Building Us: A Gay Romantic Comedy and Adventure (Marketing Beef Gay Romance Book 2)

by Rick Bettencourt

  “In the meantime….” Evan reached into the paper bag beside him and pulled out a bottle of wine. He smiled.

  “Oh. Someone’s up for a little party time!” I rubbed my hands together in anticipation. Despite the lackluster label on the oversized bottle, a little buzz-on to wait out the storm and to see what else popped up sounded fun. “What about a corkscrew?”

  Evan twisted the top of the wine bottle and at it clicked. “Screw-cap. No worries.”

  “Nothing but the best for us.”

  The first couple of glasses—in plastic cups from the bathroom—went down fast.

  “You shouldn’t judge screw-cap wine as inferior,” Evan slurred. He hadn’t drunk in a while, and the wine hit him fast.

  “I ain’t judging.” I was feeling good too. Sitting on the floor beside him, I leaned against the foot of the bed. “I’m judging the label.” I pointed to the bottle with its $8.99 price tag.

  Evan picked up the wine. “Right Stop Vineyards.” He squinted reading the label. “Made from the best grapes on earth.”

  “Really.”

  “The best grapes on earth.” He placed the bottle onto the carpeted floor. From his surprised look, I could tell it met the carpet a little too fast. “Don’t want to break it.”

  “No, we don’t.” I edged closer to him. My sweatshirt rubbed against his thermal.

  “No. No, we don’t.” He was a funny drunk. “After all, it’s the best wine on earth.” He sat up, legs underneath him. “Hey! We should do their marketing.” He jabbed me in the chest, and I held out my glass so as not to spill it. “You can write better copy than the ‘the best grapes on earth.’” He knelt in front of me.

  It wasn’t a terrible idea. We could use a new client. “All right, wait. Let me get a pen so I can write their contact info down.”

  “Hold on! I got a better idea.” Evan reached for his phone, charging next to mine. He nearly kicked his plastic cup with his leg before I caught it. “Technology,” he continued. “Let me take a picture of it.” On his knees, he unplugged his phone, placed the bottle on the bureau, and set up the photo op.

  I snuck up behind him as he wobbled. I eyed the picture in his phone’s viewfinder, but was too taken by his scent—a mix of tea tree shampoo, fresh laundry, and his sexy-as-fuck musk. My lips found themselves on the crook of his neck.

  The phone clicked and dropped.

  He spun around. Mouth on mine. “Mhh.” Tongues darted. I ripped off his tee and thermal—up and over him all in one go—and licked the tit on his birthmark. I loved him, his birthmark, and all. I couldn’t get enough.

  Making love with a snowstorm pounding outside heightened my senses—or something. The half-drunk bottle of wine didn’t deaden our arousal. Under the covers—face-to-face with me on top—we frotted ourselves into one another until neither of us could stand it anymore. Next, he let me enter him, and my entire being washed with a never-ending climax. From start to finish, it seemed as if I were in a constant state of orgasm. When I thought the moment couldn’t crescendo better, I came with the intensity of a freight train. In a deluge of sweat, I collapsed.

  We showered. I washed his back. He washed mine. And we even shaved one another’s scruffy beards, until the tepid water grew cold.

  Meanwhile, Detritus slept in a ball in the far corner of the room.

  A little more wine naked in bed—listening to snowplows thunder down the road and talking about trips to Madrid, Mykonos, and Cairo—we fell asleep some time south of midnight.

  One thing about sleeping in a foreign place and drinking a bottle of cheap wine the night before, it takes time to orient oneself the following morning. And being wakened by a cold gust from a thrown-open door and the scream of surprise from an overweight housekeeper furthers one’s confusion.

  “What the—” Evan and I yelled. The cold air swept over our naked bodies.

  Detritus barked, growled, and bolted after her. The door slammed shut, and he pounced at it.

  “Deet! It’s okay.” I fumbled for the sheets to conceal my morning wood.

  “What was that?” Evan said. “Who was…?” The heat must’ve kicked in full force in the middle of the night, for all the bed linen lay on the floor.

  The dog continued barking.

  “Deet! Enough.” I walked over to the window. Peeked out the drapes.

  “I sorry.” A voice snuck through the door.

  “We’ll be out in a minute.” I grabbed Evan’s thermal and T-shirt combo to cover my waning hard-on as if it mattered now.

  “What time—oh my God!” Evan was already by the bureau looking at his phone. “It’s ten thirty!”

  “What? How? I set my alarm for six.”

  Evan held my phone up. The charger’s plug dangled unconnected to the socket.

  “Fuck.” I took it from him. “Adam’s gonna fire us before we even start.”

  Chapter 13

  Evan

  Dillon’s stream crossed mine as we urinated in the bowl. After we freshened up, I handed him my phone. “I can’t believe you didn’t charge yours.” I stepped into a fresh pair of corduroys from my suitcase.

  “Enough already. I know.” He handed my iPhone back. “Can you unlock it?”

  I tapped in our anniversary date on the keypad and gave it back. “Do you know Adam’s number?”

  “Shit.” Dejected, his hands fell to the side. “It’s in my phone.”

  “Well, let yours charge for a bit. I’ll take Deet outside.” I pulled my old Salem State sweatshirt on and grabbed the leash draped over a suitcase. “C’mon, Deet.” I put on my parka.

  Outside, about a foot of fresh powdery snow blanketed the area. After peeing, Deet leaped through heaps of it behind the line of rooms. He popped in out like a gopher on a golf course. In a windswept area with wisps of grass showing through, he spun in circles barking at me with each passage, trying to corral me into playing. I attempted to make a snowball with my bare hands, but it barely packed. My pitiful attempt dissipated in the air when I launched it. Deet cared no less and bolted. He sniffed, then dove into a fresh pile of snow he hadn’t yet trampled.

  “You’re going to make a mess of the room.” I slipped my wet, cold hands in my pants pockets. “Daddy Dill will get us a towel before we come in.” Daddy Dill. God, the dog had become our son.

  With cell phone wedged between his ear and shoulder and wearing my shirt from the day before and nothing else, Dillon handed us a towel and closed the room’s door.

  I wiped Deet down. “You think he’d put some pants on or something.” I stepped back as the dog shook. Passing by our window, the housekeeper eyed me and hurried past. “We’ll be out of here in a jiffy!” I shouted.

  Dillon slipped into a pair of jeans. “We’re off the hook for now.” He zipped. “Adam said production is stalled because of the storm.”

  A knock on the door startled us. Deet barked. Dillon held out a hand to him, and he stopped.

  I peered through the peephole. The Indian man who’d checked us in stood out front. I opened the door. “We’re leaving right now.”

  “Have to charge you extra,” he said in a thick accent. “You past checkout.”

  I furrowed my brow. “But….”

  “No problem,” Dillon said. “Charge it to the card.”

  “Charge it to the card?” I said after the man left. “We can’t afford another night.”

  “It’s not that expensive.” Dillon wedged a foot into his North Face boots.

  “That’s money we don’t have.”

  “He won’t charge us. I was just offering.”

  “You just said—”

  “Relax.” Dillon pulled me in for a hug, but I tensed up. “C’mon. How about a quick—”

  “No!” I walked away. “Let’s go.”

  After scarfing down a couple of cereal bars—ones I’d picked up the night before at the convenience store—and attempting our way through a terrible pot of decaf from the coffeemaker in the bathroom, we packed. Dillon
tried, one more time, to coax me into another lovemaking session before we left, but I wasn’t in the mood. The doctor had told me that after the high of my testosterone medication, I might crash before stabilizing. Instead, I explained my dismissiveness as having had sex less than twelve hours ago. “We really should leave.” I pulled back the room’s blinds more.

  Dillon blanched. His mouth agape.

  “What? I promise I’ll blow you when—”

  “No, that’s not it.” He ran to the door and threw it open. “The car.”

  “What?” Dread fell over me as I went to him. “Where is it?” I didn’t recall seeing it when I took Deet out. Then again, with all the fuss with the maid, I didn’t recall not seeing it.

  The police arrived promptly. In the motel lobby, we filled out a report.

  “I thought they check out earlier,” the guy at the front desk said in broken English. “I see no car this morning.”

  That was why the maid burst through the door, ready to clean our room. I wrote my registration information on the document the cop had handed me.

  Dillon paced worn linoleum as he talked to the insurance company.

  For some reason, I wasn’t panicked about this. Dillon did enough panicking for the both of us. I knew they’d provide us a rental and cover us if the cops didn’t locate it. Besides, the car was old and had nothing of value in it, other than my Pretenders’ CD, which I’d recently downloaded to my MP3 player anyway. “It’s not a big deal,” I said to him.

  “When can you get a rental here?” he asked into the phone and nodded, listening.

  The officer took the form I gave her. “Thank you, sir.”

  Less than an hour later, we were in a brand-new 4Runner. “Not bad,” I said as Dillon drove. “It could be worse.”

  “I can’t believe a couple kids stole the Explorer.” He turned to catch my eye, then returned his gaze to the road.

  “You don’t know if it was a couple kids or not.”

  “That officer said there’s been a rash of break-ins.”

  “But she didn’t say they were teenagers.” I admired the leather, albeit fake, on the dash with a touch of my hand.

  “I didn’t say teenagers.”

  “Whatever.”

  Around noon, the Kind bars no longer sustained us, and the traffic snarled as more snow fell—wet and slushy.

  “Better for snowballs.” I looked at Deet in the back. His tail wagged.

  “It’s too wet.” Dillon steered into a McDonald’s. “I’m starving and have to piss like a Chinese race horse.”

  “Chinese, huh?”

  He nodded.

  “We really have to eat fast food?”

  He pulled into a spot by a dirty snowbank. “You’re the one who’s complaining about the budget.”

  “Yeah, but….”

  Deet stamped more noseprints on the back window.

  I gave Dillon my order—“some grilled chicken thing…or something somewhat healthy”—and stayed with Detritus.

  Ten minutes later Dillon came out empty-handed. “They declined the debit card.”

  “What?”

  “I just deposited the money we got from the studio,” he said as he neared, face red.

  “It won’t hit ’til Monday. Plus, the mortgage payment must’ve cleared.”

  Dillon threw his hands up, hustled into the car, and slammed the door.

  We drove in silence for a time.

  “You could’ve used the MasterCard.” I was responsible for the finances and guilt weighed on me. I’d thrown five hundred dollars onto the card to lower the limit for more spending.

  Dillon gazed my way. “I lost my appetite.”

  I rubbed his thigh. A sudden urge to make him come came over me—make him writhe and beg for more, like he does when I give him head in the backyard in the summer.

  He grabbed my hand. “Pass me some of those Cheez-Its from the back, would ya?”

  Chapter 14

  Dillon

  Evan wanted to blow me, but I was too upset about everything that’d happened—car stolen and no money in the checking account—to pull over to the side of the road and let him go down on me. Surprisingly. Usually one iota of a sexual suggestion from him, and I shuck my clothes and hop into bed. Not today.

  Besides, the slick roads required my steady attention. The snow had turned to rain, which iced as the afternoon sun descended.

  Our trek an hour north turned into three.

  We witnessed several cars spun out on the side of the highway.

  “Jesus.” Evan wiped condensation from the passenger window as we crept by a tractor trailer on its side.

  Dusk neared, and I called Adam and informed him of our predicament. The area where we were to film was off a lake somewhere north of Littleton. A punctual arrival proved impossible.

  “Again?” Adam replied. “You New Englanders are supposed to be built tough.”

  I let the insult slide and afterward stopped at Best Suites in Franconia.

  “Another hundred thirty-five we didn’t need to spend.” Evan shook his head and dragged his luggage down the red carpet to our room.

  I bit my lower lip and held back a snide remark. What did he want me to do?

  He flipped through his cell phone. “Son of a…! Dillon!”

  I stopped. “What. What did I do?” Now.

  He, too, stopped and faced me with his what-the-fuck demeanor. “They put a hold on the credit card for three-hundred dollars.”

  “And that’s my fault?” I dragged my suitcase farther down the hall, and Deet followed. Often when something unexpected happened, Evan blamed me first. Could I help it that an ice storm hit the area? Would he rather we die in a car accident? Did I steal our car and delay us several hours? It was a trait of his I, obviously, didn’t care for and could usually excuse, yet under the circumstances—would we lose this job with the studio?—it irritated me to no end.

  “I didn’t say it was your fault,” he said with an edge still in his voice. We stepped into the room. “It’s just that I told you, we only had a five-hundred dollar cushion on the credit card.”

  “I know. I know.” I tossed my luggage onto the bed.

  “There’s a luggage cart, you know.” He pointed to a metal rack by the closet. “Your suitcase will get the bed linen all dirt—”

  “I don’t give a fuck!” I plopped onto the bed beside it.

  Evan sat on the other queen and heel-toed off a sneaker while Deet sniffed around the room.

  I lay back on the bed. “Why do we have to argue over money?”

  “I’m not arguing.”

  He was. I hated when he got like this.

  “I’m just saying….” He rose.

  “Arguing…saying…blaming…whatever.”

  He rustled through his suitcase, which he’d placed on the prescribed rack.

  He thought he was so perfect.

  “I’m taking a shower.” He carried a fresh pair of shorts into the bathroom, and the door closed.

  Deet’s face popped up onto the mattress and met mine. His tongue flicked, and he yawned.

  “You okay, big guy?”

  His tail wagged and he licked my nose.

  I sat up and tapped the precious bedspread. “C’mon.”

  Deet jumped up, circled around a few times, scratched, and balled up. I petted him. He breathed in deeply, exhaled, and closed his eyes.

  The shower screeched on, and I lay beside my dog.

  The next morning, fearing a repeat of the yesterday’s fiasco, I got up before my alarm could. I took Detritus for a walk down a cleared path in the snow. Ahead of us an elderly guy with a stooped neck bit the blade of his shovel into a pile of snow by the gated and covered pool.

  “No reason to clear that out.” I jutted my chin toward the snow-packed pool area.

  He turned, squinting from the bright sun reflecting on the snow. “Ah.” He stabbed the shovel into a snowbank. A few chunks rolled down and onto the sidewalk he’d just cleared
. “There’s a hot tub in there. Opened all year round.”

  As I neared, I could see mist rising from the side of the fenced area, which connected to the lobby. “I’ll say there is. I doubt winter is its prime usage.”

  “Can’t say that it is. Mr. Hemley likes it cleared, nonetheless.” The man’s New England accent smacked of a Mainer. “You from around he’ah?” He searched the inner pocket of his wool coat and took out a pack of cigarettes.

  “Massachusetts.”

  He offered me a Pall Mall, to which I held up a hand. “You young folk don’t smoke. I keep forgetting.” Detritus lumbered over to him. “Nice dog you got the’ah. What’s his name?” He lit a smoke.

  “Detritus.”

  “Hmm?” The man petted him.

  “Detritus, like a pile of trash.”

  “That’s an odd name, fella.” He scratched at Deet’s rump and the dog squirmed in appreciation of having his hard-to-get-at spot found.

  “He was abandoned at a junkyard.” I didn’t want to get into the whole Mrs. Nesbitt connection, so left it at that.

  “Who would abandon you?” The man scratched more, and Deet licked his chops and rubbed against the man’s legs. “He looks like that Hot Dog, the one making that movie over y’onder.”

  I scrunched my brow. “Tapped in New England?”

  “That’s it.” He straightened and took a drag of the cigarette cupped in his free hand. “’Hampshire’s abuzz with all ’em Hollywood folk.”

  “Well, Deet here is doubling for…Hot Dog.” I hadn’t known the dog’s name.

  “They’re like two peas out of the same pod ’a litter.” He took another drag of his Pall Mall.

  “That’s why they want him.”

  “Hot Dog’s a New Hampshire native.”

  “He is?”

  “Indeed.” He blew the smoke away from us.

  The condensation from my warm breath meeting the cold air made it look like I, too, smoked. “Interesting.”

  “My cousin Jack lived next to the farm in Meredith, where they were bred. Smart as a whip, ’em dogs. Sold a many to the film industry.”