Follow My Lead: A Joy Universe Novel

by Louisa Masters

  On the plus side, the list is much shorter. We have it down to four, two of which were Dimi’s picks. It’s actually one of those that has my vote, but I’m not telling him that yet. He’s going to do some research on costs, and we’ll make our decision based on that—possibly with a whole lot more arguing.

  Trav stands as Dimi turns off the wall screen with a remote. “If you don’t need me anymore, I’m going to head out,” he says, and I look at my watch. It’s after six—no wonder I’m starting to feel hungry. Lunch was hours ago.

  Dimi’s checking the time too. “Wow, that took a lot longer than I thought.” He shakes his head. “I’ve gotta get going—I have plans.”

  Ever been punched in the stomach? I have—by an actor, interestingly enough, right after I finished critiquing her performance in rehearsals. It’s a bitch—leaves you sore and gasping for breath. I’m feeling the emotional equivalent right now.

  Stupid, right? I have no right to feel that way. I barely know Dimi, and he’s expressed no desire to change that. Still, if the emotional brain were capable of logic, I wouldn’t have been so broken up when the ex-who-shall-not-be-named decided I was a stodgy, boring bastard and left me. My emotional self has a huge crush on Dimi, and its heart is shattered by the thought that he might have a date.

  The thought no sooner crosses my mind than it occurs to me that it might be more than a date. Dimi might be seeing someone. Might be in a serious relationship. Living with someone. It’s Monday night, after all, not really a popular date night. But an evening snuggling on the couch with a long-term lover? Totally plausible.

  I feel ill.

  Forcing a smile, I say, “I still have a lot of crap to unpack. And, uh, I should find the grocery store.” Even though I didn’t cook a lot in New York, I can manage basic meals. Which is just as well, because Joyville doesn’t have quite as many or varied takeout options. The JU complex has a heap of restaurants, some of them supposedly very good, but I don’t know that many people here yet, and eating out alone every night doesn’t appeal.

  “There’s one not far from you,” Trav says, “but why don’t you come and eat with me and Derek tonight and worry about that tomorrow?”

  My smile is less forced when I reply. “That’s very kind of you, but I don’t want to intrude.” Hell, could I sound any more like my aunt Gertrude?

  Trav laughs. “No intrusion, I swear. Follow me home, and we’ll drive past the store on the way so you can see where it is.”

  I really don’t want to go back to my half-unpacked, not-very-homey-yet apartment and deal with boxes all night. “Thank you. That sounds great.” I follow Trav out, very carefully not looking at Dimi, who’s either got a date or some one-on-one time with his boyfriend.

  Or, knowing my luck, his girlfriend. It’s been a long time since my gaydar has needed to be reliable—I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m wasting my energy pining for a straight man.

  Chapter Five

  Dimi

  I don’t bother ringing the bell—it will just get me scolded. Instead, I use my key and let myself into my parents’ house. “Hey,” I call, and a chorus of voices responds.

  Monday night dinner is a tradition my mother implemented years ago, before I even moved back to Joyville. Attendance is mandatory for whoever is in town, and if you don’t turn up, you’d better have a damn good reason. The last time I skipped was the day Derek met Trav, back in May—the day we had a murder and a massive staffing crisis. And when I called Mom and explained why I couldn’t come, she made disapproving noises.

  So, yeah. Monday night dinner is important.

  I go to the kitchen first, where I know I’ll find Dad and my grandmother cooking. “Can I help?” I ask after dispensing hugs.

  “No,” Gram says. “You’ll ruin your shirt. Go keep your mother company. Don’t let her in here.”

  The shirt I’m wearing isn’t particularly special, but that should tell you how important it is to keep Mom out of the kitchen. She’s an amazing woman, a brilliant example to us all… but she sets things on fire a lot. I don’t even want to think about the roast beef debacle when I was fourteen. I mean, how the heck do you set roast beef on fire? Dad’s a great cook, though, and neither I nor any of my siblings inherited Mom’s firebug gene, so it’s fine that she can’t cook.

  I track her down to her little office under the stairs. It’s actually a storage cupboard, but when we were growing up, it was literally the only space in the house that she could use for doing paperwork. We’re all grown and gone now, and there are three empty bedrooms, but she says she’s used to it and converted one bedroom into a home gym, one into a crafts room, and the other into a spare room for when her kids who live out of town visit. Which is never often enough for her.

  “Hey, Mom.” I duck my head to get into the office and give her a kiss. She grabs on with the ferocity of a tiger and follows me back out into the hall.

  “You look tired” is the first thing she says, and yes, while I have had a long day, she would have said it even if I’d come straight from a month at a spa resort. “Are you working too hard? Is that why I never see you?”

  “You’ve seen me three times in the last week,” I remind her. Dinner last Monday, Thanksgiving, and on Friday night at the show. It’s like I’m speaking to thin air, though, because she just waves dismissively.

  “You officially started your new job today, didn’t you? How was it? Wait, come into the living room so everyone can hear.”

  I dutifully trail her into the living room. My oldest brother and two of my sisters—one older, one younger—still live in town, and they’re in there along with my sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and sister’s boyfriend of the month, plus two nephews and a niece. It’s worth noting that my younger sister only brings her boyfriends to Monday night dinner as a litmus test when she’s ready to get serious. She’s weird like that.

  “Uncle Dimi!” My oldest nephew, at seven, scrambles up from where they’re playing Monopoly on the floor. It’s really unfair for him to play with his sister and cousin, who are only five and don’t fully grasp the game, but he says—with great sincerity—that every once in a while he needs to feel superior.

  I accept a hug first from him, then the others—I’m kind of the favorite uncle—then wave at my sibs and wait for Sienna to introduce her boyfriend. I actually know his name—we’re all pretty close, and she’s talked about him—but this is the first time we’ve met, so an introduction isn’t out of order.

  By the time I settle in one of the beanbag chairs—because there isn’t enough furniture in the room to seat eight adults and I’m not making my sixty-seven-year-old mother sit on a beanbag—a semblance of order has returned to the room.

  “Dimi was just about to tell us about his first day in the new job,” Mom announces.

  Sienna looks confused. “I thought you started the new job weeks ago.”

  “No,” Patrick interjects, “he was job-sharing the new job and the old one while the new company got established.”

  See what I mean? No secrets in my family.

  “So you’re now doing only the new job?” Ryan, Patrick’s husband, asks, and I nod.

  “Yeah. The director we poached from New York arrived over the weekend, so we’ve started planning everything now.” And maybe it’s not going entirely the way I wanted it, but it could be worse. Jason showed that he was at least willing to listen to me. I wouldn’t really want a director I could walk all over—I am relatively inexperienced in this career, after all. I need someone I can learn from, not bully.

  Not that I would bully anyone.

  Well, not deliberately. I’ve been told I can be bossy and forceful, and with people who are less assertive, that can be the same as bullying.

  “What’s he like?” Sienna leans forward. “It’s that guy who directed Fake It ’Til You Make It, right? You’ve been a fan of his since f
orever.”

  Heat rises in my cheeks, but I stoically maintain my composure. Maybe I have been kind of a fan of Jason’s work ever since I was a teenager and went to New York with the school drama club for a theater weekend. But I really didn’t expect Sienna to remember, and I definitely didn’t want it to come up. Ever.

  “He’s fine. Nice guy. Has some ideas and is trying hard to understand what we’ve got to work with and how it can fit his vision.”

  Patrick and Ryan both suck in breaths, and Caitlyn, my other sister, cringes. Sienna’s eyes go wide. Mom laughs.

  “What?” I say defensively, mentally reviewing my words. I didn’t say anything to get that reaction.

  Did I?

  No.

  I squint at Mom. “Why are you laughing?”

  She reaches out and pats my hand. “Because I love you, baby, but you’ve always been a stubborn little shit, and the thought of you going head-to-head with someone just as stubborn is hilarious.”

  I blink. Because… what?

  “I… I said he was a nice guy who was working hard and had a vision.” I am so fucking confused right now. Did they maybe set up a hidden camera in the conference room? “What makes you think he’s stubborn or that we’re going head-to-head? We’re not, by the way,” I tack on, just in case they think my question is tacit agreement.

  Caitlyn shakes her head, her wife, Leona, shooting me one of those sympathetic smiles that always get my back up. “Oh, honey,” Cait says. “You’re a passionate guy. When you’re excited about something, when it’s going well, it takes an act of God to shut you up. Sienna said it, you’ve been a fan of this guy’s work for years… but you barely said anything about him, and all of it could have safely gone into a press release.”

  Well, fuck.

  I mean, she’s not wrong. I do tend to get excited about things, projects at work or the community theater, and sometimes I share about them a lot. I’ve always been like that. Usually my family just tells me to shut up already. It never occurred to me that lack of a response would be a big red flag for them.

  I sigh and flop back on the beanbag. “It’s fine,” I tell the ceiling. “I had a vision, and his doesn’t quite match it. We’re compromising.” That’s all true and should be enough to keep them happy. They don’t need to know more. They really don’t need to know that I got my feelings hurt. We’re a protective kind of family, and the last thing I need is my sibs or mom turning up at my job to stick up for me.

  My sibs seem to accept it, but Mom gives me a suspicious look. I keep my face as blank as possible, and thankfully, Dad calls us in for dinner right then.

  It’s nearly ten by the time I get home, even though I don’t live far from my parents. When I moved back to Joyville, I thought about looking for something on the other side of town, away from the neighborhood I grew up in—although really, Joyville isn’t that big and it wouldn’t have made a huge difference—but in the end, I decided to stick close to family. It’s less than a ten-minute walk from my townhouse to the house I grew up in.

  I strip to boxers and take my tablet to bed with me—no, not to watch anything interesting. I want to start researching the costs involved with the shows on our short list. Although, now that I think about it, that’s kind of sad. Not that I particularly want to watch porn right now, but shouldn’t it have occurred to me to take my tablet to bed so I could have some happy time rather than use it for work?

  Come to think of it, when was the last time I actually had happy time? I jerk off in the shower a few times a week, but the last time I was with someone, or even spent some quality time with my hand, as opposed to treating it as a purely practical thing, was….

  Huh.

  When was it?

  It’s not that I’m a monk with no social life. There was that guy I went out with a few times who it turned out was planning to move away from the area… but we never made it to bed. And that was in June.

  June.

  Really? I haven’t been out with anyone in over five months?

  Maybe I am a monk. It seems like the only reason I have a “social life” is because a lot of my friends are from the community theater. Dinner or drinks after rehearsal are pretty common. I’m going to have to pick up my game a bit, though, both with my friends and with my dating life. I love my job, and I’m determined to forge this new career path, but I don’t want to be a workaholic—not least because my mom would kill me.

  So… maybe no work tonight? It’s not like it can’t wait until tomorrow. Ten on a Monday night is probably too late to call a friend to meet up, but I can still start training myself not to work in every spare moment. I’ve got a couple of books I bought earlier this year that I still haven’t read, even though I was pretty excited about them at the time. Or there’s always Netflix—that thriller that came out last year that I never got around to seeing is on there. Or there are a couple of series that have been recommended to me that I’ve been meaning to watch.

  I’m seeing a pattern emerge here. I might be further down the path to workaholism than I thought.

  In the end, I decide on porn—are you surprised? Like I said before, it’s been a long time since I “pampered” myself, and now that the idea’s in my head, I can’t let it go.

  I don’t use my work tablet, though. I have some standards. Plus, our IT geniuses can monitor that shit, even if you do it from home. I had a very enlightening conversation with one of them at the holiday party last year, and my tablet has been strictly work-only since then—I don’t even check the weather on it anymore.

  So I grab my laptop from the spare room-slash-office-slash-one-day-I’ll-convert-this-to-a-gym room and settle in my bed with a hand towel and a bottle of lube. I peruse my bookmarks, wondering if I should maybe go looking for something new, but finally settle on one of my favorites.

  As usual, it doesn’t take long for me to get into it—it doesn’t take them long either—but this time I’m a little distracted by one of the actors. He’s a little older than the other, with salt-and-pepper hair, hot in a Clooney kind of way, but something about him strikes me as familiar. I mean, what I can really see of his face. The camera isn’t exactly focused on it. He’s doing the younger guy from behind, both of them on their knees, in profile to the camera. I stroke myself lazily as I watch, half trying to figure out what it is about the guy that’s familiar, half just enjoying the stimulation.

  The younger guy with the bubble butt moans, a deeply carnal sound, and the older one says, “That’s right. You love this. Tell me how you want it.” He thrusts just that little bit harder, and I squeeze my cock, breath catching.

  Moaning some more, the younger guy demands, “Harder. Do me harder. Make me scream.”

  Mr. Salt-and-Pepper pushes the guy down onto his hands and knees, grabs his hips, and goes to town. I shift so I can reach my balls, panting a little as I watch Mr. Salt-and-Pepper ream Bubble Butt, pumping my dick with one hand and squeezing my balls with the other. I know what’s coming, I’ve seen this vid a million times, but that only makes it hotter.

  Sure enough, Mr. Salt-and-Pepper leans over Bubble Butt and bites his shoulder, Bubble Butt yelps, and my dick jerks in my hand, precome leaking liberally. Mr. Salt-and-Pepper laughs darkly, straightens, and pulls almost all the way out. He’s totally hung, like most porn actors, his cock thick, heavily veined, and flushed. It’s shiny with lube, and in that breathless second while he pauses, my mouth waters.

  He shoves back in, and Bubble Butt cries out, then immediately shouts, “Again!” Mr. Salt-and-Pepper complies, the pace of their fucking going from fast to slow but hard. I want to come—it’s been a long time, and these two are so hot together—but I squeeze the base of my cock. I want to last a little bit longer.

  It takes only half a dozen of those hard thrusts before Mr. Salt-and-Pepper yells and pulls out, shooting his load all over Bubble Butt’s… bubble butt. I gasp as
he pumps himself and swears, but don’t let go yet.

  My favorite part is next.

  The scene changes. Now Bubble Butt is standing, and Mr. Salt-and-Pepper is on his knees, licking his dick, which is quite possibly the biggest thing I’ve ever seen.

  “You want this?” Bubble Butt asks, grabbing his cock and painting Mr. Salt-and-Pepper’s lips with the tip.

  “I wanna choke on it,” Mr. Salt-and-Pepper says and opens wide. Bubble Butt seizes the opportunity, fucking deep, and Mr. Salt-and-Pepper gags—then grabs Bubble Butt’s hips and yanks him closer again.

  I jack myself in rhythm with Bubble Butt’s thrusts, knowing it won’t be long—for either of us.

  Three thrusts later, Bubble Butt jerks back and comes all over Mr. Salt-and-Pepper’s face.

  And I see stars.

  Later, after I’ve cleaned up the mess—and boy, was there a mess. Definitely have to have some “me” time more regularly—I pick up the laptop to put it away, and the screen comes to life. The video has returned to the opening frame, in which my silver hottie is wearing a jock that frames things to perfection. I’m admiring him when that pang of familiarity strikes again. I tear my gaze away from his dick and study him more closely.

  It’s not him, exactly. I definitely don’t know him, and I’m pretty sure I’ve only ever seen him in this video. Maybe another one, too—I seem to remember something in an office setup. It’s more the look on his face and the way he carries himself—absolute confidence, but not in a forceful way. The silvered hair adds to it, giving him a distinguished vibe. If he were wearing a shirt and tie, he’d have the same overall look as Jason.

  My gut seizes. Oh, hell no. I did not think that.

  I am not attracted to Jason.

  Well… I am. He’s hot, yeah? But it’s a superficial attraction. Like attraction to a famous actor. Nobody ever does anything about that. Ordinary people who’ve never met him don’t actively pursue Chris Hemsworth. They don’t want to put him on his knees and make him choke on their dick. Not the normal ones, anyway. My attraction to Jason is like that. I recognize that he’s hot, but it’s not something I ever want to act on. I definitely don’t want to jack off to images of him like I do with the porn guy.