Spencer Cohen Series, Book One (The Spencer Cohen Series 1)

THE SPENCER COHEN SERIES

BOOK ONE

By

N.R. Walker

Cover Artist: Sara York

Editor: DJ Mack

Proofreaders: BM Edits and Jay Northcote

Spencer Cohen Series © 2016 N.R. Walker

Publisher: BlueHeart Press

All Rights Reserved:

This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or business establishments, events or locales is coincidental.

The Licensed Art Material is being used for illustrative purposes only.

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Warning

Intended for an 18+ audience only. This book contains material that maybe offensive to some and is intended for a mature, adult audience. It contains graphic language, explicit sexual content, and adult situations.

The author uses Australian English spelling and grammar.

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

DreamWorks: DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc.,

Google: Google, Inc.

iPod: Apple Inc.

Facebook: Facebook, Inc.

Grindr: Grindr LLC

Clorox: The Clorox Company

Honda: Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

EpiPen: Mylan, Inc.

Tylenol: McNeil Consumer Healthcare Division of McNEIL-PPC, Inc.,

Advil: Wyeth LLC.

A Clockwork Orange: 1971, Warner Bros.

Blade Runner: 1982, Warner Bros.

How to Train Your Dragon: DreamWorks Animation, Paramount Pictures.

How to Train Your Dragon 2: DreamWorks Animation, Paramount Pictures.

Shrek: DreamWorks Animation, DreamWorks Pictures.

Kung Fu Panda: DreamWorks Animation, Paramount Pictures.

Wizard of Oz: 1939, Metro-Goldwin-Mayer.

Frankenstein: 1931, Universal Pictures.

Fight Club: 1999, 20
th
Century Fox.

To Kill a Mockingbird: 1960, Harper Lee.

Fujifilm: Fujifilm Holdings Corporation

Ray Charles: The Ray Charles Foundation

Jeff Buckley: Jeff Buckley Music Inc.,

Nina Simone: The Estate of Nina Simone.

Bill Withers: Still Bill Productions

Miles Davis: Miles Davis Properties, LLC

Percy Sledge: Atlantic Records.

Aretha Franklin: Aretha Franklin, Sony Music Entertainment.

Led Zeppelin: LED ZEPPELIN

Evel Knievel: EVEL KNIEVEL

Family Feud: FremantleMedia North America, Inc.

Hallelujah
: Written by Leonard Cohen, performed by Jeff Buckley. Columbia Records.

Moonlight Sonata
: Written by Ludwig Van Beethoven.

This series is dedicated to every
Spencer
out there: for those who have lost everything but still have hope, for those too afraid to love again but crave it all the same, for those who have been through hell yet are still strong enough to smile, and for those who wear their scars inked into their skin.

I walked out of the tattoo shop on Abbot Kinney Boulevard and smiled into the warm LA afternoon sun. My last job had paid well, so I’d just put two month’s rent in my landlord’s hand for the small apartment above the shop that I’d called home since I’d arrived from Australia two years ago.

I loved this place. Los freakin’ Angeles. I fit in here. I found the one place where I could be me, where I belonged. There was always bustling, always something doing. A million strangers, yet I’d come to know the locals and some of them even called me by name.

“Hey, Spencer!”

Lola waved at me from a table at the back of the coffee shop. She looked gorgeous, as always. Her usual 50s style rock-and-roll dress and her bright pink hair matched the Japanese blossom tattooed down her arm. She was my best friend and had lined up my next prospective client.

I kissed her cheek. “Hey beautiful.”

She beamed a pale pink lip gloss smile up at me, and I sat down at the table. We ordered our usual drinks, and as we waited for them to arrive, I prompted the conversation. “So, tell me about this guy.”

“Well,” she started, “I met his sister at a job just this last weekend.”

“The wedding?” I asked. “How’d it go?” Lola ran her own makeup styling business and weddings were just one of her specialties.

Our drinks arrived. Lola sipped her coffee and I let my tea brew a little longer. “Oh, it went just fine,” she said, putting her cup back down on the table. “Anyway, the sister was a bridesmaid, and we got to talking. Her brother’s just broken up with his fiancé, and she mentioned that he was trying to get him back.”

I smiled.

“So I told her I know a guy,” Lola said, looking pointedly at me, “who just might be able to help him with that.”

“He’s gay?” I asked. She said
he
was trying to get
him
back, but I wanted to be sure.

“Sure is.”

I sighed, a little relieved. I had no problem working with straight clients, but batting for my own team was my preferred choice. Especially when public displays of affection were required, sidling up to a stubbled jaw was more my thing than a sweetly perfumed, soft-skinned one.

“What else do you know about him?”

“Just that his sister said he was devastated and probably wouldn’t want anything to do with this, but that they’d be here at three.” I looked at my watch. It was right on three. Lola patted my hand on the table. “Oh, here they are now.”

I looked up at who was walking in. The woman was first, with blondish shoulder length hair, pale skin and a wide smile. She was a beautiful woman. The guy behind her had short sandy-blond hair, and palish skin. He was cute too, in a
normal guy
kind of way. He also looked like he’d rather be anywhere else but here.

Lola and I both stood up, and Lola waved them over. “Sarah, so nice to see you again!”

“You too!” Sarah said. She looked right at me and grinned. “I’m Sarah, and this is my brother, Andrew Landon.” She turned to her brother, which of course made both Lola and I look at her brother, and there was Andrew staring at me.

I was used to this.

I didn’t exactly fit the “well-adjusted into society” mould. I had a white button-down shirt on with the sleeves rolled up to my elbows, which meant he could see my arms. My full-sleeved tattooed arms. I wore three-quarter brown dress pants and suspenders, loafers, and my hair was shaved at the sides and kinda long on top, and I had a bit of a beard happening. Lola had called my look “lumbersexual hipster” once, and it wasn’t until I got home and googled it that I agreed with her. Though I kept my beard short, but it was a beard nonetheless.

“Um, I think this was a mistake,” Andrew mumbled and he turned to leave.

Sarah grabbed his arm before he could walk away. “You said you’d hear them out.” Andrew stopped and took a deep breath, and although it was clearly not where he wanted to be, he stayed.

I smiled at him. “Take a seat. Let me get you a drink. Coffee?”

Sarah sat down with a tentative, apologetic smile, and waited for her brother to do the same. Andrew sat with a barely contained sigh and forced a somewhat appeased look onto his face. “So, I’m the loser who needs help getting my fiancé back.”

I looked at him for a long moment. “No, you have a loser of an ex, who needs reminding of what he’s missing.”

This must have caught him by surprise. He tilted his head, opened his mouth to say something but promptly snapped it shut. Sarah spoke instead. “We’ll just give you boys a minute, okay?” She eyeballed her brother in a be-nice-or-else kinda way, before giving Lola a nod toward the service counter.

When it was just me and Andrew, I leaned back in my chair, smiled and said nothing. I wanted to see how long it would take him to talk. He crossed his arms, then uncrossed them, then shook his head. It wasn’t even fifteen seconds. “Look, I don’t know how these things work.”

“It’s easy,” I told him. “You tell me everything you know about your ex. Where he works, where he hangs out, where he shops. We just happen to be there, bein’ all close and whatnot, and make sure he sees us.”

“And?”

“And you find out if he wants you back or not.”

Andrew frowned at the window that fronted the street and folded his arms. He was silent for nine seconds before he added, “He’ll never believe I’m with a guy like you.”

“Like me?” I questioned.

“Yes, you’re… cool and… hip. And I’m… not.”

“I can be anyone you need me to be,” I said.

“Do you really pretend to be someone’s boyfriend for a living?”

“Yes I do.”

“Your accent, are you Australian?”

“Yes I am.”

“How did you start out doing this?” he asked. “I mean, it’s not exactly a job I’d imagine is advertised.”

I nodded toward Lola. “I’d been here in LA for all of a week when I met Lola. She’d just broken up with her guy, and I took her out for coffee. He saw us, thought I was her new boyfriend. He turned into a sappy puddle of goo on the footpath, and my work was done. She joked that it worked so well, I should do it for a living,” I told him.

Andrew’s brow furrowed. “With her? You worked with women?”

I smiled at him. “I work for whoever pays. But yes, I started out as the ‘straight’ boyfriend. But then same-sex marriages were a thing, and as a gay man, it was a natural progression for me.”

“Are you really gay? Or is it part of the act?”

Fair question, which I had no problems in answering. I leaned in so not everyone in the café could hear. “I’m gay. I like men. I like the feel of stubble. I like hard muscles, not soft feminine skin. I love dick. I like sucking it and being fucked by it, but most of all, I love arse. So yes, I’m gay. Queer as a three-dollar bill.”

His mouth fell open and he blinked a few times, shocked at my bluntness. If we were going to do this, he’d get used to it. “I um, I uh…”

“What’s your ex’s name?”

“Um. Eli.”

“How long were you together?”

“Eight months.”

“How long ago did he leave?”

His voice was so quiet I barely heard him. “A month ago.”

I gave him a moment. He was obviously still hurting. “Are you out? I mean at work, friends, family? Do they know you’re gay?”

His eyebrows knitted together and a hint of offence sparked in his eyes. “Yes.”

“I only ask because if we do this, I’ll have to get to know you pretty well, and there’ll be some times where we need to be close in public. Like I might hold your hand, lean in close and talk into your ear, that kind of thing, so Eli can see us being all friendly. For this to work, you need to be comfortable with that. You also need to reciprocate it, so it looks authentic. Can you do that?”

Andrew swallowed hard and shrugged one shoulder. “Um…”

“Andrew, do you want to do this?” I asked him outright. He looked up at the ceiling and puffed out his cheeks as he exhaled, but didn’t answer. So I rephrased my question. “Do you want to get Eli back?”

Andrew’s gaze darted to mine, and he seemed embarrassed to answer. “Yeah.”

I held out my hand for him to shake, which he looked at for a second before he took my hand in his. His strong grip surprised me. “Then let’s do this,” I said with a grin. I let go of his hand and sat back in my seat. “Okay, first things first. Tell me everything I need to know about you.”

Andrew glanced at his sister. “I um, do we have to do this here?”  Obviously he didn’t really want to go into details in front of his sister in the middle of a café on a busy Friday afternoon. I didn’t exactly blame him. Just when I thought this whole agreement might be like pulling teeth, and therefore a mistake, he suggested I meet him at his place the next day.

“Perfect,” I agreed. “I’ll bring lunch. What’s your favourite?”

“My favourite what?”

I almost laughed. “Your favourite thing to have for lunch.”

“Oh.” He blinked in surprise. He paused, then shook his head. “I’m not fussy.”

“You were going to say something but stopped,” I said. “Tell me.”

He hesitated. “Well, there’s a deli not far from where I live. They make these—” He put his hands out to show me the size of a basketball. “—antipasto salads.”

“Okay then,” I said with a smile. “Antipasto salads it is. I’ll pick some up on my way.”

“I can call them ahead of time if you want,” he said, then cleared his throat. “If that’s okay. I can text you the address.”

“Perfect. Make it for twelve thirty.”

Andrew nodded and gave me a half smile, and this job was officially moving forward. Figuring it was as good a time as any, we talked about the contract agreement, and I told him my payment terms and conditions—half up front, half at the conclusion, and whilst I guaranteed an outcome, I could never guarantee it would be the outcome he wanted. We exchanged addresses, emails, and phone numbers, shook hands again, and I promised to see him tomorrow.

Lola watched them leave, then took her seat next to me again and nudged me with her elbow. “He’s cute.”

“He’s heartbroken,” I amended.

She sighed dramatically. “His sister’s really nice.”

“Did she say anything?” I asked. “About Andrew or his ex.”

Lola shook her head. “Not really. She talked about the wedding last weekend, mostly. It’s pretty obvious that she loves her brother though. Everything else you’re gonna have to find out on your own.” She waggled her eyebrows at me.

I laughed at her. “Starting tomorrow, that’s exactly what I plan on doing.”