Page 53 of The Barkeep and the Bro

“How was it?” Cal sat at the edge of his seat.

“It was…good.”

Cal didn’t ask for more. He could see the real answer written on my face.

“Is that all that happened?”

I couldn’t share the phone sex revelation. I was still processing it myself. So I answered his question with a head nod.

“Then that’s not so bad,” Russ said.

“Was there anything bad about it?” Cal asked his boyfriend. “He got to make out with a hot young stud.”

“We didn’t make out. It was one kiss,” I clarified.

Russ looked at Cal like he was crazy, a normal occurrence for them. “Was there anything bad about it? Uh, yes. Charlie is an employee. You kissed your employee. Your straight employee who might not have pushed back out of fear of losing his job. That might be ‘hot’ on TV,” he said with air quotes. “but in real life, not so much.”

“You have no imagination,” Cal said. “Which I can understand because there aren’t any hot people in your office.”

“Yes, there is!”

“Who?”

“There’s Jaron the Intern.”

“Seriously?” Cal went to respond but had a change of heart. “Yeah, I guess Jaron is attractive.”

“Have you seen his TikTok?”

“You’re following him on TikTok? Wait, you’re on TikTok?” Cal had a weird mix of disgust, horror, and intrigue swirling in his eyes. “We’ll get into that later. But back to you, Mitch.”

I held up my hand. During this lover’s quarrel, I had a moment of realization about what to do about Charlie to ensure this situation didn’t blow up in my face.

“I need to get to the bar. Good luck with selling the house.”

* * *

I holedup in my office while Charlie came in for his shift. I was nervous about seeing him, but I was the boss. The man in charge. I had to make this right and cut off whatever dangerous path we were on.

“Hey.” I descended the stairs.

Charlie gave me a big smile back, but the sheer nervousness behind his eyes was very obvious. “Hey, Boss.”

I had a flashback to him calling me boss on the phone.

“How was your time in the city?”

“Good.” His voice squeaked.

It wasn’t good. His boss took advantage of him while drunk.

“Look, Charlie.”

And he did look at me. Those big, brown puppy dog eyes stared at me, giving me their full, undivided attention—and taking my words with them. My mind went blank, and in the place of a practiced speech was the sound of Charlie coming through the phone lines.

“Boss, I am really sorry I kissed you last Monday. Man, that was hella awkward to say.” He tossed in a self-effacing laugh, which did nothing to lessen the sting. “Thank you for going with it. I panicked. I remember some sorority girls I knew said they wore wedding rings out at bars because it was the only way to keep guys from hitting on them, which is such a bullshit, sexist thing of our society. Like a woman can’t be single just to be single. Such horseshit. But I guess I thought if that creep knew I was dating someone, he’d back off. And you were the closest guy there. You came outside at the perfect time.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and balanced on his heels again. He had it all figured out. “I’m really sorry I did that. And I’m sorry for drunk dialing you over the weekend. Can we just forget…all of that?”

His eyes were practically pleading for me to wipe my memory clean. His entire face was a palette of desperation, begging me to never bring up those moments again.

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