Acrobat Read Free

hiking boots, I definitely looked out of place.
    “I’m going to go buy a bottle of wine, drown myself, and try and think of something interesting to say about Shakespeare tomorrow.”
    “Seriously.” Ben squinted at both of us. “What are we talking about?”
    “Never—”
    “Nate has a little crush.”
    “Really? Finally.” He sighed. “Enough with moping around over Duncan Stiel already.”
    “I haven’t been—”
    “Yes, you have,” they both said at the same time.
    “Oh jinx.” Melissa laughed, and her husband rolled his eyes at her.
    “You guys wear me out.”
    Ben smiled. “How many girls, would you say, fall in love with you every quarter?”
    “What does—”
    “And they have no idea you’re gay, do they?”
    It took me a minute. “What are you talking about?”
    “The girls all go nuts for you because you look the same now as you did when I met you at twenty-eight. And while once you were a struggling grad student working three jobs to support himself, help pay child support, and actually eat on occasion, now you’re a tenured professor with a doctorate in English literature—”
    “And I’m still poor,” I cut him off.
    “I actually kind of like your loft in Lincoln Park,” Melissa assured me. “It’s much less fussy than my house that I have to have a maid to clean.”
    “Excuse me?” Ben asked her, sounding just slightly put out.
    “She didn’t mean it,” I chimed in, kicking her under the table.
    “Owww, you shit,” Ben grumbled, which sent Melissa into peals of laughter.
    I couldn’t help laughing when she did; her laughter was infectious, just like my kid’s.
    “I just meant to say—” Melissa chuckled, blowing her nose on a napkin. “—that your loft is warm and homey and I love it.”
    “It is nice,” Ben grumped as the waitress returned to take our order.
    When she left us with bread, I sat there in the chilly November air and wondered what my life would look like to a thirty-two-year-old man.
    “You’re a catch, Qells.”
    I turned back to look at Ben.
    “You are. You have great friends, and I don’t just mean us. Your kid loves you—hell, my kids love you—you have a really nice home, a wonderful job, and hair that any man would die to have. You’re in possibly the best shape of your life, and your interests are so varied I can’t even keep up with you. I had no idea you could change the oil filter on your own car.”
    “This is not something to put on your résumé,” I assured him.
    “Yes, but I can’t do it,” he told me. “I can’t do crap with my own car, and I’m the CEO of my own company, for crissakes.”
    “You have people to do it for you.”
    “Yes, but the point is that you can go to the ballet with me or a baseball game or a concert and wherever is fine. You’re like the Swiss army knife friend; you have an attachment for everything.”
    I did a slow pan to Melissa. “Did that sound filthy, or was it just me?”
    “Oh no, that was filthy,” she assured me, her eyebrows lifting as she surveyed her husband.
    “Wait.” He thought about it. “I just meant—”
    “Thanks, buddy.” I smiled, reaching out to pat his shoulder.
    “Just call Sean,” Melissa ordered me. “Don’t let the whole thing squick you—”
    “Squick? I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with this word.”
    “You know, freak you out, weird you out, gross you out—squick?”
    “How old are you again?”
    She smacked me really heard, and when I looked at Ben for help, he just shook his head.
    “No hitting,” he told his wife.
    She swatted him next.
    “What the hell?”
    “Oh, I know.” She brightened. “Why don’t you just call Jare and ask him how the kids ask each other out these days?”
    “Oh God. Kids.”
    “You know what I meant.”
    Great idea. Call my son and ask him for advice with asking out a younger man. That was brilliant.
    “It couldn’t hurt.”
    Good God.

Chapter 2

     
    B EING a hero should have been less painful. I was