by Jack Harbon
“Seriously, Rex.”
Rex sighed and sat up as well. He took a moment to look at Jordan, to really study him, before he said, “I see a lot of potential.”
Jordan kept his lips pressed tight together.
“I see someone that can do a lot. Anything, really. But he’s so high-strung that he always finds himself doubting his ability. Kind of obnoxious in an endearing way, but at the end of the day, if he stopped standing in his own path, he’d be able to move mountains.”
Rex felt the knee-jerk reaction to cap his analysis off with a joke, but the way Jordan stared at him, eyes soft and brows forming slopes, he fought back against his natural instinct.
“Rex, that’s…”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. Thank you.”
Rex’s eyes darted between his food and Jordan, and he gave a lazy shrug with one shoulder. “Don’t let it go to your head. You’re still a nerd.”
“And you’re a good guy.”
Those words shouldn’t have been an ice water bath over Rex’s nerves, yet there he was, swallowing a lump of food down his bone-dry throat like he was eating gravel and glass. His fleeting gaze found Jordan once again, and, not trusting himself to speak without sounding hoarse, he gave him a short, quick nod.
This was the kind of stuff that made Rex’s skin itch like a bad case of the hives. He was allergic to any real affection, and no matter how much sarcasm or snark he gave, none of it protected him from this adverse reaction. He avoided these conversations on purpose, fully aware that despite all his attempts at putting up a barbed wire fence around himself, all it would take was a single moment of intimacy to send a butterfly soaring through the chain links to rest in the pit of his stomach.
“Do you want another spring roll?” he asked, changing the subject entirely.
Jordan didn’t fight him on it, either. “Sure,” he said, reaching for another. Rex watched him bite down on it after dipping it in peanut sauce.
He wasn’t entirely certain, but Rex was convinced Jordan gave him a knowing smile as he ate.
Ten
Jordan was quite impressed with himself. When he’d tried to indulge in his thespian side in high school, he’d been laughed at and told he didn’t have the acting chops, yet here he was, smiling at his fellow members of the Meet Cute Club and acting like Rex hadn’t just rearranged his insides.
Never in his life had he considered himself a quickie kind of guy, but with Rex, he found himself doing things he hadn’t ever thought to do. Things like being bent over the counter and getting a fast one in before any of their guests were expected to arrive.
Jordan began the club meeting as laid-back as he could, but it was hard to keep his eyes from darting to Rex, who seemed all too pleased to have captured his attention this easily. Almost pointedly, Jordan avoided that side of the living room, instead mainly looking at Charles and Gloria. They listened attentively, none the wiser about how hard he was trying to keep from just staring at Rex.
Gloria took up most of the conversation during this meeting, seeing as she had actual experience in the medical field like the heroine of their latest romantic thriller, and Jordan was more than happy to let her speak. These were the moments he got most excited about. Getting to see his friends connect with the characters was always a joy for him.
As he listened, he couldn’t help but feel Madeline’s eyes on him the entire time. They weren’t angry or anything, but he did shift in his seat frequently, trying to block them out. After a few moments of suspiciously staring at Jordan—which he tried his best to ignore—Madeline waited for the room to fill up with other conversations before she lowered her voice and said,
“Is something going on between you and Rex?”
Jordan blinked, stunned by her accurate observation. “N-no… Why do you ask?”
How had she been able to suss that out? Rex came over earlier than usual to help set up, and they were always careful about not getting caught. Aside from the time they’d been interrupted by Charles, he and Rex had mastered the art of playing it cool around the rest of Meet Cute Club.
That was the way it had to be, too. The last thing he wanted was gossip about him and Rex, especially if things ever went sour. Those situations always ruined the dynamics of friend groups, with everyone taking a side and choosing who they were closer with. The club was already struggling, and a divide like that would only cause more shockwaves to their already crumbling foundation. It was better to not cause any further problems and keep this all to themselves.
“Don’t play coy with me,” Madeline said with a wry smile on her ruby red lips. “I know what mutual pining looks like when I see it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about?”
“Oh, you don’t?” She tilted her head and smiled patronizingly at him. “You think we don’t notice how Rex is always here before anyone else? How you two are always spending time together, setting up flyers, all of that? Get real, Jordan. We’re old, but we’re not senile.”
Flushing from his neck to his cheeks, Jordan looked away, suddenly overcome with humiliation. They’d tried so hard to keep it just between them, but leave it up to the group of people that could find chemistry in two characters glancing at each other across the room to figure out about him and Rex.
“You can’t tell anyone,” he said in a low voice. “I’m afraid it’ll be weird. And we’re not even official or anything.”
“No? Huh.” She looked over at Rex as he and Charles talked quietly, then glanced back at Jordan. “Huh.”
“Huh? What do you mean, ‘huh’?”
“Nothing!” She held up her hands to show she was innocent, but that wasn’t good enough for Jordan.
“What, do you think there’s something more there? He’s never said anything to me about it.” For all Jordan knew, they were just friends. Friends that hooked up—frequently—and sometimes went on nice, quiet dates together, but friends nonetheless. There’d been no official titles, no moment where they sealed the deal and became exclusive. They were friends with benefits. Really great benefits, if he were being honest.
“Look, I don’t know much about Rex, but I’ve been around my fair share of men in my life. And I mean that. Me and men are no strangers, okay?” Her raised eyebrows added all the emphasis, and Jordan cracked a smile. There was no doubt about Madeline’s foxiness. “I know the look he gives you. It’s not just a quick glance. He holds on you longer than anyone else. He watches the way your mouth forms words. He’s probably told you it means nothing, but…”
As Madeline trailed off, Jordan found himself turning to Rex again. Though he was in the middle of a conversation with Charles, he held Jordan’s gaze longer than he might’ve for anyone else, and the corner of his mouth tugged up just a millimeter.
“Oh,” Jordan said, turning back to Madeline. She sat back on the couch, smirking confidently.
“See? I’m never wrong. I’ve been around the block and read enough of these books to know when there’s something there, and Jordan? There’s something there. He knows it like I know it. You better go get your man.”
Jordan chewed on his bottom lip and sent another fleeting glimpse Rex’s way, his entire face growing hotter by the second. Did he really have feelings for Jordan that weren’t as casual as he made the situation out to be? Or was Madeline projecting, trying to translate romantic gestures from books into the real world?
He watched Rex for a second longer, his curious thoughts too hard to ignore. It was such a contrast, seeing the way Rex had first entered the club compared to where he was now. Rather than sitting silently, he’d actually begun participating in the conversation more, even mentioning novels he was looking forward to reading later that month.
In a way, Jordan was proud of him. Sure, he had his troll tendencies still, but the level of seriousness he brought to Meet Cute Club was something that only seemed to invigorate the rest of the group. Charles, for example, could hold a thirty-minute c
onversation with Rex like it was nothing, when Jordan had often struggled to include him in every topic. Smiling to himself, Jordan turned back to Madeline, and embarrassingly enough, she gave him a matching, knowing smile.
Despite being knee-deep in a conversation about the latest paranormal romance he’d read, when Rex’s phone vibrated and he saw Amy’s number, he excused himself from the conversation and stepped away. In the kitchen, he finally had the privacy to talk.
“Hey, kid,” he said in a low tone. “Everything okay?”
Whenever Amy called, that rarely meant anything good. Like most of the younger crowd, she avoided calls at all costs, instead opting to send him texts. In her words, calling was “too formal.”
The last time she’d called him, it had been to tell him about Nana Bailey’s passing a few months ago.
“Hey,” she said, though she could barely be heard over the sound of crying babies and chatty toddlers in the background. “Mom just stopped by to see me at work. She was a complete nervous wreck.”
Rex raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “What for?” He could so easily picture Georgia bursting through the doors of Little Moments, hair pointing this way and that, startling all of the children under Amy and her coworkers’ care.
“It’s about Dad,” Amy murmured. “She talked to him for the first time since he said he was leaving her.”
“Oh. What...what’d he want?”
“Well, he wanted some of his stuff back from the house more than anything else.”
“Asshole,” Rex muttered. If he were alone, he wouldn’t have bit his tongue as hard as he did. He wouldn’t mince words or keep his true emotions buried beneath the surface. He was in Jordan’s home, though, and he didn’t need anyone seeing him get that way, no matter how easy it was for Alan to take him there.
Amy laughed bitterly. “That might be too generous of a compliment. Anyway, Mom said they talked for a while, and that he agreed to go to dinner with her.”
Now Rex was really fucking confused. “Wait, why? Please don’t tell me she’s going back to him, Amy.”
With the way Georgia had come into his life, by way of playing a part in ruining his own mother’s marriage, he had very little to give the other woman besides the shallow acknowledgement that they were both inextricably tied to the same selfish person. Still, the idea of her running back to the man that cheated on her made him feel oddly disappointed, like he’d expected better of the woman who’d gotten Alan the same way she was now losing him.
“No,” Amy said, and Rex sighed with relief. Her mother was a lot of things, but he was glad astoundingly gullible wasn’t one of them. “Mom said she wanted to get dinner with him for closure. A way to say goodbye for good.”
“Did she not already say it when she followed him and his new girlfriend to that hotel? Sorry, that was cruel.”
“It’s fine,” Amy said. Rex wasn’t so sure he believed her, and kicked himself for not being more considerate of Amy.
“Did Dad say he was going?”
“Actually...he did. She told me that and I almost didn’t believe her. I mean, that sounds nothing like him.”
“He left my mom without a second thought. Dinner with the second ex-wife is weird,” Rex said.
“Maybe he’s turning over a new leaf.” There was a long pause before the two of them snorted with resentment.
“Yeah, right,” Rex said with a sigh. “I don’t think this is smart, Amy.”
Rex knew a bad idea when he heard one, like 5-in-1 shower gels and reality TV stars turned presidents. Georgia sitting down with Alan and trying to get closure was a disaster waiting to happen. As the eldest of Alan’s two children, he’d spent his entire life waiting for that closure. She wasn’t going to get it over endless soup and breadsticks.
“You don’t?”
“Not really, no.” It killed him to crush her hopes like this, but Amy needed to know the truth. She hadn’t been around to see the damaged state Alan left his mother in. She might’ve gotten a glimpse in her own mother’s failed marriage, but the first fallout had been the worst.
“I don’t know if I should go, then.”
“She wanted you to be there too?”
“Yeah,” Amy said. “She asked if I’d come for emotional support. I told her I would go no matter what.”
Rex held back another sigh. Of course, she agreed to go. Amy was as bleeding as hearts could come, always willing to throw herself on the grenade to protect those around her. There was no way in hell she’d turn her mother down, especially not in a moment like this.
“You should go,” Rex said.
There was a moment of silence on her end before he heard the hopefulness in her voice as she asked, “Would you come with me? As my emotional support?”
“Fuck, Amy,” he groaned. He wanted to say no. God, he wanted to turn her down and tell her that the less he saw his father, the better. But forcing his lips to form the single-syllable word was like pressing similar ends of magnets together. He choked on it, his throat squeezing tight to fight back against his immediate response.
“Please, Rex? It’s just one night, and then Mom is gonna leave Dad alone and move on.”
“Fine. I’ll go.”
Rex would’ve rather licked the soles of everyone in Meet Cute Club’s shoes than spend more than a passing moment with Alan, but there he was, begrudgingly agreeing to split a 2-for-20 with the man who’d destroyed more happy homes than every termite combined. He fought to keep the sour tone out of his voice, but it was like running through quicksand, the weight of the situation pressing him deeper into the dark.
“Thank you, Rhett. I love you.”
The quick pang in his chest was a reminder that this was all for her. He’d squeeze diamonds from coal if it meant making Amy happy. Being around his shitty sperm donor for an hour or two would be tolerable, much in the same way as a quadruple wisdom tooth extraction with no general anesthesia was.
“I love you too, kid. And remember, you owe me.”
“I owe you,” she said. He could hear the smile on her face as she spoke. “I have to get back to work, but I’ll text you the details later. Love you, bye!” A moment later, the call was over. He slipped his phone into his pocket and shook his head. Sometimes he wished he could go back to not caring about anything but himself. There were a lot fewer uncomfortable social events to attend that way.
When he turned to head back to the living room, Jordan stood a few feet away, watching. Realizing he’d been caught snooping, Jordan diverted his eyes and scratched at the back of his head.
“Hey, nosy,” Rex said.
“You okay? You looked upset earlier. Just wanted to check on you.”
Rex could only smile at the fact that he had taken notice of his absence, or even watched long enough to read his body language. “I’m fine. Just family stuff.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
The only person to ask him something like that in the past few months was Amy. Rex would’ve been touched by the offer if he wasn’t so annoyed with the outcome of his conversation.
“Typical shit,” he said with a shrug. “My dad. I’d rather not be around him. My sister roped me into it. So, the worst family dinner possible will be happening soon.”
All of Rex’s demeanor seemed to show that he didn’t care, from his shrugging to the lack of interest in his voice, but Jordan had spent long enough around him to pick up on his tells. He buried his hands in his pockets when he wanted to look above it all, his gaze shifted somewhere else rather than looking Jordan head on, and his sentences grew shorter and more direct.
“You could always say you got food poisoning and skip it,” Jordan offered.
“My sister would kill me. I’m only going because of her. ‘Emotional support’ or whatever it is that she called it.”
Jordan stepped closer to him, reaching out to brush his fingers with Rex’s. “I could always go with you, if you wanted? Y’know, for emotional support.” Jordan said it as a j
oke, but there was an undercurrent of seriousness in his words. He didn’t mind being there if Rex needed him.
“You’d hate it. I don’t want you meeting my old man anyway. He’s a dick.”
“I love dick,” Jordan grinned, and to his pleasure, the vulgar joke put a smile on Rex’s face too. “I’m serious. I can go with you if it makes the whole thing easier on you.”
“Why?”
Jordan made a face. “Why not? You’ve done so much to help me. I want to return the favor. Plus, I wanna see you take off your motorcycle jacket and put on one for something fancier.” He stepped closer again, nearly chest-to-chest with the man. “It’ll be more fun with me there, I bet.”
“Maybe,” Rex said, looking away.
“You know I’m right. Just say yes.”
Rex took a moment to think before he looked down into Jordan’s rich brown eyes. “Fine. But only if you wear something nice, too.”
“Like a suit?”
“The only suit I want to see you in is your birthday suit.”
“Twice in one day?” Jordan asked, pecking Rex on the lips. “Help me finish the meeting first and maybe you’ll get to see me in it again.”
Rex rested his hands on Jordan’s hips and kissed him softly. “Deal.”
Eleven
What was the perfect outfit to wear when meeting someone you were sure you weren’t going to like? Jordan knew that he wanted to dress up, considering they’d be heading to a fancy French restaurant a few miles from his house, but he couldn’t decide what image he wanted to present when he finally met Alan Bailey.
“You’re stressing over nothing, boy,” Sherleen said, her voice sounding tinny over the speaker of Jordan’s phone. “Just toss something on and get your ass out there.”
“It’s not nothing, Grandma,” he whined. “It’s a big deal. At least…I think it is.” This wasn’t the conventional Meet the Parents moment he’d anticipated. Hell, if Rex had it his way, Jordan was pretty certain he wouldn’t meet Alan at all.