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Lex’s question stops me. “So who’s this kid, anyway?”
I’m holding the door open, a step away from the lobby. A flash of that pretty boy’s eyes. That look of anguish he had, which almost mirrored the wrestler in the very photo that supposedly brought him to my doorstep. The way he made me feel so angry and guilty at the same time.
Despite having no reason in the world to open up to my horny-for-me tenant Lex, I let the words slip right out of my mouth like buttered pasta. “A nineteen-year-old who was almost my client … ‘til I kicked his ass outta my place the other night.”
“Oh? What’d he do?”
“Nothing. He literally did nothing. I just didn’t want him using me to fulfill his fantasies, that’s all.” I say all of this to the floor, then lift my eyes. Lex is listening carefully. “So I sent him away.”
“But obviously you regret it, right?” asks Lex.
I suck my tongue in frustration. I can’t answer. I don’t know what I regret, if anything at all.
Lex shrugs, picks up a pair of sweats off the floor, folds them neatly, then tosses them onto the couch. “Most of this mess is Omar’s, by the way.” He eyes me. “Just in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.”
“And don’t worry about the kid.” He smiles my way. “Cute guys have a way of … re-popping up in Gayville. Just one tiny night on the town, you are sure to run into him.”
I gaze past him at the window, noting the shift in sunlight. Already nearing the evening.
Also, I can’t remember the last time I went out.
That should concern me more than it does.
I squint at Lex. “Re-popping up, huh? Is that your little excuse for always seeming to pop up at Aubergines on the nights Zak works? I gotta say, when I first heard Zak had a stalker situation, my first guess was that it was you.”
Lex’s eyes constrict to deadly needles.
“About time you bury that hatchet, don’t you think? It was months ago. Anyway, thanks for the advice about the kid.” I turn to go.
“I didn’t give you any!” shouts Lex at my back as I close the door behind me, smirking proudly.
5
“Look, man, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t …” I sigh and straighten one of the boob magnets on Brett’s fridge, which was vexingly cockeyed. “… if it wasn’t serious.”
My upstairs tenant Brett, a reformed frat boy who lately is determined not to throw the block-breaking house parties he used to, leans against his kitchen counter. “I’d totally love, love, love to hit the town with you tonight—”
“But?”
“But you know it’s my weekend with Skylar! I mean, last weekend, he had a big family thing, and the whole week before that, I was all tied up with a new sex-toy promotional thing going on down at the bookstore. Tonight we were gonna go out on his side of town—alone—and I planned to crash at his place. We’re still trying to, uh, figure out our whole relationship,” he adds as a quiet aside. “Connor won’t stop giving me advice about it. He’s in the other room.”
I give a glance at the French doors leading into Connor’s bedroom off the kitchen, which used to be a dining room. Unlike the other apartments in my building, Brett’s is a half-renovated mishmash of ideas that were never fully realized. He seems to adore it, blind to its flaws.
“So, I’m real sorry, man,” Brett finishes. “But I’m sure you won’t have a prob finding someone else to go out with tonight, right? I mean, you gotta know a zillion people.”
A zillion people.
Funny he says that. I do know a zillion people. I probably know ten zillion.
But I wouldn’t call a single one of them a friend I would want to go out with on a Friday night.
With business on my mind every hour of the day, I don’t have time anymore to keep friends, not like I used to. All of the contacts in my phone are business associates, clients, and nightclub owners.
I shrug. “Yeah, no biggie. I’m sure I can find somebody. Thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask you, since we already—”
“Work out all the time? Yeah, I know, right? Oh, and I’m sorry we, uh … haven’t even been doing that in a while, either,” Brett puts in. “It’s just that I’ve got so much going on between Skylar’s moving into the city—sorry, and not to mention his newlywed sister, and with my new responsibilities at the bookstore, and—”
I think this is the eleventh apology he’s given me since I stepped foot in here. The dude needs to seriously stop apologizing every five seconds before he starts apologizing for every breath he sucks into his lungs, converts to carbon dioxide, and lets out.
I squint at his fridge, then correct another tilted boob magnet. “Nah, no biggie,” I say in the middle of whatever he’s saying. “No need to worry about it. I’ve been getting my workouts in.”
