Page 5 of Hello Forever
He handed my letter back. “Come into the house and you can fill out theapplication.”
“My mom is willing to co-sign the lease,” I offered, following the two of them outthedoor.
“That probably won’t be necessary,”Calebsaid.
I took one more glance at the sunny little room before I closed the door. At least one thing in my uncertain life looked to be shaping up. Even if they hated me at work, I’d have a nice place to gohometo.
ChapterThree
Axel
Walkingin for my first day at work was nerve-wracking—my first real job out ofcollege.
My credit card was maxed out from purchasing a bed and a sofa before I returned the rental van. If I couldn’t fit in here, it was going to sting. And I’d be poorer than before I’dtried.
The athletic department occupied a modest suite of offices adjacent to the gym. The athletic-ops people and the marketing department shared a bull-pen style room, while my boss Arnie’s private office was a few yards away down a shorthallway.
My desk was one of two along a wall. The other desk belonged to a ham-necked man-child who introduced himself as “Boz,” which was short for JonBosworth.
Boz had decorated our office space by tacking Barmuth Brown Bear sports paraphernalia onto every available surface. He was the other half of the sports-marketing department, so we were going to bepartners.
He was, I decided, the most rabid Barmuth sports fan who had ever lived. As far as I could tell, Henning, Massachusetts was his favorite place on earth. He’d graduated from Barmuth three years ago and had come to work at the athletic department the week after tossing his mortarboard intheair.
In fact, the centerpiece of all the wall-mounted sports glory above our desks was his football team photo. Beneath his beaming face was the captain’s “C” stitched onto his teamjacket.
“Welcome!” he’d said about a hundred times on my first day. He sort of galloped around the room, making sure I had a stapler and a tape dispenser on my desk. It was possible that it had been Boz inside the Barmuth Bear suit I’d seen in the basketball TV broadcast. He was a frisky human. He was the sort of jock who referred to a beer as a “brewski” and not in anironicway.
Every hour that passed made me more worried about how he was going to react to my sexual orientation. I’d already decided not to hide. I wanted this job, but I wasn’t willing to duck into the closet tokeepit.
Casually slipping my sexual orientation into a conversation with Boz the Barmuth Brewski Bear was not going to be easy. I was tempted just to shock him.Hey, would you happen to know where the nearest gay bar is? I could really use arimjob.
Luckily, I was saved from making semi-rude statements that might get my ass kicked by spending most of the day at a new-employee orientation and filling out a giant stack of forms for the human resourcesdepartment.
On my second day of employment, Boz and I had our first actual conversation about sportsmarketing.
“So,” he began with a lazy grin. “You’ve doubled the size of my department. Dude, that’sawesome.”
“Um, yeah.” I gave him an awkwardsmile.
“Obviously, I’ve had to triage all the work up to this point,” he said, rubbing his scruffy chin. “The football team takes up a lot of my time. I haven’t done shit for some of the less popular teams. But I’m justoneguy.”
“Gotcha.” And I really did. On any given weekend, there were three or four sporting events at least. Nobody could cover allofthat.
“So, we need to divvy up the teams. I mean, I’m calling football, on the grounds that I have seniority…” Hefrowned.
“Of course,” I said quickly. “Football is allyours.”
“And you’re the basketball guy, right? So I should probably take hockey, because of the seasonoverlap.”
“That’s cool.” I liked hockey, but he was right about the schedule. “And it goes without saying that we should each cover the men’s and women’s teams for each of our sports. Otherwise, it’s just tooconfusing.”
“Sure.” His grin morphed into something naughty. “We might have to flip a coin forvolleyball.”
“Why?” I thought volleyball was awfully lame. He couldkeepit.
His eyebrows shot up. “Dude. Tall girls jumping around in shortshorts?”
Shit. This was my opening—the moment I was supposed to tell him. If I let this opportunity pass, I’d be stepping into the closet, which was ridiculous. I’d been out since high school, for God’s sake. “Uh,Boz?”
