“I’m guessing I’m not who you expected.”
“You know the answer to that question,” I responded, sounding perturbed. “What do you want?”
“Just keeping my promise. I said you would be hearing from me again.”
“You’re not doing me any favors. Hearing from you doesn’t make my day any better. In fact, hearing from you does quite the opposite. So I’m going to ask you again. What the hell do you want?” I was trying to keep my voice down, but in this short time he had gotten on my last nerve.
“Chai Latte,” the barrister called out.
I walked to the counter and picked up my order. I was planning on sitting down and enjoying my breakfast, but this call had changed my plans. I placed my Breakfast Bowl in the bag with Caela’s Mocha Espresso and Monte Cristo and began walking towards the door. I hadn’t checked my phone for a response from Wesley.
“I told you, you’re not for Jackson.”
“And you are?”
He laughed. “Oh, I don’t want Jackson. But you don’t either.”
“And you know this because…”
“That’s not important. What is important is that you understand Jackson isn’t about to become your man-toy.”
I was disgusted. Disgusted I was wasting my morning entertaining this fool, but even more disgusted he was talking about my plans for Jackson, and I didn’t know who the hell he was. I pressed the remote to open the car door. I placed my order in the back on the floor and the cups in the cup holders in the front. I settled behind the steering wheel and turned on my blue tooth.
“Look,” I said.
“No, you look,” he snapped. “Leave Jackson alone. He’s not about to be your guinea pig.”
“Clearly you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We’ll see who doesn’t know what. You just remember this conversation. You can’t say I never warned you.”
“Well, sir, you know what you and your warnings can do for me. Now, this is the last time I’m going to tell you to stop calling my fucking phone.” I hung up and tossed the phone in the passenger seat.
I wasn’t going to allow his phone call to disrupt an otherwise great morning so far. He was simply a wrinkle I wasn’t going to spend too much time thinking about—or so I thought. I attempted to drive the few minutes from Daily Grind to work without trying to dissect the conversation I’d just had. I’d spoken to this man twice, and I still had no idea who he was or what connection he had to Jackson or me.
With my Daily Grind bag and cup in hand, I walked through the double doors to the agency and into Wesley.
“Oh, there better be something in that bag for me,” he greeted.
“Didn’t you get my message?”
“What message?”
“I sent a text asking if you wanted something.” I checked my phone before continuing. “I never got a response from you.”
“Good looking out, man.” Wesley removed his phone from the clip. “That’s my fault. I hadn’t taken the phone off silent mode.”
“No problem. You can’t say I wasn’t thinking about you.”
“No, I can’t,” Wesley said. He placed his phone back in its holder and began walking towards his office. “Hey,” he said, turning around. “Check with me before your lunch. I want something good.”
“Will do.” I walked over to Caela’s desk, removed my breakfast bowl, handed her the bag and coffee, and started towards my office.
“How much do I owe you?” she asked.
“For just this order, or do I have time to add up all the other orders you haven’t paid for?”
“Thank you, Trevor.”
I walked into my office and over to my desk, ready to finally enjoy my breakfast. I sat in the chair and focused on the to-do list I started putting together for Caela yesterday. So far, it included only a few meetings I needed her to schedule, lunch with Mr. Millington, if he were available, and a staff meeting I’d been itching to have just to check-in on everyone. I picked up the receiver on the desk phone and dialed Caela’s desk.
“Yes, Trevor,” she answered.
“No rush, but when you’re finished, may I see you for a few?”
“Of course.”
I sat back in my chair. My cell phone buzzed. I looked at the phone screen before I answered.
“Hey you,” I said.
“Good morning,” Jackson replied. “I didn’t hear you leave this morning.”
“Probably ‘cause you sleep like a darn rock. But I did say goodbye while you were changing position. You responded, but you were probably talking in your sleep.”
“Probably.” Jackson laughed.
“Shouldn’t you be walking out the door now?” I asked looking at my watch.
“In a minute. Just wanted to check on you. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those Fridays.”
“I’m sure it won’t be that bad.”
“You’re probably right. So am I going to see you later?”
“Of course. Did you even have to ask?”
“Aiight, Trevor. Have a great day.”
“Thanks. And you make sure you have one as well.”
I had decided it wasn’t a good idea to tell Jackson about the phone calls I’d been receiving. I wanted to do my own detective work before saying anything to him. Who was this stranger, and most importantly, where was he getting his information? I wasn’t about to start walking around looking over my shoulders as if I had heard footsteps behind me, or driving and checking my rearview mirror like I was being followed. But that’s how this man made me feel.
It was a smooth-sailing Friday. There was some business as usual happening, but nothing we needed to tighten our belts and roll up our shirtsleeves to get through. I sat with Caela for about an hour putting together my schedule for next week. Wesley and I treated the staff to lunch, ordering from a mom-and-pop restaurant a few blocks from the office. At exactly 12:15 I sent out a mass email calling for an emergency meeting to discuss our budget. I figured it would raise suspicion had it come from Caela. We wanted to show our appreciation. Without everyone working together, this business, my vision, wouldn’t thrive as well as it has.
The Harrison Agency was like one big happy family that had grown since we first started. Allessandra Dumarko now hyphenated her last name after last summer’s nuptial to Bryson Starling. Asher Jones was now engaged to his high school sweetheart from Lake City, Florida, and was getting just as big a headache as she was planning the wedding she’d always dreamed about because she involved him in every detail. Xavier Mikkel and his fiancée of five years were expecting their first child. He was so excited. He had already picked out what he deemed “perfect names it can live up to”: Richaud Jeron for a boy, and Chelsea Mackensie for a girl.
“You know you almost gave us a heart attack sending out a message like that,” Jory joked. Besides Wesley and me, Jory had been here the longest. “You know what they say, first hired, first fired, and with this recession brewing, I was ready to count my losses.”
“And now you know you have nothing to worry about.” I lightly tapped him on his back and then stood next to Wesley and Caela, watching everyone.
It was good to see them relax without deadlines breathing down their backs. I left the crew in the conference room to return a few phone calls and tend to some personal business—how I sometimes spend my lunch hour on Fridays when I wasn’t entertaining Caela’s shenanigans.
The only thing I hated more than Monday morning traffic was Friday evening traffic. They drove as if it had been such a long week and the ability to obey traffic signals had disappeared the moment fatigue set it. They weren’t driving any better on 395 either.
Before I left work, I called and left a message on Dexter’s voicemail telling him I had to cancel dinner plans and that I was spending time with Jackson before his job took him away for a week. Dexter left his own voicemail with another dinner invitation on Tuesday, at his place. I don’t know which devil was talking to me bu
t I was considering telling Dexter yes.
My first conversation with Dexter was during our chance meeting at the Daily Grind. He was sitting in the corner enjoying a cold Cremosa. I was sitting in the same corner, a few tables over, my hands wrapped around a cup of Chai tea. Our encounter before that, Dexter was lying in a hospital bed in the PACU, leveled by the news that the man he thought needed his help had pulled one last selfish act out of his arsenal of selfish acts; as if he couldn’t think of any other ways for Dexter to prove he still loved him. His scheme had also left Dexter’s nephew, J.R., recovering in postoperative care with a broken hand and a sprained neck, minor injuries considering the scene I had come upon. As I approached the car, I swore whomever was inside couldn’t have survived. Fortunately, I was wrong, although, according to Dexter, that night something inside him had died.
The business card Dexter handed me just before he walked out the doors of Daily Grind sat in my wallet unused, but as my taste buds watered at the thought of smelling honey and vanilla, I thought about cashing in on that offer Dexter made as he left. He was a man of his word, so when I called, he obliged.
While I spent nights constructing my relationship with Jackson, I spent days building my friendship with Dexter. We already had one thing in common: less-than-perfect circumstances with our then significant others we were able to get out of, though not unscathed. My relationship nearly cost me my sanity, and Dexter’s relationship nearly cost him his life, but as the old adage goes, better late than never. Sometimes late just never comes soon enough.
On several Saturday mornings we found ourselves at Daily Grind in the same corner, sipping on cold cremosa and Chai tea. It became our ritual. We talked, not about the relationship he had with Patrick or the relationship I once had with Kelvin, but about not walking into our next relationship like carpenter bees.
Although I liked my interaction with Dexter, there were times I felt something else was stirring. Purposely, I would ignore his phone calls, his invitations, until I felt I had ignored him long enough.
There were moments when my two-year friendship with Dexter seemed like something more. Similarities had brought us up close and sometimes a little too personal. We playfully crossed that blurred line between friends and love-interest, but there was always that little annoying voice in my head reminding me about Jackson, keeping me from entertaining a potential relationship of convenience with Dexter because that’s really all it would have been. That voice, of course, was my own, and although I listened, Dexter and I still flirted with trouble.
I liked the friendship that developed between us. We still fought to ignore the charge we felt whenever we met, especially when our meetings occurred in the privacy of his home or mine. Fighting eventually became easier. I had already convinced myself I was in total control. After all, we had the respect for our significant others, if not for self, to ignore everything and not act on impulses. I’m not sure if Dexter had the same pep talk with himself.
Chatter over savory stuffed chicken and salmon en papillote in the early evening sometimes led to an even quieter evening sipping on Semillon. Sometimes there were moments of uncomfortable silence. I could feel Dexter staring at me. When I turned around to look at him, he looked like temptation was killing him and he wasn’t exactly sure what he should say or do. There were times I wrestled with really wanting to stay or really needing to go, especially when I thought me staying would put us in a predicament we would become too weakened to get ourselves out of. There were many parts of Dexter I wanted to explore and could have, but feelings I had for Jackson had tamed me. Although lust ran through our veins, there were many nights Dexter and I just sat and enjoyed intimate conversations.
One night we were supposed to have been watching The Crazies, an on-demand movie. I was watching The Crazies. The Crazies was watching Dexter, and Dexter was watching me.
“The craziest thing happened in court today,” Dexter said, searching for something to fill the silence that had befallen us.
So often what he said happened was never really that crazy, but it was a conversation starter. But he did have some great stories.
“Sounds like half those people you come across need to sit with a psychologist and not stand before a judge,” I joked. If I had a dime for the many moments of silence we’ve sat through, I’d be half way to rich by now.
“How about you tell me something about you I don’t already know?” Dexter broke in.
“If there’s something you want to know, why don’t you just ask?” I said with authority.
“I think people are more forthcoming if given the opportunity to say anything. The conversation goes best if it’s not guided by twenty questions that neither of us really want to answer.”
“You think?” I asked.
“No. I know,” Dexter said, and we fell silent again. I turned my attention back to the movie.
“I don’t have anything to hide. Do you?”
“Ok,” he broke in, sipping on wine and filling his glass again. A fresh bottle had sat beside him since we started our conversation. He offered me more but I had already decided I’d had enough. Plus I was tired of excusing myself to use the bathroom. “I’ll go first,” he continued.
I guess I’m going to have to watch this movie some other time…with Jackson, I thought.
I pulled up to the couch and leaned against it with my legs extended. I listened quietly, waiting for Dexter to lead the conversation. I didn’t know much about the life of this man I had befriended, but did we have to choose tonight? Couldn’t we just wait? I mean, what’s the rush.
Dexter had moved on, or at least he was trying to, becoming more serious with Giovanni C. Dawkins, the handsome lawyer he had met just before a court hearing. After Dexter’s father died, he finally decided to contact Giovanni. He knew Giovanni loved him. He hated that Giovanni had to split his free time between him and the lady in his life, his now sixteen-year-old daughter, Paisley. But how else did Dexter expect this man to treat his daughter? Dexter respected Giovanni for having always been a constant in Paisley’s life. At least he wasn’t sharing Giovanni with some other man.
“So, Giovanni is the world’s greatest dad.”
“And who bestowed him that title?” I had asked, looking at Dexter from the corner of my eyes.
“Definitely didn’t come from me. Although he isn’t that bad.” Dexter laughed. “Paisley did, of course. I met her a couple weekends ago, at her sixteenth birthday dinner; finally. And Dexter had that conversation with her.”
“What conversation? He finally told her where babies come from? I’m sure at sixteen she’s already figured that out, if she hasn’t been told already. Don’t they have sex education in schools?”
“I’m sure they do, but that’s not the conversation I’m talking about.”
“Then what?”
“Apparently Giovanni had kept two promises he made to her, more to himself, since Paisley was a toddler running around in pampers and calling every dog she saw “goddy”. He promised he was going to tell her about the attraction he had to men on her sixteenth birthday and he would introduce her to the man in his life if he had one at the time.”
“So…”
“He told Paisley about his alternative lifestyle, and introduced her to me.”
“So this girl, for the rest of her life, is going to remember that on her sixteenth birthday she found out her father was gay, and met his lover. Oh fun!” I said, sarcastically. I learned less about Dexter and more about his relationship with Giovanni.
That conversation, like many Dexter and I have had before, was enlightening. I wondered what else I would learn about him, or Giovanni, or Paisely when Tuesday came. Maybe this time I could tell him more about me.
Since Jackson wasn’t going to be in town, I already knew I wasn’t going to tell Dexter no.
When I got to Jackson’s I rang the bell instead of using the key he had given me. He answered the door wearing red plai
d lounge pants, his bulging six-pack exposed to the world and the cool, late September breeze that swept in as the door opened. He smelled of pure vanilla. He had a few loose papers in his hand.
“What’s that?” I asked, closing the door behind me.
“Just my travel itinerary and workshop schedules.”
“You started packing already?”
“I looked in the closet at a few things I’ll be taking, but that’s the extent of my packing.”
Jackson walked to the living room, sat in a chair, and continued to focus on the itinerary and schedule. I walked upstairs and dropped my overnight bag in a corner of his bedroom. I walked into the bathroom, turned on the shower and began to undress.
This was my warm water massage therapy. The water felt so soothing beating against my skin. I felt like I had waited all day for this. In my mind I had already escaped to the white sandy beach of the Vatulele Island resort in the Fiji’s, lying with the sun from an almost perfect summer blue sky beating upon my face, listening to the sound of the pristine blue water. The week hadn’t been stressful, just long. I was singing a few bars from Usher’s “Moving Mountains” and lathering when I heard Jackson’s voice.
“Hey, Trevor,” he called out.
I pushed open the shower door slightly. Jackson was standing at the bathroom door with his feet crossed and his hands in his pockets. Is it possible to look good just standing there?
“How long have you been there?” I asked.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t hear you auditioning for your spot on American Idol.”
“I see you’ve got jokes.”
“With that voice, I’m sure we both agree you’re the one
with the jokes,” Jackson responded. “No, I’m kidding. You don’t sound half bad.”
I didn’t have a good comeback, so I just laughed. “Boy, what do you want?”
“I…I think I’m gonna ask Colton to come see me while I’m in Miami.”
“I’m sure he won’t say no. When was the last time you spoke with him?” I stepped out the shower and stood in front of the mirror, allowing my body to air-dry. I turned and looked at Jackson. He was sitting in the doorway looking at me from head to toe.