Page 26 of Mimosa

When he got to Sonny, however, Sonny’s eyes were right on Haze instead of Mims.

“Hey. Want to…go for a ride or something?”

“Why ask me? Why not ask that guy?”

Mims suddenly smiled so widely, he felt like his smile could sprout him wings to fly. The guy was jealous. It had been years since anyone had been jealous of him. “Well, I could, being that he’s my very best friend, but I’d rather go with you right now.”

“Best friend?”

Finally, he was looking at Mims. “Yeah. Has been for years and he’s seen me naked, sure, but only when I was changing. We don’t…do that stuff together.”

Sonny grabbed his hand and led him outside, “We’ll talk more about that. Right now.”

Chapter Eight

Inatruck,anold F150 from the early 2000s, he sat staring out of the window while Sonny drove through the quiet residential streets near downtown Denver. Craftsman and Victorian homes were as beautiful in the dark as they were in the light of day, and Mims secretly wished to live in one of them, tending a little garden in the back, having an arbor built and a seat there that he could sit with some beautiful man at the end of their long days at work.

Like he read Mims’s mind, Sonny said, “I always loved these houses. I always wished I could buy my mom one.”

“Where does she live?”

“Oh, her house is okay, but she’s always had a thing for Victorians.”

“Me too. I love them.” He thought about it, and didn’t know if he should made the admission, but did anyway. “My sister, she had a Victorian dollhouse. We’d play for hours with it, but…you know, when my dad would get home, I had to clear out of her room. He’d have had a fit.”

“Yeah. I’m sure. Our cultures aren’t that different when it comes to some things. I really try to think that my dad would have been totally cool with me being gay, but I really doubt it.”

“Mine wasn’t,” Mims said in a croak.

“Yeah, but…you get to a point in your life when you figure out that family comes in all shapes and sizes. Family doesn’t always mean blood, and the way we try to constantly get some kind of approval from them, it’s a lot of energy that we could better put to other things.”

Mims had heard that before, but it was much easier said than done. “I still talk to my sister, but the rest of them…”

“You have a pretty great family at the pub, it seems.”

Perking instantly, he said, “Yes, I do.”

“Who’s the one that couldn’t stop staring at me like he wanted to kill me, especially when you were hugging him around the neck?”

“Like I said, my best friend. Haze and me, we’ve been close since I came to the pub. He…he took the time to get me settled, showed me how to bartend, watches out for me still. I promise, that’s all there is.”

Sonny shrugged a shoulder as he turned a corner. “I guess it just doesn’t look good to anyone watching. If we’re supposed to be a thing, well, anyone watching could think you’re cheating on me.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, holding back his glee about Sonny’s obvious jealousy. “And how could I be trusted if I cheated on you?”

“Exactly!”

Mims was smiling but hid it as Sonny parked in front of an apartment house. “This is my place. I’m going to take you inside my apartment and you can…get to know the place. I’ll tell them I caught you the first night I was at the pub. You’ll seem easy.”

“And?”

Sonny laughed. “I guess you don’t have a prudish reputation.”

“Not even a little bit.”

Sonny’s smile faded and he grunted, “Great.”

Mims’s hand shot out to catch his arm as he tried to escape the truck. “I’m easy to a guy I’m dating. Not to just anyone, and…and if I’m dating someone, I’m faithful. I just haven’t dated anyone for a substantial length of time in, well, a long time.”

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