Home Skillet

by Sandra Damien

  “I think you’re being irrationally angry about this. What the hell do you care anyway. You know this is all temporary.”

  “You couldn’t have found anywhere else in the whole state of New Jersey to work? You had to just waltz in and take over Buck’s like you’ve taken over my apartment?”

  Shit. I’d known he was a little sour about me crashing with him, but I hadn’t realized just how annoyed he’d become. “You want me out, you just say the word, Ben. It was your idea in the first place for me to stay with you, if I recall correctly. But if you want me gone, I’m gone.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Look, I’m sorry I got hired. It wasn’t my intention when I showed up today, but I’m unemployed. I can’t stay on your couch forever, and when an opportunity drops in your lap, it’s stupid not to take it.”

  “You think Buck’s is an opportunity? You’re a goddamn chef. And now you wanna hang around a shithole like that and drop frozen mozza sticks into hot oil. Great, Jimmy. Fantastic use of your talents.”

  Before I could respond, Ben had swerved into his parking space, turned off the engine, and climbed out of the car. I jogged after him, barely catching up by the time we got inside. Ben chose to take the stairs—presumably to avoid being caught in another confined space with me.

  When we got inside, I followed him into his room. He ignored me, peeling off the clothes he was wearing until he was standing in just his boxers. His chest was heaving, from anger or from racing up the stairs, I couldn’t be sure. I tried to keep my eyes from tracing the lines of his body, but there was no way I could. He was so beautiful, and being fired up like this had my mind diving into places it shouldn’t.

  “Ben,” I started, but he didn’t look at me. He was rifling through his drawers, pulling shirts out, holding them up, then pitching them into the corner. “Ben,” I repeated, with more force this time.

  He turned and looked at me, a pale blue tee clutched in his hand. “What?”

  All the fight seemed to go out of me, and I felt completely drained. Looking at him now, I was so fucking destroyed that this is how things were between us. We were best friends. We’d done everything together.

  There’d been a time when we couldn’t get enough of each other, and now he could barely stand to look at me. I didn’t know what had changed along the way, but I was desperate to fix it.

  “Do you want me to quit?”

  He huffed a sigh. “No. Yes. I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I want.”

  Well, that made two of us.

  “If you want me to quit, I will. You mean more to me than a job.”

  He looked up, his eyes meeting mine, and he laughed. “Well, I’d fucking hope so, especially if the choice is between me or frickin’ Buck’s.”

  The sound of Ben’s laughter unlocked something—the anxiousness I’d been holding in my chest since we’d left the restaurant eased, and I caught a glimpse of the Ben I used to know.

  “Look, I’m serious,” I said softly. “If you’re unhappy about this, just tell me. I can find something else. But I thought the sooner I had some income, the sooner I could get out of your hair, and maybe fix whatever’s going on between us.” I huffed out a laugh. “Spending all this time together isn’t as easy as it used to be, huh?”

  “Nothing a little Lucky Charms and Blockbuster can’t fix,” he said tightly, and I could tell he didn’t mean it. He blew out a breath, the fight leaving him. “I’m sorry. It’s great you’re trying to get back on your feet. What I think has nothing to do with anything.”

  “What you think means everything to me.”

  Ben’s features softened. “I’ve been so on edge lately, but it’s not your fault I swear. I’m sorry I’ve been such a dick.” He tossed the T-shirt on the bed and sighed. “You’re right, though. You do need a job, and even though I think you’re batshit for wanting that job to be working at Buck’s, it’s your prerogative to do stupid shit. Lord knows, it’s kinda your MO.”

  It was my turn to laugh because even though Ben’s words had hit awfully close to home, it was reminiscent of the way we used to relate to each other. Despite everything that had gone down, despite the time and distance and bullshit, we were still close. We just had to fix the cracks around the edges of our friendship. The tension between us for the last week wasn’t us. We just needed some time to get back into the swing of being Jimmy and Ben.

  Expecting our friendship to continue on like I hadn’t been tough to get ahold of for the last six years was too much to ask. We had to work up to it, and that started with me making the effort. “You’re going back to Lucky’s?”

  “That was the original plan, but it’s a little subdued for what I want tonight.”

  I swallowed hard, contemplating what exactly that meant. “Where’re you going, then?”

  “Remington’s, I think.”

  I didn’t know exactly what kind of place that was, but I could guess. The thought of Ben blowing off his tension with some random fuck left me uneasy, though. I know I had no right to offer my opinion on what he did and didn’t do, but dammit, the idea of it crawled right under my skin, making me itch.

  I think I surprised us both when I blurted, “Mind if I come with?”

  “What?” He narrowed his eyes. “You want to come dancing with me.”

  “Yeah. Might be nice to blow off a little steam…” I was regretting this already and the suggestion had barely left my mouth.

  “You understand where I’m going and why I’m going there,” he said, the words coming out slowly and clearly.

  I nodded.

  “And you wanna come with me anyway?”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  A beat passed, then another before he answered. “Okay. Be ready to go in twenty minutes.”

  I wasn’t sure what the evening was going to hold, but I’d do absolutely anything to hang on to that flash of the old Ben I’d seen moments before.

  Chapter Eight

  Ben

  Well, wasn’t this situation all kinds of fucked-up? Never in a billion years would I have thought Jimmy would coming clubbing with me.

  I wasn’t sure what was happening. I’d gone from irritated and angry to shocked in the span of a half a second. Maybe that had been his intention. Who knows, because I felt like this was the first of the seven signs of the apocalypse. There’d been a time, right after high school grad, when Jimmy and I used to sneak out to clubs in Manhattan, flashing fake IDs the bouncers knew for sure were bogus. They clearly hadn’t cared, and neither had Jimmy and I. We weren’t there to drink; we were there to dance, grinding on each other into the pulsing beat of the music.

  We’d party until the early hours of the morning, then take the train back to our apartment, still stacked with the boxes we hadn’t yet unpacked, and rub off on each other before we passed out for the night.

  It had been a magical few months before the weight of responsibility had fallen on us. That Jimmy used to love to dance, but new Jimmy… I was having a hard time picturing him in that scene.

  I guess I was about to find out if he could still let loose.

  I led him to a place I’d been a thousand times before. I was strangely nervous to take him there, like I was letting him see a part of me I’d kept hidden from him, but I needed this. Even with Jimmy in tow, letting loose and forgetting about the last six years was exactly what I wanted to do.

  As much as I wanted to tell Jimmy to quit Buck’s, as much as I wanted him off my couch, I couldn’t do that to him. But he was driving me fucking nuts. And the worst part was that me wanting him had only gotten worse.

  He was filling my sleeping hours as well as my waking ones, and now he’d be filling my work hours as well. He was going to kill me. I’d been going out of my skin for so long, and Remington’s—or the guys in it at least—never failed to take my mind off whatever bullshit I was dealing with. All I could hope was that it was the same tonight—with or without Jimmy shadowing me
.

  We arrived at the club, and I didn’t bother waiting for Jimmy as I walked toward the front. I was on a mission tonight, and he was tagging along. He wasn’t my responsibility, and I needed him to know that.

  “Is this it?” he asked when he caught up with me. The exterior looked like any other building in the area—stone and brick with nondescript doors and four floors above the main level with what were probably apartments. No one loitered outside, and I couldn’t hear the telltale club-volume bass pounding from anywhere inside.

  This place had been in business in Manhattan for decades, one of the oldest gay clubs in existence. One of the features that had made it so popular once upon a time was that in a previous incarnation, it had been a speakeasy for bootleggers.

  Remington’s had carried on the tradition of the deceptive façade.

  “This is it.” I wasn’t sure how this was going to go, but if any of the old Jimmy was still in there, the Jimmy I’d known before he’d gotten caught up in culinary fame and marriage and all that came with it, there was no way he wouldn’t like it.

  “You sure? It doesn’t seem like—”

  I pulled open the door, and Jimmy stopped talking. There was a front area with plain white walls and boring artwork. Nothing about the lobby alluded to what was inside; it was beige and basic and completely devoid of personality. In the middle there was a desk with a guy who I knew spent his days in a suit and his nights in leather. He perked up in his seat when he saw me.

  “Hey, Ben. Welcome back.” Troy looked around me, his eyes lingering on Jimmy just a second or two longer than they should have. “And you brought a friend with you this time.”

  Jimmy looked at me with amusement in the lift of his eyebrows.

  “Yep. Troy, this is Jimmy.”

  “Well, hello there, Jimmy. You new to Remington’s?” Troy leaned forward on the desk, hands under his chin, and gave Jimmy a slow perusal. There was no missing that.

  Jimmy shifted, edging behind me like I was his human shield. “Uh, yeah. My first time.”

  “Ah, we love the virgins around here,” Troy purred, and when I reached for my wallet, he shook his head. “No charge for the newbie.”

  I tucked my wallet back, pleased. “Thanks.”

  “Go on in, and have fun, boys.”

  “We will. Come on, Jimmy. Time to get crunk.”

  Troy waved us through to the door beside the desk, and we went down the steps into the dark basement that housed the club.

  As discreet as the building was outside, the inside was as ostentatious as it gets. There was nothing subdued or subtle about the place. The lights strobed and the music pumped; even the walls glittered. There was a designated dance floor, but there were guys everywhere dancing to the pounding beat. I watched Jimmy as his eyes adjusted in the smoky haze and his gaze found the men in cages moving like sex above the dance floor.

  "Drinks?" I asked.

  "Fuck yeah. Drinks.” He swallowed, eyes wide. “Make mine a double."

  I grinned and led him over to the side of the bar where my favorite bartender could usually be found.

  "Davy," I called, getting the bartender's attention. "Four cocksucking cowboys."

  It wasn’t what I’d normally drink, but honestly, I was getting a kick out of Jimmy’s reaction to being there. I could tell he was a weird mixture of uncomfortable and intrigued, and if I could play everything up a bit for that extra bit of shock factor, I would.

  "You bet,” Davy said as he poured two generous shots each and slid them toward us. He held up a can of whip cream. "Wanna make it a cumshot?"

  Jimmy looked sick, and I laughed. “Just the cowboys, thanks, Davy. Add it to my tab, would ya?”

  I turned back to Jimmy and handed him a shot. "Cheers."

  He clinked his glass against mine before throwing the alcohol back, one after the other. I watched him for a second—there was something crazy sexy about the movement, and I kinda wished he’d gone for the whip cream—then drank mine down.

  "Another round?" Davy asked, pulling our empty glasses off the bar and tucking them in the bin behind him. He winked at Jimmy, who nodded back at him. As I loosened up to having Jimmy as my reluctant wingman tonight, I was hoping he’d let go of some of his inhibitions too. A couple of shots and a few chasers to start the night were exactly what both of us needed after the day we’d had.

  I couldn’t wait to get him on the dance floor.

  "Same?" Davy asked.

  "Yeah, sounds good," Jimmy said, leaning against the bar with a grin. “Make mine a cumshot.”

  I cocked an eyebrow and gave him a little grin, pleasantly surprised he was getting into this. Four more shots were poured, and four more shots were slammed back. By the time I'd finished the last one, I was feeling hella loose. My legs were numb, and my body was warm and relaxed. It was the least tense I'd felt since Jimmy'd moved in.

  I was here because I needed to blow off some steam. My life hadn’t tanked hard the way his had, but having him around that close all the time had me tied up in knots. No matter how hard I fought the desire to strip him naked and slam him against a wall, the urge hadn’t dulled in the least. Not only that, but having him around highlighted just how shitty everything was. Yeah, Jimmy's whole world had taken a sharp nosedive, but mine had never gotten off the ground. I was standing around, waiting for my life to start, and before I knew it, I was almost thirty fucking years old.

  I stared down at the empty glasses in front of me, realizing I was four shots deep into my own pity party.

  "We should probably switch to beer." I did a quick shake of my head to clear my thoughts and refocused my attention on Jimmy. Which wasn't hard because, Jesus. Just look at him.

  The light hit him just right, softening the hard lines of his face. He leaned on an elbow as he chatted casually with Davy, half turned toward the writhing bodies on the dance floor. For the first time in a while, he looked relaxed and mellow, and dare I say it, like he was having fun.

  His smile was contagious, and when he ran a hand through his hair, my gut twisted with longing.

  Fuck. “Beers, Davy. Could you grab us a couple Bud Lights?”

  “You got it, boss.”

  When he returned with the beers, he smiled again at Jimmy, then went to help some customers at the other end of the bar.

  “So, you come here often?” Jimmy said, turning his brilliant smile to me.

  I laughed. “Dude. You tryin’ to pick me up?”

  Jimmy’s eyes widened for a minute, and then he started laughing too. “The guy at the front and now the bartender… they seem to know you pretty well.”

  I shrugged and took a swig of beer. “I come here often enough. Not a lot of options in Hackensack, and this is one of the few places around that I don’t have to always be aware of who’s looking, ya know?”

  “I hear that.” His smile faded, his words absorbed by the music. Even after a handful of shots and a bottle of Bud, Jimmy was still thinking too hard. I could tell he was getting lost in his own head.

  I pulled the beer bottle from his hand—the last few sips were fucking gross anyway—and placed it next to mine on the bar.

  “C’mon. We’re gonna find some guys to dance with.”

  “Wait, Benno—”

  “Shut it. Let’s go.”

  I grabbed his hand and pulled him to the dance floor. He only resisted a second before he was walking behind me, sticking close. His body pressed against my back as we navigated through the crowd of sweaty dancers, and all my awareness honed in on that contact. I stopped abruptly in the middle of the action and turned to face him. From where we were, we could see the go-go boys dancing above us, and surrounding us on all sides were some of New York’s finest in various states of undress. It was a good night to be out, and it looked like we'd have our pick of pretty much anyone.

  Jimmy was getting a lot of looks, the men around him blatantly checking him out as we stood there. It was like they were all in on it with me, to make sure Jimm
y had a good time from the minute he’d stepped through those doors. I started to dance, moving my hips to the beat, but Jimmy still seemed reluctant.

  “Come on, dude,” I urged. “You’ll feel better if you just forget about everything and dance for a bit.”

  The room seemed to move in slow motion, and all good judgment went out the window as I stepped forward and wound my arms around Jimmy's waist.

  We'd danced together a thousand times before, back in the day. It wasn’t like this was the first time there’d been this little space between us… maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t had a chance to decompress from Jimmy being there, in my space, all the time, but whatever it was, I felt drunker than I should have.

  I could have taken a step back. I could have made an excuse and gone to get another drink, or made up a reason we had to leave, but I didn't. I moved closer, lining our bodies up until there wasn’t a breath of space between us.

  And god, did it feel good.

  I pulled him with me, manipulating his body with mine until we both seemed to be lost in the music. He touched me, his hands sliding down to the small of my back and holding me to him. I dipped mine lower, palming the curve of his ass and grinding our hips together. My cock filled, hardening against his, and in that moment I didn’t give a shit. It felt too good to stop, and maybe that was so fucking stupid, but shit, I couldn’t care.

  I wanted this, wanted him, and in that moment, he was right there with me.

  I looked at him, our eyes locking for half a heartbeat. I knew what was going to happen a split second before it did, but I don’t think Jimmy had any idea.

  I curled my fingers around the back of his neck and pulled him to me, pressing my lips to his.

  Christ, I’d waited so long to do that. Years of wanting to get back to a place where we were free to do what we wanted to each other. I held my breath, and the moment Jimmy’s hands tightened in the fabric of my shirt, I knew he wanted this too.

  I kissed him hard, deepening it almost instantly. Tentative to full-on in less time than it took for Janet Jackson to get to the chorus.