Page 11 of Counterpoint
Jackson had to fight—carefully—for every inch he got. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right, and it killed Adrian a little inside that he couldn’t fix that. He’d gotten the side-eye, too, the first time he’d mentioned an ex-boyfriend, but it was nothing like the stonewalling Jackson got.
He spent the day cleaning up William’s mistakes and debriefing his bosses on his trip. By quitting time, his mailbox was still a dumpster fire and his head a pounding mess. An hour later, Jackson leaned against the frame of his cube wall. “You staying here all night, or you wanna get a beer and bitch?”
He really should go home. He hadn’t had a chance to catch up on his personal email yet. Thank god he’d gotten all the freelance website work for clients done before he’d gone on that business trip. Given the workload in front of him at the day job, he wasn’t going to be picking up any freelance work for some time.
Adrian blew out a breath and scanned the horror that was the three displays of work he still had to do, then glanced at the clock. “Fuck.”
“Come on, Adi. Let’s get out of here. That’ll be right where you left it bright and early tomorrow.”
Jackson had a point. And he did need a beer. “I’m gonna need another run tomorrow to chill me out before I tackle all that, I think.” Adrian locked his screen and grabbed his phone and his gym bag.
“Hell. Is it that bad?”
“You know exactly how bad it is.” When they got into the empty elevator car and the doors slid shut, Adrian murmured, “I don’t know how you put up with it.”
Jackson grunted. “How do you put up with them making those sly comments about you being gay?”
Adrian gritted his teeth and kept his mouth shut. “You know what really annoys me about those?”
Jackson’s lips twitched upward. “Yeah, I do.”
He’d ranted about it often enough to Jackson. He wasn’t gay. He was pansexual, even if his preferences did lean masculine. But explaining the nuances of orientation to rigidly straight men was a lost cause, so Adrian had given up.
The elevator door opened, and they headed out into the lobby and then into the city they both loved. In the back of his mind, he heard that question Dominic had asked on Saturday. Did he like his job?
Today, the answer wasn’t yes, or even well enough. Shit. “This gig pays really well.”
It was as if Jackson wasn’t at all surprised by his shift in conversation—or maybe it was because there wasn’t really one. “Other gigs pay well, too.”
The way he said that... Adrian’s heart flipped and his steps faltered. “Jack...” Because he didn’t want to be left alone at the bank. Because he needed a friend at work.
Jackson glanced his way and huffed. “Beer, Adi. And I’ll tell you.”
They ended up back in Brooklyn, closer to Jackson’s home in Far Rockaway than Adrian’s. The bar was closer to an old neighborhood type, given that gentrification hadn’t quite set in this part of Brooklyn—no hipster menu, no gleaming metal, and distressed wood. All the wear and tear of the place was genuine, from years of use, not from special paints or whatnot.
Adrian felt at home here, too. He’d grown up in Brooklyn during the ’80s, back when his neighborhood wasn’ttheplace to live. His parents both worked and their house—the one he now owned—had been neat, but as run-down as this bar.
When the bartender set beers down for both Jackson and him, Adrian turned and waited.
“Don’t give me that look, Adi.”
“What look is that?”
Jackson smiled and looked into his beer, a rare blush on his dark, chiseled cheeks. “The lost puppy look.”
Adrian sat up. “I’m not—”
“Yeah, you are.” Jackson took a swig, then leveled his gaze at Adrian. “For all that you’re connected and have community, you don’t make friends that easily.”
That wasn’t—okay, maybe that was true. He had his kink community and the LGBTQIA group he volunteered with, and he knew some of the other folks at the gym. There was the freelance work that kept his hand in social media and website design, but friendships...? He could count those on one hand.
“I never understood that about you, ’cause you’re a good guy. What’re you so afraid of?”
Losing.Adrian laughed into his beer and avoided the answer, because it would strip too much off. “So you’ve got another job lined up, then?”
Jackson shook his head, but it wasn’t in answer to Adrian’s question. “I’ve been interviewing. I’m close to an offer at this place uptown. Startup type, near Columbia.” He paused. “Minority owned. They’re putting together this great social media app.”
“Chancy.” Adrian couldn’t help it. Startups came and went. Hell, he’d been on that roller coaster in California, enough to hate it. Yeah, so while he might not like the bank, while there might be a whole hell of a lot of prejudice, it wasstable.
