Love on the Web

by Neil Plakcy

  I thought about calling in sick, burrowing down in bed with the covers over my head, but I’d taken a sick day the week before to work on Julian’s website. I couldn’t do anything to jeopardize my job, since it looked like that was all I had.

  It was a relief to pull off my brother’s oversize clothes when I got home. It was the first step in reclaiming who I was. I was out to my family and to my coworkers. I had put Victor and my brother drama behind me. It was time to be the real Larry Leavis at last.

  At AppWorks, I buckled down to the last few bugs in the sandwich-store app and then got Lilah to help me run more tests. She couldn’t find anything wrong, so I e-mailed the link to the client and sat back.

  I still hadn’t heard from Julian, so I decided to send an e-mail. In addition to our personal trouble, I wanted to know what his attorney had decided about the code I’d written. Was it unique enough? Or had I unknowingly infringed on someone’s patents?

  With luck, that was why Julian wasn’t calling me. Because he was scrambling with business issues—not that he was breaking up with me.

  I’m much better with code than with words, but I poured my heart into the e-mail. I explained what had happened with Victor, the way he had threatened my job if I didn’t do what he wanted. I assured him that nothing sexual had happened, and that I cared too much for Julian to do anything to jeopardize our relationship.

  I asked him how his meeting had gone, and if there was anything I could do code-wise to help. Then I hit Send.

  31 – The Way You Think

  Because I was the newest guy, I’d only been working on one project at a time. But after Dominic split up the work Noah had left behind, I realized everyone else was working on multiple jobs.

  Noah knew how to code everything from C++ to Python, Ruby, and Perl, as well as some languages I’d only heard of once or twice, like Haskell, Scala, and OCaml. So I wasn’t surprised he’d gotten another job so quickly after his birthday party. But I was irritated to see that as Kevin said, Noah wasn’t good at tying up loose ends, and there was a lot of work to be shared between Dom, Kevin, Dylan, and me.

  Dom scooted his chair over to my cube late that morning. “Larry, you’re a good closer,” he said. “I changed the file permissions on four of Noah’s apps so you can access them. I want you to go through each one, figure out what has to be done, and do it.”

  Four new projects? How was I going to manage that? But I wasn’t in any position to complain. The first job was complete, but Noah had never bothered to get the client’s sign-off. The second needed some graphics included, and I worked on that until Dylan called me over. He was trying to figure out a piece of Noah’s code that he didn’t understand.

  Though Dylan was a few years older than I was, he was a self-taught programmer who hadn’t taken more than a couple of college courses, and I could see where that was hurting him. Noah had made some advanced Java calls that I’d learned at FU, and I was able to walk Dylan through what was going on and find where the problem was.

  The four of us all stayed until midnight, working our asses off to keep up with our projects and pick up where Noah had dropped the ball. Though I checked my phone and e-mail obsessively, there was no word from Julian. I went home and fell into a deep sleep, woken only by a banging on my bedroom door.

  I looked at the clock as Manny popped my door open. It was six-thirty. “What’s wrong?” I asked groggily.

  I pulled on a pair of running shorts and scrambled to the front door. Julian was just getting off the elevator, a messenger bag over one shoulder, towing a rollaboard suitcase. “I came here right from the airport,” he said. “We have a lot to talk about.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, or the way Julian didn’t try to kiss me as he walked in. To his credit, he looked ragged and wrinkled, with bed head and dark spots under his eyes.

  “I’m so sorry you had to see that picture,” I said as I followed him to the dining room table. “But nothing sexual happened. He wanted to embarrass me.”

  “Because you wouldn’t play his sex games.” Julian opened the messenger bag and pulled out his laptop. “And how do you know he won’t keep doing things like that until you give in?”

  “I won’t let him.” I crossed my arms over my bare chest, feeling foolish in nothing more than my shorts. “Because I want to be with you, not him.”

  “Let’s see how you feel after I tell you my news,” Julian said. “You have any coffee?”

  “Sure. I’ll make some.” I walked into the kitchen. What did he mean? Was he going to accuse me of stealing someone else’s code? Or being too stupid to realize that I’d copied code, or one of the workers I’d hired had?

  While the coffee brewed, I went back to my room. I switched to briefs, a T-shirt, and cargo shorts. I glanced in the mirror to see how bad I looked. Not great, but better than Julian. I only shaved every other day, and I liked the stubble on my chin.

  I got back to the kitchen as the coffee was bubbling. I poured two cups and carried them out to the dining room. “My attorney hooked me up with a code analyst,” Julian said. “He went through everything you wrote and compared it to patents.”

  I realized I was holding my breath. “And?”

  “And it’s clear that you wrote your own code, but in a couple of cases, you could be accused of infringing on existing patents. The consultant gave me some notes you could use to reconfigure.”

  “That’s all?” I sat back in my chair.

  “I should have given you more specific instructions and had you check out the code in the relevant patents. Now there’s more work to do than I planned, and after the attorney’s fees and the code consultant, I don’t have any money left to pay you. I’m going to put the site on hold until I find additional funding. And depending on how long that takes, Amazon could launch before I do, and I’ll be screwed.”

  “You don’t have to pay me now,” I said. “I’ll do whatever you need to make things work. After you’re a big success, you can throw some cash my way.”

  “I don’t want to take advantage of you because we’re dating,” he said.

  My heart skipped a beat. We were still dating! Julian wasn’t going to break up with me!

  “This is all my fault,” he said. “If I hadn’t been so quick to jump into bed with you, we would have kept to a business relationship, and we would have moved more slowly and carefully. Instead, I let my emotions carry me away, and now everything’s a mess.”

  I reached over and took his hand. “There’s no mess we can’t fix together, Julian. It takes two to do the horizontal mambo, you know. I’m as much at fault for hurrying forward as you are. But I was falling for you, and I wanted to do everything I could to hold on to you, even though I know how far out of my league you are.”

  “Out of your league? What makes you think that?”

  “You’re handsome. You’re smart. You’re rich and well-educated. What would you want with big, geeky me?”

  “I’m no more handsome than the next guy on South Beach. And you underestimate yourself. You’re taller and skinnier than most guys, but you have beautiful eyes.” He reached out and stroked my cheek. “Cheekbones to die for, a strong chin—you’re way better looking than you think.”

  I blushed and looked down. I knew I had some good features, but I’d always felt that the bad ones—my scarecrow legs and arms, the way I towered over most guys—overshadowed anything good.

  Julian wasn’t finished. “You’re as smart as I am, though in different ways. I’m amazed at how sharp you are when it comes to coding. And remember, my dad is rich; I’m not. I’m just another guy hustling to make a buck.”

  He shook his head. “I wish you could see yourself through my eyes. What I see is this great guy with a big heart, which is the most important thing to me. When I thought you were still involved with that jerk...”

  “I’m not.”

  “But when I thought so, I figured I was a big fool. That maybe I misunderstood everything between us. Tha
t’s happened to me before. Despite what you might think, I haven’t had a lot of relationships—the only serious one was with that asshole Paul who outed me to my dad.”

  “You didn’t misunderstand anything.” I leaned in and kissed him the way he’d kissed me, putting the slightest pressure on his lips until I knew he was willing to respond. Then I let go of his hand so I could wrap my arms around him and pull him close to me. I kissed his lips and his chin and then rested my cheek against his.

  His skin was damp, and I pulled back to look at him. “Are you crying?”

  “Only tears of joy,” he said.

  I looked up at the starburst clock on the dining room wall. It was nearly seven, and Gavin would be waking up soon, scrambling for his shift at Java Joe’s. “The way I figure it,” I said, “I’ve got about two hours before I need to be at the office. We could spend that time looking over the code you need fixed. Or you could come back to my bed and go to sleep. You look like you’ve been up all night.”

  “I vote for the bed,” he said. “But not for sleep.”

  “I’ve always said that I like the way you think,” I said. I stood up and offered him my hand, and we walked to the bedroom together.

  I hope you’ve enjoyed this book, and that you’ll post a review of it wherever you find your e-books. Reviews help other readers discover books they’d like—and of course they help me sell more books!

  Now it’s time for Gavin’s story. He’s the last of the original three roommates, and his was a fun book to write, as he discovers his own hidden talents and discovers someone who can look beneath his handsome exterior to the guy he really is. Here’s the first chapter.

  Love on Stage – 1 – Contradictions

  Gavin Kaczmarek expertly dumped a bag of organic Ethiopian coffee beans into the grinder, set the dial to Turkish fine, and flipped the switch. The alarm on the dark-roast pot was ringing behind him, and he turned it off and removed the glass pot from the burner. He pulled two shots from the tray of the espresso machine and poured them into a china mug, then reached for the pitcher of hot milk.

  At six-one, Gavin was slim but muscular, with a tribal tattoo around his right bicep. He had been told often that he looked like a young Robert Redford, with a Nordic profile, a dimple in his chin, and a smile around his eyes. He kept his golden blond hair glossy and shoulder-length.

  Humming along with the song on the stereo system, he placed a big spoon over the mouth of the pitcher and filled the mug. He pivoted to the grinder just as it finished and flipped the switch off with his elbow. Then he dropped the spoon in the sink and swirled the remaining foam in the pitcher into the shape of a leaf, finishing with a tiny doodle of his own invention. He handed the mug to the customer—an elderly woman in black tights and an electric-blue tank top, with a pink-tinged bouffant that had been lacquered in place.

  She smiled a gap-toothed grin and took the mug, and Gavin bagged up the finely ground coffee beans for the customer behind her. He flirted with everybody—men, women, young, old. It didn’t matter. A raised eyebrow or a sexy smile added to the pileup of coins and bills in the tip jar. And sometimes Gavin was slipped a business card or had a phone number written on the back of a receipt. The women never got a call back, but if the guy was cute or sexy or just different, Gavin often made the call, though he denied it to his boss—a Kenyan immigrant named Careful Handa.

  Java Joe’s, where Gavin worked the opening shift, was a funky fair-trade coffee shop a block off Lincoln Road on Miami’s South Beach. The place buzzed with office workers until nine, when there was a brief respite before the beauty school students, consultants meeting clients, medical staff in scrubs, and elderly java junkies showed up.

  Gavin had unspoken nicknames for most of the regular customers, from Saggy Boob Lady to Hot Hasidic Guy to South American Soccer Mom. Because all of Java Joe’s products were certified kosher, they did a good business with students and staff at the nearby rabbinical colleges, and Gavin was always amazed at how someone could live in twenty-first-century Miami and yet dress like they had in seventeenth-century Poland.

  Around ten, Music Dude came in for his regular Jumbo Joe with extra foam. He was skinny and serious-looking, with hipster glasses, a goatee, and thinning hair, and had to be at least thirty. But there was something about him that Gavin liked, and if things were slow, he’d fantasize a bit about seeing the guy naked, and his dick would jump.

  Music Dude always had high-tech earbuds, and when he’d pull them out to order, Gavin could hear all kinds of tunes, from Brazilian sambas to blue-eyed soul to rap. A couple of times Gavin had seen him working on a laptop with what looked like musical notations on the screen.

  Gavin made the Jumbo Joe, a sixteen-ounce latte with two extra shots, and instead of his regular leaf, he drew a musical note with the foam and served up the coffee with a bit of song. “I love java, sweet and hot, whoops Mr. Moto I’m a coffeepot.”

  “Your voice has a nice tone,” Music Dude said. “But you’re losing your breath on the lower register.”

  “You know about stuff like that?” Gavin asked as he handed Music Dude his coffee.

  “It’s what I do. Digital music production.”

  “Very cool.” Gavin struggled for something else to say, but there was a line of customers out the door, and he felt tongue-tied.

  “Have a good day,” Music Dude said. He took his coffee and left.

  Gavin was bummed. He had hoped to impress the guy, though he didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he was super handsome or anything.

  He went back to work, making coffees for Slope-Shouldered Tall Guy, Russian Realtor Lady, and a raft of others who weren’t regular enough to have nicknames. At noon, he signed out and walked to the corner of Lincoln and Alton, where a big orange school bus was idling in the crosswalk.

  He signed in with the pimply-faced photographer’s assistant and took a seat halfway back, across from Tate, another model he’d worked with in the past.

  As the bus took off, he looked around at the half dozen other models and the mixed bag of crew members. He leaned over to Tate and asked, “You know where we’re going?”

  “I hear the underwear company rented out the locker room at the Miami Dolphins training center,” Tate said.

  “Maybe there will be a stray Dolphin hanging around,” Gavin said. “I’d do a pro football player in a heartbeat.”

  “Too early for pre-season practice,” Tate said.

  Gavin had met Tate on his first modeling gig. He was a nice guy, despite having the kind of good looks that immediately put Gavin on the defensive—oval face, high cheekbones, tanned skin, and shoulder-length dark-brown hair. Gavin preferred to hang around with guys less good-looking than he was, but he made an exception for Tate.

  When they walked into the locker room, the team’s presence was everywhere, from the trophies along the wall, to the big sign that read THE ROAD TO THE SUPER BOWL STARTS HERE.

  The stylist pulled Gavin’s shoulder-length hair into a ponytail and slicked it down with gel. He was handed a red-and-black jockstrap studded with silver metal bolts, which he slipped on. The stylist fiddled with the position of the waistband, then sprayed his shoulders and chest with water so that he’d look like he’d just come from a sweaty workout.

  He was directed to a bench in front of an open locker, and the stylist pooled a pair of slacks around his bare feet as if he’d just stepped out of them. There was an erotic kick to being in a place suffused with so much testosterone, and so far the photographer, a slim Asian guy wearing one of those vests that hunters wore during deer season, had chastised two of the models for getting boners.

  Suddenly the photographer was right beside him, his lens up in Gavin’s face. The camera’s rapid shutter clicks reminded Gavin of the sound the crickets made back home in Wisconsin. He was looking forward to spending the Independence Day weekend with his family at their summer home at Starlit Lake.

  “Don’t think about anything!” the photographer demanded. “Y
ou are a blank canvas. An empty shell. A mannequin to display the clothes.”

  Gavin imagined that the photographer was his father, yelling at him for some screw-up, and switched to the distant-focused look he had perfected as a teenager. He emptied his mind and stared straight ahead.

  “Excellent!” the photographer said. He snapped a few shots, then reached down and lifted Gavin’s left leg, placing it on top of the wooden bench beside him. He moved Gavin’s arm so that his right hand rested on the top of the half-open locker door. Gavin didn’t understand why the guy couldn’t have just told him what to do, but that was the business.

  The photographer took some more shots, then sent Gavin back to wardrobe.

  The wardrobe mistress was a plump Latina with dyed red hair, who had “fag hag” stamped all over her. She looked at her clipboard. “You’re Havin, right?” she asked, giving the G at the start of his name a breathy accent.

  “Yup.”

  “You’re wearing the body shapers next.” She handed him a T-shirt and a pair of briefs with some kind of reinforcing on his abs and waist.

  “What are these?” he asked.

  “They slim you.” She rubbed her belly. “You know, down here.”

  “I don’t need these!” Gavin protested.

  “Of course not. If you did, you wouldn’t be able to model them.”

  The contradiction confounded Gavin until he’d slipped into them. If they were tight on him, when he had single-digit body fat, he could only imagine how awful they’d be on a guy who needed them. He looked at himself in the full-length mirror in the dressing area.

  The white fabric clung to him like a second skin. Not an ounce of fat pushed through. He felt like he was standing up straighter, perhaps because of the lumbar support. It was the least sexy underwear he’d ever modeled, but what the hell, he was making money and building his portfolio.

  When the bus returned them to Lincoln Road that evening, Gavin headed back to Java Joe’s. He was relaxing, sipping a low-fat fruit smoothie, when he noticed a guy across from him checking him out. The dude was older, at least forty, and wore the kind of suit you couldn’t buy off the shelf. The coal-black jacket was tailored snugly over his shoulders, and the slacks fell perfectly over his black tasseled loafers.