Thai- Troubled

by Heather Mar-Gerrison

  Trying my best to cry quietly, which I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty shit at, I did my best to freshen my breath with some toothpaste, then I borrowed some deodorant and got dressed. I had to get out of there before Thai woke up. I didn’t want him to see that I was upset – I had no idea how to explain the way I was feeling. I’d had the best time of my life with him last night and part of me felt as if I was falling for him. While we were making love, I’d felt something. I didn’t know how to explain it even to myself, but I had a feeling that we’d somehow connected spiritually or something – but that was just stupid, nobody fell in love that easily…

  Chapter 7 – Regrets…

  Thai

  I got to work the next evening, feeling as though everyone knew that things had changed for me. Of course, they had absolutely no idea. How could they possibly know? Love didn’t show itself on your face unless you were with the guy, did it?

  Buzz was the first one I encountered. He grinned at me as I walked into the bar, “Hello, hello.” He said, “Someone’s glowing. What happened? Did you get laid last night?”

  My jaw dropped, “What?” I squeaked. I know – totally mortifying… How the fuck did he know?

  Buzz laughed but then his grin faded as he saw that I was absolutely mortified that he’d guessed my guilty secret, “Everything okay, bro’?” he asked.

  I shook my head, “Not really – things are a bit complicated – a lot complicated, actually.”

  He frowned, “In what way?” he asked, “what’s going on?” His eyebrows raised as he realised something, “Oh, wow,” he nodded, “It’s Franz’s mate, isn’t it?”

  Fuck. How the hell did everyone know? We’d been together once! River and Jodie had their affair going for weeks undetected… I nodded, “Yeah.” I admitted with a sigh, “He’s really special to me, man.”

  “And what about the unusual home set-up?” he asked.

  I frowned. What the fuck was he on about? “Mine?” I asked, “Or his?”

  He shrugged, looking bewildered, “Uh, both?” he asked.

  I shook my head, “My Dad will likely kill me for falling for someone. It’s completely fucking up his plans for me.” Plans I was never going to go along with but still…

  “And what about Quentin’s set up?” Buzz probed.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. I wasn’t about to pretend to understand what was going on with Quentin and the old guy but they had to have some sort of a relationship going on… “Things have changed for Quentin.” I said quietly, “The guy who owns the house – and who looks after him – is really ill. He’s dying, Buzz…”

  “Fuck.” Buzz muttered, rubbing his hand over his short hair and beginning to look almost as stressed out as I felt, “This is heavy stuff.”

  I rolled my eyes, “Yeah,” I agreed, “Tell me about it…”

  “So, what are you gonna do?”

  I shrugged, “Well, Ken – that’s Arthur’s PA, is gonna come and find me sooner or later – and I’ve gotta go talk to the old guy. He wants to see me, apparently.”

  Buzz let out a long, low whistle, “Rather you than me.” He said, squeezing my shoulder and making to get up. “It was hard enough meeting Franz’s family…”

  “Arthur isn’t even family – I think Quentin loves him – he’s conflicted at the moment…” I bit my lip. Was it wise to share this with Buzz? Well, fuck it – I had to get it out. I had to tell someone – if only to stop myself from going over it in my mind every couple of minutes. “He was crying in the bathroom this morning. I heard him.” I blurted out. I’d felt awful being able to hear him and not able to do anything about it because I knew I was just going to make it worse. We’d made love all night and then he’d crept out this morning after breaking his heart over what had happened between us, without even whispering a goodbye. He’d sounded so cut up about it that I’d just wanted to hug him better but I’d also figured that I was part of what was tearing him apart. Jeez. Why was life so damned hard? “I didn’t know what to do, so I pretended to still be asleep to make it easier for him to sneak off.”

  Buzz nodded, “Good call.” He said, “He’ll come around, mate – like you said, he’s probably feeling guilty for wanting to be with you.”

  I sighed, “You’re probably right. Christ, why does everything have to be so damned difficult?”

  Buzz grinned, “Because that’s what makes us human – makes us realise we’re alive and have feelings.” He said, “We’re all going in to see Seth later, dude – want to come along?”

  I rubbed my face. To be honest, it was the last thing I wanted to do. Seth being in the hospital after his horrific accident was just another layer of added stress and horror that I seriously didn’t need but he was a friend and I had to support him. “Yeah,” I agreed. It was only fair. The guys at Studs and Steel were like a family – and a damn sight better one than I’d grown up with. “I’ll come along – I might be a little late, though.” I really wanted to see if I could find Quentin first…

  Chapter 8 – Looking back…

  Quentin

  I got home. I felt terrible. I’d cheated on Arthur – and then I’d crept away in shame... Well, of course I hadn’t cheated on Arthur, not really – because we’d never been in any sort of a relationship. I’d done what he’d been trying to tell me to do for years – to go and find a nice young man to have a life with. I’d just never wanted to before. Well, not really…

  I stared out of the window just like I had for the last five years of my life. Only this time I didn’t feel secure and happy in the knowledge that I was cared for and that I had a home for as long as I needed it. Because that was now in question.

  Arthur was dying – and I was, for all intents and purposes, just a glorified lodger.

  We had no real relationship to speak of. I wasn’t his partner. He’d never made me any promises of commitment. I’d been nothing more than a pet to him really…

  It was time I woke up and smelled the coffee. I had to move on. I had to find a home and fast. I needed to start applying for student loans but I had no idea how to even do that. Maybe I could ask Franz and Buzz for some help but I hated to intrude – and I really didn’t want to run to Thai about it, since I felt that I’d been less than honest with him about my life – and I’d run out on him after sleeping with him, too… He’d never want to speak to me again. Fuck. My heart ached, I’d totally fucked things up with him.

  I reached for my binoculars and trained them onto Thai’s house. It really was the smartest little townhouse on the main road down the hill.

  I remembered the first time I’d ever seen him. It was a couple of years ago now – and it was after my seventeenth birthday, when Arthur had bought me my expensive and beautiful binoculars. Being an artist and keen on wildlife, he’d thoughtfully bought them for me along with my absolute favourite possession – my camera.

  I’d started out watching the badgers that came out at night. Arthur lived in a massive house, with extensive grounds. It was approximately a mile from the main road to the front door, down a winding country lane surrounded by woodland.

  I’d then noticed the foxes, the odd stoat, rats and of course the grey squirrels. I was in my element watching out of my bedroom window. It was only when a large number of trees had been heavily pruned, and quite a fair number removed, that I noticed the group of town houses that I’d never been able to see before. Now I had something else to look at.

  It wasn’t a conscious effort to spy on anyone – it was just that one person who’d caught my eye – and fast became the object of my obsession…

  I watched, fascinated, as the garage door lifted and that amazing car edged out slowly, just as it did almost every evening at this time.

  Yes, it could be deemed as a little creepy that I was watching from my bedroom window, through a pair of binoculars but to be fair, apart from my two private tutors who came to visit me daily to help me study, it was my only link with the real world and I refused to believe that I was a
stalker. I wasn’t a stalker. I was just lonely and in my more fanciful moments I thought of myself as more or less a prisoner – and in my own home, too...

  At first, I had no idea who the guy was that drove out of that garage at around seven pm every Tuesday through to Saturday, but that was before I started university and met Franz and the rest of the guys he lived with – and went with them to the Studs and Steel nightclub.

  The first thing I noticed that very first night was the Porsche car, crouching next to a Fiat 500 and looking like a big, black, shiny beast. My dick instantly twitched and my heart jumped in my chest. It was the same car. I recognised the number plate. Fuck.

  I wondered what the guy looked like up close and personal. He had an amazing physique – that much I could tell over the distance through my binoculars but I couldn’t make out his face clearly over the distance – the light always seemed to just catch in the wrong place on the windscreen so I’d never really got a good look at the driver. I knew it was a guy because I’d seen him return and have to get out of the car a couple of times when his garage door refused to open for him.

  He was tall. I’d guessed that he was dark-haired – it was always after hours when he returned – and I imagined he was utterly beautiful... Well, the chances were that he was stunning now that I knew where he worked. Franz had gone on at length at how beautiful all of the staff at Studs were – the bouncer being the object of his ultimate desire...

  He wasn’t wrong. The bouncer was, indeed, easy on the eye, although he wasn’t really my type. The guy behind the relatively small bar for the popularity of the place was better looking, but he was straight and quite clearly in love with his girlfriend.

  The dancers... Wow. They were all stunning in their own way but the one that stood out for me was the tall, muscular and always scantily dressed, Thai.

  Thai; it was a fitting name. He definitely had a slightly oriental look about him and he was definitely mixed-race. He was utterly delicious. That first night I think I just stood by the bar watching his every move. I honestly couldn’t take my eyes off him.

  The inner voice of my conscience kept reminding me that I had absolutely no business looking for someone because I wasn’t in any position to embark on a relationship when I was already taken. And in a way the inner voice was absolutely right. I had absolutely no chance of being released from my prison.

  Arthur was more or less my owner. He looked after me, he fed, clothed and homed me – but that was where his affection ended. We weren’t in an equal sort of a relationship. It wasn’t even the sort of relationship that I could relate to as being a bit like a stay-at-home wife. There was no love. It wasn’t even about sex – we had absolutely nothing between us but I couldn’t look for someone else because I would have absolutely no one else to turn to without being financially dependent on them – what a total turn-off that would be – hey, yeah, I’d love to be your boyfriend but I’ll have to move in and you’ll have to pay for my education... He’d made sure I couldn’t live without him. I was trapped.

  It had all started a long time ago. Well, not really that long ago, I guess. I was fifteen when I met him.

  I was in a bad place. I’d been kicked out of my childhood home by my stepfather and I had no idea what to do other than to go looking for something else to do. I was gay. I knew that because I’d never fancied girls and when I went looking for porn online, I always ended up looking at guys with guys. They turned me on. I loved watching men giving each other head and I always imagined myself giving head to my best friend from school – who was, sadly, straight as a die…

  Anyway. I ended up in this bar, with my fake ID that my best mate’s brother had provided me with and I’d decided to try to seduce myself a sugar daddy… And amazingly that was kind of what I managed to do.

  He took me in and gave me a place to call home. He arranged for me to continue my education and I fell in love with him over time. He just never felt that way about me.

  He never said that I had to stay, in fact he made it as plain as could be that I could leave whenever I wanted to – but that I would leave the way I arrived – with nothing.

  I didn’t want to go anywhere. I wanted to stay right there with Arthur because I thought the world of him but year after year of yearning for him to feel something more for me than polite interest in my studies was soul-destroying. I wanted more. I wanted him to love me. Being me, however, I went about it clumsily and he was horrified at my admission that I had feelings for him. Needless to say, he turned me down flat and told me that nothing could or would ever happen between us. I was left confused and hurt. What the hell was I to him? Some sort of charity case? An experiment? What?

  It was sitting up in my room, sulking when I first laid eyes on Thai. I could never have imagined that I’d ever meet him – and I certainly never set out to meet him or anyone else for that matter. I just saw the lights go on in the house that was directly opposite my bedroom window (albeit quite a distance away) and I reached for my binoculars. I saw him leave his front door at the same time as his garage door started to lift of its own accord. That was cool – remote control.

  I watched him disappear into his garage and then my jaw dropped when he emerged in the sexiest black Porsche I’d ever seen. From that moment onwards, I was hooked.

  I’d never gone out looking for him, though. He was my fantasy date. Hell, I probably wouldn’t have ever gone out if I hadn’t gone to uni and met Franz. Franz was a great friend and he thought it was weird that I always went home to Arthur and stayed in, never going out to have a drink and a dance.

  “Don’t you ever go out with each other?” he asked, over lunch one day after I’d opened up a little about my private life.

  I shrugged, “We don’t really have that sort of a relationship,” I mumbled. “We’re not partners or anything.”

  His grin had turned mischievous, “Then he can’t complain about you coming out with me and the boys to Studs.”

  “Studs?”

  He nodded, his expression positively glowing, “It’s the best place in the world – and Buzz, the doorman, pheweee!”

  I smiled. Franz had been going on about some guy he thought was called Buzz for a few weeks – since the beginning of term actually, when I first met him. He and a load of the guys he lived with had gone to some nightclub in the city – I hadn’t gone along, feeling that Arthur wouldn’t like it but I mentioned it over dinner one evening and he was all for me spreading my wings and going out to meet new people.

  “Seriously?” I asked, “I can go?”

  Arthur frowned, “Since when have I ever stopped you going out?”

  I faltered. I’d totally got the impression that he disapproved of me going out looking for new friends. It was our first disagreement – or at least, it was the first time I ever got annoyed with him and questioned my position in the household. “You’ve always said I can go out – but that I was to leave…”

  It was Arthur’s turn to look at me with his mouth open, “I’ve never said that.”

  Well, I’d completely misunderstood him then, “Uh, yes you have – every time I’ve asked to go somewhere.”

  “But, but – you’re an adult now, Quentin – you can do exactly as you please.”

  I threw my hands up in frustration, “Just as long as I find my own place, my own money and someone else to leech off – yes. I’m aware of the way you think of me.”

  “I do not think of you as a leech.” He ground out.

  “But you don’t want to be anything more than my financial provider.” I shot back, “You don’t love me.”

  Arthur pinched his nose between his finger and his thumb. “We’ve been over this.” He said with a long sigh, “I don’t…”

  “Feel the same.” I finished for him, “I know.”

  He shook his head, “I can’t be what you want me to be. I’m so much older than you are…”

  “I don’t care how old you are.” I shot back defensively.

  “W
ell, I do.” He said shortly, “You need someone your own age – or thereabouts.”

  “I just need the man I love to be happy.” I said softly, “I’ll stay home.”

  As it turned out, I was finally cajoled into going for someone’s birthday and it was one of the best nights of my existence.

  Franz got horribly drunk but was rescued by his knight in shining armour and went home with him! Result…

  I went home after spending most of the night ogling Thai and wondering when he would next be here. I started going along regularly after that.

  It took weeks before he noticed me – or until we looked at each other at the same time to gain eye contact – but once that had happened it didn’t take him long to approach me and start chatting.

  Sadly, it wasn’t long after that first meeting that I got the text from Kenneth advising me that the real love of my life had been taken ill – and was dying, so getting to know Thai had been almost over before it even began.

  Chapter 9 – Meeting Arthur…

  Thai

  I’d been working at Studs since the place opened and I got on well with my colleagues – but that was pretty much all they were to me – colleagues.

  They were a close-knit bunch – most of them had known each other before they started to work for Rob but I’d auditioned and got the job under my own steam.

  I got on best with Alfie and Harley and Simon out of them all, I guess. Alfie and Harley were the cutest couple in the universe and I wanted what they’d got together with someone of my own. And Simon was a nice guy – a gentle giant of a guy who never seemed to have anyone of his own to love either. I felt like we were kindred spirits of sorts, both of us looking for the perfect man and never finding him.