Heir for Hire

by Jerry Cole

  He needed to start moving on.

  His phone was in the kitchen, along with his wallet. There was a note from Sage that said she got his things, but she still hadn’t kicked Basil’s ass. It made Trevor smile. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Sage would still be on his side no matter what. He smiled as he spotted the ibuprofen on the counter, near the already made coffee, and his smile turned into a grin.

  ***

  A few hours passed and Trevor started to feel a little bit better. The validated parking near where they were casting made him feel better, and he got called after a couple of people who looked just like him—men, good-looking, biracial, early twenties—he was feeling pretty confident about how it would go. By the time he got out of the audition, he was sure it had gone well. He didn’t necessarily think he was going to get a call back, but it cheered him up to know he could make the people who decided whether he got a job laugh when he was expected to.

  He couldn’t know if someone would do it better than him, but that wasn’t his business. He should have learned that lesson long ago, but it was hard when he was anxious and he was anxious then. Everything felt like it was up in the air. He would have to get more auditions. He should probably get an agent. He wondered if he could get an agent. He knew non-union actors sometimes got agents, but it was harder to do. Maybe he should join a union, but he hadn’t wanted to pay the dues yet, and he didn’t want to then. Not since his situation had changed.

  He was thinking about all this when someone tapped him on the shoulder. Trevor turned around to look at the man who touched him. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with huge brown eyes and bronze skin. He was wearing a white short sleeved shirt that showed off his muscles and his blond dreadlocks went halfway down his back.

  “Hey,” he said. “You dropped this.”

  He was holding out Trevor’s phone. Trevor’s eyes widened as he took it from him. “Shit, thank you,” he said. “It must have fallen out of my pocket.”

  “It’s totally fine,” the guy replied. “Are you here for the audition?”

  “I am,” Trevor said. “I was just leaving.”

  “How did it go?”

  Trevor smiled at him. When he got that kind of question from other actors in waiting rooms, it always felt like it was a competition. He could tell this guy meant it in a friendly way and he wasn’t sure he had been prepared for that.

  “It went pretty well, I think,” he said. “All things considered. What about you?”

  The guy shook his head. “I don’t think it went so well for me,” he replied. “I don’t think I’m going to get a call back.”

  Trevor sighed, twisting his lips. “Sorry, man. That’s rough.”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “I know.”

  Trevor was about to stuff the phone in his pocket and turn around to walk away, but the guy stopped him by putting his hand on his shoulder.

  “So,” he said. “I was going to put my number in your phone but you have one of those lock screens.”

  Trevor cocked his head.

  “So, what if I call you? That way you can keep my number,” he said. “You’ll know who is calling when I call you again.”

  Trevor smiled. “You want to call me—not just once, but two times?”

  “Yeah,” the actor said. “My name’s Dave. You know, if you wanted me to call you. So you can add me on your phone. Unless you…”

  “What?”

  “Have a boyfriend,” he said. “Or a girlfriend.”

  Trevor swallowed. He didn’t, did he? He didn’t even have a boss anymore. He had nothing. He licked his lips. “Sure,” he said. “That’s fine, um, Dave. My name is Trevor.”

  “Great,” Dave replied. He took his phone out of his back pocket and handed it to Trevor. “Here you go. Put your digits in there for me, and call yourself. I’ll get in touch with you soon. Okay?”

  Trevor smiled.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “I didn’t think you wanted to see me,” Basil said, more to the menu than to his sister.

  “I didn’t,” she replied, scoffing. They were sitting together at an outside table of a restaurant on the promenade, one they used to meet up at often before Sage got busy. He didn’t think Sage was going to want to go out with him, but she had finally said she would when he wouldn’t leave her alone. He needed to talk to her. He needed to tell her what he had told their mom. He also needed to ask her if she could talk to Trevor on his behalf, but he didn’t expect her to say yes. He knew she was furious. She made that clear when she stormed into his apartment, grabbed Trevor’s stuff, and left without even saying good-bye. She didn’t have a key, but the Walker estate was pretty secure, so Basil rarely bothered to lock his door. He called her the moment she left and then when he had a lunch break at work.

  She told him she would meet him at The Newton for dinner, but not before she called him an idiot. He was relieved. He also felt a little guilty—well, he felt more than a little guilty. He felt incredibly guilty. He had been doing nothing but thinking about Trevor all day. He deserved Trevor’s hate. He was well aware of that.

  He wanted to apologize to him, really apologize to him. He also needed to reassure him he was still going to hold up his end of the bargain. He was still going to pay Trevor for the year he had promised him. Basil was pretty sure that was stipulated in his contract. He hadn’t spoken to Trevor about it yet and he was almost certain Trevor wasn’t going to want to speak to him about it—or anything—but he needed Sage to convey the information that he wouldn’t just renege on their deal. That wasn’t the kind of person he was.

  “I told Mom and Dad,” Basil finally said.

  Sage cocked her head, her eyes narrow. “What did you tell them?”

  “I told them I wasn’t…that I wasn’t interested in having children just for their benefit,” Basil said. “Well, I told Mom. I don’t know if I would have been able to tell Dad. I’m pretty sure he knows, though.”

  “She doesn’t keep anything from him.”

  “She doesn’t,” Basil said. “I just…I don’t want to be the person who’s only there for them so they can have grandchildren with their fucking names and the same eye color they have. As if that’s the most important thing in the world.”

  She smiled. Basil didn’t think she would smile right then, but she actually smiled, and it was sincere.

  “What?” he said after swallowing.

  “Nothing,” she replied. “It’s…it’s taken you a really long time to rebel, hasn’t it?”

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to say anything because she was right and he hated that she was right. She had always been the most rebellious one in the family, and Basil had always felt like he had to make up for it. It wasn’t that she was particularly bad, because she wasn’t. It was mostly that his parents’ expectations were different for them.

  They always had been.

  “They never ripped into you about…”

  “They ripped into me enough,” she said, holding her hand up to stop him from talking. “They ripped into me hard. I just didn’t care. You shouldn’t have cared either.”

  “One of us had to care.”

  She shook her head. “But why?”

  “Because!”

  She raised her eyebrows, brushing her blue hair back behind her shoulder. She was obviously unconvinced. “That is not a good reason. You know it’s not a good reason. I don’t need to tell you it’s not a good reason. Why did it take this long?”

  Basil licked his lips. “I guess I didn’t realize what I was missing out on,” he said. “After…after what happened with Trevor, I realized I wasn’t just hurting myself by listening to them, I was hurting other people. I don’t know if I hurt him but—”

  “You hurt him,” she interjected, her voice stone. “I’m not supposed to tell you this, I don’t think, but he’s really fucking torn up about it.”

  Basil blinked. He didn’t realize how much he wanted to hear that, but it also hurt. He never meant to up
set Trevor. He didn’t think he had—not really. Maybe he hurt his pride. Basil never thought he actually hurt Trevor. He was only his fake boyfriend and he didn’t think Trevor particularly cared about him.

  “You look like you’re glad,” Sage finally said. “I’m not sure how to take that.”

  He swallowed. “I’m not glad,” he said. “I mean, I guess I am a little. Don’t worry, I feel like shit about it.”

  “Why are you glad, though?”

  “I don’t know,” Basil said, his heart beating fast. He wasn’t sure why he wanted Trevor to miss him. All he was sure of was that he did. He closed his eyes and thought about when they kissed, how electric Trevor’s kisses had been, how they made him feel so weirdly complete. Then his mind wandered to the stairs, where Trevor had pushed him up against a wall, and dropped to his knees as it was the most natural thing in the world. He had to shift in his seat so he wouldn’t get an erection while sitting across from his sister in a busy city restaurant. He wasn’t a teenager anymore. The idea of someone sucking his cock shouldn’t get him hard in public. The idea of Trevor sucking his cock again, it made him dizzy with desire. Being around Trevor—ugh, he would probably never get to be around Trevor again.

  He had made sure of that.

  He took a deep, trembling breath and set his gaze on his sister.

  “Can I ask you something?” she asked. She seemed less angry than she had been, but Basil wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. She looked like she might pity him or something. He wasn’t good with pity. He didn’t like it when people felt sorry for him.

  He shrugged as a way of response. When that didn’t earn him a verbal reply, he muttered. “I guess.”

  “Have you ever had feelings for another guy?”

  “You mean like platonic feelings? Because I’ve had plenty of feelings,” Basil said. “I’m an unstable ball of emotions. I’m having lots of feelings right now.”

  She shook her head. “You know what I mean.”

  “I mean…I don’t know, I really like girls,” Basil quietly replied.

  “I know,” Sage replied. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t like other people.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “It doesn’t,” Sage said quietly, tilting her head and looking pensive. Basil closed his eyes, wondering if she was right. He hadn’t often found other guys attractive, but unlike his friends, he didn’t find them repulsive. At least that was what his friends said. He always appreciated the male form, he often focused on it when he was watching porn, but it was never because he considered himself gay or bisexual. He always liked girls too much and he guessed he had been too horny for them to pay attention to his appreciation for the male form. He always waited until he’d had crushes on people before he decided anything about himself. He supposed the first man he ever had a crush on had been Trevor.

  It wasn’t just a crush, either. Basil was pretty sure of that.

  “Shit,” Basil said quietly after licking his lips. “I really screwed this up, didn’t I?”

  Sage twisted her lips. “Do you like him?”

  “I don’t just like him,” Basil said, his voice shaking. “I mean, I think I don’t just like him. I don’t…I’m not sure. I think I’m going to have to sit down with myself and think about things a lot.”

  She nodded and surprisingly, she reached out and grabbed his hand. “Don’t take too long, okay? I don’t know if he’s going to stick around.”

  Basil swallowed. “Do you think he’ll want to talk to me?”

  “Right now, I think you’re probably better off giving him a little space,” she replied. “He’s hurt. You need to figure yourself out before you approach him, because honestly, the last thing I want is for you to hurt him again.”

  “I never meant to hurt him,” Basil said quietly.

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You hurt him and he didn’t deserve to be hurt. He took a job, Basil. He didn’t necessarily want to take on all your baggage from a lifetime of trying to please Mom and Dad.”

  Basil swallowed. “I mean, that’s what the job was for.”

  “Right,” she replied, casting her gaze on the wooden floor. “But you didn’t really have to break his heart.”

  Basil’s eyes stung. For some strange reason, he felt like crying. “Is that what I did?”

  She didn’t say anything. “So,” his sister finally said. “What did you say was good here?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Trevor looked at his reflection in the mirror. His face looked unfamiliar to himself. There were big bags under his eyes and discoloration around his nose and lips. He didn’t just look tired, he looked like absolute shit. He looked down at the cotton ball he used to wipe off his make-up, because he definitely wasn’t going to go to an audition without make-up, especially not when he looked like death. He must still have his magic touch because Dave had asked him out. He didn’t think he was going to go out with him, because he still didn’t feel up to it, not after everything that had happened with Basil.

  Then again, maybe he did need to go out with someone else. Another gay dude. Yeah, that was probably a better idea. It would be less complicated. If it didn’t work, that would be fine. Trevor didn’t need it to work. He just needed to get Basil off his mind.

  As long as he kept looking at himself though, he saw remnants of him. Not just the way his body had been physically affected by his lack of sleep and his poor decision making, but also the way Basil grabbed onto his hair when Trevor had first gone down on him or the way he dug the ends of his fingers into Trevor’s body when he was close to orgasm. Trevor sighed. He would probably dye his hair.

  He often did that when he felt powerless. He couldn’t have felt more powerless then. There was no reasoning with a straight boy, especially not one who had hired him to act as his boyfriend. Trevor was aware there was no way to talk someone out of their sexual orientation, and while it was true Basil had happily fucked him, he could have been thinking of a woman while he did. Trevor hugged himself, shuddering at the thought. He had been so in the moment, it only occurred to him Basil might not have been as into it as he was, despite his declarations of desire.

  He didn’t want to go through the effort of picking a color, so he decided to bleach his hair. It should be a simple process, and it grew out fast enough that if he got sick of it, he could just shave it again. Or, if he had a role where he would have to play up another part of his identity. He wasn’t too worried about that, someone would be in charge of his hair and his clothes if he was lucky enough to land a role somewhere.

  He was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be chosen for the thing he auditioned for today. He couldn’t even remember what it was called. He knelt down and opened the door of the bathroom cabinet. He probably already had bleach at home.

  ***

  Basil sighed as he put the last of his clothes in his luggage. He recently found a small apartment near the city, and while it was nicely located, there was little more to say for it. He attempted to quit the company, but his father had negotiated with him—he would actually be mentored to do something and soon he would be taking over a logistical department. It wasn’t particularly exciting work, but at least it was work, and Basil hated to admit how excited he was. It would be work, actual work, and he had a nice salary bump to go along with it. His trust fund, the one set up by his father, would kick in on his twenty-sixth birthday. Luckily, that had nothing to do with his father’s business. Basil wondered if his grandfather had an inkling of how overbearing Basil’s dad could be, but he had been an incredibly overbearing man himself.

  Basil felt a stab of pain as he thought about his sister’s words. Was he really becoming like his father? He was trying hard not to, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to avoid it. It seemed like fate. Basil thought about his father’s steadfast avoidance of the topic of Trevor and the topic of heirs. He was pretty sure his mother had spoken to him, but Basil didn’t want to find out what he had said. He was worried about t
he conversation which he was sure was going to happen eventually, but telling his father he wanted to quit seemed to have put Basil’s deception on the back burner.

  He was excited to live by himself in the city. Technically, he had moved out of his house when he was seventeen years old, two days before he went off to college. When he was in college, he lived in the dorms. When he graduated, he thought about moving out, but there was something incredibly convenient about being able to live a five-minute drive away from work and having all the perks of being at home while still having all his independence. Sage had been right, though. It was high time he rebelled and started living for himself, not just doing what his parents wanted him to do.

  His mother cocked her head. “Do you need all this?”

  She smiled at him when she spoke, which surprised Basil. He didn’t think she would be receptive to him moving out, but she just nodded and asked him if he needed help furnishing his new apartment. He told her he did. He liked shopping with his mother, and he wanted to make the transition as easy for her as possible. He didn’t like admitting it, but he was also a little scared. This was the first time he would ever be on his own. He needed it to work.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I think so.”

  “Okay,” she replied.

  He smiled at her. “I honestly thought you wouldn’t be happy about this.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be happy about this? You’re doing what you have to do. I’m proud of you.”

  He looked down and his expression sobered. Hopefully, she would be even more proud of him later, when he took care of things.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Yes,” Trevor said into the phone as he gave a thumbs up to Sage. They were sitting in the living room, watching some stupid reality TV show, when he had gotten a phone call from the casting director he had gone to see a week ago. He still couldn’t believe what she was saying, but he couldn’t ask her to repeat herself again. He had already done that enough. He was finding this entire thing hard to believe. He had been so sure he wasn’t going to get the role he had been auditioning for because he felt so crappy that day and because all he could remember about those few days was when Basil had offered him more money just to fuck him again. The whole thing still upset him but it didn’t make him as angry as before. He was resigned that Basil didn’t like him like that and he wasn’t sure what had made him fall so quickly and stupidly. He should have known better than that. He did know better than that. It was just weird for him to think he had cared so very much.