I dropped my hands and stepped away from Joe, but I was shaking with anger. His face was an icy mask, and when he looked at Noah, it was with pure loathing. But he was Joe, master of masking his feelings and remaining coldly neutral, so he took a deep breath, ran a hand through his hair, and the hatred vanished. He yanked the envelope from my hand.
“Mel will be here in a couple of hours. And the chef is on his way.”
Noah finished descending the stairs but stood away from both me and Joe. It looked like he’d scrubbed himself clean yet again, and had thrown on jeans and a flannel shirt. Without his glasses and with his hair slicked back, he looked younger. Which made the unease in his eyes all the more noticeable.
“I’ll get going,” he said. “I don’t want to get in the way.”
“I thought we already talked about this,” I said. “You said you would stay.”
“That was before . . .”
“Don’t leave on my account,” Joe said with a sneer. “It’s not my house. I’m just here for the football and Chef Turner’s turkey.”
Noah nodded slowly. He watched as Joe strode out of the room. “This is going to be bad, isn’t it?”
I sucked my teeth and tried to draw him close to me, but he resisted.
“Noah, don’t be that way. Who gives a fuck what Joe thinks?”
“You,” he said. “Even if you act like you don’t, you know it’s true. He’s been with you for almost eight years. And even though you grumble about him being a smarmy douchebag, he’s like family. Which is why you spend holidays with him.”
“We spend holidays together because no one else likes us,” I countered.
Noah just shook his head, not even cracking a smile. “I really think I should get the fuck out of here before Mel arrives. He’s going to tell her, and I don’t want to spend Thanksgiving feeling like everyone is glaring at my scarlet letter.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“I’m not being dramatic,” he said sharply. “I know what he thinks of me. And now that I know you’re bi, I bet he never wanted me for this position because he was afraid of exactly what he walked in on.”
“Yeah, and that doesn’t matter. You’re here, we’re fucking, and he can’t change that. It’s fine.” I snagged his arm and succeeded in pulling him to me. “We’re fine. All right?”
Noah pursed his lips and nodded stiffly. I rubbed his back, hoping to ease the tension, but he leaned away from me as if me touching his flannel was somehow worse than Joe watching our comeplay.
“I’m trying to be optimistic here,” I said. “Can you throw a motherfucker a bone? I want to spend this day with you. Please don’t make me beg.”
“Sorry.” Noah melted against me. After a tiny pause, he even drew me into a quick hug. All wiry arms and tightly clenching hands as the smell of him surrounded me and I got a chance to inhale his clean hair. “I’m just worried.”
“Don’t be. We’re fine.”
Noah didn’t look convinced of that, but he stopped fighting and followed me into the living room. I tried not to let it bother me that he sat as far away from me as possible. As long as he was here, I would take what I could get.
***
Noah
Chef Turner prowled the kitchen like a machine. Stirring, roasting, chopping, sautéing, baking, and making the kind of Thanksgiving I’d never seen before. Holidays in the Monroe household had consisted of a roasted bird that hadn’t been basted enough, stuffing that was a little too burnt on the outside, mashed potatoes without enough butter, and frozen corn. And we were all suckers for Entenmann’s pumpkin pie.
People always shamed us for our love of Entenmann’s, but it was our thing and we liked it. But that had been back when I was a kid, before my mother had finally decided to end my parents’ mostly platonic marriage and try to find something that would make her happy. Now they were long-distance friends, and I’d spent Thanksgiving either eating turkey sandwiches with my dad or flying out to see my mom so I could choke down the Tofurkey she’d taken to preparing.
This was the first year I was without family, and I missed it. I missed them.
I wondered if that yearning would have been as strong if I’d been able to spend the day alone with Gavin. Sometimes this place felt like home to me, especially when he dozed off in the bed with me. But now, with a chef and a staff of helpers scurrying, and with Mel and Joe talking shop in the living room with Gavin, it was clear I didn’t belong. This wasn’t my home.
So I stayed in the kitchen with the cooks and tried to help. Unfortunately, they seemed irritated by my presence so I banished myself to the office and wondered if I could get an airline associate on the phone. With Joe willing me to sink into a hole in the floor, it was a better idea to stay the hell out of the way.
Or was it?
Every time I pictured Gavin’s face when he’d admitted to never spending his holidays with someone who’d just wanted to be with him, I felt like an asshole for hiding. For letting Joe run me off. And for being ashamed to have been in the bed with him. Was it really so bad? Was I really so fucking awful? Was liking him something to be ashamed of, just because I was his employee for a few months? My head said yes, but the way my pulse raced when we were together made it plain as day that every other part of my body wanted to scream no.
I went back into the living room. Joe glared, but Gavin smiled. It was a little-boy-on-Christmas-morning smile. Surprised and happy.
God, what the hell was he doing to me? He’d gone from growling every time I walked in the wrong direction to looking at me like I’d hung the moon. And it was only my guardedness and paranoia that kept me from looking at him the exact same way.
“Noah, take the day off from working, for God’s sake,” Mel said after setting eyes on me. “You’re missing the game.”
I looked at the available seats. Joe and Gavin were on opposite ends of the same part of the sectional, and Mel had perched on the loveseat. It seemed wiser to sit next to her.
“What’s the score?”
“0-7. Marcus just scored a touchdown,” Mel said. “Rushed sixty yards.”
“Holy shit. Did they already show a replay?”
“Yeah, but it will come on again. It was a damn good moment.” Mel shook her head. “His athleticism is awesome.”
“Too bad Tony Donahue snapped him up before you did,” Joe commented between giving me side eyes. “You’d have been able to represent the Three Musketeers.”
They started talking business, and I tuned them out. For all that I had developed a passing interest in football in the last couple of months, discussing players’ salaries still made me uncomfortable. Especially since I was starting to view professional football as a trade-off between their health and money. It was something Gavin talked about more than he probably realized, and it’d slowly become my concern as well.
In five years, when Gavin was in his early thirties and had no choice but to retire, what would he do? He’d have money . . . but what would he do with it?
My eyes went to him. He was sprawled on the couch lazily, not unlike the position he’d been in the first time I set eyes on him, but this time he was doing nothing to hide the fact that he was checking me out. Doing a slow circuit of me in my grunge-era outfit, and absently rubbing his thumb against his lower lip.
I swallowed hard. Gavin smirked.
He was going to get us in so much trouble. It felt like we were sitting there flirting across the room with our parents nearby. Parents who very much did not want us together.
The next quarter wasn’t as exciting as the first, but in the third I found myself leaping to my feet and screaming as Phil, Gavin’s backup, scored a touchdown with an eighty-yard kick return. After my initial excitement my eyes flew to Gavin, wondering if seeing his replacement burned, but he was ecstatic. And when our eyes met, his face lit up further.
Without warning, he pulled me into a monstrous bear hug that took my feet off the floor. I laughed, unable to help it.
<
br /> “I can’t believe you like football after all that shit you talked,” he said after putting me down. “Simeon and Marcus called it.”
“They did. But I don’t know if I’d care if anyone else was playing.”
Gavin thumped his chest. “Don’t matter as long as you root for me, baby. Next thing you know you’ll be tailgating.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“I know, but listening to you come up with dumbass possibilities would be funny.”
We laughed together, which is when I realized that both Mel and Joe were staring at us. Mel appeared very close to thinking Gavin had been abducted by aliens and pod-Gavin was standing here in his place.
Discomfort moved me from my place by the couch to the edge of the room. “I’m going to see if there are any available snacks.”
My feet took me out of the room before I could take any questions or comments, and I found myself going to the bathroom instead of the kitchen. Because the house was a museum, it took me far enough away for the volume of the television to fade. I washed my face for no reason, washed my hands twice, and then stared at myself in the mirror.
I looked shitty. My restless sleep had given my skin a pale cast and dark circles, my hair was messy, and my clothes were disheveled. I wondered if I looked any better on a typical day. There were spans of time when I spent so much time in the house that I didn’t bother glancing in the mirror before carrying on with my day. Sometimes I wondered how much of this other people noticed, that I’d stopped realizing over the past few weeks. How obvious was it that I’d become a hermit? That we could barely keep our hands off each other? That we were . . .
“Noah.”
Joe’s voice was quiet, but it still penetrated the door like a bullet. I opened the door to find Joe’s ice grill a few inches from my own.
“We need to talk.”
He gave me a hard look and turned around, heading to Gavin’s office. I followed close at his heels, unsurprised but still uneasy about where this little conversation was going. It wasn’t going to be good, but I girded my loins and shut the office door behind me.
“Was this your plan all along?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, mirroring the stance Gavin had used earlier when facing off with his manager. There was such a combination of disdain and impatience on Joe’s face, like he couldn’t wait to get a conversation with a lesser being over with and he couldn’t believe he was wasting his time, that it took me back to SafeZone. The meeting with my managers, when they’d decided to fire me instead of taking a look at their director.
“I didn’t know Gavin was bisexual,” I said slowly. “How could I have planned this?”
“You could have planned to seduce him.”
I made a scornful face. Joe wasn’t fazed.
“You’re telling me it’s a coincidence that you have a tendency to sleep with your bosses?”
“Is it a coincidence that I end up becoming close to men I respect? No. Probably not. But it had nothing to do with me getting ahead at SafeZone, and it obviously has nothing to do with a temporary position—”
“Oh, don’t give me that,” Joe scoffed. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter. I see the way Gavin looks at you. You’ve got my boy by the balls, and there is no way you’re leaving after this job ends. Which is exactly what you wanted.”
My fingers dug harder into my arms. “We haven’t talked about anything past the end of my contract.”
“I’m sure. But I’m also sure you’ve thought about it.” Joe pointed at me just as he’d done to Gavin earlier. “Let me paint a picture for you. The picture I’ve been seeing clearly since the first time I realized the two of you probably had something going on.”
“What—”
“I won’t sell you short and deny you’ve kept him sane these past few months, but because of that he thinks you’re his savior. Maybe he thinks he’s in love.”
My chest tightened. “He’s never said anything like that.”
“Shut your mouth.” Joe’s eyes narrowed to slits. “He didn’t say it, but he probably feels that way, and I know you’ve caught on. Because you’re not stupid. You think after your job ends, you’ll hang on to him. Maybe not move out right away since you’ve been having so much fun fucking by the pool where a million paparazzi can take sleazy pictures. And since you still haven’t bothered to find another job, and you probably don’t want to go back to Queens, maybe your stay will be extended.”
I tried to come up with a million denials, but they all sounded hollow, even in my own head. I’d been so wrapped up in Gavin that I hadn’t begun to look for another job. I’d not even thought about it in weeks. The bubble we’d been living in was going to burst very soon, and I wasn’t even prepared for it.
“But once that bracelet is off, Gavin is free again. To travel, party, play. He won’t be alone with his savior anymore, and all of this”—Joe gestured around as if pointing to the bubble I’d just been envisioning—“will be gone. And you’ll be angry. And then you’ll do like little Max Grayson and sell incriminating photos to the media.”
My heart all but stopped. I tried to form words, but the terror that crept over me struck me silent. Joe shook his head at me, still sneering and yet reassuring me at the same time.
“I’ve already fixed it. But I can’t fix everything. So you need to go.”
“Joe,” I said, voice scraping out lower than usual. “I would never hurt Gavin. And I know you think you have me all figured out, and you’ve probably seen this type of thing a million times before, but . . . it’s not what you think. I care about him.”
“When this started, you couldn’t even stand to look at him.”
“I know, but that changed. Fast. Now, I . . . like him. As a person. Not a football player or a celebrity or anything else.” I stopped clawing at the insides of my arms and dropped my hands, letting them dangle at my sides. “He calls me on my bullshit, and challenges me, and makes me explain myself way more than anyone I’ve ever met, but he also makes me smile more than anyone I’ve ever been with. He makes me reconsider my assumptions and think. Really think. About why I feel the way I feel or why I’m saying the things I’m saying. And I know I’m unprofessional and awful, but I can’t change those feelings. And I can’t stop him from returning them. So I’m sorry you don’t approve, but it is what it is.”
“You’re right. I can’t change your feelings or his, but I want you to think about something.” Joe moved closer to me, and his voice dropped like he knew someone was coming. As if, after all this time, he could sense Gavin, just like I now could, after spending so much time in his presence. “Is anything I said about what will happen after he’s off house arrest ringing false? His lifestyle, the changes between you two once he’s back in it, and how about a relationship where he can’t even acknowledge you in public? Because I’ll tell you one thing, Noah. The NFL can give all the sensitivity training they want, but the majority of players, coaches, and general managers don’t want a gay or bisexual man in the locker room. If it doesn’t ruin his reputation, it will ruin his relationship with his own team. And he’ll end up a free agent by the time his contract ends.”
Each statement was a rock sinking into my stomach until I was close to following suit and dropping to my knees. It wasn’t just the worst-case-scenario outlook. It was the fact that they did ring true. And somehow, while existing in this perfect world where there was nothing but me and Gavin and our hands and kisses and the taste of his sweat, and us helping each other in ways neither of us had expected, I’d stopped thinking about the real world. I’d stopped thinking about how this could affect him, and how it would inevitably affect me.
The fight drained out of me, and Joe saw it. For just a second, his face softened, before he slammed the shutters down again.
“End this now, Noah. Before you both get hurt.”
Joe walked around me to head out the door. He ran directly into Gavin. The suspicion on his face gave way to stormy
realization once he met my gaze.
“Joe, what the fuck did you do?”
“I told him the truth. And it’s about time you both let it sink in and move the hell on.”
Gavin inhaled deeply, but I grabbed his wrist before he could go off. Instead of exploding on his manager, he held himself tight, barely breathing, until Joe excused himself from the room.
“Gavin . . .”
“No.” He yanked his hand away from me. “I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t want to hear it. This is bullshit.”
“What’s bullshit?”
“I can tell just by looking at you that you let him get in your head and fuck everything up.”
I had to look away from his angry face before I let him get in my head. And undo all the stark realizations that had just come crashing down on me. I walked to the couch and sat down, slumping until my knees hit the coffee table.
“Come here,” I said.
Gavin stood over me, glowering and breathing hard and generally looking like he was going to flip out. He looked between me and the door, like he couldn’t figure out who he wanted to chew out first. But when I reached out my hand, he took it and let me draw him down to the couch.
“We need to talk about where this is going.”
“Where do you want it to go?” When I hesitated, he leaned closer. “Noah. Just say it.”
“I can’t just say it, because it’s not an easy answer.” I’d forced him to sit next to me, but now I wanted to jump up and pace the room. “I think we both have feelings for each other, beyond being horny and stuck together. But Joe is right that it can’t . . . end well.”
“Joe doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Gavin said, voice rising with each word. “He doesn’t know a fucking thing about us.”
“He knows you can’t come out,” I said. “He knows being openly bisexual could ruin your career if the Barons aren’t supportive. And he knows that, beyond all that, this could just be cabin fever for you. I’m the only person you see most of the time, Gavin.”
At that, his expression turned thunderous and it was him leaping off the sofa. “Don’t do that to me.”
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