Copyright 2018
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously, and any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover art provided by Morningstar Ashley of Designs by Morningstar
Editing provided by Allison Holzapfel
Proofreading provided by Judy Zweifel of Judy’s Proofreading
Interior Design and Formatting provided by Stacey Blake of Champagne Book Design
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original publisher only.
This book contains sexually explicit material and is only intended for adult readers.
Copyright and trademark acknowledgements
The author acknowledges the copyright and trademarked status and trademark owners of the following trademarks and copyrights mentioned in this work of fiction.
“Bad Medicine”
Bombay Sapphire
Bud Light
Detroit Tigers
ESPN
Fifth Third Field
Fox News
Huntington Center
“Lost In Your Eyes”
Lyft
MSNBC
Q-Tip
Tanqueray
Toledo Mud Hens
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Michael Bailey
To Annabella Michaels
Who convinced me to take this particular leap of faith
And
To Rod
Always
Can someone please tell me why I decided to do this?
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, water dripping through my hair, towel wrapped around my waist, glaring at myself like my very own reflection would give me the answer. However, my reflection simply glared back.
It was a rhetorical question. One that had been bouncing around in my head since I’d pulled into the hotel parking lot. And one that I still didn’t have an answer for. I had hemmed and hawed, mentally debating whether attending this particular reunion was a smart decision. I’d skipped the twenty-year reunion as well as the twenty-fifth. I’d had absolutely no desire to see anyone from my graduating class.
Okay, so maybe that was a lie. There was one person I would like to see, even if I couldn’t completely admit it to myself. But, I had no desire to relive my days of virtual invisibility. It wasn’t as if he would have remembered me anyway.
So why did I think it was a good idea to come to the thirty year? What had changed in my head to have made me even consider agreeing to come, let alone book a room in the same hotel as the reunion? The room wasn’t even necessary.
Maybe it was morbid curiosity. I’d spent years invisible to the high school elite. I was never athletically gifted enough to play any of their sports, nor was I intelligent enough to be in any honors classes. I was stuck somewhere in between, in a sort of limbo that I couldn’t escape until graduation. Part of me wanted to see how far they had fallen down the social status ladder.
Cliché, I knew. In my heart of hearts, I knew that I was being stupid. Plain and simple. Why should I care, thirty years after the fact, what they looked like? Why did their failed marriages and illegitimate children matter to me? Because, at the end of the day, maybe I would finally get to see them the way I had always seen myself.
Ordinary.
And, that depressing thought, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason I need to get to the hotel bar STAT.
Grabbing a second towel from the rack, I padded into the main part of the hotel room I had booked for the weekend, running the towel over my wet hair as I went. I’d only requested a single, but for some bizarre reason, the hotel had seen fit to give me a room with two double-sized beds. I wasn’t about to complain. I assumed the hotel was probably booked solid because of the reunion, and I certainly didn’t want to risk giving up a room only to not have another available.
I hefted my suitcase up onto the spare bed. Sure, I knew this was only supposed to be a two-day trip, but I’d always been an over packer. If I was going to be gone for two days, I always had five days’ worth of clothes with me. Yes, it was a real problem, or so I’d been told. But I figured I rather have an outfit for any occasion. You never knew what might pop up. I was a Boy Scout, after all. “Be Prepared” and all that jazz.
Standing between the two beds, I dropped the towel I’d been using on my head onto the floor, and untied the towel that was wrapped around my waist, letting it fall next to the first. I smirked at the idea that maybe someone would be able to see me in all my forty-nine-year-old nude glory, then wondered if they would really want to see all of that. I glanced at my profile in the mirror hanging on the wall in front of the two beds. I wasn’t that out of shape. I mean, sure, you could tell that I had an aversion to sit-ups, and maybe I enjoyed my fair share of nachos. But it could be far worse. I sucked in my not-so-flat belly, but it looked completely unnatural, at least to me. I actually liked the way I looked now. When I was in high school, I was too skinny. My arms were so thin that short-sleeved shirts would stick out, making it look as if I had wings for arms and could take flight at any moment. Instead, I wore long-sleeved shirts year-round, rolled up to the elbow.
Now, I didn’t care. I was in my late forties, for God’s sake. At this point in my life, I was allowed to look it.
I pulled a pair of boxer briefs from my duffel bag and slid them on, followed by a white t-shirt, sparing any potential Peeping Tom from seeing me in all my glory.
I flopped down onto the bed I would actually be sleeping on. I needed something to listen to while I finished getting ready. I grabbed my cell phone off of the nightstand and scrolled through my music selection. You don’t have to look any further than the music downloaded to my phone to understand that I was perpetually stuck in the late ’80s. Erasure, George Michael, Wham!, Depeche Mode, Sting, Tears for Fears. This was the soundtrack to my life back then, back in the good old days that weren’t so good, and when everything was simpler when it really wasn’t. This was the music that I clung to, that made me feel alive.
Music these days doesn’t hold a candle to what it was back in the day.
And, God did I sound like an old man.
I didn’t feel like an old man. Hell, for that matter, I didn’t feel like a man in his late forties. I wasn’t a twink anymore, young and thin and full of energy. I couldn’t go out until the wee hours of the morning, go home and crash for two hours, then get up and go into work. Hell, there were some nights I was lucky not to fall asleep on the couch watching prime time television. But at the same time, I didn’t feel like I was ready to be fitted for a walker either. I still went out, even if it was less frequently than when I was in my twenties. I still socialized, even if my social circle had slowly been dwindling over the years, falling victim to my friends all pairing off and finding the loves of their lives.
And, ugh, wasn’t that another depressing thought?
Maybe it was the reunion, a reminder of where I was thirty years ago, and how I seemed able to blend in and go unnoticed. Maybe it was the reminder that I was getting older and still single. That I was quickly approaching my own expiration date, even if I didn’t know what that date was, and had still not accomplished everything I’d set out to do.
But wasn’t that what this weekend was really about? The reunion was supposed to be the backdrop, an excuse to rent a hotel
room in downtown Toledo, and scope it out for a possible expansion of the restaurant business I had started in Detroit.
Was I nervous about that? Hell yeah. The fact was that I had been scared shitless when I opened the first one five years ago. But with that feeling had been a level of excitement I had never felt before. Detroit, and more specifically the downtown area, was in the midst of a revitalization similar to what downtown Toledo was seeing now. Money was being thrown at young entrepreneurs and buildings were being sold cheap. I wanted to finally fulfill my dream, and the downtown revitalization project was just the avenue to take.
After hemorrhaging jobs and people for decades, Toledo was finally experiencing something similar. Seeing my hometown slowly coming back left an ache in my chest. No matter how bad things may have gotten, my hometown still meant something to me. Not only did I want to see it come back from the brink, I wanted to be a part of it. With the number of empty buildings in the downtown area alone, it shouldn’t be hard to find a prime location for where I hoped to open my second restaurant.
The reunion was simply an excuse for that. Wasn’t it?
I pushed all of that out of my head. All of those worries were for tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I would walk around downtown and look for some prime real estate. Tonight, I would simply pony up to the hotel bar, have a few cocktails, and take in the crowd.
I threw on the rest of my clothes, a navy-blue polo and faded jeans, and with my cell phone in hand playing Erasure’s Blue Savannah, I made my way to the bathroom to finish getting ready.
Well, shit! This does not bode well for how the night’s going to go!
That was my first thought as I made my way to the hotel bar. Dead does not even begin to describe it. There was one young couple huddled together at a table in a darkened corner. Other than that, nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not a single person other than the bartender. I checked the time on my phone. Nine o’clock. Not too early, but not late either.
I began to get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’d heard nothing but good things about the revitalization of the downtown area, and wanted to be part of it. But if there were only two people at this bar, what did that say about the nightlife for the rest of the area? Maybe opening a second restaurant downtown was a bad idea.
No, I couldn’t let what was happening, or not happening at the hotel bar, determine what was going on elsewhere. It was a hotel, after all. Maybe the other guests were out carousing. Or sleeping. Or…well, who knows. They just weren’t here.
I sat on a stool at the bar in the one place that I figured would be the easiest to grab the bartender’s attention: near the cash register. I was right. Before I knew it, the cute young bartender wearing his crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled to mid forearm, and black apron tied around his waist, asked for my order. His name badge read Rick, but I wondered if he went by Richard or Dick or “Call Me Sometime”
“Gin and tonic with a slice of lime.”
“Bombay or Tanqueray?”
To anyone else, he may have been speaking a foreign language, or asking to dance, but I knew he was asking if I had a gin preference. “Bombay.”
I couldn’t help but admire his ass as he turned to the shelves containing the bottles of liquor. His white shirt strained as he reached for a bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin. I wondered if that was his work uniform or if he had purposely put on clothes that were a size too small. Probably a combination of both. He was good looking enough even without the form-fitting clothes, but I was sure they helped him earn extra tips. Black pants in a semi-darkened bar certainly helped to accentuate the positive. I smirked at my own inner joke.
I watched as the bartender turned back, blue bottle in hand, and placed it in front of me. He grabbed a glass and scooped ice into it, then poured a generous amount of gin over the ice. Perhaps a little too generous. The liquid and ice combination filled a third of the glass, and I wondered how strong the drink would really be. He grabbed the soda gun and filled the rest of the glass with tonic, then he pressed a slice of lime onto the rim. He slid the glass in my direction, smiling shyly as he did. For a moment, I wondered if he was flirting with me, but then almost immediately thought better of it. I was probably at least twice his age, and unless he had a serious daddy complex, I was most certainly not his type.
“Tab?”
I thought for a moment. Running a tab could be dangerous. It gave the illusion of unlimited alcohol, and I wasn’t certain I wanted to get that intoxicated, even if I did have a room in the same hotel as the bar. “No,” I said, pulling my wallet from my back jeans pocket. “I’ll pay as I go.”
“Three-Fifty.”
He smiled again as I handed him a five and said, “Damn, I forgot how cheap booze was in Ohio. Keep the change.”
Maybe I was being a little flirty too, if not a big tipper.
I pulled the lime from the rim and squeezed the juice into the glass, using the straw to stir it into the drink. Spinning slowly in my stool, I took in the bar. Televisions hung from the walls in various, strategic locations, each one with the volume turned down and set to a different channel. Two were set to different sports channels. Which of the multitude ESPNs, I couldn’t tell. The other two were set to twenty-four news channels, one Fox News, and the other to MSNBC. Polar opposites on the political spectrum, as far as I was concerned. At least the bar believed in “fair and balanced reporting,” even if the channels themselves didn’t.
Large floor-to-ceiling windows lined the wall opposite of the bar, looking out into the lobby of the hotel.
I swiveled the barstool back around to face the bar. The bartender was making himself busy, wiping down the same spot that I would swear he was wiping down when I walked in. I leaned in so that he could hear me and asked, “Is it always this dead in here?”
The question was intended to serve two purposes.
First, if the downtown area still lacked for business, what would be the point in investing in a new restaurant in that area? It didn’t seem prudent to invest a ton of money in a project that could potentially turn into a financial black hole.
I’m not ashamed to admit that the second purpose was to strike up a conversation with someone. And, let’s face it, the bartender was cute, and maybe he had been flirting with me earlier. I may be in my forties, but I wasn’t dead. Who knows, if nothing else, maybe if the guy seemed personable, I could steal him for the new restaurant.
He grinned, but wouldn’t look directly at me, like he was slightly embarrassed, or shy. I’d much prefer shy. “It’ll pick up later,” he stated. “Hockey season just started. The Walleye has a pre-season game tonight, but we’ll get busier after that lets out.”
The Toledo Walleye is a local professional hockey team, one of a number of pieces in the puzzle that had become the revitalization of the downtown area. They played in Huntington Center, which was also used for other sporting events as well as a concert venue. Just a few blocks away stood Fifth Third Field, home of a minor league baseball team called the Toledo Mud Hens, which was an affiliate of the Detroit Tigers. The construction of both facilities jumpstarted the rebirth of the downtown area.
I watched for a moment and a group of three men walked into the hotel and up to the front desk. I took a sip of my cocktail, wondering if these three were part of my graduating class. Would I really be able to recognize anyone after so many years? I thought I did, but couldn’t be sure. I knew I had changed over the years, so I knew that anyone I had graduated with had as well. People change so much over time. Doubtful, but I peered anyway in a futile attempt to try.
I watched as they approached the desk, backpacks slung over their shoulders and suitcases dragging behind them, chatting with one another. One by one, they spoke to the front desk clerk and handed over their credit cards. I was beginning to get bored watching them by the time the third man approached the counter. He was quite attractive. I could tell, even from my distance, that he was well built. His hair was immaculately done, and his navy-blue suit s
eemed to be tailored to accentuate his chest and biceps.
Completely out of my league and probably hopelessly straight.
I was about to turn back to the bar and order a second drink when the third man turned to his two buddies. His face was contorted in anger, and he was saying something that I couldn’t make out. He threw his arms into the air, the universal sign of “what the actual fuck.” His friends turned and spoke to each other. I wished again I could hear what they were saying, or at least read lips, because they turned back to their pissed-off friend and spoke. Whatever they said didn’t sit well with him. His face turned a nice shade of crimson that I could even see from my distance. Whatever was going on seemed intense.
The guy’s two friends grabbed the handles of their luggage and made their way deeper into the bowels of the hotel. Whatever was going on, I felt bad for the guy. Clearly something had happened to upset him. Then to be ditched by his friends…that just seemed cruel. You don’t leave a friend behind in his moment of need, and clearly this guy was in need.
He began speaking to the clerk behind the desk again, becoming more agitated as he did. The poor woman behind the counter looked frustrated but kept her composure.
Finally, it seemed as if he had given up. She said something to him, to which he nodded. She stepped around the counter. Taking hold of his luggage handle, she rolled it around behind the counter. His shoulders sagged as he picked his backpack up off the floor. Much to my surprise, he made his way to the bar which gave me a better opportunity to scope him out.
He looked…familiar, as if I should know him, but couldn’t quite place him. That feeling of almost-recognition niggled at the back of my mind. His dark hair was cut short and combed to one side. His beard trimmed close to his face. The closer he got, the better I could see how he filled out his suit, not bulky but muscular, defined, like he took care of himself but didn’t spend his life in the gym.
He stormed into the bar, face set in a stony expression, anger radiating off him. I was sure if the bar actually had people in it, he would be able to part the metaphorical crowd like Moses and the Red Sea, just from the look on his face.
Reunion Page 1