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just glad Drew had gone into the restaurant ahead of him so he couldn’t see the wood Brad had been pushing. But he’d been hard for the entire lunch, balls so tight they ached.
     
    That was totally gay, and Brad knew it. That pissed him off. It scared him. That wasn’t who he was.
     
    Was it?
     
    That wasn’t who he wanted to be.
     
    But what if he secretly did?
     
    “Damn it!” Brad yelled, bellowed, as he pounded the steering wheel in frustration. “I’m not gay!”
     
    Then he noticed the dashboard clock.
     
    “Shit!” he screamed, well and truly pissed.
     
    It was 4:00 p.m. Lunch had lasted hours, and he’d never noticed. He’d been gone from the office all afternoon. If his dad had dropped by….
     
    Brad gunned the engine. He had to get back to work.
     

     

     
    Brad pulled up outside his house—his dad’s house, really, even though both Sundstrom boys still lived at home—with a feeling of dread curdling in his guts. It wasn’t that Randall Sundstrom was physically abusive, but he sure yelled a lot. Brad was sick of the yelling.
     
    His shoulders slumped, and he got out of the car. He swung the disreputable backpack he still carried over one shoulder and looked at his house, wishing he were anywhere but there. He might as well face the music, but coming hard on the heels of his afternoon, he was so not in the mood for this.
     
    Brad had barely shut the door behind him when he looked up to see Randall standing there waiting for him. “Hi, Randall.”
     
    Randall acknowledged the greeting. “Where were you this afternoon?”
     
    “I’m sorry, I just lost track of time. It won’t happen—”
     
    “I’m tired of your excuses, Bradley,” Randall said calmly.
     
    “Look, I said I was sorry—”
     
    “Sorry doesn’t cut it in the grown-up world, Bradley. You’ve always been feckless. You treat life like a joke. When’re you going to grow up?”
     
    Maybe when you treat me like a grown-up? Brad thought. “What—”
     
    “The sales office was closed all afternoon. That’s simply inexcusable,” Randall said. “Where were you?”
     
    “Meeting with a real estate agent to find out what I could do to make Suburban Graveyard more appealing to his clients,” Brad snapped, voice dripping sarcasm. That was it. He’d had enough. Pushed by his fears and insecurities, he’d hit the limit of what he was willing to swallow. “That not what you were expecting to hear, Dad ? Figured I took the afternoon off to go joyriding or something? Sorry to disappoint you, Dad, but I’m trying to do the job you dumped on me. Besides which, there weren’t any cards stuck in the door when I got back, and no messages on the voice mail.”
     
    Randall stared at him for a moment. “We don’t want Realtors bringing people in, Bradley. You have to share the commission,” he said, emphasizing the you .
     
    But Brad was having none of it. “Right now, there’s no one coming in. So all of nothing is… nothing. You told me I had to do this. If you’re not going to tell me how, then back off.”
     
    “No cards just means no real estate agents, Bradley,” Randall said with exaggerated patience, “it doesn’t mean that no one came by. The people we want don’t leave their business cards in the door. They’re just ordinary people who want to buy a house.”
     
    “Yeah, they’re beating a path to our door, that’s for sure,” Brad said, laughing. “Whole busloads of ’em, all panting to buy one of those horrible houses. Whoever designed those must have a lot of hostility to work out.”
     
    Brad didn’t wait for an answer. He stomped off to his room, ignoring his dad’s demands that he come back. He threw his backpack into a corner of his room and slammed the door behind him. If Randall was true to form, he’d leave Brad alone in his room.
     
    Brad relaxed fractionally now that the door was shut and locked. Whatever else he could say about living at home as a college graduate,