“I am, actually.” Jake shoved the phone back in his pocket.
“It’s not the phone’s fault.” Craig slammed on the brakes as the light changed before he was able to speed through the stoplight.
“Try telling that to your brake pads,” Jake mumbled, receiving a grimace from Craig for his trouble.
“You still have me as a friend, baby,” Craig reminded him.
“Yeah, I know, right back at ya.” He sighed, pulling the phone out so he could read the text again. “I really liked him.”
“He really liked you, I think.” Craig started grinning, looking particularly devilish. “In a wanna shove his face in your crotch kinda way.”
“Don’t even go there.”
“You telling me that you didn’t want to go there?” Craig asked. “Why go to the movies with the guy, then?”
“I have a boyfriend, lest you’ve forgotten that fact.”
“I try to forget that fact every day.”
“Why are you so hard on Victor?”
“He’s fine, I suppose.” Craig shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road. “If you’re into that sort of thing.”
“Really?” Jake asked, cringing as Craig weaved in and around several cars. “That’s the best you can do?”
“Look I can’t help it, the man is a bit of snob.”
Jake sighed. “I know he can be a little tough to take at times.”
“A little?” Craig cursed under his breath as he swerved to miss a bike messenger.
“He’s never been anything but nice to you.” No matter how many times he read the text message Jake couldn’t manage to suss out any sort of clue or opening that led him to believe Levi might be open to discussing things further. “Fucking hate texts.”
“Put the phone away and stop obsessing over your wanna-be lover’s text message and try concentrating on the topic at hand—your boyfriend? And I’m pretty sure that where Vic is concerned, you’re confusing tolerance with kindness.”
“There is a nice guy underneath all the… stuff, you know that, right?”
“If you say so.” Craig held up a hand like he was ready to surrender the topic.
“Damn, I knew you weren’t Victor’s biggest fan, but I never knew you truly disliked him.” Jake could tell his partner was a bit embarrassed judging by his uncomfortable looking posture, and the slight flush in his cheeks.
“I’m sorry. And he’s not that bad, never explicitly rude. But whenever I’m around Victor, I can’t shake the feeling he’s counting down the minutes, like I’m a social obligation or something. It’s like he’s made up some arbitrarily appropriate allotment of time in which he feels obligated to spend talking to me and he’s got his eye on the timer, watching that clock just praying for it to be over already.” Craig steered the truck through a short maze of other cars, making a quick left turn as the light was changing. “It’s not just me, either, Jake. Sophia’s noticed it as well.”
“Is this why you guys have begged off going out to dinner with us the last few times?” Jake asked.
“Kinda, we tried to, for you, you know?” Craig glanced at the rear view and passenger side mirrors before switching lanes. “But I seriously can’t with the wine swishing and sniffing—the endlessly boring discussion about the bouquet. Enough already… we get it… you’re like a serious wine-dude but can we drink the shit already and move on to something else?”
“Wine-dude?”
“You know what I mean, and it would be one thing if I felt like he was genuinely excited about the wine, but it feels like he’s a little more excited about showing off.”
“He does get genuinely excited about the wine, but yeah, he also likes to show off a little. But that’s not a horrible thing.” Jake reached up, grabbing the bar above the window as Craig made another sharp turn. “We all know why every T-shirt you own is a size too small.”
Jake pointed at Craig, whose face flushed, visibly embarrassed at being called out over his own vanity.
“You work out a lot and you look good,” Jake said, without judgment. “You want people to see that. Victor has spent a great deal of time and money educating himself about wine and he likes to show that off.”
“I guess you have a point, though I don’t take off my shirt at the dinner table and give everyone a lap dance, that’s all I’m saying.”
“You should totally start!” Jake patted his lap. “Come on, you can practice on me.”
Craig reached over and punched Jake in the arm. “Don’t be a douche. You’re like my brother.”
“But from another mother so it’s all good. Gyrate, baby, gyrate!”
“I’m telling my wife on you.”
“She’ll just laugh and think it’s funny. Then she’ll yell at you for telling me you both hate my boyfriend.”
“We don’t hate him, we just don’t like him. Sophia
really
doesn’t like him for you. Is it a money thing? He’s able to keep you in the style to which you’ve become accustomed, growing up rich and all?”
“Wow, so I’m a materialistic gold digger, now? Thanks for that ringing endorsement.”
“That came out wrong, you know I don’t think you’re a label queen.”
“Where do you come up with this stuff? Label queen?”
He shrugged. “Don’t pretend like it’s not a thing.”
Jake laughed, but decided not to comment further.
“We just want you to be happy, is all I’m sayin’.”
“Preferably with someone you approve of, as opposed to my sugar daddy.”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Craig said, grinning like he was thrilled to have all that off his chest.
“Real nice.”
“So exactly what’s going on with the orgy guy?”
“What do you mean?” Jake asked. “And please stop referring to him as ‘orgy guy’, his name is Levi for fuck’s sake.”
“Touchy. You do realize that you’re getting angrier about my dissing your non-friend than you did your boyfriend?”
“Can we not talk?” Jake asked.
“I know you, Jake, really well—”
“So that’s a no on the whole non-talking idea?” Jake asked, cutting him off.
“—probably better than I’d like to admit,” Craig continued, completely ignoring his pleas for silence, “so don’t pretend as if you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“I tried making a new friend, that’s all. Seemed like I might have a lot in common with Levi.” Jake turned, glancing out the passenger side window, afraid the disappointment over not having Levi be a part of his future might show on his face.
“Like the fact you wanna screw one another’s brains out?”
Jake laughed. “I won’t deny that I find him attractive, but I find you attractive and we’ve never screw—”
“Do
NOT
finish that sentence, I’m begging you.”
“All I’m saying is I find a lot of men attractive but that doesn’t mean I go out and have sex with them. I have a boyfriend who I’ve committed myself to. I’ve never broken that commitment.” Jake decided that Craig seemed altogether unimpressed by that fact.
“Not that the same could be said for him,” Craig muttered.
“It was one time,” Jake said, wishing he’d never confided in Craig. “It was just sex. He slipped up. I wasn’t going to throw our entire relationship away over one indiscretion.”
“You’re a bigger man that I am.”
“And Levi… he’s a really cool guy and I do like him, probably more than I should. If I were single, I’d ask him out, but I don’t see why that fact should mean we can’t be friends.”
Craig shot him a sideways look. “Not sure my wife would agree if it were me and some other chick.”
Jake frowned, but didn’t offer any further justifications on the topic. For one, he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong, even though somewhere deep down he suspected he might be potentially playing with fire, so perhaps not the smartest move ever?
All that being said, since Levi didn’t want to be his friend, none of it fucking mattered.
Jake quickly shoved that thought aside, hoping that Levi would change his mind at some point down the road. Both he and Levi were grown-ups after all, and Jake knew he would never act on any feelings he may or may not have—which eventually would very likely pass anyway, as most of these things usually do when no one acts upon them. On top of that, he felt strongly that Levi wasn’t the kind of man who would get romantically involved with someone who had a boyfriend, any more than he was the kind of boyfriend who would ever cheat on the side.
Knowing all of that to be true, Jake was confident a solid friendship could be forged out of all the chaos. He’d leave it alone for the time being and try again later. That little bit of hope, no matter how fruitless it may have seemed in reality, managed to lift his spirits.
He could feel Craig was still watching him so Jake flipped him off, smiling when his partner started laughing. He was still pissed at the man, but forced all that into the back of his mind. Jake was aware that Victor had changed over the years, hell they both had.
But that was to be expected, right?
They’d been together for nearly nine years. Victor had come into his life when Jake had felt more alone in the world than ever before. He’d lost his grandfather on his dad’s side, who’d been Jake’s favorite person in the entire world. Grandpa Frank had been Jake’s one cheerleader. They never really talked much about the whole gay thing, but he’d said enough that Jake understood he wasn’t going to lose him over it. His grandfather understood him in a way his father never could—Jake’s yearning for a simpler, quieter life—they had that in common.
Jake hadn’t truly felt whole since Grandpa Frank had passed away. Even his relationship with Julia had been strained at times. He was aware that she didn’t understand him, but he knew she loved him as he did her.
His sister wanted him to be happy, and she didn’t judge him for not wanting to be a part of the world their parents had created for them. She also wasn’t ever going to defend him to their parents, which was fine. He understood that, even though it stung a bit for her to forever be the neutral ground on which he and his parents most often fought. Jake didn’t want to be the cause of a rift in his sister’s relationship with their parents, and he knew that her defending him to them would eventually do just that.
For a long time it had been him and Victor against the world—but there were times lately when it seemed like the world they were up against wasn’t the same one. There’d been a gnawing fear deep in the recesses of his mind that he and Victor might want different futures—that they’d been in a holding pattern for several years, standing at a fork in the road, each waiting to see who was going to give in and compromise on the future they each wanted for themselves.
Jake had been at a loss for how to once again reunite those paths.
* * * *
Levi sat at his large, L-shaped desk watching the two-dimensional cubes on his screensaver bounce off the edges of his monitor and one another, mildly mesmerized and wondering if any of them would ever manage to break free, shooting off into cyber space, eventually popping up on some other computer screen in some other part of the world.
Today he felt like those cubes, trapped in a holding pattern, doomed to repeat the same thing over and over—no escape.
“You’ll get a ton of work done that way,” Valerie said from her desk located across the makeshift aisle they’d created with their desks.
“We should have totally had offices put in. We need more walls in this joint.”
“You’re the one who got all weird about not unnecessarily altering the original structure.”
“In all honestly, that was just my nice way of not having to come out and say that I know you’d be napping all day if you had any amount of privacy.”
“Yet here you are, zoning out—probably sleeping with your eyes open, you little freak.”
Levi burst out laughing and chucked a pad of Post-Its at her head.
He missed unfortunately, which was made worse by the fact Valerie hadn’t even attempted to duck, knowing he hadn’t a chance in hell of hitting her. He went back to staring at his screen, deciding to ignore her snark. The truth was, they’d gotten a lot done since he’d come back from the coffee date from hell with Jake.
“That dude was totally into you.” Valerie said.
“Who? Angelo?” Levi asked, wishing he actually gave a damn were that the case.
“Of course not!” He found the look of revulsion on her face amusing.
“Angelo was completely mesmerized by my beauty,” Valerie added. “He’s going to put a baby in me someday.”
Levi’s lip curled as that visual popped into his head and proceeded to make him nauseous. “Angelo is gay, lady, and don’t pretend like you don’t know it.”
He laughed again when the Post-Its beaned him in the head, ricocheting off onto the floor at his feet.
“I was referring to the blue-eyed hottie who took you away and plied you with caffeinated beverages this morning.”
“Ah!” Levi said with an overly dramatic sigh. “The guy with the boyfriend.”
“Even better,” Valerie said. “Love in the afternoon… with no attachments!”
“Ew, I can’t be with him, I mean, ew! How tacky would that be? Cheap and tacky—some sort of holiday season affair? Nothing screams desperation like falling into
any
man’s arms during this time of year.”