by Jo Adler
“I don’t think of Adam like that,” I say. “I’m not looking to put notches on my bedpost, okay? I’m looking for—”
“True love and happiness with a handsome older man of means?”
I laugh. “That’s it exactly,” I tell her. “And if they’re hung and smart and funny and grounded, then it’s the whole enchilada.”
Dede waves at a couple of regulars when they come in the door and head for a booth in the back.
“I’ll be right over,” she calls to them before turning back to me. “While I’m gone, try and remember everything that you know about Prince Charming.”
I watch her cross the room and greet the new arrivals with warm hugs and bubbly laughter. As much as I wish that my art was paying the bills, I adore working for Dede. She was one of the first people that I met when I moved to New York. At the time, she was renting an apartment down the hall from Oliver and his boyfriend. I’d claimed their sofa as my home away from home while I looked for a place to live. When I bumped into Dede in the elevator one day, she introduced herself and asked how I felt about delivering pizzas. It was the perfect introduction to my new friend. I fell in love on the spot. Dede was direct. She was funny. And she had a British accent. When she offered me a job working in her pizzeria, it felt like a simple twist of fate. A couple of days later, I learned that Oliver had set the whole thing up. He knew that Dede’s regular delivery guy had walked out and I needed at least a part-time job. Since they’d become close friends, he called her up and said that he had the perfect temporary solution to her staffing emergency. I took the job instantly, figuring that it would be a fun way to learn about the city while earning a few bucks. I’d never imagined that I would still be working for Trattoria Roma three years later, while also holding down two other part-time gigs to pay my rent and buy art supplies to work on canvases while I tried to land a gallery show.
I’m still reflecting on my friendship with Dede when she returns from greeting the new customers.
“Where were we?” she says, slipping behind the counter. “What else did you remember about the hot daddy from the Filthy Secrets Social Club?”
“Dirty Secrets,” I say.
“Whatever.” Dede rolls her eyes. “Spill it, mister. What did you come up with?”
“Nothing more than what I already told you,” I say. “His first name is Adam. He’s got killer sleeve tattoos. And he—”
“See?” She flashes a dazzling smile. “That’s new info. You didn’t mention the tattoos the first time you described him.”
“Really?”
She nods. “What else?”
I nibble on my lower lip, trying to conjure more details that Adam shared during our night together.
“C’mon, Nick. Surely he talked about what he does for a living.”
“Not specifically,” I reply. “It has something to do with real estate or architecture.”
She laughs. “There you go, doll. Making progress.”
“So his name is Adam,” I say again. “He lives in the West Village. He has really beautiful sleeve tattoos. And he does something related to real estate or building.”
“Well, that sure narrows it down.” Dede pauses. “To probably a few thousand men.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s kind of pathetic that I didn’t ask more questions.”
“Don’t panic yet,” she suggests. “What did you guys talk about before...um, before whatever happened behind closed doors?”
I smile and my face goes red again. “Want to hear a little secret?”
“Always,” Dede says.
“Some of it happened before we were behind closed doors,” I whisper.
She lifts one eyebrow. “My, my, my! I didn’t know you were an exhibitionist.”
I blush. “Neither did I.”
“There’s always a first time for everything,” she says.
“Amen to that!” I close my eyes and conjure an image of Adam. “He really is the most incredible man that…” A name suddenly surfaces. “Bandit Heart! He told me that he goes to a place called Bandit Heart for his tattoos.”
“Well, there you go, sweetie,” Dede says. “You’ve got at least two places to start searching for the hot, sexy man. The tattoo parlor or the club where you met him.
I shake my head. “Won’t I just look like a lovesick puppy?”
“Who cares about that?” Dede asks with a giggle. “There are times when we must sacrifice pride and ego in order to find the Holy Grail!”
13
▬ ☼ ▬
ADAM
Charlotte comes into my office with a stack of magazines, a vase filled with fresh white tulips and a sheepish grin that tells me she’s about to ask a delicate question.
“Can you take a call?”
I shake my head. “Way too busy,” I say, holding up the copy of National Geographic that I’ve been flipping through for the past half hour. “I need to finish the inspiration board for Maxine Hinton’s country place before I leave for the day.”
Charlotte’s eyes flick to the clock behind my desk. “It’s barely noon, Adam. I think you can maybe swing both and still have a few minutes to spare.”
I drop the magazine and sit up in my chair. When I ask who’s on the phone, her answer arrives like a dagger to my heart.
“It’s Liam,” she says in a soft voice. “He sounds pretty bad this time.”
I’m staring at the phone and thinking about the last time I saw Liam when Charlotte drums her fingertips on the desk.
“Earth to Adam,” she whispers. “Anybody home in there?”
I rotate slowly in the chair until I’m facing her. The warmth and compassion in her eyes is like a bolt of clarity. You can do this, I hear the tiny voice say in the back of my mind. Just pick up the phone, listen carefully and then tell him to fuck off.
But when I hear Liam’s voice a few seconds later, as Charlotte sits across from me for moral support, I feel the familiar pang somewhere deep inside my battered heart. It’s no longer love. Or affection. It’s a simple sadness, the sense that I’m hearing the voice of a man who is so far off the path that most of us walk on that he’s lost all logic and reason and honesty.
“Ah, there you are,” he says in the familiar croaky rasp. “How’s it going, stud?”
I pull in a breath to calm my nerves. “What do you want, Liam?”
“I want to know how you are,” he says. “But maybe your hearing’s going, huh? Huh, old man?”
I clench my teeth. “I’m fine. So good of you to ask.”
Charlotte learns forward in her chair, props both elbows on her knees and cups her chin. “Keep it short,” she whispers. “But don’t be mean.”
Liam hums into the phone. “Oh, how sweet,” he says. “Is that fat fucking Charlotte I hear in the background?”
I take another breath, let it out slowly and then repeat my original question.
“What do I want?” Liam answers. “I want what I’m owed, stud. I want the money that you promised me when I had to move out.”
“I never promised you anything,” I say in a calm, measured tone. “But I did transfer a pretty hefty sum to your checking account so you wouldn’t be destitute.”
He laughs. “Hefty? You call thirty grand hefty?”
“It should’ve been sufficient to help you get settled,” I reply.
“Thirty grand’s nothing to a rich fucker like you,” Liam snaps. “A drop in the ocean, right? But I know what you’re doing, okay? You’re trying to—”
“What am I doing, Liam?”
“You’re trying to fucking punish me,” he spits. “I asked you if I could borrow the money. I asked you! I didn’t take it without your knowledge or permission.”
I close my eyes and lean back in the chair. For the next few minutes, while Liam goes down the same rabbit hole that he drops into whenever we talk, I concentrate on breathing and counting to ten and listening to my heart pounding in my ears. As soon as he finishes the harangue, I open my eye
s, look across the desk at Charlotte and tell Liam that I need to get off the phone.
“We’re not done yet!” he says with a cold, bloodless edge. “You owe me the rest of what you promised.”
“I have to go,” I say. “I need to finish up some things this afternoon so I can get to an early client dinner.”
“What about my money?” he demands. “What about the help that you promised me?”
“I wish you well with your business,” I say. “But the money isn’t going to happen.”
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” Liam says. “After everything that I gave to you, I can’t believe you’d just deny me this one last favor.”
I laugh. “What did you give me, Liam? As I recall, you quit your job the minute that I invited you to move in with me. You quit working and started spending.”
“Wasn’t that our arrangement, Daddy?”
My body tightens. “Don’t call me that ever again,” I hiss before hanging up the phone.
14
▬ ☼ ▬
NICK
The limestone façade at Dirty Secrets Social Club looks even more elegant and imposing in the radiant afternoon sunshine than it did the night that I met Adam. As I stand on the sidewalk, admiring the glossy black door, pristine white columns and ornamental four-story bay window, the voice in my head goes into full-blown panic mode.
Get the fuck out of here, Nick! Turn around and go back downtown. This is a massive mistake. They probably won’t even answer the—
“Hey, handsome,” says a voice, floating in from just over my left shoulder. “Weren’t you here last week?”
When I pivot slowly, I’m staring at a tall, dark-haired guy carrying a pair of shopping bags loaded with fresh produce, paper-wrapped baguettes and bottles of wine. He’s dressed in skinny jeans, an untucked blue linen shirt and scuffed boat shoes. Dark Ray-Ban lenses and a ball cap cover some of his features, but I guess that he’s probably around thirty.
“Um…” My voice trembles slightly as I try to remember talking to him. “I was here, but…”
He nods toward the door. “I’m talking about the club,” he says.
“Yeah, I know,” I reply. “But I wasn’t sure…” I gulp in a breath to steady my voice. “I mean, I don’t remember—”
“It’s cool, bud.” His smile expands even more, bright and relaxed and sexy as fuck. “You were a little confused when I came to wake you.”
With the final few words of his admission, it all comes rushing back: I’m staring at the guy that woke me up in the suite last Saturday morning and asked me to leave.
“Oh! God, that’s right. I’m so sorry…”
He shakes his head. “Don’t be. You were coming down from a daddy dick high, right? That has a tendency to confuse any of us.” The laugh that follows is as crude and audacious as the remark. “But it’s all good, bud. Did you come by to visit the scene of the crime?”
I force a smile. He’s giving so much attitude—arrogance and entitlement and contempt—that I’m having trouble keeping my thoughts in order. I made the trek up to the club for a very specific reason, and I don’t want to let this asshole dissuade me from accomplishing my mission.
“I actually came by to see if anyone can help me with something,” I say.
“Maybe.” He hands me one of the bags. “How about you help me first and hold this for a sec?”
I take the groceries and watch as he digs in his back pocket for a set of house keys. Then he bobs his head toward the entrance.
“Follow me,” he says. “There’s sorbet in one of these bags that needs to be in the freezer.”
I don’t really want to go inside, but it doesn’t seem like I have a choice. I follow him across the sidewalk, wait while he unlocks the door and then step across the threshold into the foyer.
“Wait here,” he says. “I’ll take these to the kitchen and be back in a flash.”
“I don’t mind coming with you,” I offer, but he grabs the second bag and spins away without a word.
While he’s gone, I check my phone to see if I’ve heard from Dede. I left her a message earlier that I had a few errands to take care of before reporting for my shift, but still haven’t heard back. I feel an instant flood of relief when I see her text: No problem, babe. Tino can cover until you get here.
I start to send her a reply when the dark-haired guy strides back into the foyer. He’s carrying a packet of envelopes tied with a bright red ribbon along with a stack of magazines. When he notices me studying the parcels, he holds them up and laughs.
“Rejects,” he announces in a crisp, haughty tone. “All of the dinosaurs and fossils that won’t be getting a membership to Dirty Secrets.”
“Looks like quite a few,” I say. “Word obviously got around town.”
He shrugs. “This is the tenth round of decline notices, so it’s more than a few. I’d say we’ve turned away about two thousand old queens so far. Not just from the city, but from across the country and Europe. And some of these losers are truly pathetic. They call and beg Devon to reconsider, but he wants to keep the riffraff on the other side of the door.”
I try to think of something to say in return, but the guy’s smirk and the elitist aspects of the club are making me nauseous. How did I ever let Oliver talk me into coming to this place? It’s so not my style.
“Anyway,” says Mr. Arrogant, “what was it you needed help with? Did you lose something when you were here last week?”
I shake my head. “It’s not that. I’m trying to get in touch with someone that I met here.”
He barks out a laugh that echoes through the empty two-story entryway.
“That’s fucking hilarious,” he sniffs. “What’s the real reason you came by? Are you looking for a job? With your looks, you could clean up as a bartender.”
“I’m not joking,” I tell him. “And I’m not looking for work. I really did meet someone here last week. He wrote me a note, but he didn’t—”
“Oh, you poor thing,” the guy interrupts. “Did Adam run off without giving you his number?”
I flinch when I hear Adam’s name. “You know him?”
He laughs again. “Oh, c’mon. Everybody knows Adam. He’s one of the hottest daddies in town. I don’t think he’d seriously want to fuck a poor thing like you twice though. It was probably an act of mercy.”
My face is growing warmer as I glare at the haughty asshole. I’ve never hit anyone in my life, but I feel my fingers tightening into fists. I take a deep breath and square my shoulders to keep from swinging wildly.
“What’s your name again?” I ask.
“Little Miss Sunshine.” He smirks. “What’s yours?”
“Nick Hardy,” I tell him. “And I’m not a poor thing. And Adam didn’t run off. He was in a hurry to catch a plane, and I think adding his number to the note just slipped his mind. I was hoping that someone here would be kind enough to pass along my number to Adam. But I can see that I’m mistaken.”
When I finish, the guy drops the magazines and envelopes on a console table and begins to clap his hands.
“Bravo!” he cheers. “That was almost believable.”
I feel the fury growing inside, but I clench my teeth to keep from saying or doing anything that I’ll regret later. I need to leave before the encounter gets any darker, so I take a step toward the door.
“Look, kid,” he says. “You got in over your head. I’ve been around the track a few times myself. That’s why I’m working here at Dirty Secrets. Devon used to be my daddy, but I put on a few pounds and had a couple of birthdays. He dropped me last year for a twink that was fresh off the bus from Alabama. But I didn’t whine about it. And I certainly didn’t show up unannounced like you did to beg for special treatment.”
“I’m not begging,” I say sharply. “And I’m not interested in hearing your sob story. I’m not you, poor thing.”
He laughs again. “That’s fucking precious, Nick. What I just told you isn’t a sob story. It’
s the truth. And it’ll probably happen to you one day.”
It already has, I think as an image of Taylor in bed with the two younger guys flashes in my mind. But it didn’t turn me into a bitter asshole like you.
“And when that day comes,” the guy continues, pulling a business card from his pocket, “give me a call. Maybe we’ll have a spot for you here at the club.”
I glance at the name embossed on the sleek silver card: Blake Sandoval, Director of Security. A cold chill loops along my spine as I remember the voice on the loudspeaker in the elevator when I was with Adam.
“It was you,” I say, slipping the card into my wallet. “The other night after I met Adam.”
Blake’s mouth forms a zigzag smile. “I got rock hard watching that elevator show,” he says. “I always wanted to fuck Adam myself, but the jerk didn’t think I was good enough for him. That’s why I settled for his friend Devon.”
I stare silently and shake my head.
“What is it?” Blake asks. “What are you thinking? There’s obviously something sassy going through your pointy little noggin.”
“No,” I say as a welcome wave of calm suddenly sweeps through me. “I don’t do sassy.”
He snickers darkly. “Look, buddy. There are primarily two kinds of older men that come here: the ones that are married, and the ones that are damaged beyond repair. Do you really want to find out which category Adam falls into? You should just be grateful that he was interested enough to fuck you once.”
Before I’m tempted to challenge Blake’s premise, I shake my head, thank him for his time and turn toward the door. I didn’t get Adam’s phone number, but the return trip to Dirty Secrets was definitely worthwhile. Since my relationship with Taylor ended with betrayal, I’ve been trying to decide which direction to take that part of my life. Avoid anything serious and just go for random fucks when the urge strikes? Take it slow and see if I can meet one older guy who’s looking for a real connection? Or ditch the hunt altogether and live in a constant state of denial and confusion?
Ah, fuck it. Who am I kidding? After tasting a bite of the apple with Adam, I want more—more sex, more conversation, more cuddling, more warmth and more of his undeniably seductive essence.
