by Kody Boye
Guy’s deep, raucous laugh echoed throughout the apartment. “Yeah—sorry about that. Not very often a guy buys you breakfast after he sleeps with you, huh?”
“It wasn’t that,” I replied. “I was just surprised that you’d bought for both of us.”
“Why not? You’re here, I’ve got a car, and there’s practically food around every corner. I’ll even drive you home when you decide you’re tired of hanging around here, though you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”
While my immediate response was to question his motives, I didn’t push it. He seemed genuine—at least, in the sense that he wasn’t a complete asshole who was a fuck-and-dump. And he had listed ‘friendship’ on his profile, so maybe he really did want to be friends—or at least friends with benefits.
Reaching forward, I took one of the sausage biscuits in hand and took a bite out of it, nodding as Guy passed over one of the two Styrofoam cups marked clearly with cola.
“Thanks,” I managed through a mouthful.
Guy nodded and dug into his own breakfast, alternating between bites of the biscuit and sips of coffee. My peculiar interest continued to lay in his eyes—which, now revealed in full color, were far more striking than they’d been last night.
Was it a birth defect, maybe? Genetic? An injury?
Then again, if he’d ever been injured, he sure hadn’t shown it last night.
I blinked when I realized how caught up I’d been in his appearance and blushed when I caught his gaze on me.
“Eyes?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I smiled. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s cool.”
“It’s hard not to look at them. They’re beautiful.”
“All the boys say they’re a sucker for pretty eyes,” Guy smiled, revealing perfectly-straight and white teeth. “Yours aren’t so bad yourself.”
I laughed. “They’re gray. Not much to them.”
“Maybe not, but how many people do you see with gray eyes?”
I didn’t reply—not because I didn’t want to, but because I wasn’t sure how. He did have a point. It wasn’t often you saw people with a blue eye color pale enough to pass for gray.
“Guess you’ve got a point there,” I replied.
We finished eating breakfast and lounged about his sunroom for a while—he in a tight-fitting T and jeans, me in my T-shirt and boxers. Gentleman as he was, Guy hadn’t bothered to mention my attire, which made the situation all the more comfortable considering how awkward I already felt.
Guy tilted his head back and let the sun strike the curve of his stubbly neck. “Nice day today,” he said. “Isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said, tilting my head to face him. “Hey… I’m not keeping you from anything, am I?”
“No. Why?”
“Just thought I’d ask. Most guys have their Saturdays planned out.”
“I’m more of a homebody than anything,” Guy shrugged, making the trademark stretch of the arms over the head before setting one across my shoulders. “Seriously—if I didn’t want you here, I’d’ve taken you home already.”
“I’m just making sure.”
“What about you? You have anything to do?”
“Not really,” I said.
Guy’s eyes flickered with question. I shook him off with a smile and wave of my hand.
“Trust me—I lead a pretty boring life.”
“What do you do?”
“Nothing much at the moment. I’m kinda… wandering.”
“Ah. I see.” Guy tightened his hold around my shoulders and looked toward one of the windows. “Hey—probably a stupid question, considering the circumstance, but… you wanna go out with me?”
“Huh?” I asked.
“For drinks, dinner—just that. So we can get to know each other a little more. Yannow… beyond last night.”
“I’m not objecting to last night,” I laughed. “Dinner would be nice, though. Anything in mind?”
“The Texas boy in me’s thinking Tex-Mex. I know this place that has killer margaritas. And their food—God, the food. But seriously—the margaritas are where it’s at.”
“I can get down with that,” I smiled. “Sounds good.”
“Cool. How about, uh… tomorrow night? Eight-ish?”
“I’d like that.”
“Ok. It’s a date.” Guy stood and offered a hand. “Also—I hate to kick you out all of a sudden, but I’m sure you have other things to do. Besides—the longer you stay here, the more I want to do things to you again.”
After dressing, we walked out the door and made our way toward the parking garage.
Chapter Six
He kissed me goodbye at the door to my apartment before he made his way down the stairs and to his car.
I watched him the whole way there.
Once the door was opened, the brutal truth of the situation was once again revealed.
In stark contrast, my apartment was a dump. While Guy’s resembled an immaculate bachelor pad, mine appeared to be a slum house. The wallpaper was peeling, the carpet was stained and yellowed, the air conditioning busted and never repaired. The walls were so thin I could hear everything from fighting to screwing to fists going in and out of walls. It was, in a word: Hell. I’d never imagined that such a place could exist before I got kicked out of the co-op. Given it was all I could afford since those disastrous happenings, I couldn’t really complain.
Sighing, I walked over to the mail console.
If anything, at least I had a home.
I opened the box.
The first thing to pop out at me was Past Notice Due.
Or not.
I fought back the urge to rip the mail out of the box and toss it over the railing before shoving it under my arm and dragging it into the house.
Upon slamming the door, I heard the all-too-familiar sound of a screw coming loose.
“Fuck,” I groaned.
I turned just in time to see the door bow off one hinge and then completely tear another apart.
I could’ve screamed.
Chapter Seven
While the landlord was quick to respond to my complaint about the hinge breaking for the third time in a month, they were also more than eager to charge me for the repair bill they swore was not covered under his terms of service.
Great, I’d been so eager to think. Another bill.
I sat in my room with the collection of bills strewn about the floor and tried to keep from looking at the things that had become the bane of my existence. Most were months old—receipts from deferments which were quickly going to have to be renewed—but others were fresh, like last month’s rent payment I’d missed due to a check bouncing and then the new one for the door.
One-hundred, two-hundred, three-hundred, four…
Five-thousand, fifteen-thousand, sixty-thousand, more.
I cupped my face to my hands and rocked myself to the inevitable tune of my destruction, somehow managing not to cry but knowing that it would soon come anyway.
All those years, all that time—all for one lazy little leech to steal it all away from me.
Plagiarism, the head of the English department had declared, results in mandatory expulsion.
And the whole while, Michael Kriemer had just stood by, grinning like a fool when he knew no one was looking.
I rolled out of the bed which was in near disrepair and wandered to the window to look out at the dark side of Austin, trembling at the possibility of having to face life homeless in a state where the weather could be the death of you. Summers were bad enough—heatstroke could kill. But the winters? When it would suddenly drop from thirty to below-zero without warning? Now that was a far cry from mercy. I’d much rather go to jail and be someone’s butt monkey than have to live through that.
My phone chimed.
I frowned.
I crossed the distance to the bed and lifted my phone to find a message from none other than IceFire, this time in perfect English.
Hey, it said. It’s Guy. How’re you?
The temptation to avoid the truth and just ignore the message was immense. There was no reason for me to spill my guts to a man I’d met just last night, much less slept with almost immediately thereafter.
But something… something was there.
I couldn’t explain it. Magnetism might’ve been the best word, but even then, that seemed stupid, considering I’d compared our attraction on the dance floor much like the same thing, or even our irresistible draw and passion when we’d screwed last night. Regardless, I felt a little coil of hope spring out in my chest—something that, though I wasn’t sure really existed, compelled me to be honest.
Horrible, I replied. Not having the best day.
You want to talk?
I couldn’t tell him no.
Chapter Eight
Guy drove up from downtown and picked me up on the corner of what I deemed was a far more feasible street before we made our way north. The whole way there, I struggled to say something—anything—to help break the ice on this embarrassing and all-too-humiliating situation, but not once did Guy press me. Instead, he pulled into the parking lot, opened the passenger seat door for me, then took my hand before walking in and taking our seats.
The minute the waitress arrived with our drinks, Guy slid the margarita over to my side of the table and jutted his chin in my direction. “Take it,” he said.
“I can’t drink that,” I laughed.
“Sip it then. You look like you need it.”
I sipped the margarita while Guy scanned the menu and sampled the offerings of chips and salsa set between us. The knots in my stomach increasing by the moment, the temptation to hyperventilate becoming more tempting by the second, I took a long, hard sip of the margarita and slid it to Guy’s side of the table before taking care of my soda.
“Better?” Guy asked.
“No,” I managed, reaching up to stop a tear before it could fall.
“Are you all right, Jason?”
“I—”
The waitress returned soon after.
“The steak,” Guy said. “And queso, for an appetizer.”
“The burger and fries for me,” I added. I didn’t think I could eat too much.
I was able to maintain control of myself until the waitress left. After that, however, a few more tears slipped down my face.
“You are crying,” Guy finally said, reaching out to brush a tear from a cheek.
“Sorry. Not the best way to start a date.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Just… everything, it seems.”
The man’s eyes faltered to the margarita at his side. He lifted, sipped, then replaced it before snaring his fingers within mine.
“Not you,” I said shortly thereafter, reaching up to wipe more tears away. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“No, no. You didn’t do anything to me, Guy. It’s…” I sighed, then paused to take another breath.
“It’s… what?”
In any other situation, Guy’s unfaltering gaze probably would’ve reduced me to nothing. The strength in its matter was something that no one could’ve faced in the midst of a moment like mine, because looking at him was like looking at a creature whose depths were far greater than anything imaginable. But here, though… now… they brought comfort—a sole warmth in the gust of wind that threatened to whisk me away.
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “My college,” I said.
His unsure gaze was what prompted my story.
I told him everything—of my ambitions to be an English Literature teacher someday, of my quirks and fascinations for the oddest or more obscure of the well-known writers and poets’ work. I even laughed when I mentioned that I’d stolen my username from one of Poe’s stories, which instantly prompted a smile and some relief come time the waitress arrived with the food.
“But what happened?” Guy asked. “Why are you so upset?”
The question was the perfect segue for the only person I felt was my one true enemy: Michael Kriemer.
I explained the ambitions that the two of us had—that, until sometime last year, I’d known nothing about him or what he wanted: just that he was a snobby little rich kid whose daddy had bought his way into school. Then I detailed what I felt was the cutting moment.
“I corrected him on one of Shakespeare’s sonnets,” I explained, chicken-pecking at my fries as Guy cut into his steak. “Something about how cultural and social standpoint would’ve prevented him from writing about his historically-scandalous love interests.”
“The male lover,” Guy agreed.
I nodded. “Right,” I said. “But Michael said that I had to be wrong, because works such as the Dark Lady sonnets were obvious proof of his sexuality due to their amount. I then countered by asking that if he’d been a gay writer in that time, would he’d be so willing to broadcast those feelings in such a climate? Not to mention how many of his poems or works might have been lost.”
“Understandable.”
“But… that’s where it went downhill. I made an enemy then, though I wouldn’t know until later, and… well… he got a hold of my dissertation.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was because he had ins with the English department. Maybe it was because his dad was rich. I don’t think he could’ve hacked into my storage cloud, because that would’ve been traceable, but a printed piece of paper… which was requested… bound, no less, and arranged in a binder… that could’ve easily been ‘misplaced.’”
“It was lost then.”
“Stolen, more likely. Either way, come time I turned my dissertation in after I was told it’d gone missing, I was called down to the dean’s office and told that I was being put on academic suspension due to allegations of plagiarism. I started putting two and two together—my dissertation being misplaced or uncatalogued and Michael’s ins with the department—and… well…”
I couldn’t finish. I’d no need to. The outcome was clear. There was no happy or righteous ending in this story.
“You were expelled,” Guy said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “And now I have sixty-thousand dollars’ worth of debt that I can’t pay off.”
“Won’t they let you in another school?”
“Who knows? Maybe. Maybe they’ll take pity on me. Or maybe they’ll just think I’m a plagiarist once they look at my records and see why I was expelled. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I’m about to lose my apartment anyway.”
Guy’s face paled instantly. “What?”
“Yeah. I missed rent last month. No tolerance. They’ll kick me out within the next two weeks if I don’t pay up.”
“Fuck, Jason.”
I picked up the hamburger and began to eat in slow and careful bites, knowing that any further rush would make me sick and send me puking into the bathroom. Meanwhile, Guy’s expression had changed little. His unease had quickly eclipsed from shock to outright horror in the moments that passed, most likely because of how resigned I was to my fate.
“Do you have any family?” Guy asked.
“Up north,” I replied. “Nowhere I want to be. Or where they’d care for me to be.”
“Friends?”
I shook my head. “A few, but… not the kind I could go to for help.”
“But you…”
Guy’s loss for words was so initially disconcerting that I stopped eating to wait for him to continue, my attention rapt and set directly on him. When he didn’t continue, I fell to the belief that he was merely thinking and continued eating, unsure what to say.
Minutes passed without Guy speaking—the waitress stopping, refilling drinks.
Just when I was about finished with my meal, Guy cleared his throat, took a mighty gulp of his margarita, then set it down, using the point of one knuckle to wipe salt from his lips.
“I’ll help you,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
/>
“I’ll pay whatever you need to get out of the lease. You can stay with me.”
“I don’t think that’s—”
Guy pressed a finger to my lips—and though I tried my hardest to argue, to fight, to refuse, something in his gaze, his touch, kept me from doing so.
His eyes said it all. Don’t speak. Listen. Wait.
He pulled his finger away set his hand atop the table, watching intently and waiting for an answer.
Truthfully, I don’t think he blamed me for my unsurety. I mean, who could? I barely even knew this man and yet he was willing to invest everything in me—his money, his confidence, his life. To some, his offer could’ve been seen as a gift of compassion, but to others? The double-edged sword was sharp. Did he really want to help, like he said he did, and offer me the chance to be his roommate? Or was he just trying to make me into his own little sex bunny—to use and abuse whenever he liked? What, exactly, did he want with me?
“You don’t have to decide tonight,” Guy said after a moment, accepting the check from the waitress and signing it off. “I don’t want to pressure you into anything.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ll think about it. Thank you.”
What he didn’t realize was that, while he’d opened one door, all the others had remained closed.
He was my only opportunity.
How else could I escape a life of homelessness?
Chapter Nine
I meandered about my apartment at nearly three o’clock in the morning trying to figure out what would be the smartest thing to do. I weighed up the Past Due notice on my kitchen counter on one side against my meager amount of pride and self-worth on the other. I collapsed on the living room floor and stared at the ceiling with the jagged crack that occasionally dripped water come time for rainier months.
There in my head rang the great question: To do or not to do?
Realistically, there wasn’t much I could lose if I caved to Guy’s offer. My dignity had already taken a turn for the worst, and I wasn’t exactly opposed to living with one of the hottest men on the face of the planet. Of course, the whole thing could backfire—he could demand sex constantly or force me to do things I didn’t want to, but if so, it wasn’t as if I couldn’t leave.
