The Hookup That Didn't

*This one came from the idea of two people meeting for a hookup and finding their lives intersect in ways neither planned. It's not a fairy tale just a raw, messy night. Thanks for sticking with it.*

The hookup app said Thad would be done with his floor buffer rounds by ten, so I got there at a quarter to, parked at the far end of the lot, and asked myself, out loud, what the hell I was doing.

"Okay, Cade. Okay. You drove forty minutes for this. You're not chickening out now," I told the steering wheel. The wheel didn't answer, which was about as much courage as I deserved.

Six months. Six months since Leo and I sat at our own kitchen table and did the breakup math, and I still couldn't walk into my own apartment without expecting his shoes by the door. So yeah, when a guy named Thad on the app said he worked nights at a community college and the building would be empty, I said sure. Forty-four years old, meeting a stranger in a dark parking lot. My mother would've had a stroke.

I texted him: here, dark car, far end of the lot.

Three dots. Then: side door by the old science bldg, red light above it. Knock twice.

Knock twice. Like a drug deal. I laughed at myself the whole walk over, sneakers crunching on gravel, past a dumpster that smelled like rain and old coffee. The door was steel, dented at knee height, and above it one red bulb buzzed in one of those little cage fixtures. I knocked twice, then a third time for no reason.

It opened and there he was. Thad Hobbs, thirty-nine, taller than his photos, hair buzzed short, in a gray work shirt with a name patch and jeans. He had a floor buffer key hanging off his belt like a prop.

"Cade?" he said, looking me over from head to shoes in about two seconds flat.

"That's me. You're taller than your pictures, man."

"Photos do me dirty, I know it." He grinned and stepped back to let me in. "Come on, I got maybe an hour before I gotta run the buffer again. Building's dead tonight."

The hallway was that fluorescent nothing-light you only find in schools, all buzz and glare. The old science building was half torn up, plastic sheeting taped over doorways, and we walked past a room where the wall was just gone, studs and orange extension cords and a wheelbarrow sitting in rubble.

"So is this, like, normal for you?" I asked. "Bringing guys through your workplace?"

"First time, actually." He shrugged like it was nothing. "Usually I go to them. But my truck's in the shop and I figured, hey, big empty building, nobody around. Kind of romantic if you squint."

"If you squint hard." I was doing my own looking, and I wasn't shy about it. Broad shoulders, forearms with old scars, a little soft at the waist in a way I honestly liked. He caught me at it and grinned wider.

"See something you like?"

"Maybe. Ask me again in ten minutes." God, I was flirting like a person with a functioning heart again. It felt good.

We passed through a set of double doors into a longer hallway, and that's when I saw it. Behind a gray trash bin, shoved back like it had been hidden on purpose, was a coil of thick copper wire. Cut into lengths, maybe two feet each, a whole pile of it, the ends bright and fresh. Fresh cut, that pinkish shine. Even I knew what copper went for these days, my cousin Ezra sold scrap out of his garage.

"What's the deal with the wire?" I asked, nodding at it.

Thad didn't even break stride. "Leftover from construction. They tear out old wiring in a reno like this, it piles up. Custodial deal with it later."

"It's cut, though. In nice little pieces."

"They cut it to pull it out of the walls." He said it easy, breezy, already walking. "You always this curious about wiring, or am I special?"

"I'm a very curious guy," I said, and let it go. Mostly. The pile bugged me a little, the way it was tucked back there, but listen, I was a guy on a date, not a cop. I figured the man knew his job better than I did.

We ended up near the entrance to the newer wing, a wide corridor with vending machines humming in the dark. Thad leaned against the wall and looked at me again, slower this time.

"You're better looking than your pictures too," he said. "For an old guy."

"Old? I'm forty-four, you jerk. You're what, thirty-nine? That's five years, not five decades."

"Forty-four and mouthy. I can work with that." He pushed off the wall. "So what's your deal, Cade Gallagher? You don't got a wedding ring, you drove three towns over on a weeknight. What's the story?"

"Story is I got out of seven years with a guy in March, and my apartment is too quiet, and I figured a night like this beats sitting on my couch watching other people have lives on TV."

"Seven years, huh. That's a real chunk."

"Yeah, well." I shrugged. "He got a job offer across the country and I didn't want to go, and instead of that being a conversation it turned into a breakup. Your turn. Janitor by night, what else?"

"Delivery truck, before this. Three years at Birch Hill now." He ticked it off on his fingers like a résumé he was bored of. "Got an ex too, everybody's got an ex. Mine took the dog. That's the real tragedy here."

"Nobody takes the dog," I said. "That's a war crime."

"Right? Thank you. Nobody believes me." He laughed, and it was a good laugh, loud in the empty hallway, and I thought, okay, this is fine, this is actually fine, I can do this.

Then somewhere deeper in the building a door went clack, and we both went quiet like a couple of kids. Thad tilted his head, listening.

"That you?" I whispered.

"Nah, that's the HVAC kicking a vent shut. Happens all night. Scared the hell out of me my first month." He relaxed again. "Speaking of, I should probably finish my loop before my boss's boss decides to do a surprise walk-through. Guy named Antonio, he's got it out for me lately, likes to show up unannounced."

"Your boss does walk-throughs at ten at night?"

"Antonio Dahl does his rounds at ten on Tuesdays, believe me." He rolled his eyes. "Anyway. We got a little time. You want to see the rest of the building, or you want to cut to the part where I ask you what you came here for?"

I felt my face go warm. Forty-four years old and blushing in a school hallway. "What I came here for. Wow, subtle."

"Subtle's never been my thing." He was close now, close enough I could see the sweat at his hairline from hauling the buffer around all night. "So? Yes or no, Cade?"

"Yes," I said, a lot faster than I meant to. "Yeah. Yes, obviously."

He smiled and reached past me, and I thought he was going for my belt, but he just grabbed a lanyard off his shoulder and jingled his keys.

"Cool. Cool. Then follow me, and we'll find somewhere with a locked door."

So he led me down the back stairwell of the newer wing, past a couple of dark classrooms, into a corridor that was half renovation, half regular hallway. Plastic sheeting hung from the ceiling on poles like the world's saddest haunted house. And at the end of it, tucked between a fire extinguisher cabinet and a door propped open with a brick, was the janitor's closet.

"Well," I said, looking at it. "Romantic."

"You got a problem with my office?" Thad smirked and got the door open. It was bigger than I expected, actually. Mop sink on one side, wire shelving stacked with paper towels and bottles of bleach, and against the back wall a folding chair and one of those little dorm fridges that hums louder than your whole apartment. It smelled like bleach and floor wax, sharp and clean.

He flicked the light on, a bare fluorescent tube that buzzed, and then he stepped aside and looked at me. "In or out, Cade. That's the door, this is the decision."

"In," I said, and stepped past him into a closet that was somehow warmer than the hallway, and heard the door swing shut and the lock click. A real lock, a deadbolt, the bolt sliding into the frame with a heavy little thunk. That sound did something to my stomach, I'll admit it. A locked door, a quiet building, a guy I'd met twenty minutes ago. Six months of nothing and now this.

Thad set his keys on a shelf and pulled a folding chair down off a hook, spinning it around and sitting on it backward, arms on the backrest, like we were about to play cards. "So. You drove forty minutes."

"I did. Corolla doesn't complain, but yeah."

"And you want to tell me what you're looking for, or do you want me to guess?"

"Why do guys on these apps always want a mission statement?" I laughed, because he was grinning. "Fine. I want to feel like a person again instead of a guy who eats dinner standing at the counter. That's it. That's my whole sad pitch."

"That's not sad. That's just Tuesday." He studied me, and the fluorescent light made his green eyes look almost yellow. "Okay. Me too, basically. No strings, no weirdness after, no showing up at my job with a casserole."

"Wasn't planning on the casserole."

"Good, because I'd eat it and then it'd get complicated." He laughed, and I laughed, and then somehow we weren't laughing anymore, we were just looking at each other across three feet of closet and the air felt thick.

Here's where I did the brave thing, for once in my careful little life. I put my hand on the back of the chair, next to his arm, and I said, "Can I kiss you? Because I've been thinking about it since the vending machines."

"Yeah," he said, and his voice had gone low. "Do that."

So I did. I tilted his chin up with two fingers and kissed him, hard, hungrier than I'd planned, and he made this little sound into my mouth and grabbed a fistful of my shirt and hauled