Page 33 of A Reindeer Wish for Love
“Who is it?And why are you being secretive?”
“I’m not being secretive because I told you, didn’t I?”
“But you didn’t give us the lowdown on who he is.”
“I don’t know who he is myself.All I know is his name is Cole, and he owns the bar in this expensive building that caters to those rich attorneys.”
“Is he gay?”Marty questioned.
“We never discussed that.”Another soft lie to my friends.It seemed I was getting good at this, but they didn’t deserve this kind of thing.
“Of course he is,” Tyler interjected.
“Not necessarily,” Marty added.“He could be in the closet like Mason.”
“Mason was never in the closet,” I defended him.“He was married, but he wasn’t hiding anything.”
“Then why was his wife surprised.They say the spouse is the first to know.”
“Because, Marty, he had never had a gay experience before.”
“And how do you know?”
“I think we had this conversation before, Marty.”
“Why don’t you remind me.”That’s why I chose not to tell Marty everything and replace it with a lie because Marty was an incurable nosey dude.A good friend, but nosey.He wanted to know the small details.He should have been a lawyer, or a detective.I thought a detective would have suited him best.
“For the second time, he was a virgin and I was his first.”I didn’t like repeating this.Perhaps he wasn’t listening the first time because silence hid in every corner of the room and every expression on Marty and Tyler’s faces.
They furrowed their foreheads, turned to each other and then cleared their throats.I wondered who would pose the next question, but no one did, which led me to explain, “He asked me to you know...guide him, and because I had more experience than he, I was the likely choice to you know...”
“No, we don’t know,” Tyler and Marty said in unison.
“We thought you were a bottom,” Tyler chuckled, getting into the act.
“Well, now I’m not and I must say I enjoyed the hell out of it.I didn’t know what I was missing.”Marty turned to Tyler and crossed his arms.
“Well, Clay, you’ve started something and it’s time for us to retire to our room, because I feel an argument coming on.And I don’t like to argue.”
I took that time to prepare for my job and check my phone until I passed out on the sofa.When I woke, it was early and I prepared for the job where no one would see me, therefore, I wore some jeans and a shirt that had been to the cleaners too many times to count and threw on one of those clip-on ties where technically was dressed appropriately.
Appropriate for working in the basement of a high-rise office building where I would go to work and leave without seeing anyone.I even stopped at the deli and bought a corn beef and rye sandwich for lunch.Marty had always cooked, and I didn’t have to worry about dinner.
When I arrived at work the janitors were changing shifts as well as security.I took the elevator to the bottom floor and trotted inside that depressing room to open my computer to find out my next assignment.
