wouldn't have invited you.” One corner of his lips turned up in a smirk. “And if I didn't want to see you again, I wouldn't have put my number in your phone.”

Silas felt his face get warm. He wasn't sure how to respond to that. Saying “oh” again seemed stupid. And yes, he could leave, but he really didn't want to. Matthew made his stomach feel unsettled, but in a good way, which was not a sensation he ever considered possible. He glanced at the display of coffee beans. “I'm going to buy some coffee.” It wasn't an answer, but it also wasn't the same as just leaving. He needed some space to think.

Silas studied the display of coffee options for an exceptionally long time, not really reading any of the bags, but considering his next move. If he stayed, he could have a perfectly pleasant conversation with Matthew like the one he'd enjoyed last weekend. He also might end up going to bed with him. Was that a good decision, or a bad one? It wasn't like he had moral quandaries about sex; it was a perfectly normal biological act that served many functions and was enjoyable for everyone involved. With Matthew, though, sex felt more complicated than it had with his previous partners. He'd felt a hint of that complication during their one-night fling, when he'd barely been able to keep his mind about him. If they hadn't been so pressed for time and so caught up in being quiet, would the encounter have been as overwhelming? The danger might have been the key factor in its intensity. Another, more frightening possibility was that the rushed circumstances had only hindered their chemistry, and given more time and privacy, the contact would be explosive. That possibility both terrified and fascinated him.

He became aware that someone was trying to get his attention, and jumped. The girl behind the counter was staring like there might be something wrong with him. “Hey. You okay? I was just asking if I could answer any questions for you about the beans.”

Silas felt flustered, and he took a moment to find the right words to answer her. “No, thank you. I'm fine. I was just choosing. I'll, uh, get these.” He grabbed a bag at random from the shelf and went up to the counter with it.

“You want them ground?” She took the bag from him and rang up its total into the register.

“No, thank you. I have a grinder.” It was one of Silas's few indulgences, a deluxe burr grinder and several different contraptions for making the coffee itself. He vacillated between the slow, rich smoothness of his Chemex and the fuller, bitter brew of a French press, depending on the day and his mood.

“You get a free cup of coffee with every pound of beans. Would you like it for here or to go?” She looked up expectantly from the register.

Unprepared for the decision, Silas blanked, finally blurting out, “For here.” Before he knew it, he was carrying his beans and a cup of hot coffee back to Matthew's table, and his heart was pounding like he was facing an inquisition.

Matthew looked up from his laptop, his eyes widening in surprise as Silas slid into the booth opposite him. He had put his headphones on since Silas had walked away, and he took them off and set them on the table. “I didn't think you were coming back.”

“I wasn't sure I was coming back,” Silas confessed. He set his coffee in front of him and took a sip, considering the flavor profile. It was really good, actually, for coffee that he didn't make himself. He drank a lot of coffee—good coffee, bad coffee, gourmet coffee, fast-food coffee—and appreciated most of it for whatever it did well. This particular roast was a touch on the bitter side, with more acid than he generally preferred, but the flavor was rich and had underlying notes of complexity that he didn't usually detect in café coffee. As he finished analyzing the sip, he noticed Matthew watching him. Feeling self-conscious, he asked, “What?”

Matthew shrugged one shoulder. “I was watching you drink your coffee like you were at a wine tasting.”

“I know a lot about coffee.” Silas looked down at his cup. Matthew was probably realizing what a weirdo he was.

“I know absolutely nothing about coffee.” Matthew grinned. “I have a regular coffeemaker, but I mostly use my Keurig.”

Silas made a face, but then composed it again. He didn't want to offend Matthew with a knee-jerk response like he had the other day. His disgust had apparently registered, though, because Matthew laughed.

“It's all right. I know it's not good quality. But I live alone and it's convenient. I don't want to brew an entire pot for just me.”

“You need something different from a regular drip coffee machine, then.” Silas sat up straighter. “There are lots of options for single-cup setups, and all of them will make better coffee than a Keurig. Cheaper, too. And less wasteful.”

“Oh yeah?” Matthew was still smiling.

His smile made Silas feel self-conscious again. Maybe he was being mocked and he hadn't picked up on it. “Are you making fun of me?” he asked tentatively.

Matthew shook his head, his expression changing to one of earnestness. “No, man, I'm sorry. I just hadn't seen you look this interested in anything that wasn't saving the world before. I like it. Cool that you have a hobby.”

Silas had never considered coffee his hobby before, but considering how much of it he drank, that wasn't a bad assessment. “Thanks.”

“And the verdict about Brass Buckle coffee?” Matthew nodded to the cup.

“Nice. A bit acidic, but complex.” He took another sip. “Some of that is the brewing process, and some of it's the beans. A Chemex would filter that acidity right out.” At Matthew's blank look, he pulled out his phone and started typing in keywords. “It's a gravity-filtration coffeemaker, like a big beaker.” He found a picture online and slid his phone across the table. “Looks like this.”

Matthew examined the hourglass-shaped beaker with the wooden collar around it. “You have one of these?”

“Definitely.” Silas took his phone back. “Creates an entirely different flavor profile from other coffeemakers.”

“And you drink your coffee black, I see.” Matthew gestured to Silas's cup.

“I always start with it black, to get a sense of the type of coffee, and then I might add cream and sugar, depending on the blend.” Silas realized he was getting animated, moving his hands about, and he forced himself to put his hands down on the table. “Sorry. I get excited when I talk about coffee.”

“Yeah, you do.” Matthew's voice was thoughtful. “You don't have to apologize for it. Is that . . .” He paused. “You mentioned you have some social issues, and you seem self-conscious about how you're acting sometimes.”

Silas looked down at the table, where his hands were still pressed to the wood. “Mild Asperger syndrome, apparently. I don't like putting a name on it, because then people have a hard time seeing me instead of a disorder. I don't like to think of myself as a ‘disorder' or a ‘syndrome.' ” He raised his fingers to put air quotes around the words. “But I am on the spectrum. And sometimes I'm a little weird, so I try not to get overly excited about things, at least in public.”

When Matthew smiled back at him, his grin was wicked. “I like seeing you excited. In public or in private.”

Silas felt his heart rate quicken. That was a sex joke. He was being flirted with again, he was fairly sure, and he felt another thrill of uncertainty.

When he didn't respond, Matthew pressed on. “So, tell me about yourself. Have you always lived here?”

“Oh.” Silas looked down at the cup of coffee in his hands. He didn't usually answer questions about his personal life, primarily because most people didn't ask. He was the type of person who kept mostly to himself. Dee knew all of this, and she was one of the only people who had ever broken through his walls, but few others had the same perseverance or even interest. Matthew seemed genuinely curious, though. It couldn't hurt to share a few of the facts. “I grew up about an hour north of here. I went away to college at MIT, moved back to do graduate work at UF, and somewhere in there, Wayscorp offered me a job. I've been there for almost five years now.”

“And your family?”

Silas hated this question, the way his answer made him sound like a sympathy story. “I don't have a family. My parents died a few years ago, shortly after I moved back. Car accident. I was an only child.”

“I'm sorry.” Matthew's voice was gentle. “That must have been difficult.”

“Yes, well, you get over it.” He shrugged, giving the pat response he'd learned to give when people found out. He wasn't sure how accurate it was. Did you ever really get over something like that? After months of being fine, he'd smell a similar perfume to his mother's and be right back with her again, for better or worse, with all the tumultuous emotions that accompanied such a memory. He knew how to deflect the conversation. “What about you?”

“Yup, Tampa born and raised.” Matthew leaned back, draping one arm along the back of the booth. “I'm an only child, too. Did you always know you wanted to be a biomedical engineer?”

Silas remembered his affection for literature, his occasional immersion into books when the rest of the world seemed overwhelming. “I thought about going into English, but engineering seemed much more practical.” He thought about his parents' stern rebukes against the humanities, a reminder that science was practical and serious work, the work someone with his gifts ought to be doing. “My parents felt very strongly about it.”

Matthew nodded. “That's a lot to live up to.”

“I guess so.” Silas didn't need to share the overwhelming guilt he felt whenever he slacked off, the unshakable feeling that he was disappointing their memory.

Matthew tipped his head to the side, surveying Silas thoughtfully. “You know, I'm starting to think there's a lot more to you than you let on. You just keep it under wraps. I'll bet when you unwind, there's much more to you than just being uptight.”

Silas looked back down at the table, feeling an urge to curl his shoulders in. This type of direct confrontation was not in his comfort zone. “I don't think of myself as uptight. I'm focused.”

“Yeah, I've seen you focused.” Matthew put his chin on his hand again. “I think I like you better unfocused. In fact, I think I'd like to unfocus you. Tonight. Right now, actually, if you're up for it.”

Oh. That was certainly direct. When Silas picked up his coffee cup again, his hand had a slight tremble to it, so the liquid sloshed. He forced himself to steady it as he sipped, an act that took all his concentration. When he put the cup back down, he ran his tongue over his lips to draw in the last drops of coffee. Matthew was watching him with darkened eyes, and Silas thought he could fall into those eyes and not come out of them again. He knew he was prone to staring sometimes, but Matthew met his stare head-on.

Without consciously deciding, he found himself nodding. “All right.”

Matthew gave Silas a half smirk again. “I'm parked outside. Follow me back to my place.”

---

God, what was he
doing? His heart raced for the entire drive, despite deep-breathing exercises. He stayed focused on Matthew's Honda in front of him, driving with extreme caution and trying to keep his mind on the road instead of on the very handsome, very talented man in the car in front of him. They ended up at a block of new high-rise apartments in downtown Tampa, in the quarter of the city mostly populated by up-and-coming young people and growing businesses. Silas had watched these apartment buildings going up over the last few years and wondered who was moving into them. They parked in the underground garage, and Silas got out of his car in a daze.

Matthew was waiting by his car when Silas walked over. The stale concrete-scented air of the parking garage was all around them, pressing close, making Silas feel a little claustrophobic. Maybe that was just his nervousness. When he neared Matthew, the other man took him by the hip and pressed him back against the concrete pillar next to his car, casually crowding into his space with a few steps forward.