Midnight sun

6 | Dylan

A loud crash and clang is not what I want to hear on a Monday morning. I roll my chair back from the blueprints, grab my hard hat and jump out of the trailer. I walk around the corner of the huge cinderblock foundation and stop in my tracks.

Lawrence, the electrician, stands with his foot on the length of a pipe from the bundle that had crashed to the ground. I look up and see Noah Summerville with that deer-in-the-headlights look on his face.

Hands clenched into fists, I walk over then pick up a nearby rock and stick it under the pipes to keep them from rolling further. "We're already two weeks behind. I've got supply delays, they forecast snow in ten days and now this."

"Morning boss," Lawrence greets me with a casual smile knowing very well that greeting wasn't likely to smooth my feathers. "Just a little hiccup, nothing to worry about."

It's not the first time that members of my team are covering each other when they screw something up. But they rarely screw up. It's been the third time in the last week that they are covering for Noah Summerville, my newest employee.

I walk to the other side of the structure and start to shift the trolley so they could stack the pipes back onto it. Noah approaches, wiping his hand over his dirty cheek, looking like he was chewing on something sour. He mutters something that sounds a lot like sorry, bends down to help other men pick up the heavy pipes. Within several minutes they have pipes cleaned up, and Noah goes back to his work on the porch.

Swearing under my breath, I stalk back to the trailer and catch myself looking back at the porch in the making. I see Noah before I see anything else. With all the physical activity needed to get the job done, guys usually lose their jackets and work in their long-sleeved shirts or T-shirts and today is warm enough for Noah to be working in only his black company T-shirt. He lets the shovel that he is holding drop onto the soil and lifts the hem of his T-shirt to wipe his forehead, giving me a very good view of his abs. He is on the skinnier side but lean with wide shoulders, defined arms and narrow waist. His biceps bulge beautifully and there are a few small intricate tattoos that go down his right arm and his hand. A happy trail of dark hair runs from his navel to disappear underneath his waistband.

I immediately suppress my first response, a very physical one, to Noah's body. Fuck. I better not stay or someone will catch me ogling and that wouldn't be good. To take my mind off inappropriate thoughts, I remind myself that I still have manifests to go through and section reports to review.

Hours later, work's done for the day and I walk through my house door. I toe off my work boots, then I shrug out of my coat and hang it up before I head to the living room-slash-kitchen-slash-soon to the dining room where the pile of boards and a big toolbox sits in the corner.

The house is quiet like it always is. Being alone hasn't bothered me in a long, long time and I prefer it, to be honest. But sometimes, late at night, being alone morphs into loneliness. Soul-scratching, painful loneliness.

I open my fridge and instead of much-needed food, I grab a bottle of beer and head to the unfinished part of my open-plan home. My home. I built this place almost entirely by myself, and it's still a work in progress. Sometimes it is just a board put into place and nailed and then I'd go to bed. Sometimes I get a little carried away and I look up finally and see the sunrise. Running my hand over the dining table in the making, I sigh and wonder again about the reason why I'm doing this. I could go back to Anchorage and live with my old man–the house where I grew up with him and my Mom will eventually be mine anyway. Or I could rent a room, I could find it cheap around here.

After what happened with Tom I needed something to hold on to, a reason to keep going. Relationships are a no-go so all I do is work.

Which brings me back to Noah Summerville and that clean-shaven face of his with those movie-star dimples. He has a face that should be plastered on some magazine for the whole world to see and admire, not hiding it here in the middle of nowhere. We don't get people like that often around here.

And he doesn't fit in. Especially not at work. With his inexperience he also risked slowing down my job, which proved to be the case today and I couldn't have any more deadlines pushed back. He is slow and struggling to keep up. I had to assign Gonzales to work alongside him to finish the porch. But it's not his knowledge or ability that's making him slow. I wouldn't mind that, different people progress at different paces. He just doesn't care. He is not trying enough. It's like his mind is somewhere else. And that's not acceptable in the dark, frigid days that defined an Alaskan winter.

I can't be the one to babysit him around the construction site all day anymore, because the more time I spend around him the more I'm getting these stupid ideas that make my dick hard. Like now.

I finish my beer and decide to give up on working tonight. I'm too exhausted and wired up, like there is a strange hum in my body that won't still. Maybe a shower will help.

But once I'm standing in my bathroom naked, Noah Summerville pops up into my tired mind again.

I wasn't particularly vain but I was damn observant, and I'd caught those eyes looking in my direction more than once. He could be gay, but what are the odds of that? Maybe some of it was because he was scared of me, maybe the guy was simply curious.

I sigh, dragging a hand through my messy blond waves, trying to bring order to the ever-growing chaos. My Norwegian mother, god rest her soul, always used to say I have the prettiest hair she's ever seen. Too bad it's usually slightly sweat-slicked or grimy with grease from work, making me look even older and more tired than I am. And the beard, I don't even bother shaving anymore. Long gone are the days when I cared about my looks, it's not like anyone will mind if my beard is longer and it looks unkempt.

That's why I surprise myself when I reach for the drawer and pull out my long forgotten electric shaver. I trim most of it, leaving it very closely trimmed which simulates just about three days of stubble.

Will Noah notice the difference? Will he like it?

I curse silently, squeeze my growing hard-on at the base in hopes that it goes away and jump under the hot spray of my shower. But something is changing inside of me. There is a shift. An awakening. A small, flickering flame I thought was extinguished a long time ago.

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