by C. C. Dado
“Seriously, stop talking,” Brandon said. “Let’s go see if he needs any help moving in.”
“Okay, but don’t you think you’re going to start June Cleavering him like you did me.”
Brandon stopped midstride as he went to open the door. “June-what-ing him?” he asked as he slowly turned around.
Josh knew he had fucked up as soon as the words left his mouth. Stupid relationship Tourette’s. “Ummm, nothing. Never mind. Let’s go meet the neighbor,” Josh said as he walked past Brandon to the door.
“Not a chance.” Brandon reached over Josh’s shoulder to stop the door from opening. “Explain, please.” Even though Brandon was the more soft-spoken, nice one in this relationship, he also had Josh by about forty pounds and used it when needed.
Josh turned to face the inevitable. “When I moved in to the building, you always tried to take care of me from across the hall, bringing me food and checking on me when I was sick. Like June Cleaver…,” he said under his breath.
“I reminded you of June Cleaver?” Brandon looked confused and mildly insulted.
“Not literally. Like June Cleaver with a penis.” Josh made things worse by clarifying.
“Oh my God, what are you talking about?” Brandon gasped, appalled.
“Hang on a second before you get all fired up again. You know I’m not good talking about this stuff. I just meant you took care of me, made me feel special to someone for the first time in my life, and I fell in love with you. So no, I don’t want the new neighbor to get the same treatment I got.”
They stared at each other in silence.
“Totally worth it,” Brandon said, leaning in and giving Josh a kiss before opening the door. “Come on.”
Nathan was just heading in with another box, looking like he was about to drop it, when Brandon and Josh came out of their apartment.
“Here, let me help you,” Brandon said, grabbing the box from Nathan.
“Nathan, this is my fiancé, Brandon,” Josh explained, walking up behind Brandon. It was the first time he had called him that. It felt right.
“Welcome to the building.” Brandon shifted the box so he could offer his hand to Nathan.
“Hi. Uh, thanks,” Nathan said.
Nathan’s slight blush when looking back and forth between Josh and Brandon let Josh know he was remembering the “incident” that occurred last time he was here.
“You got more out in the truck?” Josh asked. “We’ll help you unload.”
“Oh, thanks, but you don’t have to. I can get it all.” Nathan attempted to take the box back.
“That’s what neighbors are for.” Brandon turned with the box and headed toward Nathan’s apartment.
It took them an hour to unload the truck. The majority of Nathan’s belongings consisted of shelves and enough books to make a librarian proud.
“Thanks for all your help. I would offer you guys a drink, but I haven’t gone shopping yet, so the fridge is bare,” Nathan said.
“That’s okay. We appreciated the workout. You really like to read, I take it?” Josh teased.
“Yeah, I guess,” Nathan said, looking at the floor.
“That’s cool. Well, we’ll let you get settled in.” Josh put his arm over Brandon’s shoulder and headed back to their place.
“Hey, you’re moving in at a perfect time. We’re getting married in two weeks,” Brandon said, turning back around.
“Oh, ummm, congratulations,” Nathan said, looking mildly confused as to why it was a good time to be moving in.
Brandon smiled at Josh as he placed his hand on Josh’s waist. “We’re having a joint bachelor party next weekend up on the roof. You should join us. Meet everyone. I should warn you, though, there is going to be a male stripper.”
“Oh, that’s great…. Um, I mean, it’s fine. I mean, that doesn’t bother me….” Nathan’s face turning red again.
Joshua chuckled under his breath until Brandon discretely punched him in the gut.
“I’m sure we’ll see you around this week, but the party starts at eight Saturday night,” Brandon said as they left.
Chapter 5
The Stripper (David)
“I’M SERIOUSLY going to murder you in your sleep one of these days,” David said as he held up the zebra-striped mini boxer briefs, doubting his penis would even fit in them.
“Oh, come on, bro. You’ve got to help me out,” his brother Jamie wheezed from the couch. “If I call in sick, they will fire me.”
“Well, you better start looking for a new job ’cause there is no way in hell I’m putting that on and giving some dude a lap dance,” David assured him.
“Oh God, I feel like I’m dying,” Jamie said as he covered his head with his blanket and proceeded to cough like he was actually going to die.
“You’re not dying. It’s a cold. And you’re the one who got yourself into this stupid job. I am not saving you this time,” David said, throwing the ridiculous underwear onto the table.
“You know this is the only job I could find that pays me enough to go to school full-time and cover my half of the rent,” Jamie whined as he continued to cough up a lung. “You just have to dance one song and leave. You can totally do this. You’re still in shape from soccer, and you’re not a completely horrible dancer…. Just help me out this once. Please, David.”
Ha! Once his ass. David had spent most of his life getting his little brother out of trouble. Their mom referred to Jamie as a “free spirit,” which in layman’s terms meant flakey and irresponsible. He rarely thought things through before he acted, like deciding to become a gay male stripper to pay his way through school. He wasn’t even gay, but he said men paid double what woman did in tips. Mom thought he was a flower delivery guy. All their dad’s dreams of his boys playing professional soccer wasted on a lazy stripper and a woodworker with a blown knee.
“Come on, David, I’ll owe you big.” Jamie no longer sounded like himself, he was so congested.
“You have nothing I want, Jamie.” David grabbed the garbage can from the kitchen and began cleaning up Jamie’s mess of Kleenex littering the living room.
“I’ll get my own place,” Jamie said, and stopped David in his tracks.
David loved his brother and let him move in with him after graduation when their parents decided to retire to Arizona, but living with him was challenging to say the least. Jamie was a night owl, along with his best friend Levi—they were like dumb and dumber.
“You know Mom would kill me if she thought I’d kicked you out. So thanks, but no thanks.”
“Not kicked out, moved out, and I will talk to Mom. Levi and I are planning on moving into the dorms next semester, but I’m not going to be able to move if I lose my job.”
David paced the living room, knowing he was fucked. He picked up the stripper wear and his brother’s iPod and walked to his room without looking back.
“Thanks, bro. Oh, and could you pick me up some soup on the way home?” David heard his brother’s hoarse voice as he closed his bedroom door.
David laid his head back against the door, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. How had his Saturday night just gone from watching the game to stripping for a gay couple’s bachelor party?
Fucking Jamie….
David looked at his watch and saw he had three hours until Jamie was supposed to appear at the party. He was going to need a shower, some liquor, and some practice if he was going to pull this off.
An hour later David was wearing the minuscule boxer briefs and working on his third beer while straddling a chair, swaying to the music in front of his mirrored closet door, when his brother walked in wrapped up in a blanket.
“Oh fuck, my eyes!” Jamie teased as David fell off the chair and dove under the covers of his bed.
“What do you want, Jamie?”
“Are you practicing, bro? That’s sweet,” Jamie mocked.
“Shut up, Jamie.”
“Okay, well, I just wanted to let y
ou know the party is in Capitol Hill. It’s not too far, but you never know with traffic. And thanks again, David. I mean it.”
“Yeah, no problem. Now leave so I can dress and get this over with.”
“I almost forgot. Here are my tearaway pants.”
Something landed on top of the blanket that was covering David. “Oh Jesus, Jamie, really? Tearaway pants?” David threw the blanket off his head and glared at the pants lying on top of him.
“It’s a uniform, dude. Cops don’t go to a gunfight without a bulletproof vest on, and strippers don’t show up to strip without tearaway pants.”
“Seriously the worst metaphor ever. They’re going to know I’m an imposter.”
“Whatever, James Bond, just put on the pants. It’s stripping, not espionage.” Jamie paused, fumbling with his blanket in his attempt to leave. “Hey, how many beers have you had?” he asked, pulling a Kleenex out from inside his blanket and wiping his nose.
“Don’t worry, Dad. I’m calling a cab. I needed some liquid courage.”
“Here’s the address. The guys’ names are Josh and Brandon.” Jamie handed the piece of paper to David and headed back to the couch.
Chapter 6
The bachelor party (Nathan)
NATHAN STOOD in his new bedroom, trying to figure out what to wear to Josh and Brandon’s bachelor party. He had never really been to one before, with the exception of his great-uncle’s second marriage, but he was pretty sure ten seventy-year-olds playing pinochle was not an equivalent for whatever was currently in full swing on the roof of his building. He had been hearing people coming in the building for the past hour. Nathan stood in front of his mirror, wondering if the jeans and button-up shirt were okay. Nathan had zero fashion sense, so he usually tried to match something he saw on a mannequin, figuring someone thought it was a good idea.
He brushed his fingers through his dark hair that currently refused to be tamed and adjusted his glasses. He grabbed the keys to his new place and started to the roof.
The music got louder as he walked up the stairs. He wasn’t sure if this was a good idea. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but he didn’t want to turn down the first invitation he got from his new neighbors. He was determined not to be so shy. This was a new start for him.
He ran into Josh and Brandon a few times throughout the week, and they were super nice guys. He was not going to hide in his apartment. When Nathan was younger, his mom was convinced he had autism because of his lack of social skills. He preferred reading to playing with the neighbor kids. She took him to fifteen different doctors, demanding someone diagnose him as autistic. The only thing she got was a referral to a counselor for herself. Over the years she managed to get some doctors to prescribe a multitude of medications for his anxieties, none of which he took because he hated being medicated. He still had a stockpile in a box he hid from her.
He contemplated going back downstairs to find the box. He hated how the drugs made him feel, but he really didn’t want to freak out or do anything embarrassing in front of his new neighbors. It was bad enough it still took everything in him not to drool over Josh like he did the first time they met.
Not that Nathan had a thing for tall, dark-haired, tattooed bad boys, because he definitely didn’t. Guys like that made him too nervous. If he had his pick, which he didn’t, but if he did, it would be an athlete. He hated sports, but there was something about an athlete’s body and their mental drive that did it for Nathan. In school Aurora tried to get him to try out for sports constantly. A kid of hers should be on the football team, she would say. Nathan wanted to date the football team, not be on it.
He wanted what Brandon and Josh seemed to have. He could tell the two were very much in love.
He was feeling good about his decision to move here. It felt scary but good to step out of his comfort zone for once. He had never lived in an area that was gay friendly like this, and he didn’t have any other gay friends, so he didn’t want to screw this up.
He opened the rooftop door. Walking in, he saw they obviously had quite a few friends. He wandered around the outer edges of the party, taking it all in.
White table-clothed round tables surrounded by white padded wooden chairs had been set up along one side of the roof, and a long banquet table filled to overflowing with food ran down the middle. The entire roof had antique-style white lights strung from one side to the other and wrapped around the arbor posts.
Josh was right. This was totally worth the walk up. The far end of the garden area had been transformed into a dance floor, with a bar Brandon was currently manning along with a guy he assumed was the actual bartender, based on his black vest and service tie. Josh was standing on the other side of the bar, laughing with a couple guys. There were a lot of people here, he realized. Thinking maybe he couldn’t do this, he looked around for the exit to calm himself. He noticed there was a fire escape as well as the stairwell, and the building next to this was connected, which made him feel less trapped, easing the tightness in his chest.
Josh waved him over, so he headed in his direction.
“Everybody,” Josh hollered, raising his beer and throwing an arm around Nathan. Everyone quieted down and looked their way. “This is our new neighbor, Nathan. Nathan, this is everybody.”
“Hi, Nathan,” the group hollered back.
“What would you like to drink?” Brandon gestured to the impressively stocked bar.
Nathan was stumped. He didn’t even know the name of a drink. There went any chance of being cool.
Brandon must have picked up on Nathan’s hesitation because he started making suggestions. “How about a mojito or a White Russian?”
“Uhhh, mojito sounds good,” Nathan decided.
Nathan turned to Josh while Brandon mixed his drink. “It looks amazing up here. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Yep, it’s all Brandon,” Josh said proudly, looking at his fiancé.
“You two have a lot of friends.” Nathan looked around at the people dancing and drinking.
“Ha, only a few of these are mine. Most of these folks are Brandon’s friends. Hey,” Josh said to Brandon, as if he had just had an epiphany. “I’m taking this one.” Josh put an arm over Nathan’s shoulders and pulled him in next to him possessively.
“Huh?” Nathan said, not sure where this was going but feeling very uncomfortable.
“You have too many friends already, so this one’s mine.”
“Okay, honey,” Brandon said, giving Nathan a wink as he handed him his drink.
Three drinks later Nathan was feeling fantastic. Everyone at the party was extremely nice. He felt like he was part of a group for the first time in his life. Not that liquor suddenly gave him excellent social skills, but his lack thereof didn’t bother him so much now. He managed to stay off the dance floor, even though a few tried to pull him out there. The joking about his possible lack of grace was friendly banter that made him laugh instead of the mockery he had experienced in the past.
He was standing with a few of Brandon’s work friends, thinking maybe he should slow down a bit on the drinking, when a guy walked in the rooftop door. Nathan was dumbstruck. The man was every dirty fantasy Nathan had ever had.
Nathan watched him slowly make his way around the outside edge of the party. He seemed uncomfortable, something Nathan was very familiar with, but it didn’t fit on him. He had short dirty-blonde hair, was at least six feet and muscular, like he played sports versus spending hours in a gym.
“You all right there, Nathan?” one of the other neighbors asked. She was the one throwing the party for Joshua and Brandon. He couldn’t remember her name. Sheila, Shelby… oh, yeah, Sharon. That was it.
“I’m fine. I was just wondering who that is over there by the arbor,” Nathan said, trying to discretely point in that direction.
“Oh, looky looky. I do believe that’s our entertainment for the evening. If you will excuse me,” she said, leaving him and making her way over to his dream man,
who was a little less dreamy now that Nathan knew people had paid to see him naked.
Nathan had never seen a stripper. He watched Sharon talking with the stripper, and she directed him to the open area they were using as a stage in front of the bar. She dragged one of the chairs to the middle of the floor and then headed back to the stereo that was set up next to the bar. Nathan took a moment to examine the emotions playing across the man’s face as he stood just off the dance floor. He looked like he could bail at any moment. Nathan was surprised when he lowered his head and then looked up, determination in his eyes and his jaw set, like he was going to do this come hell or high water. Nathan was not usually very good at reading people’s emotions, but that guy’s were written all over his face. The music started up at the same time he saw Josh pull Brandon onto the floor and sit him in the chair.
People started to whistle and catcall as soon as the stripper made his way toward Brandon to the beat of the music. Nathan was worried for a second he was actually going to drool this time as the stripper raised his shirt slowly, moving his hips, teasing Brandon and then lowering the shirt. Oh good lord. Nathan prayed for the strength not to get a boner.
When the stripper finally pulled his shirt off over his head, Nathan was a goner. This man was physically blessed. Nathan had never even seen a body that looked that good outside of a magazine. Apparently Josh had second thoughts about how fun this would be when Brandon reached out to stick a bill in the top of the guy’s low-hanging pants.
“Okay, baby,” Josh said, pulling Brandon out of the chair. “Let’s let someone else get in on the fun.” Brandon looked like he was going to pout.
Nathan felt someone pulling on his arm, and suddenly he was pushed into the chair.
He pushed his glasses back up his nose and stared at the beautiful man unbuttoning the fly of his jeans one button at a time. As the music pumped, so did his body. Nathan couldn’t see anyone at the party anymore. It was like tunnel vision. The stripper was all Nathan could see and everything around him was blurry, like they were alone as he circled Nathan. He moved to the other guests, getting more money shoved at him. Sharon even licked his chest as he went by, but he never broke eye contact with Nathan, like Nathan was his prey. The music slowed, making Nathan shiver as he drank in the sight of the stripper making his way back to the chair.