Some Assembly Required Read Online Free

his sudsy fingers from his hair. “The fuck?”
    Tommy darted for the faucet, narrowly missing the boiling stream of water, and then flicked off the tap. He sighed as if he had averted some nature of crisis.
    Patrick scowled. He just wanted a shower. Couldn’t he take one without getting fucked with?
    He clenched his jaw and forced the faucet on again. The hot water flowed once more, and he ducked his head under the stream.
    Tommy shrieked like a child confronted with a terrifying yet completely harmless insect. Perhaps a moth. Patrick had never been particularly fond of them. Tommy lunged forward to shut it off again, but Patrick growled and smacked his hand away in warning. Tommy reeled back as if brushed against by said spooky moth, and Patrick’s vision went fuzzy from the touch.
    They both stopped for a moment as the water ran. Their eyes met, and the suds slid from Patrick’s hair, down his shoulders, and then over his chest. Tommy blinked, his lips pursed in an O as he stared at him.
    Patrick pressed his lips together as Tommy hesitantly reached out, intending to touch him. Patrick gestured to his waist. “Either you’re going to join me, or you’re going to teach customers how to use Allen wrenches. Because this ain’t gonna suck itself.”
    Tommy jerked his hand away, and his lips wiggled into an embarrassed line.
    “Really?” Patrick arched a brow.
    Tommy’s answer came by way of his bolting from the employee lounge.
    Patrick shrugged. “Whatever.”
    Once he was suitably clean, he scored some proper jeans from the Lost and Found. It always amazed him what people left behind at CASA, or what they did to leave them behind. He’d found a prosthetic leg once. The guy probably wouldn’t be getting far on foot after that.
    Tommy had left his locker open. A glaring yellow CASA shirt hung, neatly pressed, with three others. No one pressed their shirts. And no one kept that many spares.
    “D’aw,” Patrick said as he took one of the shirts. “Tommy has a mommy.”
    He pulled it over his head and then adjusted the sleeves. Right length, but a bit too small for him. Tight across the chest, and the sleeves stretched to the limit on his arms. He looked more like a bouncer with a bizarre choice of Halloween costume than an actual cashier. At least it was “proper.” Agnes would be pleased. Dried-up hag.
    Patrick’s mood soured the moment he hit the café floor. The old man was back again, sitting in the corner all alone and lost in thought. The bastard never had anything better to do. He sat there for hours with a plate of meatballs he never ate. In front of him was the latest Wall Street Journal crossword puzzle and a pen. The WSJ crosswords were Patrick’s drug of choice. He noted that the puzzle was blank and the pen new.
    He snorted. “Stop trying to look smart,” he said to the old man as he loomed over him.
    The old man threaded his fingers together, refusing to be cowed by Patrick’s intimidation.
    Patrick stiffened at the sound of a chair scraping the ground. A young guy settled at a nearby table alone, looking much like a lost kitten bewildered by such a big new world. He smiled, bright and genuine, at Patrick. Narrowing his eyes, Patrick gave a little wave in reply. The guy waved eagerly in response.
    He was definitely a cute one, for sure. Even better than the guy in his dream. Maybe this day wasn’t such a wash after all.
    Patrick turned back to the old man and then crouched over him to whisper in his ear. “I’ll deal with you later.”
    He stepped away and crossed the floor to the infinitely more pleasant and definitely doable guy. Uninvited to his table, Patrick took the initiative, spun a chair backward, and straddled it.
    The guy didn’t speak immediately but instead seemed to just be pleased to be in CASA.
    No one ever came to CASA alone. CASA was a purgatory best faced with a quest companion, usually a spouse or next of kin.
    Patrick saw neither a ring nor an indication of