The One With Multiple Partners
For the fourth day in a row, I woke to an empty apartment. Unlike the previous mornings, however, coffee had been made and was actually still percolating by the time I got to the pot. A small smile tugged the corner of my lips, a feeling of gratefulness and appreciation settling over me as I poured some of the liquid into my favorite mug. Once the coffee had just enough creamer, I turned to check for a note from Taylor–he’d been leaving them for me every morning, giving the bare minimum of explanations for his whereabouts. Even though I knew I wouldn’t get very far, I decided to inquire about his morning excursions when he returned home today.
I spent the better part of the next hour enjoying my cup of coffee, watching Sports Center, and getting ready for the day. It was Tuesday, which meant a day off from Double Entendre’s, but also meant that tonight we’d once again play host to Eduardo and Cade. Despite what Taylor may have thought, I didn’t mind spending time with them, really; they were really nice guys, as Taylor had pointed out multiple times.
With nothing better to do, and knowing Taylor’s anxiety over having company over in a dirty house, I set about picking up the living room and kitchen; I even made sure there was soap and a hand towel in the bathroom. I was finishing dusting a bookcase in the living room when the front door burst open and Taylor practically fell through it, his arms loaded with items.
“What the hell is all this?” I asked, grabbing a few bags from his hands.
“Stuff for tonight,” he replied from somewhere behind a stack of boxes. We finished transferring everything from his arms to the kitchen table, and I simply raised an eyebrow at him when he could finally see me. He sighed, exasperatedly, as if I should be satisfied with his reply. “I’m going to make bean dip and some pigs in a blanket, OK? And I thought margaritas might be nice, so I picked up a margarita machine.”
“Margaritas? You have fun with those; I’ll stick with beer. You did get beer, didn’t you?”
“Cade and Eduardo are on beer duty,” he reassured.
“Now that is a brilliant idea–let the gays pick the beer! I’m not drinking Corona or any light, sissy-pants beers,” I commented. Apparently, Taylor didn’t see fit to acknowledge my statement–he was too busy with his margarita machine and appetizers. He didn’t even notice all the cleaning I had done. Any feelings of appreciation I had felt over the coffee was swiftly evaporating.
I left Taylor to worry about the food and drinks by himself, settling in with one of my final bottles of Magic Hat #9 and an NCIS marathon. I had gotten through two episodes when there was a knock on the door. I made my way to the foyer to let Cade and Eduardo in, and finally dragged Taylor out of the kitchen.
Everyone was provided a beer–luckily Cade had the good sense of grabbing a case of Yuengling–and Taylor was busy making a few margaritas. We wound up hanging out in the living room for a while, another episode of NCIS playing in the background. Taylor was doing most of the socializing for everyone, being a good host and delivering drinks and trays of food as we sat; the only real conversation coming from the television.
I was thinking about how bored I was becoming when Eduardo–armed with one of Taylor’s experimental beverages–stood up, raising his margarita. “This is going to sound juvenile, but fun at the same time!” He announced. “We’re supposed to be getting to know each other better, right? So why not have a little fun with it? I propose a game of Never Have I Ever. I’ll go first: never have I ever been fired from a job.”
“Do I have to drink for each individual job I’ve been fired from?” Cade asked with a giggle.
“Why, has been a lot?” Eduardo asked, his eyes growing wide.
Cade smiled, a small blush crossing his cheeks. “No, it was just the two. Despite what anyone says about the other seven, because I totally quit those.”
Eduardo and Taylor both laughed, but I failed to see the humor. I just quietly sipped my beer, still undecided. Taylor stood up, dramatically holding his beer glass up. “Never have I ever gotten asked to be in a porno flick!” He declared.
I glowered at him, almost deciding to tell everyone I wasn’t going to play that stupid game when Cade took a swig of his beer, then sat up, calling next. He reached into his pocket, producing a neatly rolled joint. “Never have I ever smoked one of these!”
I let out a genuine laugh at this, remembering a few times in college Taylor and I had smoked up. My eyes instinctively sought Tay’s at the memories, and our gazes locked, briefly and intensely, before I took a long swig of my beer, closing my eyes to avert them. When I reopened them, Cade was pulling a lighter out of his pocket and asking Taylor and if it would be OK to spark up.
It had been a long time since I had smoked, but it wasn’t because I didn’t like to. I gave Cade my blessing, watching his lips curve around the end if the joint as he lit it. He passed it to Eduardo first–apparently this was the first time our Latin American friend had ever smoked. I held my tongue at how hard it was to believe that, and let the joint come around to me.
I gently held the small rolled paper between my forefinger and thumb, taking a long, slow hit off the herb. The smoke burned its way down the back of my throat, a fit of coughing starting almost before it hit my lungs. I held the hit in as long as I could before my body rejected it, the coughing becoming more violent as the smoke was pushed from my circulatory system and back into the air around me. I took another quick hit before I passed the joint back to Cade; he took it from my hands, our fingers brushing slightly as he did so.
A weird, butterfly-esque sensation filled my stomach at his touch, a warmth spreading through my abdomen I couldn’t quite place. I blinked, shaking myself to my senses, following the joint as it went around another pass. Taylor and Eduardo posed additional never-have-I-evers, Cade and I participating passively from here, drinking when required or providing some kind of commentary.
The weed had taken hold of us, amplified by the alcohol we had consumed. Our game of Never Have I Ever was turning into even more of a slumber party as Taylor and Eduardo could only laugh at everything. They still called out topics; I was pretty sure Taylor was purposefully calling out things he had done in order for an excuse to drink. I was mostly observing at this point, still trying to process Cade’s actions with the joint.
“Oh, what’s this?!” I heard Cade’s voice from the entertainment center. I glanced up to see him inspecting a DVD case. “Harry Twatter and the Prisoners of Asskaban?”
“Like gay porn has better titles?” Taylor inquired.
“No, they’re worse, actually,” Cade shrugged, setting the case down. “Never have I ever kissed a man,” he shot Taylor a look, and the butterflies I had felt earlier returned, only now they were moths slowly eating away my stomach lining.
I watched as Eduardo took a long sip from his drink, then, after coming up from air, took a few more large gulps. My eyes were glued to him as he took a final sip, finishing the margarita and setting the cup down on the coffee table. “Everything OK, there, Champ?” Cade asked, slapping Eduardo’s shoulder.
Eduardo’s eyes moved over each of us before he finally sighed, exasperatedly. “Whaaat? I’ve kissed a lot of guys, ok?”
I couldn’t stop the laughter from bubbling out of my lips. “Eduardo, calm down…your Puerto Rican is showing.”
“Now, wait just a gay minute,” he demanded. “Your non-bf bff just drank nearly as much as I did on that one! I’m openly gay–it should be no surprise I drank so much. Your chico over here…well, I don’t know about you, but I require details.” He sat back down at attention, crossing his legs and resting his hands over his top knee.
Taylor’s eyes darted to me quickly, then away, and he shrugged. “I never claimed to or not to be one way or the other; I just said Zac and I weren’t a couple. Anyway, I choose not to subscribe to societal labels and stereotypes of sexuality.” At Eduardo’s raised eyebrow, Taylor sighed heavily. “In college, there was a time when I decided to experiment, and there were a couple of guys I made out with, ok?”
“Oh, just made out, huh?” Eduardo teased.
Taylor’s face flushed, and he shrugged. “Maybe there was some touching involved. But nothing more than that. And that isn’t to say I would have or would not have, just that the situation never arose. Besides; when you’re this good looking, it would be unfair of me to deny half the population access. Plus, why would I limit my options?”
Beer came spewing out of my mouth at Taylor’s confession. He had been social, and dare I say it, popular in college; he was always surrounded by a group that consisted of both genders and all kinds of sexuality. Looking back, it shouldn’t have been so surprising that Taylor had “experimented” in his college years, especially after what happened between us at the private party. Even if he didn’t care if anyone knew we kissed, he did care if Ruby found out we had a threesome with a client, however, so I calculated he’d keep his mouth shut for at least another week. At that point, he’d at least start pestering me to tell him what was going on in my mind about it.
Hopefully I figured it out before he started demanding to get inside my head.
“Zac’ry!” The sound of my name being called by an ever-increasingly drunk Taylor knocked me out of my own inebriated day dream. When I glanced at the clock, the little hand had made its way a few numbers closer to midnight than the last time I had looked. “Our guesses are leafing. Be polite an’ say g’bye.”
I obeyed Taylor’s drunken demand, giving Eduardo and Cade handshakes; I could feel a stupid grin on my face, but the alcohol and remaining effects of the weed made me not care. After our guests had left, I stumbled to Taylor and slung my arm over his shoulder, “I say we clean to’arrow,” I hiccuped.
Taylor merely nodded, turning and walking toward the hallway. I followed, shutting the lights off as we went. “Hey, Tay,” I grabbed his arm and stopped him before I went into my room. “Thanks for not saying anything.”
“About what?” He shrugged, feigning ignorance.
“You’re a good friend,” I patted his shoulder, smiling, then paused. Taylor’s lips were captivating, and I couldn’t stop myself from leaning forward and pressing my own to his. I stumbled back a moment later, and rushed into my room without another word.
My heart pounding, I clicked the lock on the doorknob and flung myself to my bed, drifting off to sleep with torturingly graphic thoughts of Taylor dancing in my mind.