Page 8 of Gold Rush
Goldie smiled, and Abs winked at him. “Hmm. What do you know?”
“Shut up, Abs.”
After Goldie got a glass of water for himself, he sat at a table with Dean. The way he felt wasn’t normal. Goldie wasn’t shy, and he wasn’t skittish about talking to men he was attracted to in the least.
But there was something different about Dean, and it was more than being so similar to that picture.
“I had a family once,” Dean said. “They were alcoholics. They were…mean. Dad left finally when I was about twelve, and my stepmom didn’t want me. She sent me back to my mom, who lost me over her hitting my sister, and when I got there, she started hitting me. I left when I was fourteen.”
“I couldn’t work at that age, so I…”
“Hooked? Fuck, that was really young.”
“Yeah. I made three times what I make now,” he said with a sour chuckle.
Goldie was disgusted but not surprised. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. You’ll find though, you’re in good company here. All of us, at least us bartenders, we’ve all had rough pasts. Murphy, the owner of this place, well, he gave us all second chances.”
“Nice guy. What was the reason?”
“Excuse me?”
“He didn’t do it out of the kindness of his heart. Had to be a bargain. I do this for you, and you do something for me. It’s how the world works.”
Jaded for good reason, and not completely wrong. Murphy did have an agenda for collecting them. “He needed us to…work here. Gay, halfway decent-looking men, and in exchange, we all make a lot of money on the weekends. Which it almost is, so maybe you can stick around and see why.”
“And you fuck the high-paying customers, or what?”
Goldie laughed. “Murphy would kill us. That’s off-limits. In fact, we’re not supposed to date each other or the customers, but some have…bent that a bit.”
Dean sat back, shaking his head. “Really? So, no hooking, hustling, anything? Just…making drinks?”
“You have no idea how well we make drinks.”
Chapter Three
Murphyshowedbackup,Eazy by his side, each carrying cases of liquor. All the guys helped unload the van and then, when he could, Goldie asked Murphy and Easy to meet him in the secret room in the basement.
Murphy got into the bookcase/door right after Eazy, and the door closed behind them. Tense, Goldie had gone over what he’d say a hundred times just while he was helping unload the van.
“What’s the problem, Gold?” Eazy asked in his smooth, sweet voice.
“I, uh…” Suddenly, his entire speech left his head.
They invited him to sit, and he took a seat beside Murphy and across from Murphy’s lovely husband.
“Goldie, you’re not one to be afraid to tell me what needs said,” Murphy told him. “Spill it.”
“Sorry, but it’s…I don’t even know. I was scoping a job with Abs, and we went down this alley. We found a guy with a needle sticking out of his arm, and we called 911, got the cops and ambulance there…”
“The…cops?” Eazy asked. “None of the BBC, right?”
“No! Oh, no, just regular, dicky cops. No, it’s the guy I’m talking about.”
Murphy asked, “The one with the needle in his arm?”
“Yeah, yeah, Murph. He’s not a junkie. I have seen junkies, you know?”
“I know. So?”
