by Rick R. Reed
“You know I’m not supposed to say.”
“Oh, Martha, Martha, Martha.” Cody chuckled. “You’re a girl who’s defined by her talent for doing what she’s not supposed to.” Cody knew that a little charm might pry the details loose from the producer.
“Yes,” Martha sighed. “There’s that.” She paused again. Cody heard her light a cigarette, draw in, exhale. “If I tell you, you won’t tell anyone?”
The deal had already been struck. And Cody had his answer. He might as well hang up now. “No, of course not. My lips are sealed.”
“Okay, so we did have the idea of having you both on the show. We think it would be cool to have two great friends suddenly confront the idea of friendship turning to love.”
“But Martha, that’s just it. We’re too good of friends to complicate it with a crazy little thing called love.”
“Sing it, sister. Anyway, you don’t have to pick Matt. You don’t have to pick anyone. That’s always an out. And if you do pick someone and it doesn’t work out, you can get a divorce. That’s in the contract. If it doesn’t work out within a year, the show bears all the expenses of a divorce.”
“How romantic!” Cody took another swig.
“Well, it’s realistic, at least. But yeah, the two of you will be paired up. I will tell you now that you should not know this going on. We meant it to be a surprise, so the two of you will have to act surprised. Yes, I know you’ll run right out and tell Matt as soon as you hang up. Do you think you can do that?”
“I don’t know that we have a choice.”
“Well, you can move on.”
Martha’s last sentence hung in the air, glittering with promise. Cody could do it, right now. All he had to do was say, “That’s a very good idea, Martha. Why don’t we just forget the whole thing?”
But he didn’t. He didn’t want to. If someone were to ask him why, Cody wasn’t sure he knew the answer or at least wasn’t sure that, if he did know the answer, he was ready to face it.
“You do not have to pick your best friend,” Martha repeated. “It’s just something we’ve never done on the show before, and we think it will give your episode an added dimension. But we have two other very hot men lined up for you, Mr. Mook, and you’d be crazy not to pick one of them.”
The idea did not make Cody feel as excited as he thought it should have. Whatever.
“Are we okay? Maybe it will be easier now that you both know, anyway.”
“Maybe. Thanks for letting me know.”
“Letting you know what?” Martha laughed. “I’ll convince the powers that be that we should let you guys in on the truth when you sign the contracts. I can be persuasive.”
“I’m sure.”
“It will be easier in the long run. We can still do it exactly as we planned. You’ll just have to act surprised.”
“Isn’t that cheating?” Cody asked.
“Honey, do you believe everything you see on reality TV?” Martha made a tsk noise. “You are what we call a babe in the woods. We have to stage things, set things up, otherwise reality TV would be just as boring as real life. Watching paint dry!” Martha cackled.
Cody joined her in the laughter. He stopped himself when he realized she had said a quick good-bye and hung up. He felt as though he had already signed the contract—with the devil.
Chapter 5
Later that evening, Matt found himself wondering what he should do. Weekends, he realized, had become all about going out with Cody. On rare occasions, such as this one, when the two of them were not going out together, the weekend loomed before him, empty and almost without purpose.
Oh, you’re pathetic. Cody isn’t the only person in the world. It’s not like you don’t have other friends. There’s Angela from school. She loves to go out with you to the bars and dance. There’s Mike and George, who are always up for going out somewhere cheap for dinner. There’s even that new guy who just moved in downstairs…what’s his name? He looked like he could be fun, once you got past the retro sixties clothes and the cigarette holder. Oh, my options are dazzling. Damn you, Cody!
He sat down at the desk he had set up in the corner of the bedroom and moved the mouse to bring his desktop computer to life. “You are way too attached to that man,” he told himself. He shook his head. “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.”
He thought of all the other things he could do:
Go on Adam4Adam and see if he could find a hookup for the night.
Place an ad on Craigslist and be crazy by not looking for sex but searching for a date, maybe someone to go out to dinner and a movie with tonight. He imagined a man very much like himself, sitting alone at his computer, wishing more guys were romance-oriented instead of sex-focused. He shook his head when he realized the man sitting at that computer looked an awful lot like Cody.
He could bring up Amazon Prime and pick out a movie or TV show, hop back on his bed, and let some imaginary world lift him out of his own. He had yet to see that BBC series one of the teachers at school was always raving about, Sherlock, with Benedict Cumberbatch (what a name!). He could binge watch until he fell asleep. Yeah, that sounded like a healthy way to spend the evening.
He could be productive, vacuum and dust the apartment, clean the bathroom, empty the refrigerator of unidentifiable foods he thought he would one day eat, change the sheets on his bed…
There were all sorts of things he could do, but his thoughts kept circling around to his best friend.
Cody.
Why couldn’t he just tell him the truth? That he had been in love with him since practically the first time they met in the teacher’s lounge way back when? At least if they had things out in the open and Cody rejected him in that way, they could move on. Matt could tell Cody it was too painful to be just friends without the prospect of it ever developing into something more, or he could settle for what he had and learn to make the best of it. Move on. Meet a man who wanted him. This unrequited love crap truly sucked.
Why not just tell him? The idea, so terrifying, sprang forth with genuine possibility, sounding reasonable to Matt’s slightly inebriated brain as the light outside deepened into violet. No one says you have to be face-to-face, Matt thought, fingering the keyboard. You could write him an e-mail…
With the prospect of a long and lonely evening stretching out before him, he thought he could use the distraction. And maybe there would be a kind of relief if he finally got things off his chest.
He brought up his Gmail account and keyed in the first few letters of Cody’s e-mail address. Auto fill completed the rest.
He started typing—or keyboarding, or whatever the kids were calling it these days.
Hey, Cody,
I am sitting here, thinking about you. Does that sound like the opening words a stalker might use? Does that sound a little too creepy close for a best friend?
Who knows? The truth is I am your little stalker, if being a stalker means thinking about a certain person all the time, if it means that person is on the “stalker’s” mind first thing when he wakes in the morning and last thing before he goes to sleep at night, if it means that there’s no one the “stalker” would rather spend time with than the object of all this thinking, then yes, I am guilty as charged.
I’m not really a stalker. At least that’s not what I think. You know what I am? I am—hold your breath, wait for it—a guy who’s in love with you.
Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. But maybe it does. Maybe you see the way I care about you as nothing more than being good buddies. After all, beyond a couple attempts to kiss you a little more deeply than good friends usually do, I have been reluctant to ever let you in on my real feelings for you.
Why? I don’t know. I’m scared. If I leave things as they are now, at least I have you. We can go out on weekends together. And even though it breaks my heart as I watch you leave R Place or C.C. Attle’s with some other guy at the end of a night of drinking… Well, at least I’ve had you. Not in the same
way that other guy will have you, but I’ve had your attention for a lot longer than that other guy will, and I know I’ll most likely be the one you meet up with in the morning at Glo’s for omelets.
Does that sound pathetic? Maybe it is. But in this life, we take what we can get.
Does that mean I am settling for what we have? Not really. First of all, a good friendship can often be a more profound and valuable connection than any romantic one. “Just friends,” people say, as though the concept of friendship has little value or it’s somehow less than other relationships people have. That’s bullshit. Friends can be one of the closest and most enduring connections we make. With good friends, we can be ourselves and not worry (too much!) about judgment. We can share the good and the bad. Other relationships—families, lovers—have boundaries which we fear crossing because we might jeopardize that loved-one status. But a good friend takes us as we are.
So I sit here wondering why I’m writing this letter. The one thing I am certain of is that you and I are good friends. Lifelong pals, I’m sure. The kind of friends where we can truly reveal our best and worst points without fear of reprisal. The kind of friends where revealing ourselves completely does not come with the threat of dismissal. This is a kind of true love.
Why am I not satisfied with that? Why do I dream that, when taping for Husband Hunters begins, you’ll pick me as your husband? Why do my fantasies, wholesome and very, very filthy, revolve around you, even though I know that such thoughts are futile?
I guess, in the end, it’s because I’m selfish. I want all of you. I can’t accept that I get this part—friend—wonderful as it is, but only that. You know? I want to be your best friend, your lover, your family.
I want you to love me like I love you. Wholly. Completely. Love me so much we talk far into the night—about nothing. Love me so much we fuck far into the night—again and again. Love me so much we spend Christmas together, and the gifts we’re most excited about are not the ones we’ll get, but the ones we give to each other. Love me so much that when our friends think of us, they almost invariably think of us as a single unit. A couple.
I want all of that. I dream of all of that. I want you. I love you.
There, I said it. And now you know, in case you didn’t. I don’t love you “as a friend,” although there is that, and, as I said above, that’s a beautiful and powerful thing, but I love you as a man, with the hope that we can be partners in life.
Corny? Maybe. And maybe the reason I know I will never send this letter is because I’m scared to death that if you read this, you will not run straight into my arms, but away from me just as fast as you can.
Matt realized he couldn’t write any more. A part of him urged him to just hit the little Send icon and let the chips fall where they may. But he couldn’t. He did hit Save, where the unfinished letter would live on for as long as he wanted in his “Drafts” folder. Perhaps one day the time would be right to send it.
“You’re a chickenshit,” he whispered to himself. He exited Firefox, stood, and moved toward the bed, stripping out of his clothes as he went.
He crawled under the covers and lay there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to come.
Chapter 6
It had seemed like the Husband Hunters recording was always so far away, Cody thought, and now here it was. Important days had a way of creeping up.
It was a bright Saturday morning in August. Sun streamed in through Cody’s bedroom window, prying his eyelids apart, energizing his body, and making him grateful to be alive. At least he wished that was how he felt. Actually, jitters had prevented him from sleeping much at all the night before. His jitters had affected Ryder, who became restless too, hopping down from the bed to go and sit by the bedroom door, tail thumping on the carpet. Cody would throw a pillow at him. “It’s three o’clock in the morning! It’s too early!” Almost as if he understood the words, Ryder would hop back in bed, turn around a couple of times, and fall back asleep within minutes, snoring. But then they’d repeat the same act again in a half hour. They had finally both settled into real sleep around four. And although the August sun was out there, it only annoyed him. Cody’s slumber that morning had been filled with images of shadowy figures with guns pursuing him. When the bright light awakened him, even though his blinds were shut tight against it, he felt exhausted.
Ryder started licking his face, knowing, Cody supposed, the routine of sitting by the door would not yield the desired result.
He lay in bed, depleted, wishing for just a few more hours of sleep. But it was already eight thirty. Ryder needed to be walked and fed and then dropped off at the kennel up the street. The production team from Husband Hunters would be outside by ten to pick him up. Crap! He would probably have bags under his eyes and look more like an extra from The Walking Dead than a hopeful on Husband Hunters.
Wearily he sat up. Go! Go! Go! his mind screamed at him. You don’t have time for self-pity. Take care of your pooch. When you get back, hop in that shower. It’ll wake you up. Cody listened, but even though it was himself barking orders, he didn’t have to like it.
Later, under the spray of hot water, Cody did have to admit to feeling slightly better. He supposed it was one of the fringe benefits of being young—as well as one of the fringe benefits of a good shower with hard water pressure. He also felt better as he looked down at his body, which was lean, tan, and ripped in all the right places. The last several weeks, he had eaten a high-protein, low-carb diet, run four miles a day, and lifted weights at the school gym at least three days a week. The hard work had paid off, and Cody knew he was in the best shape he’d ever been in. If the producers required him to appear shirtless in any scenes, he was more than ready for it.
After showering, he mixed up a smoothie for himself—banana, blueberries, peanut butter, flax seed, and a little coconut water. The coffeemaker hadn’t been touched over the past several weeks, and Cody had surprised himself—he didn’t miss the caffeinated beverage as much as he’d thought he would, once he got over the initial hump.
After breakfast, Cody struggled over what to wear. He wanted to look good but didn’t want to appear as though he had tried too hard.
Martha Stewart had called him last night to see if he had any last-minute questions. He’d had only two, really: what to wear and what kind of adventures he would have.
Martha had been her usual self, which is to say she first balked and claimed she wasn’t supposed to discuss details about the show with contestants. Then she relented a little and told him he should plan on wearing comfortable clothes for this weekend of shooting. “But look hot. Show off those muscles! It’s summer, so you can put some skin on display. Most of our audience is gay men and the women who love them, so the closer we can come to naked, the better.”
“Maybe I should just show up in a jock strap?” Cody wondered. “I have a black one that I look hot in.”
“I bet you do,” Martha purred. “But unfortunately, we’d never get anything that blatant by the censors.”
“They still have censors?”
“They still do.”
Martha sounded sad. Cody had the feeling if it were up to her, the show would follow each couple into the bedroom and show not only what happened when the couple threw back the sheets but their money shots as well. Cody had an inkling Martha Stewart was no stranger to gay porn.
“But seriously,” Martha continued. “Just dress casual. As I’m sure your mama always told you, ‘Just be yourself.’ Bring a few changes of clothes. The shooting will take place mostly on Saturday, with a little bit Sunday morning. Whatever you don’t have, like a Speedo, we will get for you.”
“Do I get to keep any clothes you provide?”
“No. We keep them for other shows.”
“That’s too bad. Hey, what will we be doing? Is this going to be the episode with Matt?”
Martha was quiet for a moment before responding. “All I can say is that this one will be in Seattle, and you’ll be doing
a lot of touristy stuff. We don’t like you guys to be too prepared. We want to get a genuine reaction from you. And regarding Matt—haven’t you guys already talked about this?”
Cody recalled his and Matt’s conversation with a little disappointment as he threw T-shirts, shorts, and jeans across his unmade bed. For the last several weeks, he had actually not talked nearly as much to Matt as he used to or would have even liked to. Matt had grown distant, moody, and it seemed he always had other plans whenever Cody wanted to do something.
Cody couldn’t imagine what was wrong. The few times they had gotten together, Matt had been a pale imitation of his previous self, mostly preoccupied and not quite there. His sense of humor, once so vibrant and infectious, seemed to have disappeared.
When Cody asked him what was wrong, Matt always shrugged and responded with the classics—“Nothing” or “I’m just tired.”
Cody had made it a point to speak to him the night before and, even though he asked him specifically about Husband Hunters, could get no information from his friend. In a way it would be a relief if Matt wasn’t in this episode. Whatever was going on between them, the unspoken tension, it couldn’t be good for filming, taping, recording, whatever it was they did with their cameras and sound equipment. As the old chestnut went, the camera did not lie. And even if they tried to hide it, Cody didn’t believe he and Matt could conceal the tension that hung thick between them.
Cody selected a simple red deep-V-neck T-shirt that contrasted nicely with his sandy hair, which had gotten more blond strands in it with the advent of summer. It also showed off his broader shoulders and more defined pecs to good advantage. Below the shirt, a simple pair of khaki cargo shorts and a pair of Keen sandals. He turned in front of the mirror behind his bedroom door and thought he looked okay. He would not play the game of trying on a zillion different outfits before leaving.
