Page 7 of Playboy For Hire

MASON: You still free next weekend? Got a new client for you. Girl named Quinn.

I stared down at my phone and sighed. A new client. Just what I needed.

2

QUINN

Iwas fucked.

And not in a good way.

In point of fact, I haven’t been fucked in a good way in a while. But depressing as that was for my life overall, it wasn’t the problem at the current moment. No, I was holding the current problem in my hands.

I stared at the thick, creamy paper embossed with golden ink in a flowing script. My grandparents had spared no expense on the stationery. It was heavy enough to commit blunt-force trauma, and required three magnets to keep it attached to the fridge.

Julius and Delia Carmichael invite you to join them in celebration of their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

Fifty years. I couldn’t imagine someone wanting to be married to me for that long. I couldn’t imagine someone wanting to marry me, period. Of course, back when my grandparents had gotten married, most gay men were still in the closet, and marriage was barely a pipedream. But still.

My grandparents had gotten married at age twenty-two, right after my grandma finished her teaching degree. I was twenty-seven, and hadn’t gotten anything close to a proposal by now. Granted, it would have helped if I’d dated more than two guys in my entire adult life, and if one of them weren’t now dating my cousin. But I digress…

The point was, Nana and Grandad were throwing a party this Friday night and my presence was expected. My presence…and someone else’s.

It was so stupid. I didn’t know why I’d lied when Nana called me two months ago and asked if I wanted a plus-one for the party. I should have said, ‘No, Nana, I’m single, just like I have been for ages, and will be for the rest of my life. In fact, I plan on throwing a Fifty Years of Loneliness and Desperation party for myself in a few more decades.’

But then she’d gone and mentioned Julie, my cousin, who was dating that ‘nice young man, Brandon, so handsome, and successful,’ and how if those two were coming together, surely I’d want to bring a guest too, and my dumb mouth had opened and said, ‘Oh, that would be great, I could bring my boyfriend!”

Like I said: fucked.

I heard Auntie Thea wheel herself into the kitchen behind me. I stuck the invitation back onto her fridge with three different novelty magnets from St. Petersburg, Florida—one of a manatee, another of a palm tree on a beach, and a third of a tall, white lighthouse. I had the same invitation back at my apartment, but mine was shoved into the bottom drawer of my desk under a heavy set of reference books, as if hiding it could make the date approach slower.

“There you are,” Thea scolded playfully. “You came in here to get us more iced tea ten minutes ago. Have you been standing here feeling sorry for yourself all this time?”

My cheeks heated, and I looked at her guiltily. “Not thewholetime. I also spent a few minutes daydreaming about changing my name and flying off to Mexico to escape all my problems.”

“Well, you’d best not be thinking about that too hard. Who would be my bridge partner against Violet and Marjie? Those two would be lost without you here to tell them how nice their hair looks.”

I laughed. “You know, you could tell them that too.”

“And break the Lord’s commandment by lying? Mm-mm. Tina’s fingers are way too clumsy to be messing about with people’s hair, and itshows.”

Tina was the hairdresser at Swannvale Lofts, Washington DC’s premiere senior living apartments. It took up an entire city block and included two restaurants, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a gym, game room, movie theater, library, conservatory, and, yes, salon. Thea had bought a unit when the place first opened, but she still insisted on me taking her to her preferred hairdresser in LeDroit Park. Only the gentlest, deftest touch on her hair was acceptable, and that did not include ham-fisted Tina, apparently.

I didn’t mind taking her, just like I didn’t mind visiting her multiple times a week. I was able to walk over from my apartment in Logan Circle, plus I got to use the pool. And honestly, it was kind of fun hanging out with my great-aunt and her friends. At this point, they were the most active part of my social life.

Auntie Thea was my oldest living relative, my paternal grandfather’s older sister. She’d used a wheelchair ever since having polio as a child. But that hadn’t stopped her from having a long, full life, working for the government and traveling whenever she could. She’d slowed down a bit with age, but she could still beat me at chess and quote long passages of Shakespeare from memory.

When Nana and Grandad decided to hold their anniversary celebration in DC, out of deference to her age, Auntie Thea had claimed it as a nearly unforgivable insult. ‘I’ll show them who’s ‘not as mobile’ anymore. Julius will be downrightimmobileif he comes too close. My fists still work just fine, thank you.’

Luckily, my grandad had thought quickly and reminded his sister that they had plenty of old friends in DC still. It was where they’d all grown up, after all, and it still felt like home, even though they’d moved to Florida ten years ago.

“Now finish up with that tea and come join me in the living room. My show’s about to come on.”

It didn’t take long to refill our glasses and add fresh lemon. Auntie Thea had a lot of ‘shows’ but tonight’s was Blade of Ages, a Christian weapon-forging show where contestants battled to create weapons from around the world and inscribe biblical messages onto them. She’d moved out of her wheelchair and into her high-backed, blue velvet TV chair. I set our glasses on the TV tray between us, then sat down next to her.

This week, a blacksmith from Idaho was inscribing a battle-axe with a quote from Jeremiah: ‘For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’

“That’s what you need,” Auntie Thea said when the show went to commercial break.

---