Page 86 of Goodbye Paradise
All I had was impossible choices.
“Hey! Look who it is!”
I turned my head to see Danny and Jakobitz sitting at a high table on bar stools. “Hi,” I said, realizing that this had been a mistake. When I first started working at the garage, they’d asked me several times to join them here. But I never did.
It’s not that I didn’t want to go out with them. It’s just that I couldn’t justify spending money on beer. And what’s more, I couldn’t justify hanging out at the bar with these guys while Josh waited at home. And bringing Josh with me… I didn’t know how that would go.
So I’d always begged off.
But now here I was, finally accepting their invitation, on the night when I was a giant fucking wreck.Nicely done, Caleb. You idiot.
“You meeting someone?” Jackbitz asked.
I went closer to them. “No. Just needed to get out.”
Danny cocked his head toward an empty bar stool. “Get over here, then.”
I sat down, and a waitress appeared immediately, temporarily saving me from further conversation. “What’ll it be?” she asked.
“Uh,” I didn’t know much about beers. “Let me buy a round,” I said, taking out my credit card. “I’ll have one of whatever they’re drinking.”
She took the card and walked off.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Jakobitz said, pausing to drain his glass, “but you don’t look so good.”
I must look almost as bad as I felt, then. Because Jakobitz wasn’t the most perceptive guy I’d ever met. “Yeah,” I sighed, tucking my wallet back into my jeans. “I fucked up tonight.”
“Bad?”” Danny asked.
“Bad,” I confirmed.
“We’re talking, like, life-changing fuck up?” Jakobitz asked.
I nodded, miserable.
He whistled. “Did you cheat?”
“No,” I said immediately. But then my heart seized. Because I might as well have said yes. I’d told Josh that I meant to marry Miriam, and to me, that was nothing but a giant sacrifice. But from where he sat, it wouldn’t look like that.
“Does shethinkyou cheated? Women can’t ever get over that shit. Theytellyou they will, but they don’t.”
My heart dipped. The waitress set a beer down in front of me, and I took a sip of it before I looked up at Danny and Jakobitz. “Well. Is the same true for guys?”
Jakobitz’s beer halted on the way to his mouth. “You’re with a guy?”
I sighed, setting my beer on the table. “I was until about an hour ago. You got a problem with that?”
Danny let out a hoot and smacked the table with an open hand. “Hedoesgot a problem! His problem is that he owes me twenty bucks. Pay up.”
“Christ,” Jakobitz swore, opening up his wallet. He took out a twenty and threw it at Danny.
“You had abet?”
“Don’t be mad,” Danny said, tucking the money away. “We bet on everything. Jako once won ten bucks off of me because the boss took a piss break before noon, not after.”
It took me a minute to relax, though. I had exactly zero practice telling people I was gay. The only person I ever told was Josh. Everyone else just guessed. “Where we’re from, they would have jumped us for being together.”
“Cuz you’re from… Iran?” Jakobitz quipped.
