by Daryl Banner
A tittering, favorable laugh ripples softly through the room.
I may be the only one whose funny bone isn’t tickled as I stare at Benjamin longingly, desperate to be alone with him and discuss what’s going on.
“Secondly, as you were just told, our Jersey punk-ass Hawk is dropping by the office. Be on your best, but more importantly, just be yourselves.”
It’s at this exact moment that Benjamin seems to find me in the crowd, and his eyes flicker with emotion. Just be yourselves. He says this, yet plays off our weekend and the photo that came from it as a thing to minimize, spin, and rewrite.
It’s like suddenly we never went to Mexico.
My birthday never happened.
I’m still that twenty-year-old heartsick idiot from the nightclub who went home with a perfect stranger that fateful Friday night.
I pull my eyes away and stare at the floor, unable to keep eye contact with him anymore. Heaviness sinks into me as suddenly as if I was just filled with all the water of the Caribbean Sea, except it’s cold and unwelcome.
Benjamin must finish saying whatever it is he’s come to say because the room starts applauding out of nowhere, and then Ben gives everyone an encouraging nod and dismisses us, turning to speak to Rebekah and the other department heads as they slowly make their way toward his office. The door opens, they go inside, and then the door closes. The lights flick on, and I watch as Ben goes to his desk, hits the hidden switch there, and then his blinds flip shut and not even silhouettes can be seen.
Five o’clock cannot come fast enough. I grab my things and head for the door, uncaring of whether Ben is still in his office or if Elijah is making plans with Ashlee or literally anything else.
When I pass the front desk, an unexpected voice stops me. “You got some sun.”
I spin around to find Brady sitting where Dana the front receptionist usually is. “What?”
“Sun,” repeats Brady flippantly, his arms folded on the desk in front of him. His bright blond hair is unexpectedly tame today, tightly parted and flat against his perfectly shaped head. “You got some sun this weekend. Lots of it, in fact.”
I don’t like the superior, leery look in his eyes. “I was outside all weekend at my parents’ for my birthday,” I state, inventing my alibi on the spur of the moment.
“Oh? Do they live on a particular beach in Cancún?” he asks, immediately followed with an arrogant chuckle and a calm, “Just kidding. I wouldn’t dare imply that.”
Winter’s worst cold front rushes through my stomach. I don’t remember what I had for lunch, but it’s about to meet Dana’s prized desk. “What the hell are you doing at this desk anyway?”
“Dana has the week off. Rebekah trusts me. She appointed me front desk duty. It’s really one of the best tasks any of the interns could be assigned,” he points out, puffing up his chest. “I get to speak directly with clients, forward calls, set up appointments …”
“Congratulations,” I state flatly. “I’m sure your beautiful hair comes in handy when you’re answering calls.”
“It’ll certainly come in handy when I’m the first one to meet and greet the Jersey boy tomorrow.” Brady grins so big, he shows teeth. “Have a most excellent evening, Trevor. Don’t get too much more sun on your way home; you really don’t want to look like a tangerine tomorrow.”
I roll my eyes and turn toward the door again, clutching my stomach. It slams with a rattle behind me.
I can’t get home fast enough. The second I’m through the door and discover that I’m alone, I collapse against the kitchen counter and bury my face in my folded arms, rested on a smelly folded newspaper and a gaming magazine.
And then I start to cry.
I can’t help it. I can’t stop it. I have decided to throw myself a pity party for one, and if you’re not planning on feeling terribly sorry for me and all my grievous woes that I am suffering, then you are not invited.
Comically, my phone vibrates with a call just as I have that thought. I look up to see who my first invitee is.
My only invitee.
I answer the call, pressing the phone to my ear and quickly suppressing my annoying sobs. “B-Ben?”
“Hey, babe.”
I try to mask the obvious quivering of my voice as I struggle to regain my composure. “What the hell happened?”
He sighs into the phone before answering. “Some dick with a camera caught us, in short. There’s nothing much else beyond that. But if it’s any consolation—”
“It won’t be.”
“The story is already burying itself. It hardly broke ten thou on the big blog. Five thousand or so hits, collectively, on all the subsidiary sites. It didn’t even trend on Twitter or Facebook.”
I take a deep breath, wipe my eyes, then nod. “That’s a really good thing.”
“Yes, it is,” Ben agrees. A short moment passes. Then he adds, “I miss you, Trevor. I could barely sleep last night without having you by my side.”
I clench shut my eyes. I had a very similar experience, finding my pillows terribly inadequate to the big muscular one I got to press against me Friday and Saturday nights. “That makes two of us. Benjamin …”
“Yes?”
This isn’t going to be easy to say. “I … I think my roommate knows.”
He is silent for a while. I drop my forehead to the counter, curling up in this barstool as I stare down at my lap with the phone at my ear turning sweaty.
“Ben?”
“I’m here,” he finally says. “Why do you think he knows?”
“He broke my alibi I had for this weekend. Called my parents. Realized I wasn’t there. He saw the photo and … gave me a look in the office. He could pick me out of a crowd of ten thousand, Ben.”
“But did you confirm that it was you?”
“No. Of course not. I … I told him I was involved with someone in the office. But I didn’t say it was you.”
“But he still suspects it’s me?”
“I think so.” More like I’m three hundred percent certain.
“Alright.” He takes a quick breath. “Well, we need to let the card of plausible deniability play out. Divert him. You and I will be cool and collected in the office, alright? No one else will suspect—”
“Ben. I’m not another one of your clients.” I’m starting to get short with him. “Unless you really think what’s going on between us is nothing more than a scandal that needs minimizing.”
“Trevor, we can’t let this get out. You agreed. I agreed.”
“I know. And I don’t want it to get out either. But it may very well out itself whether we want it to or not. Even that fucking Brady is on to me. He kept noting how much sun I’ve gotten. And between him and Elijah—”
“Again, plausible deniability,” Ben insists, stubborn as ever. “I have handled hundreds—thousands—of situations like this, and even worse. Trust me when I say this will blow over, and things will be right back to how they—”
“Maybe I don’t want things to just go back to how they were!” I snap, rising up from my barstool as my heated words shoot into the phone. “Maybe I liked Mexico and what it did for us! Maybe I liked how I got to see into you for the first time! Maybe I liked how we grew so close that I felt like I’d known you for years!”
“Trevor, stop it.”
“I don’t want to just be your fucking intern!” I shout, my hand shaking. “I’m your boyfriend, Benjamin. I let you inside me. I gave you my fucking virginity and you want to minimize it.”
“Come on. You’re blowing this out of proportion.”
“And you’re reducing its proportion.” My words are quiet and cold now. “Minimize. Spin. Rewrite. How are you going to rewrite the weekend, Ben?” I ask. “Did you go to Mexico alone?”
“No. Babe, please …”
“I think you did,” I go on. “You went to Mexico alone. Maybe you picked up a cute boy in the bar—a Mexican nightclub—picked him up after staring lustily at him through the
smoke and the mariachi music.”
“Trevor …”
“You wined and dined him, then took him out to the beach and popped your pecker in, just in time for the snap of an unseen camera. And where was I?” I ask coolly. “I was at home with my parents. I ate my mom’s birthday cake, calmly turned twenty-one, and I’m still a virgin.”
Ben has gone silent on the line except for his slow, measured breathing.
“I’m still a virgin,” I repeat, detached, staring off at nothing.
Then I hang up, slip into my room, and drop face-first onto my bed. I don’t want to see or hear or feel anything until the morning sun pours over my head like a bucket of warm water and this horrid day comes to an end.
42
Benjamin was once robbed at gunpoint, shat on by a pigeon, and broke his arm in the same day.
This day is worse.
The first thing I see when I enter my office is the smug face of the intern Brady, who rises from his seat and gives me a curt nod and a plastic smile. “Good morning, Mr. Gage.”
I give him a tight nod. “Morning. When Hawk arrives, make sure to buzz my office immediately. He arrives at four.”
“Will do. You can count on me.” He gives me another bright, million-dollar smile.
I pass through the office full of quick-moving bodies, giving the faces that look up an obligatory nod, a polite hello, and a tiny smile of greeting.
When I pass the intern table, I am surprised to find Trevor there. I don’t know why I expected him not to be—as if he’d quit overnight after the unfortunate tiff we had on the phone.
As if sensing my presence, Trevor glances up from his work. His eyes soften when he sees me. I don’t see anger in them, but I’m not sure I see anything inviting either. He makes no move to speak nor greet me. He just stares, distant and unemotional.
Despite that, I give him a nod of acknowledgement, then continue on my way to the office, ignoring the way my heart feels: crushed up like a beer can in my chest. My stomach feels as raw as a throat that’s screamed for hours on end.
I spend too much time in my office staring at the computer screen and reading the same sentences ten times. I can’t focus on anything. Nothing makes sense anymore. I don’t even know what I’m going to say to Hawk when he shows up. His image is a total disaster. The world only knows him as a self-indulgent, rebellious teenage pop star who keeps offending everyone with his social media presence and the totally awful, tasteless answers he gives during his TV and radio interviews. How the hell am I supposed to pour honey all over that and serve it to the internet?
But none of it matters. How can I focus on any of that when the real problem is sitting at the intern table outside my door? How can I bother to care about anything when the man I love just tried to rewrite history in the space of a phone call last night?
It pains me so much that, even in anger, he’d wash away all of that joy we experienced together. Doesn’t he realize that the first thing I thought of when I saw that article was how this might affect him and whether he was okay? Trevor was the first and last thing I worried about. I’m still worried about him.
I sigh, exasperated, then buzz for Rebekah. When she pops her head in, I tell her to get me an unoccupied intern from the intern table, someone to organize a filing cabinet. She disappears, and I wait anxiously, desperate to have an incidental excuse to chat with Trevor and sort my mind on the matter. We need to talk. But the next time there’s a knock at the door, it’s Jimmy’s bright red hair I see, not Trevor. I suppress an inward sigh, thank him for coming in, then set him to work on organizing the files, which totally don’t fucking need to be organized.
Twice, I give myself an excuse to leave the confines of my office and cut through the main floor. Both times, I discover that Trevor is either on the opposite side of the room or he’s busy with other interns at the computers. He’s never in a place where I can get to him.
The frustration is mounting. I have too much on my mind with the Jersey boy making his way here in a few hours. I need this settled between Trevor and I. Things between us have to be okay, and I need to see to that as soon as possible.
It’s one o’clock when Trevor takes his lunch. And it’s exactly at that same time that I intercept him at the door to the break room. “Trevor.”
He looks up at me, his eyes unreadable. “Mr. Gage.”
“I need you in my office to go over numbers you submitted yesterday,” I tell him. “I … found a discrepancy.”
Trevor’s eyes narrow.
“A discrepancy with my numbers,” I am quick to clarify. “Your work was flawless. I need to see where my numbers went wrong compared to … compared to yours.”
Really, this silly tap dance could be avoided by not speaking in annoying office metaphors. There’s a discrepancy in my feelings, I’d rather say, and I’m desperate to know where I’ve gone wrong and how I can repair this.
The next thing I know, Rebekah appears at my side—and with Brady, no less. “Oh, there you are, Mr. Gage,” she chirps excitedly, then turns toward Trevor. “Didn’t you clock out for your break?”
“He did,” I answer on his behalf. “I am taking him to my office to look over some numbers. Shouldn’t take long.”
It isn’t lost on me that Brady is eyeing us suspiciously.
“Oh, alright,” Rebekah returns. “Brady got a call from Melena wanting to thank you for recently handling a situation, but you weren’t in your office, so—”
“Brady, tell her I will return her call tomorrow,” I tell him.
A glint of self-satisfaction twinkles in his eyes before he gives me a curt smile, nods, and says, “You got it, boss,” then turns and heads back to the front desk. Rebekah gives Trevor and I both a bright smile before also heading off to do whatever it is she was busy doing.
And what are we doing? Trevor stares at me, and I stare right back, a hundred questions sitting in my stomach.
“Shall we?” I offer, gesturing toward my office.
Trevor clenches shut his eyes, then pops them open and gives me a short nod. He passes by me and heads toward my office. I pick up the sweet scent of his cologne, invading my nostrils and reminding me who this beautiful boy is who’s got his claws sunk so deeply into me that I can feel them every time I move a muscle.
And following him into the office proves that I still can’t pry my eyes away from the shape of his slender body in those tight pants of his, that fitted pink dress shirt, and that sexy black tie. Behave, I warn myself. Discretion is key, and if you have any chance of making this right with him, you’ve got to be smarter than your dick.
I close the office door behind us, flick on the lights, then tap the button under my desk, causing the blinds to snap shut.
“What are we doing?” asks Trevor despondently.
I lean against the front of my desk and face him, arms folded. “We’re going over numbers,” I answer.
Trevor narrows his eyes. “What are we really doing?”
My gaze drifts to his chest. “I … owe you an apology, Trevor.”
He studies me for a while, his face blank as a stone. “For what, exactly? And be specific,” he adds, folding his arms to match my own. “I want to know exactly what you’re sorry for.”
Trevor’s sassy little attitude is coming back. I experience an inner grin of satisfaction. We’re getting somewhere …
“I’m sorry for seeming like my image was my main priority.”
He purses his lips, listening.
“And,” I go on, “I’m sorry that your weekend was ruined by a greedy goblin with a camera whose identity we may never know. You don’t deserve to be spun into an article and spread across the internet.”
Trevor closes his eyes, then shakes his head. “This is stupid.”
I lift an eyebrow. “What?”
Trevor takes a breath and drops his arms to his sides, looking me in the eye. “You aren’t the one who owes me an apology. I’m the one who should be saying sorry. I shouldn�
��t have said all those things. I overreacted. My roommate thinks I’m banging my boss.”
“Well, you kinda are.”
“Shush. And he hates me for it. I’ve never lied to him, Ben, not ever, not about anything. And now it’s all I do anymore. Lies, lies, lies. I lie every day I come into this building. I lie whenever I talk to my parents on the phone about how my job is going or whether I’m still single. I lie to myself, most of all, insisting that I’m okay with our secrecy when really … I’m not.”
He closes the space between us, his eyes hardened and shiny with emotion. His plump pink lips are parted as he stares into my eyes, searching for something.
I dare to touch his tie, gripping it gently. He lets me. “This past weekend showed me a few things.”
Trevor lifts an eyebrow. “Did it?”
“Number one, it showed me that my life … is empty.” I fidget with his tie in my grip, like it’s the only thing keeping Trevor near me—our tether. “Number two, it gave me a glimpse of what my life could be like if it was fulfilling. But most importantly, number three is …” I bring my eyes to Trevor’s and find them glistening, bright and aware. “That you are the one who fulfills me.”
“But Ben … where do we go from here?”
“I don’t know,” I confess. “Preferably somewhere without any cameras.”
“There aren’t any cameras here in this office.”
The suggestive tone in his voice sends blood rushing down my body and straight to my dick. I promised I’d behave. I promised. “Somewhere without watchful eyes would be nice,” I add.
“Yours are the only ones I see.” Trevor gazes into mine with longing.
I grip him suddenly, unable to contain myself, and pull our hips together. When I do, I make the discovery that I’m not the only one getting hard. “I don’t give a fuck where we go from here, Trevor, as long as we go together.”
Trevor swallows hard, the wetness in his eyes trembling with excitement. Then, in a voice that’s barely there, he chokes out these words: “Ben, I think I’m falling for you.”