Page 4 of Lance
TWO
Fingers plucking nervously at the worn threads of his black pants, which threatened to give way at any point, Jamie stood outside the office door where his boss lurked. In theory, they were supposed to have an open door, always ready to listen to the employees, but in reality, Jamie wasn’t sure he had ever met anyone less approachable in his life.
Forcing his fingers to still, Jamie took a deep, deep breath, then let it out slowly. He couldn’t afford to ruin these pants. They were close to falling apart as it was, and while the fast food chain where he worked supplied them with shirts, he had to use his own pants. So he had to be careful, because his money, most of it, went to pay his rent.
The door was, technically, open. Just a crack, not even enough for Jamie to put two fingers through, but he supposed that it counted. Swallowing down his heart, which beat hot and heavy and too damn fast in the back of his throat and raised an odd, metallic taste on his tongue.
His boss was an ogre. As in, Jamie had never met another human being that was as repulsively unprepossessing than this man. The only good thing about him was that he tended to stay away from the rest of the employees unless he absolutely had to.
And now Jamie had to ask him for a favor. He knew that he was lucky that he’d gotten the phone call at all, the one that had told him that he could come down this afternoon and audition because someone else had pulled out and there was room for him.
The Lost Boys. The chances of him getting in were probably worse than winning the lottery, but didn’t he have to try? He could sing, and he could dance, and he might as well put his only marketable skills to use. And if—by some miracle—he did get in, it would be his ticket to freedom, to adventure.
Dom’s voice echoed in his head, telling him very clearly that he would never get in. That he was wasting his time, and that he was never going to amount to anything if he didn’t get serious. He pushed that deep voice away, but it was compelling, and it came back to him every time he lowered his guard.
Tears threatened, and he pushed those away, too. He couldn’t keep thinking about what Dom would say, or how his handsome face would twist with derision at the very idea. Instead, he used the surge of emotion that his ex-boyfriend brought out in him to finally propel himself forward, to push the door open and come face to face with his boss.
The man looked up from his computer, shock on his thick, blocky face, straggles of black hair hanging into his face and thin lips the exact color of liver tightening when he saw Jamie. Hastily, he closed the lid of his laptop, and Jamie tried not to think too much about what the guy was doing on that computer that made him so nervous.
“I have to ask a favor,” Jamie got right to it, though he could hear the pounding of his heart in his voice, making it a little bit shaky. And his boss didn’t make it any easier, peering at him from behind the thin strands of his hair, his eyes a creepy, strange light green.
Still, this was his future, or at least, potentially. So Jamie forged on, and he forced his voice to strengthen, even as he had to lock his legs to keep them from shaking.
“I have to leave early. Please.” Jamie should have spent some of the time during which he’d been freaking out to think about what he was going to say. Now, he was without any sort of script, so he was pretty much stuck with the truth. “I got this chance to try out for …”
“No.” His boss glared at him, and Jamie felt his heart, which had been racing, suddenly clench as his stomach sank like a brick had been stuffed into it. Just like that. No. All of his hopes and dreams were dashed.
“Look, I’ll come in after, I promise. I just need a few hours,” Jamie tried, though he sort of thought that it was pointless. But if he wasn’t going to fight for his future, who was going to? He was alone now, and the thought was both liberating and terrifying, in pretty much equal measure.
“I said no.” There was a pause, and Jamie had to force himself to look his boss in the eye, though he wasn’t used to such things. He wasn’t used to standing his ground. But this was worth gambling on. The rewards were great enough, and he took in deep breath after deep breath as he met his boss’s eyes.
“You can go now.”
Jamie shook his head and just kept staring. He couldn’t let this go. He just couldn’t. This was everything to him, something he could do with his own talents to bring himself up in the world. Something other than peddling burgers and asking people who were screaming at him if they wanted fries with that.
“Dismissed! Get out of here,” the bastard commented, but Jamie stood firm. He had to know that he had tried his best, at least, even if it was pointless.
“Look, go get back to work, or you’re fired.”
The words echoed through Jamie’s brain, resonating in the very back of his skull, right where it met the column of his neck. Just like that, even the small existence that he’d carved out for himself could be taken away, by this greasy, pudgy, repulsive man.
Jamie took a deep breath and then turned on his heel and left the office. His mind whirled, his head spinning almost like he’d drunk far too much, too quickly.
What was this life, anyway? He could get another fast food job, but when would he ever have another chance to do something like audition for one of the biggest bands in the country? In reality, he knew what he was going to do from the moment that his boss, or should he say, his former boss, laid the law down.
He was going to take a risk. He was going to leap blindly, a leap of faith, and trust that whatever happened, he would be okay. Wasn’t he resilient? Hadn’t he landed on his feet when he’d left Dom?
Well, if not on his feet, at least not on his knees, which was where he’d ended up when he was with his ex. He would be okay, and even if he wasn’t, at least he would know he tried.
He had just enough time to run home, to get himself changed and showered, and then to make it to the audition. So he burst out of the fast food joint, and he didn’t even look back. The restaurant was a symbol of him staying where he was, never able to move forward, barely treading water and only just keeping his head above the surface.
He was running by the time he made it to his beat-up junker of a car, one which never started on the first try and sometimes didn’t go until the fourth or fifth time he turned the key in the ignition.
Even that couldn’t dampen his mood. High strung, tightly wound up, only time and luck would dictate where he would end up when that spring deep inside of him unwound. But at least he could know that he had tried, and he took a deep breath as he headed off to his apartment. The apartment where the heat barely worked and where it was boiling hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter, and where the lobby doors were made up of air since they always got broken by people breaking in.
All of that could change if he could be bold. It had been a long time since he’d felt very brave, but maybe that just meant that it was about time.
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