Where Do I Start?

by Chase Taylor Hackett

“The bar is toward the back, food on the right,” said the goddess.

  Marco and I came up politely behind.

  “You must be Katrina,” I said, turning on the smile.

  “Yes, and you guys are…”

  “Fletch.”

  “Marco.”

  “Friends of Bob’s,” said the paunch from the elevator.

  “Bob’s? Really?” Apparently she didn’t think we were Bob’s type—but she didn’t seem to mind. “One blond, one brunette. A girl doesn’t know which to choose.”

  “Why choose?” said Marco.

  Katrina’s eyebrows jumped a good three inches. And yeah, we’d done the three-way thing before, too.

  “You boys just come on in!” she said, stretching out an arm to us. “The bar is toward the back and on the left—food on the right.”

  We slipped in through the crowd. Katrina stepped up to greet some new people, and Marco let his hand slide across her backside as we went by. She seemed surprised, but she certainly didn’t seem to mind. Clever boy—we weren’t getting thrown out of here any time soon.

  I don’t actually drink, so while Marco aimed for the bar, I veered off on my own. It was a chatty group, all talking shop as far as I could tell. I kept looking for a conversation I could slide into, but everywhere I turned they were babbling about motions and subpoenas. Oh sweet mother of us all, I thought, it’s a bunch of frigging lawyers. Hardly the ideal party crowd.

  There was a guy sitting alone on a radiator by the window, balding, mid-thirties, looking shy and awkward. Approachable, but not really what I had hoped for on a Saturday night. And then I noticed another guy off by himself, studying the bookshelf, looking, well, just as shy and awkward as the radiator sitter but with an important distinction—the bookworm was seriously cute.

  He was maybe my age, maybe a bit older. Curly brown hair that fell across his forehead. Big brown eyes. He wasn’t really my type—and yet somehow, man-oh-man, he was completely my type. Maybe it was the shyness that was so appealing. The bookshelf was obviously a hiding place, to avoid dealing with the other boys on the playground.

  A waiter was setting out several glasses of champagne on the bar. I swung past, snagged two, and moved to the bookshelf.

  “Hey,” I said as I stood behind the wannabe wallflower. He was startled and he jumped a bit as if he’d been caught at something. “This is for you.” I gave him one of the champagne glasses, and reached over his shoulder to set the second glass on the bookshelf behind him. “Fletch.” I extended the right hand.

  “Roger. Roger Prescott,” he said, shifting the champagne glass and shaking my hand. “Trusts and Estates.”

  “Fletcher Andrews,” I said. “Biscuits and gravy.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I don’t know what you said either, so we’re even.”

  “Oh.”

  I think I had scared him.

  “Thanks for the…” he said, lifting the glass.

  “No problem. Hey,” I said, leaning against the bookshelf next to him. “I’m going tell you a secret, if you promise not to tell anyone ever.”

  “O-kayyyy,” he said, clearly not okay.

  “You see the guy nibbling on Katrina’s ear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s my friend Marco. He and I crashed this party—”

  “No way.”

  “Way. And we don’t know a soul here—although it looks like Marco is getting to know Katrina pretty well. So, I ask you, because I know you will know. Who are all these people?”

  “Wow. Well, let’s see.” He turned to the room, and pushed the curls back from his forehead, which, of course, fell right back onto his forehead. Maybe the single most-adorable gesture of all time.

  “It’s nearly all lawyers, mostly from my firm. Katrina’s firm, I mean. She’s a partner. I just work there. Katrina’s my boss. She’s head of Trusts and Estates.”

  “Trusts—and estates?”

  “My department. That’s wills and trust funds and things. You know how you hear about a zillionaire who pays six dollars in income tax? We make that happen.”

  “Wow. Useful skill.”

  “So yeah, that’s my department. I recognize most of the others, but I don’t know a lot of them. I’m new, just a first-year, so…”

  “First-year what?”

  “Attorney,” said the baby-faced attorney.

  “Really.”

  “And you’re not? An attorney, I mean.”

  “Not even close. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No! No, not at all actually.”

  “So—shouldn’t you be out there working the room or something? Schmooze your way to the top?”

  I scooched myself just a little closer.

  “You’re probably right. I mean, of course you’re right. I’m just not very good at it. The firm is really—competitive. And I’m just not.” He glanced at me, saw I was just that much closer to him. His cheeks seemed to be permanently blushing, but now he really blushed—but he didn’t move away either.

  My trusty gaydar went Ding! Ding! Ding!

  “So you write wills for, like, old, dying people?”

  “Old, dying rich-rich people. Normal rich people? They can’t afford us. And I only do the boring bits. I’m just a first-year.”

  “You said.”

  “Sorry.” He was sipping the champagne to avoid looking at me.

  “No, it’s okay.”

  At this point Katrina came over with Marco draped on her arm like one of Calvin Klein’s obsessions.

  “So you know Roger too?” she asked.

  “Oh absolutely,” I said before Roger could answer. “Roger and I go way back, don’t we?” The poor kid was in no way up to this improvisation. “Summer camp,” I said, explaining to Katrina.

  “I see,” she said, totally not buying it. “Someone said you’re a friend of Bob’s?”

  “Uh—yes.” I’d forgotten all about Bob.

  “He’s over there, by the window.” Bob, it turned out, was the balding radiator sitter. Bob from Accounting, it all made perfect sense.

  “Oh! I didn’t even see Bob,” said Roger. “I should go say hello.”

  I laid my hand on his arm to keep him with me and left it there. The bicep through his shirtsleeve was warm, nice. Not massive or anything, just—I don’t know—nice. And Bob could wait.

  “You and Marco seem to have hit it off,” I said. “And I’ll tell you something. You can take it from me—he’s fantastic in bed.”

  Katrina looked from Marco to me to Marco. Marco just raised his eyebrows and smiled.

  “You boys aren’t lawyers, are you?”

  “No, ma’am,” said Marco, leaning on her shoulder.

  She patted him on the head.

  “And you, Roger,” she said, looking at him and then me, and smiling, shaking her head a little. “It’s always the quiet ones.”

  She turned and led Marco away—who looked back at me over his shoulder and grinned. Roger gulped his champagne.

  “Damn, Marco works fast,” I said.

  “So you guys know Bob?”

  “I lied. I figured the odds were good somebody would be named Bob.”

  “Wow—you do this a lot.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “For what, just free food and booze?”

  “I don’t drink, but yeah, free food, sure. And some laughs. It’s something to do. And maybe I’ve just been hoping all this time that I’d meet some adorable young attorney with lots of curly brown hair.”

  “What?” He wasn’t used to getting hit on.

  “Seriously. I think you’re about the cutest thing since bunny rabbits, with the most gorgeous eyes I’ve ever seen.”

  “Oh.” He went to drink some more champagne, but the glass was
empty.

  “Take this one,” I said, and I handed him the glass I’d set on the bookshelf.

  “You sure?”

  I nodded.

  “I brought it for you.”

  “Oh.” He sipped. “Bob’s really nice. He’s in Accounting.”

  “I’ve heard that about Bob.”

  “He’s a friend of mine.”

  “Hey, Roger, as long as I’m flirting with you and stuff, I feel I oughta ask you before I go any further—does anyone here belong to that hickey?”

  “What?” I swear, his voice cracked like he was fourteen. “Oh this,” he said, rubbing the hickey on the left side of his throat. “It’s not a hickey. I play violin.”

  I thought about that for a second.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “Is there—a connection?”

  “Oh. If you play violin, a lot of violin, I mean, you tend to get a mark there where you neck bends over the instrument. It doesn’t go away. Look, you can see Katrina has the same hickey—mark, I mean. She plays too.”

  I looked across the room to Katrina. If she had it, it was somewhere under Marco.

  “And Bob!” he added.

  “He plays violin, too?”

  “No, cello. So no hickey. Unless it’s like—on his thigh somewhere.”

  We both looked over to balding Bob on the radiator.

  “Don’t go there,” I said.

  “Seriously.” He turned back to me. The champagne was starting to relax him. “Anyway, we play together, the three of us, Katrina, Bob, and I. I mean there’s also Janine. I don’t think she’s here. She plays viola. We play quartets.”

  “So much easier with four people.”

  “I’m being an idiot—sorry.”

  “No! Not at all, I swear. Tell me, what kind of quartets?” Like I knew anything about this, but I wanted to keep him going.

  “We’ve been doing Schubert mostly, lately, but we’ve been working on a Beethoven quartet too.”

  “Which do you like best?”

  “Between the two?” He was gaining courage as he went. “I really love Schubert. If I had to pick a single all-time favorite, it would definitely be Franz Schubert. But lately I’ve been thinking the late Beethoven quartets sound like they were written last week. I’m always hearing something new in there every time I open a score.” He explained some more about these quartets, and there was something truly charming in the way he talked about this stuff, like he believed I could somehow relate to it or even had a clue what he was talking about. His eyes were completely sexy and sparkly when he was even a little excited, and he was apparently pretty stoked about his late Beethoven.

  Were those freckles that ran across his nose and cheekbones? How was anyone supposed to pay much attention when he had freckles like that?

  Then he got suddenly unsure, and that wonderful enthusiasm was gone in a second.

  “Jeez, you must think I’m a total dweeb,” he said, “talking chamber music to a guy at a party.”

  “Dweeb? No, that was not what I was thinking, not even close.” Man-oh-man, would ya’ look at those eyes. “Hey, can I ask you—are you like—in the closet? I don’t want to out anybody at the office party or anything.”

  “No, why? I mean I guess I’m out at the firm, as much as anyone cares…”

  “Not a big presence around the office yet?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Come here, turn to me. That’s it. Now lean your shoulder against the bookshelf like me—and look at me.”

  He did as he was told.

  “There that’s better. I really meant it about those eyes of yours.”

  “Stop,” he said, trying to pull away.

  But my hand caught his arm and he stayed. So did my hand.

  “The reason I asked about the closet and all is that I’m about to kiss you.”

  “What?”

  He tried to pull back again, but my hand was firm. I leaned to him, moved my hand up to his chin, and held it with just the fingertips of my right hand. I tilted my head and kissed his lips, very, very lightly at first, then with a little more contact, and then a full-on kiss.

  Is there anything better than a first kiss? Always a little tentative and sensitive and electric. He tasted of guy. And champagne. All good things.

  “And you know what?” I said, pulling back only a little. “Monday morning, everybody in your office is going to be talking about that cute guy Roger from whatever your department is—”

  “Trusts and Estates—”

  “Trusts and—that’s not the easiest thing to say: Trusts and Estates—”

  We said the last bit together, and man-oh-man when this kid smiled…

  “They’ll be talking about Katrina’s party and that cute Roger guy from—Wills and Things—”

  And he smiled some more for me.

  “And the hot blond he was kissing.”

  Roger laughed, sputtering a little. I kissed him quickly on the cheek just because his laugh was so sweet.

  “They won’t.”

  “They will.”

  “Hey, Prescott,” said a girl in a black dress and a string of pearls as she passed by.

  “Hey, Monica,” said Roger.

  “How’s it goin’?” She walked past, oh-so slowly, eyed me and then Roger, oh-so slowly, and then she kept going, still slowly.

  Roger Prescott. And for half a second I was actually thinking that even his name was cute.

  “See?” I said. “The gossip’s starting already.”

  “Seems kind of high school, doesn’t it?”

  “If you say so. Now c’mon, you dweeb,” I said with one last little kiss before he could panic. “Let’s go talk to Bob.” I put my arm around his waist and shepherded him over to the radiator sitter, grabbing a couple more glasses of champagne as we went. I was sure Bob would like some too.

  Bob and Roger talked mostly about music and their quartet, but they made an effort to clue me in, which was really nice. And I loved watching Roger’s face, how animated he became talking about allegrettos and legatos and stuff. By the end of the evening I knew a lot more music words than I did at the beginning.

  Eventually Roger said good night to Bob, and I did too. He waved good-bye to Katrina from across the room, and I did too. He eyed me a little uncertainly, but he didn’t tell me to take a hike either.

  “Where do you live?” I asked in the elevator.

  “Chelsea. You?”

  “Brooklyn.”

  Out on the sidewalk—probably because we’d just come out of Katrina’s crowded, overheated apartment—the warm April day seemed to have turned into a frigging cold April night.

  Neither of us had a jacket. Roger threw his arms around himself.

  “Spring Street’s not far,” I said, meaning the subway stop. We started off at a really fast walk. As we turned on to Sixth Ave., still a few blocks from the station, it started to rain. Really cold rain.

  We looked at each other.

  “C’mon,” I said. I took off at a run, and he followed. We pelted as fast as we could through the few people on the sidewalk with umbrellas, dodging cars as we dashed across side streets. I let him go down the subway steps in front of me, his feet just flew, and we came to a stop as soon as we were inside. We were breathing hard, and laughing—don’t ask me why. Like two little boys.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he panted. “You?”

  “Me? I’m fine. I’m always fine.”

  We didn’t talk much on the train, but he seemed a little more relaxed with me, after the run.

  Did I mention this kid was totally not my type? The ones who usually pushed my buttons were the big manly guys, fit gym rats with muscles and stubble, guys totally comfortable with their sexiness. But this shy little violin-playing
lawyer boy had found buttons in me I didn’t know existed. I didn’t understand it, and I couldn’t get enough. As we sat on the train together, I wanted to put my arm around him, but I wasn’t sure how he’d take that, so I just leaned against him a little. Nothing obvious, just sharing some body heat. He felt really nice there.

  “You can change here for the D,” he said at West Fourth Street. The D train goes to Brooklyn.

  “I’ll see you home,” I said.

  I should also tell you that I was pretty much a cut-to-the-chase kind of guy. Most guys, me included, want to get to the point of the matter and sooner rather than later. Generally, my idea of foreplay was seeing how fast I could tear open a condom.

  But with this one, my mind wasn’t racing ahead to the sixteen things I was going to do with him—which was how I’d usually be at this point. Instead, all I could think was how much I wanted to hold that sweet face in my hands and kiss him, kiss him all over. Crazy, huh?

  It wasn’t raining when we got to Twenty-Third Street, just cold, so we walked really quickly without any conversation. Two flights up, we were outside his apartment door, and he seemed more nervous than ever.

  “You don’t have to come in if you don’t want,” he said, a little out of breath.”

  Not quite the line I usually got at this point in the evening. He obviously didn’t do this very much. From the other side of the door came an occasional bark.

  “Are you allergic to dogs?” he said. “Because I have a dog.” He was apparently trying to talk me into going away.

  “I love dogs,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  “Look, I can go, if you want me to. But—I’d much rather come in.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. And maybe, Dweeb,” I said kissing him, “if you let me in, you could show me your Stradivarius.” How had I come up with Stradivarius? Even I was impressed.

  He turned and put the key in the door.

  “I don’t actually have a Strad, of course. Mine’s from Mittenwald, a little town in—” He pushed the door open.

  I gently guided Roger inside, and this little black dog started sniffing my ankles.

  “But you don’t really care who made my violin, do you?”

  I kicked the door closed behind me while kissing him—a much-practiced move.