You Are the Reason (27 page)

By lunchtime I told myself I was imagining things, and that people weren’t giving me strange glances. My mobile rang, and I grinned as I saw Lee’s name.

“Hi,” I greeted him. “To what do I owe the absolute pleasure of having you ring me in the middle of the day?”

“Shit. I knew I should’ve texted. But I’m on break and I wanted to hear your voice.”

I could feel the happiness stealing over my face. “Don’t worry. You can ring me whenever you want. If I’m with a client, then my phone will go to voice mail, so you’re never interrupting.”

“Oh, good,” he sighed. “Because I wanted to ask you if you were willing to watch a film with me tonight? I’ve been dying to see it, so I ordered it over the Internet. It’s a foreign film, and I can’t find it in Australia. It arrived today, and I need a movie buddy to watch it with me tonight. Do you want to come over?”

I thought of sitting through a movie in the dark with Lee, and it sounded great. But being at his parents’ house could possibly cramp my style. Especially if there were naughty bits in the movie that Lee and I clearly had to prove were possible to recreate.

“Sounds like a great plan. But bring it over to my house, okay? We’ll be much more… comfortable at my house.” I allowed my voice to thicken with promise and was glad to hear Lee’s rapidly indrawn breath on the other end of the phone.

“Okay.” His voice was thready, and I laughed. He was too easy to turn on.

“I’ll be home by six, so anytime after that is fine by me. See you then.”

We said good-bye, and I hung up with a smile on my face. I felt someone at my elbow and looked up to see Eliza there.

“Hi. Wha—”

She cut me off by almost throwing a stack of papers on my desk. Her voice was frozen as she said, “There’s the report you needed.”

I was bewildered as to what had set her off. But I decided to let it go.

Frozen? Let it go?

I was humming the popular tune in my head and made a mental note to stop watching Disney movies as I picked up the report. There were a number of errors in it, so I highlighted the relevant information and stood up to find Eliza. The office was a semi-open plan, with desk groupings behind partitioning. I approached Eliza’s desk, only to see her standing with Callen, the IT guy, Sean, the CEO’s secretary, Beverley, and the two accounts staff, Gwen and Petra. They all stopped talking as I approached, and I got a decided look of loathing from most of them.

I halted a couple of meters from them. There was something going on that I didn’t understand. And I didn’t want to build a fucking snowman, so they were just going to have to tell me the harsh truth instead of slamming doors in my face.

“Okay. What the hell is going on, and what is it that you think I’ve done?” I asked, placing my hands on my hips and challenging them. There was an unholy gleam of mischief in Callen’s eyes that I knew would mean the shitstorm would follow the snowstorm.

They were all silent, but there were a few looks of guilt. I began putting one and one together and took a wild stab at the cause of their revulsion.

“Okay, does this have anything to do with the rumor about the after-hours activities that supposedly happened? Because if any of you are pointing the finger my way, then you’re fishing in the wrong pond. It wasn’t me.”

Gwen was a rather outspoken woman and had no problem speaking her mind. “Of course, if it
was
you, you wouldn’t be telling people, right?”

I crossed my arms defensively across my body. “C’mon, guys. You’ve known me for ages. I don’t do stuff like that. And who exactly was it I was supposedly caught with?”

I had the wild thought that someone had found out I was gay and the rumor was that it was me with our boss, Joseph Cunningham. I internally winced at the thought. The man was old enough to be my grandfather—well, nearly.

No one answered my question, although there were some guilty looks at the floor. I tried reasoning with them. “I would definitely check your sources before you start passing on gossip.” I had a big suspicion about who had started the rumor. “I’ve been here three years now. Think about who told you this gossip and whether you trust them to be telling the truth.” As I hoped, there were some thoughtful frowns.

I handed Eliza the report and was prepared to go back to my desk, when she burst out, “It has to be you, because you’ve been so happy lately. We’ve all noticed, and we thought you had a girlfriend who….”

She trailed off and Petra took up the story. “And Kendall has been all happy and secretive lately too. So we thought…. And then last night….”

I could feel the look of shock cross my face as I said incredulously, “Hang on, hang on. Me and
Kendall
? You guys can’t be serious.”

Eliza and Petra rushed to give me their evidence, cutting off each other’s sentences.

“But you’ve been so happy and giddy lately—”

“And Kendall’s had a crush on you for ages—”

“And then she started acting all—”

“And then Callen told us that he heard someone was caught—”

“And Callen said you were flirting with someone over texts—”

“And Kendall gets texts all the time—”

“So we knew it had to be you—”

“But then Eliza just heard you inviting another woman over to your house tonight—”

“And that’s the meanest thing we’ve ever heard—”

“Because Kendall’s going to be heartbroken—”

“Especially since it’s the night after….”

They petered into silence, which was rather a good thing because they were in a world of shit already, and digging themselves in deeper. I took stock of the situation and noted down the looks of their faces. Callen’s face was smug, but Gwen and Beverley were looking as if they were doubting the whole story now. A whole set of circumstantial evidence and not much truth in it at all. The only reason I didn’t blow up right then was because I knew Eliza and Petra. They were genuine and not malicious at all.

“Whoa. So you’re telling me that just because Kendall has a crush on me, and that I send someone texts, suddenly you’ve created a whole relationship that has ended with me two-timing someone I wasn’t even dating?”

Okay, so I got a little loud there at the end, and I saw some of the other office staff perk up their ears.

Eliza tried to defend herself. “But Callen said—”

I talked over her. “
Callen said
? Right. So just because Callen said, it’s true?”

The tide turned a bit then, and I saw Beverley throw a questioning look the weasel’s way. He saw it and took a step back, ready to turn tail if things didn’t go his way. Other staff members had begun to join the group from other parts of the office. I saw the office door of the HR manager open and Michelle’s head pop out.

Great. Now they’ll all get to witness his lies.

I pressed home my point, angry that I had been judged without a trial. “So
Callen said
and you just believed without even asking me or Kendall the truth? You just assumed that we were dating, without confirming facts? Just because
Callen said
?”

I could see Callen backpedaling madly. He realized he was about to be found out and began frantically smoothing cracks in his story. “Hey, I didn’t say you and Kendall were dating. I simply said that you were acting coy over some text messages, and I thought you had a secret girlfriend.”

“I don’t have a secret girlfriend,” I hissed at him angrily. “And it’s no business of yours.”

“Hey, there’s no shame in having a girlfriend on the sly, Dave. We all do it.”

My jaw dropped open. “You’re an arsehole. Keep your nose out of my life.” Yeah, I was definitely beginning to shout.

Frank Liddle approached. “Come now, guys. What’s going on here?”

I looked around and realized, for the first time, how big our audience had grown. “Lies and rumors, spread by a filthy mouth,” I growled, glaring in Callen’s direction. I wanted to wipe that smug look off his face.

He held up his hands in a placating gesture, but it was too late. He’d roused the sleeping giant now.

“No lies,” he spluttered. “I simply said you were flirting with a girlfriend on the phone yesterday.”

The lid blew off my temper because it was obvious that that was
not
all that he’d said. He’d said a lot of other stuff about Kendall and office sex to get this rumor rolling. And with no thought to how this was blackening poor Kendall’s name. Not to mention that it was none of his fucking business. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Eliza rushed to his defense, probably hoping that Callen’s story was true, since she’d helped spread the gossip. “Yes, you do. I just heard you making a date for tonight.”

That was it. I was wildly angry. The story needed to be set straight, once and for all. I threw up my hands and shouted, “That wasn’t my girlfriend. That was my boyfriend. I’m gay. So how the hell Callen thinks that I’m banging the office receptionist, I don’t know. Because it’s never happened. It’s never going to happen. And he can put a cork in that big mouth of his before I shut it permanently using my fist.”

To say you could’ve heard a pin drop was the understatement of the century. But I wasn’t sorry. I would never be sorry about being gay again. And I could never, ever be ashamed of dating Lee.

If there were people in the office who thought a gay man could never work in an engineering environment, I had proven them wrong. I had been there for three years, and they’d seen how good I was. I was better than average—constantly bringing in the sales needed and doing a fantastic job, if I did say so myself.

Besides. Being gay? I knew the law. They couldn’t fire me for it.

I waited for someone to speak, to respond, to do anything. In the end, the spell was broken from the most unlikely of places.

“You have a boyfriend?” We all turned as one to see Kendall standing behind Michelle. Her face lit up with enthusiasm. “Cool. How come you didn’t tell us about him? How long have you been together?”

I blinked and tried to process it. Where was the “I can’t believe you’re gay”?

What about the disbelieving “You can’t be gay”?

Or the homophobic step back and
You should’ve told me you were gay. How many times have you seen my dick at the urinal, and I didn’t realize you were perving on me?

Instead I got a
How come you never told us you had a boyfriend?

I unglued my tongue to answer her. “About four weeks.”

Kendall smiled. “Ha. I knew it. I told Eliza that you had a secret lover. You’ve been all smiley and sappy over someone.”

To my utmost embarrassment, I felt my cheeks flare. Make insulting and mocking comments about me being gay, and I get angry. Tell me I act sappy over my boyfriend, and I blush like a schoolgirl.

“Yes, well….”

Michelle finally pushed forward and stood between me and Callen, who I noticed had retreated further behind the crowd, with a malevolent glare.

“I don’t like what I’m hearing over here. This sounds all unprofessional and bordering on harassment. Dave, I’d like you to go and take a seat in Frank’s office. Please don’t talk to anyone, and I’ll be there in two minutes.” I was about to open my mouth and demand to know the reason why. If she was going to mention the G-A-Y word, I was going to throw a tantrum that would make Elsa’s ice castle look like a miniature.

And I
really
needed to stop watching Disney.

But before I could protest, Michelle turned her head and continued speaking. “Callen? I need you to go and sit in Nick’s office, please. Eliza? There’s a seat outside my office with your name on it.” Eliza looked close to tears, and I felt for her. Michelle turned to our managers. “Nick and Frank, I believe we need a quick word in my office?”

I nodded my understanding to Michelle, entered Frank’s office, and took a seat on the chair facing his desk. I wasn’t sure if I was in trouble or not. I had used language unbecoming, but Callen deserved it. I didn’t think Michelle would be homophobic, but Frank was an unknown to me. If he had a problem with my sexual orientation, he could possibly use this incident to push me toward getting fired.

My phone was still in my pocket, and without even thinking about it, I pulled up the message function and typed a quick message to Lee.
Fuck. Just outed myself at work. Waiting for the fallout.

I watched as the message left and I wished I had my magic oracle to tell me the future. I’d stumbled across an online Magic 8 Ball once, so I googled it and typed in my message.

Will I be in trouble?

It is certain.

With a roll of my eyes and a sinking feeling in my stomach, I went to place the phone back in my pocket, but it dinged with a message.

OMG. Are you okay? Call me? What happened? Do you need me to strap someone to the dentist’s chair and use the drill on them?

I smiled and suddenly realized Kendall was right. A message from Lee, even though I was in knee-high shit, made me smile sappily. For weeks, Kendall had said. Obviously my smile had known something that my brain hadn’t caught up on since I’d only decided in the past week that I was going to date Lee
proudly
.

I replied.
In the principal’s office, waiting for them to come. I had an argument in the middle of the office, which ended in me shouting I’M GAY.
I added an angry face emoticon and the one with his tongue sticking out, so he knew I wasn’t seriously upset.

With Lee, you could always guarantee his texts had an element of sex to them. He didn’t disappoint.

Principal’s office? Waiting for them to come? Oh, you have all the fun.

I groaned that he’d managed to make that innocent sentence so dirty, but I heard footsteps. I quickly put my phone away as Frank, Michelle, and Nick entered the office and shut the door. I straightened my shoulders and vowed to be truthful—about the events and my own failures in the situation.

Surprisingly to me, Michelle led the interview. She asked for my version of events, and I told her about the previous day’s altercation in the break room, and then about the confrontation in the middle of the office, which they had caught the tail end of. They asked questions but never brought up the G-A-Y word until Michelle finally said, “And did Callen know before today that you were gay?”