by S A Sommers
It was probably better that I was moving my bed away from his living room wall.
Less chance of him hearing me furiously jerk off to one of his books.
Oh, God.
Kieran looked between Noah and Uriah and back again. I tried not to laugh. Jace wasn’t so lucky, and Vin fell in right behind him.
“You’ve never seen identical twins before?” they chorused.
Kieran burst out laughing with Jace and Vin. “You did that on purpose.”
“Of course, we did,” they spoke together again.
“I like to call them Tomax and Xamot,” Maddox said, gesturing with his beer. “They do that creepy twin shit all the time.”
I could also see that Kieran was utterly star struck with Maddox sitting there on the edge of my couch. To us, he was just Madd, but to the rest of the world, he was Maddox Jones, the lead singer of Robot Servant. Currently, two songs on the charts and two gold records on his wall at home. He and the band were working on a new album that everyone was sure was going to go platinum.
I hoped it did. He deserved it after all he’d been through.
“I think the place turned out pretty well,” Vin said. “It’s a little weird to have to go into the kitchen through the bedroom, but at least the dog is further away.”
“I might actually get a full night’s sleep!” I clapped my hands in delight.
“That was very gay of you,” Uriah deadpanned.
We all burst out laughing. Everyone in the room was gay or bi, with the exception of Maddox.
Vin put his beer down, and stood. “I have to be the party pooper, you guys. I have a tough case coming up and I need to prep. I need a metric ton of precedent to get my client cleared, and I’m behind.”
“Ha, you said prep.” Noah giggled.
Vin rolled his eyes. “Yeah, this one is figuratively being screwed in the ass. I feel for this woman. I wish we had the resources of the other law team because what’s going down isn’t anywhere near right.” He let out a sigh. “Anyway, attorney client privilege and all that. I got reading.”
“Thanks for coming over, man,” I said, walking him to the front door. “I really appreciate it.”
“No biggie.” He nodded. “Sleep is important and you’re a nice guy for not making Butthead get rid of the dog.”
“Dog’s nice,” I said.
“What about the butthead?”
“Stopped a mugger the other night,” I answered with a shrug.
“Damn, so he’s nice too. Well, I hope this solves a lot of the mess. Let me know if you need any help again. I’m always willing.”
“That’s why you’re not a rich lawyer,” I teased.
“Eh, I can sleep at night. Others can’t for all their money.”
Giving him a hearty pat on the shoulder, I nodded. “Good man. Don’t be a stranger.”
“You either.” He pulled the door shut behind himself.
I turned to find the rest of the guys were cleaning up the mess and getting ready to go. I was relieved I was going to be able to sleep finally, and that all of my friends had the good sense at this stage of life that staying here and drinking ourselves stupid wasn’t really a good plan.
Jace, I noticed, hung back.
The rest—Noah, Uriah, Madd, and Kieran—all performed their ritual goodbye and were out the door and down the stairs in just a few minutes.
“Need a couch, Jace?” I asked, watching him wipe the coffee table.
“Do you mind?”
“Who is it this time?”
He sighed. “Silas. Took my credit card. Ran it up, and pretended to be me, closed it and laughed in my face when I couldn’t get the company to believe it wasn’t me.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“They dropped the charges but refused to open it again. So now I get to pay on it, and have no place to charge the things I need. Like food.”
I shook my head. “You need to get the hell out of that apartment, man. All the way out. Why don’t you double up with one of us? I mean, I’m only asking for rental of the couch if you stay.”
“I can’t do that…”
“Your pride is going to be your downfall, Jace. We’re all here for you.” He was about to start arguing with me, but I held up my hand. “No, I know. The couch is yours tonight if you can deal with Fido. Shower and fridge too. Anything you like.”
“I do…” He coughed. “I wanted to ask you for one favor. And it kills me to do this. But could you co-sign a safety deposit box with me? I don’t trust these assholes to keep their mitts off my stuff, and I want to keep things like my birth certificate and important docs away from them.”
“Why co-sign?”
“Because if something happens—”
“Have they threatened you?” My overprotective mama bear came out and I drew up taller.
“No, no, nothing like that. I’m just worried.”
“Are you sleeping on your backpack again?”
“I have to,” he whispered.
I was going to have to talk to the others about this. Jace struggled too much and he was too proud to ask for help. We were going to have to force it on him. “We can pop over to the bank tomorrow and open one.”
His relief was palpable. “Thanks, man.”
“Meanwhile, shower’s free here whenever you want to get away from those assholes.”
“Appreciate it.” He grinned, heading back that way. “I don’t want to walk onto the set and stink.”
Shaking my head, I sighed. The set. An underpaid camera man at a bad studio in Queens that produced nothing but stilted news and cheap, air-able smut for cishet men who were stuck in the throws of toxic masculinity.
I wondered if they even knew that Jace was gay.
I hoped not, for his sake.
Just as I was about to retreat to my new bedroom, my phone rang in my pocket. Confused, I pulled it out and twisted my lips when I saw the name on the front.
Beth Garcia (Mom)
Tonight was not the night for this, and it took all I had not to swipe and send her to voice mail.
Swipe to answer. “Hello?”
“Chase, is that you?”
“Hi, Mom.” I hoped the grimace I was making didn’t sound through the phone.
“Hon, you know it’s your dad’s birthday this weekend.”
“Yeah, I know.” I sighed.
“Did you book your ticket?”
“I’m not coming.”
“Chase—”
“Every year, Mom. For twelve years. You try to get me to go back there and every year I tell you no. I don’t go to Bumblefuck, Indiana for any reason. At all. Not Christmas, not Arbor Day, not even my father’s sixty-fifth birthday. I’m not welcome, and I’m not going to impose myself on people who don’t want to be seen around the town faggot. So. No, I haven’t booked my ticket. I’ll send a fruit cake.”
“Chase Martin. You have a shitty attitude.”
The laughter boiled out of me, and I was unable—well, maybe unwilling—to stop it. “A broken zygomatic bone, a sprained shoulder, and busted steamer trunk on the way out the door makes me think that just maybe it’s not my attitude that’s shitty.”
“Your brother—”
“Was the one who threw me out the door onto my steamer trunk while Auntie Maude was icing Hank’s knuckles from breaking my eye socket! Give me a break, Mom. Just do everyone a favor and forget my number, okay? Send an email. That way I can ignore you at my leisure and you can still feel like you’re trying.”
“Chase—”
I swiped the connection closed. I missed angry hang ups from when I was kid. I realized I was unconsciously running a finger over the tiny scar next to my eye.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to center myself. I wasn’t going home, I wasn’t going to be guilted into going home. I left the day after I turned eighteen and who I was before was relegated to the shelf in the living room. Bedroom.
I was better than just being the Bumblefuck faggot.
With a final, firm nod, I walked into to the kitchen to do—just about anything with my hands.
MARCUS
THE IDEA HIT ME OUT OF THE BLUE. I snapped my head up and grinned at the screen I had been staring at too long.
A baseball game.
I owed Chase so much after taking care of Pollux for me, and having ditched him completely. He rearranged his house to accommodate Pollux, and I had to back out.
I’d been stuck at work for three nights getting Roberts’ pieces done, and then for the following two weeks, I’d been running late leaving because of a really bad commercial they were trying to save. Sorcha and I had found each other quite literally banging our head on our respective soundboards over the thing.
I found her singing a mantra as she did. “This sucks, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks.”
“Does it suck?”
She looked up at me. “It feels like I’m in a vacuum pressure system and someone keeps flushing the toilet.”
Pausing, I considered her words. “Impressive metaphor. And completely correct. Why does this suck so much? Why are we both dying slowly here?”
“The content, the product, the acting, the cinematography,” she grumbled. “Honestly. It’s like an eight year old produced this. Two weeks is too long for a thirty second spot.”
“I think you’re insulting eight year olds,” I said. “I also think that the fact they keep sending us a new version of it we can’t sync old sound to is a big factor.”
She tapped a sheet of paper. “I have a damned spread sheet of the times for the sounds, and they never sync.” She flipped the end of the paper over and it cascaded off the desk. “See? Every rework. Nothing the same.”
I plunked into the chair. “We need to talk to Jerry about this contract. We need to put them on a finalized footage only rider from now on.”
“Goddddd, yes,” she moaned.
“Editing break. I need your opinion on something totally unrelatedly related.”
“Was that phrase even allowed in the English language?”
“Don’t care. I owe my neighbor big time. He rearranged his house to accommodate my dog, and now he’s been walking him every night when he gets home so I don’t go home to a pissed up house.”
“Lord, man you do owe him.”
“I think I came up with a way to pay him back. He has a little shrine to the Cubs in his living room. Bedroom. Whatever room that is now. And I was thinking, the Mets play the Cubs, and there’s a three game series coming up next week.”
“Get the man tickets, and take him to the game!”
Grinning, I nodded. “So you like the idea?”
“I think that’s the perfect way to pay him back for all this dog walking.”
“Good. That’s what I’m doing then. We’re going to see the Mets play the Cubs. I’ll hop on the computer tonight and get the tickets.”
She elbowed me in the side. “Get good ones, Marc. Really good ones if they’re available.”
“Oh, I know. Wait, you don’t think I’m asking him on a date, do you? I don’t think he’s gay…I’m the only fool who outs themselves in the hallway.”
“No, I’m not saying it’s a date. I’m saying you need to get him good seats because you owe him. Big time.”
I nodded. I did. It wouldn’t hurt to get to know the guy who had the hot ass next door, either.
Straight. Don’t go there.
Standing up, I grabbed her hand. “Come on. It’s three-thirty on a Friday, and we’re staring at another two hours of work each. Let’s go find Jerry and talk to him about this. I don’t want to be here any later than we have been.”
“What’s Jerry going to do? We have to finish these—”
I yanked her down the hall. “We’re going to make him aware of how much time we’re each putting into these damn things.”
Jerry was sitting in his office, looking at his screen with his expression of deep concern. I knocked and walked in, but it took him a minute to look up.
“Hey, Marcus, Sorcha. Uh, are you two anywhere near done with your commercials? I have a backlog we need to tackle, and the delays on those are making me nervous.”
“Well, we’ve been working on them,” Sorcha said. “But they keep changing the finals. Not a lot, but—”
“Wait, what?” He sat up straight in his chair. “They’re changing the finals? We have no change orders.” He slammed his hand on the speaker. “Vi, do we have any change orders for the Brixton account?”
“You know we don’t, Jerry,” she huffed. “I just updated you this morning.”
“Just making sure I heard right,” he said. Jerry grabbed the phone and dialed an extension, motioning for us to just stay where we are. “Hardy, get up here.”
Sorcha grimaced, and I tossed her a confused look. “Jimmy Hardison. Our data manager. He’s a dinosaur.” Her words were whispered.
A man not much older than either of us walked in and I shot Sorcha a withering look.
She chuckled. “In IT. I meant in IT.”
“Yeah, sure,” I mumbled.
Jerry either didn’t hear us or ignored us. “Hardy, why have new files been uploaded to the server without a change order on my desk?”
“Huh?”
Jerry’s fingers flew over his keyboard, and he pulled up the files Sorcha and I were working on. There were a dozen copies there, all labeled sequentially. “These are not supposed to be on our server. What are they doing there? You’re the only one with access to upload, and it’s never to be done without a CO.”
“I got COs for those.” He hip checked Jerry out of the way and pulled up a different file. Opening it, there were a dozen, matching COs in there.
I stabbed the screen. “I’ve only been here three weeks, but those are all DOCX files, and your COs, previous to this were PDF.”
“Marcus is right,” Sorcha said. “The COs only come down the pike as PDF because Jerry does them manually and scans them in so he knows what’s going on.”
Jerry fluttered his hand at her. “Exactly. You’ve been here for fifteen years, Hardy. Why the hell don’t you know my system!”
He ran a hand down his face. “Fine. I let them upload because they said they sent the wrong file. I’ve been overwhelmed trying to keep this place organized on the back end and I didn’t think that it was going to hurt anything if I let them.”
“Fuck!” Jerry slammed his hand on the table. “They’ve been wandering through our system, Hardy?”
“Nah, no, I only let them upload—”
“You gave them access! If there was a person on their end worth their salt in IT, you gave them the key to the whole fucking system!”
“I’ve been overwhelmed—”
“Why didn’t you ask me for help!”
“I…”
“Jesus, Hardy.” He scrubbed his hand down his face. “We need to lock the whole system down, and transfer everything to a new internal server.” He pointed at Hardy. “Hire someone to help you, you moron. Don’t ever give anyone permission to upload again.” He pointed at us. “The Brixton account is frozen. Fuck ‘em. Forget ‘em. Move on to the next thing tomorrow—Monday. Whatever.”
“You got it,” Sorcha said.
He plunked back into the chair. “Look, if anyone in this company is feeling overwhelmed I want you to come to me and ask for help. We’re successful enough that if you’re running to catch up, we probably have the resources to hire someone. Hardy, seriously. Find someone who can help you manage this.”
Hardy looked devastated and relieved at the same time. “I don’t know if I can find anyone fast enough to help me, boss. I’m out of the loop with new IT guys. I only know old grizzled dudes like me, who miss reel-to-reel and aren’t convinced the Cloud is safe.”
“We’ll figure it out on Monday. Everyone go home. You’ve all done too much overtime this week as it is.” He c
losed the top of the laptop he had on his desk. “Seriously. Go have a beer or whatever. I’ll worry about all of this tomorrow. Hardy, just make sure you lock everyone out of the system who isn’t an employee, eh?”
“You got it, Jerry.” He nodded and walked back out of the room.
“That was nice of you not to fire him,” Sorcha said.
“He’s a good guy,” Jerry said. “I just want you all to ask me for help if you think you need it. I’m not going to fire him for an old school practice of grin and bear it.”
I nodded. “That’s very true. None of us should have to grin and bear it.”
He tapped his nose, then pointed to the door. “Get out. Go home. Get drunk or something. Come back Monday. We’ll start fresh.”
Sorcha and I nodded together and headed out the door and back down to the studios. She clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Good job. I just assumed that Jerry had okayed all that.”
“I did too, honestly, and I was going to complain about him blindly accepting change orders.” I grinned. “I’m glad this was so much less nefarious than him doing a cash grab.”
“I’m closing up and heading out. Hubby and I have a hot date with a cool drink on a roof top.” She smiled. “Care to join us?”
“Your hot date? No, too straight.”
She laughed. “Good point. When is that game you want to take your neighbor to?”
Looking at the face of my phone, I gasped. “Shit, it’s this weekend! I need tickets!”
“Hop to it! And I’ll see you Monday.”
I nodded and ducked into my studio, and scrolling through the available tickets this weekend.
Marcus302: Hey, are you busy Sunday afternoon?
Chaser: Uh, maybe why?
Marcus302: I owe you, big time, for forgiving me for ditching you, for walking my dog, and for letting me keep him.
Chaser: Just buy me a pizza.
Marcus302: No. Bigger. Sunday afternoon?
Chaser: Yeah, I’m free.
Marcus302: Good. I’ll be at your door at eleven.
Chaser: That’s not afternoon!
At eleven in the morning, I knocked on Chase Garcia’s door.