Down Bad (Buck x Eddie)

Chapter Three: The Bolter

Eddie Diaz

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We're at a small bar just down the road from 118 and we stand around a pool table, shooting pool and drinking.

"What'd you do before this, Diaz?" Buck asks as he shoots at the red ball. He makes it and leans against the Pool cue, taking a sip of his beer.

"I was in the military. From ages twenty-one to twenty-nine." I reply and tip back my glass of whisky.

"Wait, how old are you?"

"Thirty. You?"

"I turn twenty-five in a few weeks." He replies and goes over to the bar and sets his empty glass down, the bartender takes it behind the bar and hands him another.

"So, you're twenty-four?" I clarify, knowing the answer but wanting to hear him admit it himself. I can't help my eyes from wandering from his eyes and down to his broad shoulders, and his muscular arms, the pulsing veins on his forearms and the small tattoos that line the skin. He's like a walking sex magnet.

I cannot have feelings like this about my coworker that I met a week ago. It's ridiculous of me to even consider those to be valid feelings in the first place, right?

I clear my throat, "I probably gotta head home to my kid after this game, his sitter is probably ready to be dismissed."

"Is he starting school soon? Or are you waiting since the year ends soon?" He asks and for once, I feel as though Evan Buckley is being genuine and not his usual angst-ridden self that I've grown accustomed to.

"He's gonna start in the fall. The principal said it was a little too late in the year for him to start. My exes parents live about fifteen minutes from his school so he'll just ride the bus there and I'll pick him up when I'm done." I explain to him and take another drink.

He nods, setting his second empty bottle on the counter. The bartender goes to grab another and he shakes his head.

"How's your relationship with them? Since she passed and all?"

"I'd know them since I was a kid. So nothing really changed. I met Shannon when I was in elementary school. We both lived on the base and after my Dad passed when I was a kid, her Dad stepped in as a substitute Dad, if you will."

"Like a childhood friends to lovers sort of thing?" He adds and we abandon our game and sit at the bar.

"Yeah, exactly like that. How do you know romance tropes?"

"Contrary to popular belief, Diaz, I do read."

I laugh quietly, "Romance novels?"

"Some. If Maddie says it's good."

Putting pieces together leads to the conclusion that Maddie is either his girlfriend or his sister. But clearly he can sense my confusion because he clarifies.

"She's my sister. She moved here a couple months ago after a messy divorce." He leans against the bar and turns to face me, "You have any siblings."

"A brother. He's forty. From our Mom's first marriage." I reply and take another drink.

Buck sighs and leans in ward, "So after your comment in the showers the other day, I was just-"

He pauses to think about what to say, "Are you um-"

"Am I what?" I asks, despite knowing where this conversation is going. 

"Are you gay?" he ask quietly, almost as if he wasn't supposed to ask in the first place. Like it's a sin.