by L E Franks
Somewhere outside, a dish crashed to the floor, and I glanced at my watch. It was still early. I shifted in my seat silently, cursing the other man who sat placid as a wooden Buddha, watching me from behind the rim.
I didn’t want to think about my love life, but I couldn’t help being a little curious about Blake’s since he brought it up… kind of. The thought of keeping two partners happy boggled my mind.
I pierced the silence that had settled back in the room.
“Why would you do that to yourself? Isn’t one enough?” The sound of an empty cup settling on its saucer sang between breaths. I watched him consider my question.
Blake’s brows were still dark above piercing blue eyes, his silvering hair freshly trimmed—the cut, youthful. Emerald’s influence, probably. Blake belonged to the Richard Gere School of Aging, his hair the only evidence of his decades, maybe the crow’s feet. But that was all.
He shifted backward, arms behind his head. “Are you saying you could choose between two favorite flavors of ice cream when you could order a cone with both?”
A little mouthful of coffee threatened to go up my nose, but I struggled to clear my throat without making an utter ass of myself.
“Are you really equating women to a flavor of ice cream? Do you have a death wish I should know about?” I was appalled—I couldn’t help myself. I mean, these women were both so smart and nice. I’d always thought the same of Blake.
I was working myself into a righteous fit of epic proportions when I noticed Blake smirking. Fucker. I was really off my game if I couldn’t recognize Blake’s teasing.
I made a half-hearted attempt to banter back. “Please—at least make sure that when the hit comes, they strike somewhere else. You know how much the cleaning staff hates getting blood out of the carpet.”
He smiled. “It’s fine, Nicholas, truly. I honor them both, as they honor me. What we have is rare… and usually private. But I consider you part of my family so I’ll say this one thing and then you’ll answer a question for me—deal?”
I nodded.
“Emerald is the love of my life. But she’ll tell you herself that she’s a complicated woman. This… arrangement… that we now enjoy… was at her direction. She comes from a culture very different from ours, and as the woman—the matriarch—Emerald holds all the power here. If she were to ask me to end things with Sharon, I would in a heartbeat.” Blake toyed with a few papers on his desk and then smiled.
“Love is complicated, but she doesn’t consider Sharon a rival or a betrayal… She picked her. And that is all I will say about that. If you want to know more on the subject, you’ll have to ask Emmy yourself.” He grinned at me. I could tell he’d pay money to watch that happen.
“Like I have a death wish.” I shuddered at the thought of asking her about their love life. She’d tell him. In full colored detail.
“Wise man.” Blake’s smile was full of affection that warmed me.
“Now, my turn. What’s really going on with you? You’re a wreck.”
“I’m—”
Juan burst through the door. “Nick, that Irish team is back—all of them! Ian’s over his head and Christine hasn’t come back.”
I hopped up, trying not to show relief at the interruption to Blake’s concern-driven interrogation. He waved me away. “Want any help? I can pour the pitchers…”
I grinned at my boss. “And take you away from all this?” I gestured to the stacks of invoices and unopened mail strewn across his desk before relenting. “I’ll send Juan if I need you.”
I was almost out the door when a thought occurred to me, making me pause in my tracks. “Can you do me a favor? Call Christine and remind her that her shift started five minutes ago.”
I heard his “Will do.” as I closed the door, readying myself for Corwyn and his mob. One bird, two stones, and just a pinch of schadenfreude for the home team.
Christine was not going to have fun tonight… but that was no reason I couldn’t. I thumbed my phone on and sent FatBoy a text.
N: I’m not closing tonight. Late dinner my place?
FB: I’ll bring the beer & the massage oil
N: !!!!
N: Off at 11
FB: It’s a date
N: K!
N: Gotta go - Hurlers back, ttyl
I tried to hide my grin as I waded in to rescue Ian.
* * * * *
When I was a freshman in college and still working out the social niceties of getting into nice boys’ pants, I spent a lot of time traipsing after a theater arts major named Trent. He was wispy and fey and had a string of girls hanging on his every word, gazing into his faded china blue eyes, ruffling his fine wheaten locks, and badgering him into accompanying them to evenings at the playhouse or afternoons at the teashop. He was as flaming as they came, yet he swore—swore—he was straight as a flagpole on Independence Day.
I never bought it.
I was young and foolish, never noticing the bruises on his milk-blue skin after holidays home, never considering that for him to be anything other than straight might be beyond the stretch of possibility and life expectancy.
I hadn’t yet met other men similarly built like fine porcelain dolls but who were as tough as nails and as fiercely hetero as those rednecks showing off at tractor pulls. Not that some of those good ol’ boys weren’t on their knees behind some aluminum shed killing time between matches. But back then, I wasn’t particularly insightful.
I accepted clichés at face value, frankly uninterested in pondering the infinite nature of man beyond looking for the ‘sure thing’, which Trent represented at the time.
But Trent had my number, probably from the first whiff of my Calvin Klein and the faded blue flannel I wore unbuttoned to show off the abs I’d earned over summers working a bailer. He was unimpressed.
I was clumsy in my pursuit of him, and whether he was gay or not, his subtle cues designed to enlighten me on his position were as fathomable to my eighteen-year-old self as the notion that underage drinking was wrong and to be avoided at all costs—which is to say, I could only guess at his meaning. His point that I was not the boy for him, thus went unrevealed.
Every Sunday, I’d swing by his dorm room like clockwork to invite him to brunch. Up until this point, he’d politely decline from behind the partially opened door, until one afternoon he caved—probably in hopes of resuming his quiet life as the campus thespian-scholar—and invited me in.
In retrospect, what followed could only be his last ditch attempt at driving me away and stopping my relentless courtship of him, by schooling me in stereotypes of my own: I spent the next three months of Sundays watching every musical known to mankind chaperoned by his Greek chorus of giggling girls. I was in hell… until, by the end, I’d called ‘uncle’ on my pursuit of him and we became friends.
To his relief, we ditched the Bye Bye Birdies of the genre and switched to Bogart and Stewart and other icons of Hollywood’s golden era, and I went on to spend the rest of the semester making out with a fullback on the B squad. Trent and I retained our tradition of Sunday movie marathons until graduation, a relationship lasting much longer than any of my flings.
By the end of my scholastic career, I had grown up enough to appreciate the irony of that fact as well, and I’d retained enough of the Trent-Weston-Film-Appreciation-Course that, when I stepped into the bar, the sheer volume of noise and commotion reminded me strongly of the hunting scene from Auntie Mame, with the table of bankers lingering over their Manhattans now playing the role of the outraged local gentry.
For a Thursday afternoon, it was a madhouse.
Corwyn’s hurlers were baying like hounds, crowding each other and trying to get Ian’s attention over the din. Ian was looking very much like the treed fox. We were just missing Rosalind Russell’s comic genius for creating chaos out of order, and we’d have the full cast.
Blake came up behind me with a nudge to my ribs, and I supposed that was my role; I was about to step in and h
ose them down for the second time in a week when a piercing shriek sliced through the air with such velocity I found myself half-listening for the sonic boom to follow.
In the wake of Ian’s whistle, everyone froze, and I had to admit he had style. He was a tall boy, and by the way he was towering over the bar, I figured he’d found the milk crate we used to get the top shelf liquor off the top shelf—hoped, actually, because if he’d just hopped up there on his own, I was going to have to start going to that ridiculous gym down the block.
Gone was the uncertain youth of earlier. Here instead was a man, his biceps flexing below the cuff of his rolled sleeves, his tie askew, shouting his mastery over the slavering curs he’d just brought to heel.
The only vulpine thing about him was his pointed chin. And maybe the red streaks in his auburn hair.
I leaned against the doorjamb and watched to see what he’d do now that he had them in his thrall.
“Alright! Everyone who wants to share a pitcher of ale, go sit down at one of those tables and we’ll serve you. Anyone who wants a pint of Guinness takes a seat at the bar, and I’ll get Nick for you. The rest of you line up like civilized folk and stop scaring the natives. We’ll take your orders one by one. Questions?”
“Good catch,” Blake whispered in my ear. He hadn’t been around when I hired Ian, just gave him a quick once-over as he walked through the bar during his first shift, later warning me off touching the help, again.
This was his first sight of our junior bartender in action and I wanted to swoon with pride.
“The muscles help,” I replied, still enjoying the show. “Shall we?”
Blake just shook his head and followed me in.
* * * * *
“Nick!” The call rose in unison on a lyrical wave of Irish testosterone.
As fine a picture as Ian made, stepping up onto the oaken top and going all Braveheart in their faces, I was still plenty annoyed on his behalf. No one abused my staff.
I might have growled a little.
“Boys. Howzit hurlin’?”
Ian just patted me on the shoulder, gifting me with a million-watt smile, both barrels locked and loaded with dimples. In that moment, he looked about twelve and I felt closer to a hundred, which was fine. No sense in ruining a perfectly grumpy mood brought on by seeing Corwyn again so soon, by being nice to this rabble.
I ignored a few confused looks and put Blake at the far end drink station filling pitchers with the Indian Pale Ale. Not that they’d get a choice. They were lucky I wasn’t serving them Bud… and forget about the good chili-roasted nuts that Marco made for me—these guys could count themselves fortunate if I passed out the stale pretzels from last night.
If they wanted back in my good graces, they were going to have to spend a little capital and woo me… or at least Ian. Ian was going to make a new record for tips earned on a Thursday afternoon while Christine was AWOL.
I hid my grin and started passing out the pitchers and pulling draughts.
* * * * *
I surveyed my kingdom.
Everyone seemed content, a momentary state of being for a bar, even if it felt more like a Friday night in Nashville proper, rather than a Thursday in the neighborhood. Corwyn was holding court at the team table, along with a colony of gym bunnies—much to the disgust of the suits. They’d begun arriving only to find their usual prey falling under the magic of an Irish brogue or twenty, never mind all that muscle barely hidden under team shirts.
He’d tried flirting with me over the din until FatBoy materialized, taking up his post as glowerer-in-chief at my end of the bar.
I couldn’t help the grin. He wasn’t officially on duty today, but he’d showed up not long after I let it slip that the team was back in force.
“Hey, sailor, come here often?” I slid over the raspberry lemonade I’d made him in deference to his ersatz role as stunt bouncer, rather than the beer he’d get for being my overprotective, if not silent, boyfriend.
FatBoy grunted, apparently unfazed by the fruity beverage or the pink umbrella I’d stuck into the fruit skewer decorating the glass. I polished the bar top with slow sweeps of my towel, mesmerized as FatBoy plucked it out of a cube of pineapple, licking the wooden barb clean before motioning me closer.
His eyes were the bright blue of summer, heat shimmering in his gaze. He’d forgotten the mirrored wall behind the bar. If he was trying to keep his passion for me secret, he was throwing all caution to the wind with that one look. I wondered if I held up a compact, would I see his feelings for me reflected into infinity? Would it mean more if I could?
FatBoy crooked a finger at me, and I leaned in close enough so I didn’t lose a single whisper.
“Here ya go, Nicky. I think this suits you better.” He slipped the paper umbrella behind my ear, somehow tangling it in my thick hair so that it stayed even as I reared back in surprise.
“Ass.”
All I got back was cocky, self-assured FatBoy. It made my heart skip and my jeans a little tighter.
“As much as I’m enjoying this…” He left the rest of the words unspoken, but his eyes glittered in meaning in the wash of light from behind the bar.
“I’ve got another twenty minutes, maybe less if some of these people would just go home. It’s a school night. What’re they doing at my bar? They should be studying or polishing their sticks, or writing briefs.”
“Or losing their briefs,” Simone added, loading up her tray with the margaritas.
“Yes, exactly,” I concurred. I was magnanimous. As long as I was getting some tonight, I was happy for everyone else to get a little bit as well.
I’m finally getting some.
I had a mental picture of FatBoy stripped naked, sprawled across my bed. Some of the details were a little hazy, but I had his chest memorized from yesterday’s make-out session, and it made my mouth water. If we weren’t playing it ‘cool’ here in public, I’d drag him across the bar and claim him as mine.
“Getting’ a little flushed there, Nicky. Anything I can help you with?” FatBoy smirked. It was like he could see my hard-on from behind the tubs of ice and trays of sliced lemon.
I was about to flick him with my sodden towel when a giant crossed into my peripheral field of vision.
Just beyond FatBoy stood a Viking—from the shoulder-length blond hair to well-worn brown leather pants tucked into scuffed boots. My eyes skittered across a vast wilderness of gold skin and blond curls enhanced by a skintight T-shirt clinging to the rock wall of his abdomen. One wrong move and it looked like it would explode off him in tatters.
I wanted to poke him.
I felt FatBoy’s eyes lasering across my features—reading me instantly—and I desperately tried to find something else to look at, or think about. Something that didn’t make me feel desperate or foolish or primed for a quick, hard fuck in the back.
The last thing I expected was to have a tall blond god walk into my bar and hold a blowtorch to my already primed libido.
Hopefully, FatBoy wouldn’t take it the wrong way… or maybe he should if the wrong way felt this right.
I gulped down an image of being pinned between them both and moved my gaze to someplace safe, like my bar towel. Certainly not the Viking, or FatBoy… anywhere that didn’t leave me dead center between Valhalla and the seven circles of Hell currently licking at my balls.
I settled on the shirt graphic stretched obscenely across the giant’s chest. It was a leering green man flipping me off with the stubby middle fingers of both hands, corncob pipe clenched in Chiclet teeth. The little man was dressed in a frock coat and vest and sporting a bowler hat with a four-leaf clover nearly as large as the rest of him. Scrawled underneath were these words:
Oi! Fuck off, we’re The Leprechauns!
Great. The band was here.
I could tell the minute that FatBoy stopped watching me and started seeing them. It wasn’t just the blond rock god stepping out of the pages of mythology porn, he had backup—three Irish boy-
band miniatures… satellites orbiting their leader; the dark chasing the light encased in a mash up of denim, leather, and oddly enough, lace.
The noise around us dimmed perceptibly as the room finally noticed the newcomers standing in the arched entry. All we needed was a set of swinging saloon doors and we had the perfect set up for a John Ford western.
From my perch safely behind the bar, I watched it all unfold, FatBoy acting in his role as ‘the law’ stood slowly, easing a hip against the bar directly in front of me, blocking me from their line of sight—it was sweet and annoying at the same time.
What harm could a hot Irish rock band do?
I felt a thrill of adrenaline run down my spine and almost swooned. Instead, I cracked my best welcoming smile. Blondie cracked his knuckles in return, leering at me through neon green contacts and earning me one of FatBoy’s patented over-the-shoulder looks.
Like that was going to quell me.
I smirked back, enjoying the muscles flexing across his chest as he crossed his arms, not saying a word.
I turned to Juan who’d sidled up next to me as soon as the stare-down erupted. “Run and tell Blake his band is here. Well… on second thought—”
I watched FatBoy lever himself fully erect—and wasn’t that a sight? All those bunched up muscles smoothing out and uncoiling like he was fishing line slowly spinning off a reel, a lure flashing in the sun… and I was caught.
But then again… when wasn’t I, when it came to FatBoy?
The Viking obviously wasn’t as impressed with the show as the rest of us were, and he threw his own shoulders back, proving that FatBoy was shy a few inches, as if I was comparing them like cattle at auction.
Though if I were, they seemed to be shopping at the same place for their builds. FatBoy’s screamed former ball player, but this newcomer looked like he’d earned his body by brawling. Maybe at biker bars, given the white line of scar tissue bisecting his right brow.
I’d have to call a draw without further investigation, and I’d already pushed FatBoy over the yellow line if I was being honest.
