After his last accommodations, thanks to the state of Texas, the idea of having an entire airplane hangar without another soul nearby was almost like having God rock him to sleep on the sweet soft palm of his hand.
But having Carl coming back to this little personal area? It felt like he’d been called into Michael’s living room, and Michael… well, he’d dreamed of inviting Carl to his place, the city apartment that their bosses, the Salingers, let Michael use. Not this little bachelor pad he’d carved out of an airplane hangar.
“Oh wow!” Soderbergh had cleared the cubicle walls set up to keep the office area private. “You’ve got a little apartment back here. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude!”
Chuck blinked as if this had not occurred to him. “Are we intruding, Car-Car?”
“No,” Michael said shortly. “But don’t call me that.” He realized that he sounded defensive and tried to make up for it. “Would anybody like a beer? I’ve got a mini fridge with snacks, water….”
“Water, thank you,” Soderbergh said.
“Me too,” Chuck said. “That’s mighty kind of you.”
“You flying too?” Michael asked Soderbergh, trying to make conversation.
Soderbergh shook his head and perched on the arm of the gently used couch. “Nope. I just don’t do beer after a stint in rehab.”
It took Michael a moment to get that. “You went to rehab?” he asked, thinking he couldn’t have heard right. Rehab was where his family had gone when they’d gotten hooked on meth. It never took.
“Drank too much.” Soderbergh shrugged, and while it seemed to be an old wound, Michael could sense a story there.
“That was a while back,” Chuck commented. “That was before you and me met, wasn’t it, Carl?”
“Yeah, ’bout eight, nine years ago.” Soderbergh—Carl—gave Michael a smile, obviously hoping to turn the conversation. “So what did you want to ask me?”
“Car-Car here wants to reinvent himself,” Chuck said, “and he was wondering about a name—”
“Call me Michael.” Oh God. He’d said it. He’d actually said it. He’d promised himself that this job, these people, his new life would all be about reinvention. And he’d just taken his first step.
“Michael,” Carl said, giving him a sweet smile. He had a square chin with only the hint of a divot, a square jaw, an almost Roman nose, and weary green eyes. A “sweet” smile was like a gift in that solidly male face. “Nice name. Well chosen.”
Chuck let out a snort. “Are you sure? I mean, Car-Car has some character to it, right?”
“Car-Car has some jail time on it,” Michael said, exasperated. “I… you know, want to be respectable.”
Chuck grimaced. “You always were respectable, Car, erm, Michael. The jail time was mostly my fault.”
Michael rolled his eyes. “The jail time was my stupid brothers’ fault. They were the ones who’d hero-worshipped two assholes who were planning to shoot us all dead. And it was my fault for saying, ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll help you idiots rob a bank. Just don’t beat the shit out of me like you been doing my whole damned life.’” He turned to Carl, wishing they were having a different conversation. Dammit, ever since he met the big broad-shouldered businessman, his dreams were always very… smooth. Very suave. Very urbane. Very not the redneck hick trying to reclaim his life. As he fetched the bottles of water from the mini fridge and gave one each to the guys, he reflected unhappily that this impromptu party in the hangar apartment was not what he’d planned.
“I’m sorry,” he said resignedly. “I just wanted to know if, you know, I could make ‘Michael’ work.”
Carl gave him another one of those incongruously winsome smiles. “I think it works great,” he said. “And you know what? Making a fresh start in your life is nothing to be embarrassed about.” He cracked the lid on the bottle with a wide-palmed hand. “Here’s to fresh starts.”
He said that like he knew what those were about.
“Here’s to fresh starts,” Chuck said, sinking into the couch. Michael had bought the furniture secondhand, but it was pretty comfortable, and he’d arranged everything in the “apartment” on area rugs. In a way, watching Chuck stretch his legs in front of him and yawn was sort of a compliment. He’d done his best to make the place homey.
“I’m sorry,” Chuck added, after a long draught from the bottle. “I got in pretty late from Lucius’s place last night. I know Hunter’s got the first shift flying when he gets here but….” He yawned.
“No worries,” Michael told him. “Look, I got to go around back and take care of my birds. How about you two rest here, okay?”
“Sure,” Chuck said, yawning, but Carl, after giving Chuck a good-natured look, shook his head.
“I’ll leave you to sleep.” Carl stood up. He left his luggage, Michael noticed, but took his water with him. “What birds?” he asked, following Michael into the hangar. It was a good walk past the vehicles and the waiting plane toward the vast door of the hangar. Carl kept up with a long, swinging stride, which was something Michael had always found really sexy in a man. It had been Chuck’s swagger that had attracted Michael to him three years earlier, and it had been Carl’s easy hip-swinging walk that had made Michael look twice the first time he’d eaten at the Salingers and seen Carl “Soderbergh” Cox striding up the walkway to the Salingers’ Glencoe mansion.
“A couple different kinds,” Michael told him. As they cleared the door, the wind hit them, only softened a little from its journey across Lake Michigan, with a late September bite. Michael shivered in his hooded sweatshirt. “Wow, it’s cold. Does it get much colder than this in the winter?”
Next to him, Carl choked.
“Oh my God, yes. Winter in Chicago is like seven layers of icy hell. Did nobody warn you?”
Michael grunted. “Well, winter outside of Austin is a lot like this. So no. Nobody warned me. I’m gonna have to get heaters for the hangar, aren’t I?”
“The place should be heated already,” Carl said. “But it’s big and badly insulated, so that’s not going to work so well. But if you tell the Salingers you’re overnighting in your little apartment there, they’ll probably spring for some space heaters and insulation and maybe even some swamp coolers for the summer. I don’t know how you survived late July and August in there.”
Michael gave a humorless laugh. “You kidding? There’s big ol’ fans in there, and even a cooling unit. Compared to my garage back in Texas, it was Shangri-fuckin-la.”
“You don’t miss it there?” Carl asked as they circled around the side of the building.
Michael had actually planned for this question—he had. He was going to say something smooth and urbane like “Not my kind of place, old son. No, I find Chicago far superior.”
What came out of his mouth was not that at all.
“I’d live in seven layers of icy hell to fuckin’ not go back there again,” he said, with such deep loathing his voice shook with it. He took a breath and tried to rein it in. “And now that my ex-wife and kids are safe in Ohio, I won’t have to. If I don’t set foot in Texas again through my next six lifetimes, the seventh will still be too goddamned soon.”