Page 44 of Footlights and Forever

“I’m sorry sweetie, but my order just isn’t right.” I groaned inwardly but plastered on a warm, or possibly lukewarm, smile as I looked up into the half-smiling, half-sneering face of the older lady who had brought back her breakfast tea twice before, making this time my lucky three.

“I’m ever so sorry ma’am.” My fists clenched at my sides behind the counter. “What can I do to make it right?” I reached across and took the steaming cup from her hands, the sting of the porcelain sharp on my skin.

“Well for one, it just isn’t hot enough.” My scorched, now smoothened fingertips would beg to differ. “I don’t know why this is so hard for you dear. I wanted my tea extra hot, tea bag in for just a few moments, a lemon slice on top with a drizzle of honey in a bone china cup.”

The time before the lemon slice had just not been thin enough and the time before that I had apparently left the tea bag in far too long. This time it appeared that the tea, so hot that it might as well have been boiled on the surface of Mercury, was not hot enough.

“I’ll get right on making you the perfect cup of tea and bring it right on over, and for your trouble, I will throw in one of my extra special lemon squares. How does that sound?”

The sneer quickly vanished from her face, replaced with what could only be described as hungry lust. Since I’d started working at Lou’s Tea Rooms earlier in the year, people had come from all over the neighborhood to grab one of my now locally famous lemon squares. Normally they sold out within the first hour or two of the store opening, but I always stowed a couple behind the counter to diffuse any tricky situations.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that young man, but I won’t say no.” I was under no illusion she was about to decline a free treat. I watched as she shuffled back to her seat, avoiding the looks of the other customers who eyed her with distaste after hearing her repeated complaining over the last fifteen minutes.

“You know she will want free stuff every time she complains now, don’t you,” the husky voice over my shoulder laughed.

“Holy shit!” My hand flew to my mouth as I glanced apologetically to the currently chuckling close-by customers. I turned round and slapped Darren, the tea room’s general manager, on the arm. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!” I pressed a hand to the center of my chest. “I’m going to have to get you a bell so I know when you’re coming.”

Darren leaned forward, his blond hair-dusted arms crossed across his barrel chest, the top of his short-sleeved, unbuttoned shirt giving me an unencumbered view of his strong pecs and the thick coating of hair that covered the majority of his body. “Trust me, Dylan, you won’t need a bell to let you know whenI’m cumming.” A smile twitched under his thick moustache and beard, a gleeful twinkle in his eyes.

“You know what I mean.” Heat flooded my face and neck.

“Yeah I know what you mean,” he chuckled warmly and patted my arm lightly. “I know you’re still with that guy that doesn’t deserve you.”

“He deserves me.” I smiled weakly.

His forehead furrowed and he regarded me wearily, clearly tired of the same conversation we seemed to have every few weeks. “Sure kiddo.”

“He does,” I protested, “he just forgets sometimes that I deserve him too.”

Okay, so I would have loved to be able to say that the last three years had been smooth sailing and fancy free, but this wasn’t the type of love story that you saw in the movies. This wasn’t the love story where our heroes overcame the slightest of hurdles, only to look into each other’s eyes and know that everything will somehow just be okay.

After Austin had made his announcement at the coffee shop about living together, everything in most ways had just seemed to fall into place. We’d still had a few months left before the summer, which had given us time to find somewhere that we would both be able to afford, while still being able to focus on college.

We’d found a small one-bedroom house about half an hour’s train ride away from the city in Yonkers. Natalie had ridden my ass for the rest of my time in the dorm about how I was moving to the boonies, and that I would be married to a close relative within a few weeks and lose all my teeth and start playing the banjo. I’d tried to point out to her several times that Yonkers was a popular suburb of New York, but apparently anywhere over any of the bridges that wasn’t Brooklyn would have been completely unacceptable.

Austin’s roommates had not been as forgiving as Natalie. Kyle had reverted to form and tried to insinuate that I was trying to alienate Austin from his friends and that I was just getting what I had always wanted. It had resulted in me refusing to be in the same room with him for the better part of six months. Austin had tried repeatedly to broker a peace deal between us but had failed time and time again. We had just decided that the relationship between me and his friends would be amicably hostile until kingdom come. We could be in the same room together at a party, as long as I wasn’t required to talk to them for longer than ten minutes at a time and could drag one of my own friends with us as a buffer. It hadn’t been an ideal situation, but it had worked for us, somewhat.

“So where is his lordship this afternoon?” Darren looked out across the shop. “Doesn’t he normally stop by Wednesday afternoons to make sure that I haven’t got you bent over a box in the stock room?”

After we’d both graduated, I’d looked for work as an assistant in any of the major studios and production companies in New York, but had come up empty. Those coveted jobs had been snapped up quickly after graduation. While I was still looking, I’d picked up some part-time work at the tea room to help make ends meet. Austin on the other hand had flourished, getting small acting roles in theatres Off-Broadway and more than a couple of callbacks for headline shows on the main stages of New York. We both knew it was just a matter of time before some casting agent spotted him and snapped him up.

“I think he trusts me enough to know that he doesn’t have to worry about that.” I laughed, pushing past him to serve a customer. “Plus, he is meeting with the director of a new stage play, so he won’t be back until tomorrow. He’s staying with a friend in the city and coming back in the morning.”

“Aw sweet,” Darren nodded, “but admit it.” He moved to stand behind me and whispered in my ear. His hot spicy breath made my whole body shiver. “You have thought about it though.” With a last breathy laugh, he disappeared into the office at the back of the shop.

He wasn’t wrong. I had thought about it a lot. Darren was basically a gay man’s wet dream. Tall, strong, stacked with muscle and with just enough hair to make him the sexiest bear that ever did bear. It wasn’t enough however to sway me from my love and devotion to Austin, and nothing ever would be. Sure, I had fantasies of Darren pinning me down in the back stock room and having his wicked way with me, but a fantasy was all it would ever be.

However, my obvious soft spot for Darren had not gone unnoticed back home. Each time Darren had asked me to stay behind to help out with stock take or on a Wednesday afternoon when it was only me and Darren scheduled to work, Austin would find some excuse to come and check up on me. Part of me was insulted While the other part reveled in his jealousy, in a very twisted but hot way.

The rest of the shift passed fairly slowly, Darren staying mostly in the back to work on the books. Occasional shouts of ‘fuck’ or ‘asshole’ would periodically drift out from there, making me cringe before apologizing to the customers each time, assuring them it wasn’t normal practice for us to have our patrons accosted by verbal expletives. Around an hour before closing, a frantic Darren came rushing out of the room, carrying an armful of manilla envelopes and bellowing something about making it to the attorney’s office before they closed for the day. He thanked me for volunteering to lock up, which I had not done, before rushing towards the car lot and speeding off down the road.

The sun had long since set by the time I’d closed up the shop for the night. I wanted nothing more than to get home, take a long ass bath and curl up in bed with a good book. Maybe I’d call Austin at the hotel to see how his audition went, and maybe I’d even give him either a little congratulatory or conciliatory phone sex. The lights from the store fronts illuminated my way home, shining bright from the big business brands mixed with the mom-and-pop stores that lined the city blocks and avenues during my fifteen-block bus ride home.

Our small house would never grace the covers of any architectural magazines, but it was where we called home. We had managed to turn it from the blank slate it had been and filled it with memories, family photos that hung from the pale-yellow walls. Overstuffed throw cushions lined the back of our second-hand sofas that barely fitted into our living room. The kitchen was dominated by a giant dining table that could easily fit ten people around it. I’d argued that it would be nice to occasionally move around the kitchen without breaking my feet every time I kicked a chair leg, but Austin was right in that a large family table meant that we could have our friends and family over for dinners and games nights whenever we wanted. He was right, and the kitchen had slowly become my favorite room in the house.

I slung my messenger bag onto the table and was just about to open the fridge door to raid it for some snacks, when my phone began to vibrate in my bag. I hadn’t heard from Austin all day, but it could only be him. He knew my shift pattern at work and would probably be calling to check I hadn’t accidently fallen and landed on Darren’s dick.

“I still only want you inside me,” I laughed as I accepted the call and pressed the phone to my ear.

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