Published by
Wayward Ink Publishing
Unit 1, No. 8 Union Street
Tighes Hill NSW 2297
Australia
http://www.waywardinkpublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Say Cheese Copyright ©2014 by Michael P. Thomas
Cover Art by: Lily Velden in collaboration with Jay’s Cover Designs
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other enquiries, contact Wayward Ink Publishing at: Unit 1, No. 8 Union Street, Tighes Hill, NSW, 2297, Australia.
http://www.waywardinkpublishing.com
ISBN 978-1-925222-28-9
Published in Australia
First Edition
February 2015
IF YOU have a television, you probably have a crush on Felix Medrano. If you have an especially sharp eye for ass-related detail, you’ve probably had a crush on him since he started doing those Facebook ads for ‘Perfect Fit Chinos’. But ever since he landed the lead as hunky, heartsick dairy farmer Filbert Green on the smash network hit Say Cheese, his toothsome mug has enlivened the cover of every supermarket magazine in America—from Rolling Stone to Reader’s Digest. If you don’t have at least an innocent crush on his dimpled grin, someone else does your grocery shopping.
And what’s not to like? His windswept, walnut locks? His aw-shucks chubby cheeks? The cleft in his chin? He can act, he can sing, he can land a joke. With shoulders like a chifferobe, eyes the color of almonds, and a voice that drips smooth, smoky dark chocolate over every word, every woman wants him, and every man.... Well, they all want him, too, whether they can admit it or not. All this, and he’s not even thirty yet—as far as any of the magazines know.
The icing on this beefcake—he throws one hell of a party. Generous by nature, and raking in the royalties, he spares no expense. Especially when he’s showing off, which, okay, he might be doing just the littlest bit tonight. And why not? He loves Shep so hard he can’t always see straight, and a gay wedding is still a big deal in Hollywood, especially when both grooms photograph well. If Shep says yes, their engagement will hit TMZ before bedtime. If he’s in the papers in the morning, Felix fully intends to make a splash.
Tucked into the greenery just above Sunset, the Re/LAX Hotel and Spa is home to the most sought-after party patio in town, and Felix has sprinkled only a tasteful few famous faces amongst his parents and The Boyz from their Clarion Café days—well, from his Clarion Café days, he supposes. Shep’s still behind the bar at the Clarion six nights a week, Lord only knows why. Led by a nunnish and nearly spherical bass player, the jazzy trio lobs subdued standards into the evening. Untouched yet, the heavy silverware twinkles in the flattering light of the cast-iron candle fixtures. Quieted by the approaching dark, bougainvillea blooms artfully overhead, remarked upon only by Felix’s mother, and those few guests who can tear their eyes away from their phones long enough to do anything but signal the waiter for another cocktail.
Not that Felix is in a position to criticize. He’s been glued to his own phone for the last forty-five minutes, willing Shep’s avatar to appear bearing glad tidings. Hell, any kind of tidings. Shep was supposed to be home from New Orleans almost twelve hours ago, and Felix doesn’t know if his new celebrity friends will stick around after the free feed for a Face Time proposal to a virtual boyfriend. The whole thing—the party, popping the question—is a surprise, of course, but Felix just knows Shep will find a way to make it to the most important night of their life together.
But where the hell is he?
“FOLLOW THAT car!”
Shep piled into the back seat of the lavender taxi behind his best friend, Billy Bonami. He damn near slid right back onto the gravel when the driver fishtailed in the IHOP parking lot, but Billy grabbed onto his arm, and he managed to wrestle the door closed as they swung, tires squealing, into the traffic on Airline Drive.
“How exciting!” The driver flashed a toothy grin into the rearview mirror. “I’ve always wanted someone to jump in and say ‘follow that car!’ I feel like I’m in a movie. Are you making a movie?”
“A play, actually,” Billy improvised, keeping a straight face. “That’s why there are no cameras.”
“How exciting,” the driver said again.
What Shep was most excited about was getting on the plane back to L.A., but all of his shit was in the trunk of Billy’s car, which some bottle-blond twink in a tank top had just jacked from in front of the IHOP while Shep was paying for Billy’s breakfast. In heavy traffic, the IHOP was forty-five seconds away from the Louis Armstrong airport. Even accounting for their late start—never mind Shep’s howling hangover, Billy was still half-drunk—stopping to load up on pancakes hadn’t cost them much in the way of valuable time. But they’d built in very little car chase cushion, and Shep was more interested in his watch than what was happening on the road in front of them.
As, apparently, was the driver. At least the car he rear-ended was Billy’s. The buddies scrambled from the backseat into traffic in time to see Tank Top and his bloody lip bail out of Billy’s car. He whirled to accost them, oblivious to the horns and middle fingers popping off like popcorn.
“Seriously? You just ran into me?”
“Seriously?” Billy mimicked. “You’re stealing my car?”
“I’m okay.” The cab driver’s declaration was muffled by the air bag that had blown his glasses off.
“You’re one to talk about stealing,” Tank Top cried.
“What are you talking about?” Billy asked.
The kid pointed a quivering arm at Shep. “He steals you, I steal your car.”
“You two know each other?”
“Grover Shepherd, Brant Mattachine,” Billy, ever the Southern belle, said by rote. Honking cars inched around them. “Brant, this is Shep.”
“Hey,” Shep said with a nod. Brant Mattachine snarled.
“What’s his deal?” Shep asked.
Billy shrugged. “We’re kinda hanging out.”
“You and this kid?”
“I’m not a kid, asshole.”
“He’s nineteen,” Billy explained.
“And a half,” the kid added.
“I hate to break it to you,” Shep said, “but if you’re still using halves, you’re a kid.”
“Yeah? Well, I’d rather rob the cradle than the grave.”
“The grave?” Shep laughed. “I’m thirty-three.”
“Whatever you say, Gramps.”
“Gramps? Billy’s thirty-four.”
“He’s twenty-four, asshole. See? You’re already fuckin’ senile.”
Shep turned to his friend. “Really, Billy? Ten years? With those crow’s feet?”
Billy shrugged. “Hey, I moisturize. I’m young at heart.”
Shep laughed. “You’re an idiot at heart.” He turned back to Brant, who was tenderly pressing his cut lip, pouting to inspect the damage. “And you believed him?”
“Of course I believed him. We’re in love, he wouldn’t lie to me. He lied to you when he picked you up last night.”
“Is that what you think happened?”
“I was at Big Sheila’s last night, asshole. I saw you leave together.” A mom in a minivan had some decidedly unladylike commentary on the accident scene as she squeezed past, and Brant
began to cry. “Billy, how could you?”
“You wanna step in here?” Shep suggested. Billy rolled his eyes as he carefully picked his flip-flopped way through shards of taillight to snuggle Brant to him. “There, there,” he murmured. “You got it all wrong, Baby. I can explain. See, he came on to me....”
Shep laughed. “You wanna at least pop the trunk so I can get my shit and try to make my flight?” This was classic Billy Bonami—he framed even the most mundane details of his life in terms of a sexual conquest, and he was always, but always, the trophy. They’d been friends since Tulane, hadn’t had sex together since their freshman year. Shep had come home to New Orleans to welcome his sister’s new baby into the family, spent his last night in town with his best buddy Billy, and now he was just trying to get his ass home. It wasn’t a complicated situation, and it certainly didn’t require a complicated explanation, but Billy equated ‘simple’ with ‘boring’, and was always on the lookout for colorful threads to weave through his narratives.
“The police are on their way.” This from the cab driver again.
“The police?” Brant’s big blue eyes almost sprang from his head.
“You did steal a car,” Shep reminded him.
“We gotta get out of here.” Brant untangled himself from Billy’s half-assed embrace and clambered behind the wheel. “There’s no way I’m going back to jail.”
“I don’t care where you go.” Shep slid into the backseat of Billy’s car as Billy trotted around to sit shotgun. “As long as you drop me off at the airport on your way there.”
“The airport?”
“I told him New Orleans isn’t big enough for the both of you,” Billy said with the littlest wink.
“For real? And he’s leaving?”
“I’m trying,” Shep said.
“You do love me,” Brant swooned. “Oh, Billy....”
“Oh, Brant.”
Shep groaned. “Oh, brother.”
The good news? This entire episode had unfolded within spitting distance of the airport. Several jetliners had screamed over the proceedings on their way skyward, and once he was back behind the wheel, Brant drove like a madman. Little wonder he’d gone to jail, Shep figured. He careened across the road like he didn’t even know there were laws about driving. The cab driver had let out one indignant Hey! as Brant U-turned heedlessly into oncoming traffic, but then he must have done some quick math and decided missing out on a half-mile fare would be a better deal than copping a ticket for rear-ending Billy’s car. As they sped by, Shep saw him peer around the drooping airbag as he worked himself back into the flow of traffic.
The not-so-good news? Among those screaming jetliners had been We’ll Take You There! Lines’ one and only non-stop flight to LAX, which was now winging its way westward—without Shep.
“It’s just that we really wanted pancakes,” Shep told the ticket agent. “And then there was this car accident—”
She interrupted him gently. “At this point, it’s not so much about why you missed it,” she pointed out.
“Right. Well, what do I do? How do I get home?”
“Let’s see....” She turned her attention to her computer. She clacked a few keys, muttered a few hmms. “I can put you on our ten o’clock flight to Houston,” she eventually said. “From Houston, we have a ton of flights to L.A. They’re all jam-packed at the moment, but we’ll put you on standby. You’re bound to get on something.”
“You think?”
She shrugged. “People miss flights all the time. Take you, for example. All you need is for some poor sap to go to the IHOP in Houston and you can take his seat.”
“They teach you to call customers ‘saps’ in your training, do they?”
She shrugged again. “You wanna talk to my supervisor about my qualifications, or you wanna go home? The Houston flight leaves in twenty minutes.”
“Nah, I’ll take it,” Shep said. “Let the next poor sap worry about your attitude.”
“That’s the spirit.” She handed a boarding pass across the counter, then yelled “Next!”
Well, this won’t be so bad, he thought as he wound his way through the security line. Missing an airplane certainly wasn’t the biggest trouble he’d ever gotten into tagging along with Billy Bonami, and Houston was only like three hundred miles away. What would he be, an hour late getting home? Two, maybe, if he didn’t get on a flight right away? No big deal. He texted Felix, mostly out of habit. Missed my flt Billy etc, going thru Houston, b home soon. Miss u wanna kiss u. He signed off with their habitual 143, a throwback code for ‘I Love You’ from the pre-cell phone pager days of old—or from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood from days of older, depending on who you asked.
He was already on the airplane, wedged into his middle seat, when Felix buzzed him back. K. Hurry home. 143, 2. Shep smiled, even let out a little Aww. Felix had attached one of their favorite photos to his text message. Of them, naturally. Both in black shirts, both with big smiles. The deserted bar of the Clarion Café in the background, their first kiss mere moments away....
THEY’D WORKED together for close to a month. Felix was an L.A. native helping a high school buddy get the white tablecloth restaurant of his dreams up and running; Shep was fresh off the boat. Well, fresh off a Southwest Airlines 737, anyway. He hadn’t come to Hollywood in pursuit of any particular agenda, other than To Get The Hell Out Of New Orleans. If a joint in the French Quarter had a rainbow flag in its window, fluttering over its patio, or hanging above the jukebox, Shep had tended its bar, with his T-shirt hanging out of his back pocket, for at least a couple months. The boys in New Orleans were often charming, handsome, and loads of fun, but they were also crazy, and it got to the point where he couldn’t even go to the grocery store without danger of tripping over a romantic entanglement. He was too zit-pocked and skinny to be a model. He’d never acted—beyond pretending Billy Bonami had actually surprised him with his ‘Second Annual Twenty-Ninth Birthday’ party. When he danced, he looked like he was doing an especially poor impression of the Tin Man, and the Unitarian Universalists had kicked him none-too-gently out of the Sunday choir. He harbored no illusions about his chances of finding fame or riches in Los Angeles, but a guy had to go somewhere. Ellen had washed up in L.A. when she left New Orleans, after all, and she’d done all right.
His apartment was a dump. His rent was three times what he’d paid for his own place in New Orleans, and he shared a shoebox with a smokin’ hot, jaw-droppingly inconsiderate prick with a scandalously rudimentary hygiene regimen, who’d apparently been raised to regard the white porcelain bowl in the bathroom merely as one of several suggested receptacles, as he sprayed his pee on the seat, the floor, and all over the sink without compunction.
But the weather was gorgeous. Eye candy littered the sidewalk as though someone had busted open a piñata. And he loved his job.
He loved the guys he worked with, anyway. The day-to-day of the job was more you’ve-poured-one-martini-you’ve-poured-them-all, but the staff at the Clarion Café was solid gold. In fact, most nights the hostess, a six foot two drag queen named Frieda Swallow, looked like she was auditioning for Solid Gold, wig bouncing and fringe a-glitter as she glided among the tables. The Clarion was high-class and high volume. The tables turned, the kitchen was chaos, and you ran from open til an hour after close, but the owner worked as hard as the bus boys, the food was flawless, and the cash tips rained down from the dramatically lit ceiling.
Felix was his favorite server from the get-go. Partly, yes, because he was the handsomest man Shep expected he would live to see. Butterscotch skin no blemish would ever be so gauche as to mar, a belly so pancake-flat Shep wanted to lay him across the bar, pop the buttons on his black dress shirt, and lick butter and syrup off him til morning. He was all playful cowlick, laughing brown eyes, and smackable round ass. Cute as a bug’s ear, but totally unselfconscious about it, like maybe he’d never looked in a mirror. In a town—hell, in a restaurant—full of good-looking dudes who wa
nted to be thanked just for showing up and being handsome, Felix wore his looks like a comfy old sweatshirt. Shep imagined a casting agent discovering Felix at a soda fountain, crying out That face! and Felix saying This old thing?
He was unfailingly polite when he called his order over the bar, and always had a wink and a smile for Shep when he swung back by to collect the tray of drinks. He had a line from The Golden Girls for every occasion, knew the French words to every Melody Gardot song Pandora piped in, and referenced Cary Grant and Grace Kelly as naturally as Jay-Z and Beyoncé. He kissed hello and said, “Charmed, I’m sure.” Every waiter at the Clarion wanted to be an actor—Felix longed to be a Star.
The night the photo was taken hadn’t started out as anything special. It wasn’t the staff Christmas Party, or anybody’s birthday. It was just some random Tuesday where, by the time Felix busted out his cell phone for selfies, they were the only two left in the bar. Raul was tucked back in his office, counting receipts or trolling Growlr, or whatever it was restaurant owners did at three o’clock in the morning. Marc and Randy had stumbled off down Santa Monica Boulevard, having downed their customary two bottles of after-work wine apiece. Frieda was long gone, and Shep and Felix were rattling the ice cubes around in their highball glasses. Work was over, the whiskey bottle was empty. It was way past time to say good night, but each time they looked at each other, they agreed on another bogus reason to stay.
“Let’s take a picture,” Felix suggested. “We’re friends now, and I like having pictures of my friends.”
“What a cunning little camera,” quoth Shep while Felix orchestrated their close-up. He couldn’t help himself—The Philadelphia Story had been his grandmother’s favorite movie. He’d watched it with her no fewer than a thousand times, and could deliver a note-perfect staged reading of the entire film by the time he was six. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had snapped a photo in his general vicinity that he hadn’t channeled Tracy Lord.
“I’m afraid I’m an awful nuisance with it,” Felix riposted, not missing a beat.
“But you couldn’t be,” Shep deadpanned. “I hope you’ll take loads.”
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