Page 24 of Stray for You

“Yeah, yeah,” a guy named Dom says, “but a slushy? Come on, man.”

“Slushies taste good,” I say, sipping shamelessly from my straw.

I suck down the sugar a little too fast, giving myself abrain freeze that amuses the entire table. The booze hits my brain next, soothing my turbulent thoughts. As the focus of the conversation shifts away from me, I sneak a look at my phone. Still no messages, so I scroll through the ones from over the weekend. A lot of dumb banter. A lot of casual flirting. The kind of stuff I should be doing with the sales reps around me; the kind of stuff I should be doing with Jessica. I scroll up high enough to find a message from Saturday afternoon about the Seattle Underground. Cameron didn’t know anything about it, and I let the matter drop, but now the thought sticks in my head. I do a quick search on my phone, but the website could have come straight out of the nineties, and it doesn’t tell me all that much.

“Got a work thing or something?”

Jessica’s voice interrupts my scrolling. I jerk my head up to find everyone else watching me as well. A couple of them look confused. They know me from other conferences and expect a very different Julian than the one they’re getting today.

I stuff my phone into my pocket. “No, it’s nothing,” I say.

Thankfully, the conversation turns away from me. I get myself a second slushy, and when I return to the table, everyone’s talking about the ethics lecture from today and laughing openly at the very notion of giving a shit.

“I get that they have to say that stuff, but do they have to force us all to listen to it?” Dom says.

Everyone laughs in agreement.

“Would have been more interesting if that one chick was leading the panel. The redhead?”

“Marcie? Marie? What was her name?”

“Mikela, I think.”

“Yeah, that one. She could read me the phone book.”

“That chick Betty was even better. You see her?”

“You’re crazy, man. No shot.”

“Excuse me, can we be equal opportunity here at least?”Jessica cuts in. She’s not the only woman at the table, but she’s definitely the boldest. “Eric wears the tightest pants I’ve ever seen a man try to get away with, and hedoesget away with it, thank God.”

Dom smirks. “See, this is why I always say women are just as nasty as guys. Sick minds, all of you. You’re just good at hiding it.”

Jessica flips her hair over her shoulder. “It’s called poise. Sorry you neanderthals never figured it out.”

Dom gives a mocking little bow. “I defer to the master. Maybe some day I’ll learn from your example. But what about you, man? Our resident bisexual needs to weigh in and settle this for us.”

All eyes turn to me. I make no secret of my sexuality. In fact, I usually flaunt it at these kinds of conferences. It can often play to my advantage. What’s better than flirting with some people? Flirting with everyone and having them all believe it’s sincere. Naturally, it doesn’t always work. There’s always a few men you have to be careful around in these situations. But I’ve learned how to dance between those lines and give everyone what they want, especially myself.

“I was … kind of zoned out, to be honest,” I reply.

Dom wags his eyebrows. “Good weekend? You seem zonked today.”

I accept the easy out. “Yeah, you could say that.”

Knowing smirks and looks pass around the table. A few eyes even go to Jessica beside me, but I stay as neutral as possible.

I can see them wanting to dig deeper, wanting to press me for juicy details and gossip they can trade around for other gossip, but I’m not in the mood. Normally, I spin them some sort of story consisting of just enough truth to be unassailable, but today I want to steer them as far from the subject as I can.

An idea strikes me.

“Hey, have any of you heard of the Seattle Underground?”

Confusion flickers through every face. The conversation dies for a beat, until Pete, a guy who’s actually from Seattle, speaks up.

“I’ve heard of it,” he says. “It’s a tour or something.”

“Is it any good?”

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