Authors: KC Burn
“What about Ryan?” As soon as Ryan had been old enough to leave his own home, he hadn’t ever returned, to Luke’s knowledge, and started joining their small family celebrations. Then Luke realized how the question sounded. “I mean, obviously he’d be welcome to come, too.”
Zach smiled that genuinely happy smile that he and Kelly had strove to keep on his face without spoiling him with material goods they couldn’t always afford.
“Good. So, it’s settled. The three of us bachelors will hang out and have a man Christmas.”
Luke rolled his eyes. He’d have to have a personality transplant before he’d call it a “man Christmas.”
“Guess I’d better start making a grocery list.” Luke wanted to laugh. Spending Christmas with his son and his almost-son would be fantastic. But he couldn’t rely on Zach forever; he needed to find a life of his own that didn’t involve conversing with television detectives or waiting for whatever scraps of time Zach could afford to throw him. “Aren’t you going to text Ryan, tell him to come back in? I think it’s a little cold out there for him.”
Zach’s gaze slid away like Luke was covered in Teflon.
“What? What have you done that I’m not going to like?”
His son bit his lip and pulled a folded sheet of purple paper out of his pocket and handed it over.
Luke opened it, the sight of a rainbow flag making him cringe ever so slightly. Advertising his orientation didn’t seem like something he’d ever want to do.
Are you working in a blue collar profession? Do you find it hard to meet people? Do you feel uncomfortable being honest with your coworkers about your orientation?
If so, Rainbow Blues might be for you. Rainbow Blues offers a safe environment where you can be yourself and meet other men like you.
Yearly membership $100.
“Merry Christmas,” Zach said.
Luke sucked in a lungful of pine-scented air. The traditional scent evened out his fury a bit, but not entirely.
“You signed me up for a dating service? Zach, that is not your place. Cancel it. Immediately.”
Zach finally looked at him, chin thrust out and spots of color appearing high on his cheeks. Luke groaned. Zach was his son, through and through, and he could be stubborn as hell when he set his mind on something, and Zach was wearing his stubborn face. Which meant Luke needed to give in to whatever this was, or he and Zach were going to have a huge argument.
“No. I won’t. First off, it’s not a dating service, it’s a social group. They specify quite clearly on the website that their purpose is for blue collar workers to find other gay friends. Because, Dad, you need some fucking friends. You probably also need to get laid, but getting laid is a hell of lot easier than making friends.”
Luke’s face heated up. The truth didn’t just hurt, but it could humiliate too. He also was a little worried that Zach was too naive to recognize a sleazy hookup site masquerading as something reputable.
“I also paid for you to go to their holiday party, which is their next scheduled get-together. It’s Saturday night, so you’ve got plenty of time to find something nice to wear.”
“Zach, what the fuck?”
Luke wanted to bite back the words as soon as they escaped, doubly so when his son paled. Luke didn’t swear at his son, not ever. But right before his eyes, his son proved he was a man. Instead of caving or running away, Zach merely narrowed his eyes and pulled his shoulders back, staring Luke right in the eyes.
“I would never presume to know what you’d look for in a potential boyfriend. Maybe if I’d ever seen you date, I’d know what you liked or what you didn’t. I checked out the website. I checked out reviews. I checked to see if they’d had complaints with the Better Business Bureau. This isn’t some skanky meat market because, ew, I wouldn’t send you to one of those, even though it might get you to loosen up a bit.”
The silence lengthened as a calculating look appeared on Zach’s face and a thread of panic wove its way into Luke’s belly.
“No. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but no. I’ll go to the holiday party, just forget whatever you’re thinking right now.” Luke wouldn’t put it past him to figure out a way to send Luke to an orgy or hire him a rent boy or something. The last time Luke had seen that particular look, Zach had ended up overdosed on caffeine. That particular brainwave had been a combination of a late term paper and a sleep-deprivation study with himself as the only subject, which he’d managed to get an A on. The time before that, he and Kelly had ended up with a tub full of lime Jell-O and had to explain to Ryan’s parents how both their kids ended up with matching black eyes and split lips because they’d thought the idea of a pool full of Jell-O was cool and a bathtub was the nearest they could manage.
“You promise to go to the holiday party?”
“I promise. I swear.” Besides, if it was a skanky hookup, well, maybe getting laid wouldn’t be so awful. It had been… months since he’d gotten off with a hand that wasn’t his own, and pretty much the only time he’d gotten laid since his divorce had been in seedy club hookups. He’d find a way to tell Zach he’d never be going again, without letting him know his Christmas gift was a fairly expensive cock.
Luke got another big, happy smile for his capitulation. “Good, because if you didn’t agree, I was going to tell Mom how you spent last Christmas.”
Zach pulled a phone out of his pocket and started texting while Luke tried to breathe. His breakup with Kelly might have been mutual and amicable, but he sure as shit didn’t want her to know he was a pathetic asshole. No one wanted their ex to know that. Bad enough that his son and probably Ryan were fully aware.
Moments later, Ryan bounded back in the apartment, and the three of them settled into setting up the tree. This close to Christmas, the decorating selections were limited, or so Luke had to assume based on the eclectic mix of colors and styles Zach had purchased for his tree. Or perhaps his son had suddenly become color-blind or just plain blind.
They ordered pizza in, Luke’s barely touched frozen dinner nothing more than a bad memory.
The finished product came together beautifully, and he’d have died rather than tell Zach anything different, but the cheery addition only illustrated how dismal his life had become.
L
UKE
STOOD
outside the community center. He might have to rethink his conclusion that this was a skeevy hookup party. Surely that would be held at a club of some sort, wouldn’t it? He wedged a finger under the unfamiliar collar and pulled, trying to make the new shirt comfortable. At work and on his personal time, he was much more a T-shirt and jeans sort of person. At least he’d been able to talk Zach out of a tie. He hadn’t worn a tie since his wedding… no, wait, there’d been a couple of funerals over the years. Nevertheless, there was no way he could possibly manage socializing with complete strangers while being strangled by a fancy strip of silk.
He’d promised to give it a shot, and Zach had spent good money to give him this opportunity. Even if the purple flyer had caught his eye, it’s unlikely he would have bothered looking into it further.
Another deep breath and he walked in, trying to pretend he wasn’t completely out of his depth.
The interior was decorated like a high school Christmas dance. But the room was filled with a bunch of men. He’d half expected to be the youngest guy in a room full of dinosaurs, but there was a substantial age range; he was neither oldest nor youngest. Hovering in the doorway, he wasn’t sure what to do. Going straight for the food—or the cooler that he prayed contained bottles of beer—seemed a little rude. Surely he wasn’t supposed to just walk up to a random person and start talking, was he?
Sweat popped out on his forehead, and his breathing got shallow. The room wasn’t huge, but there probably weren’t more than thirty guys here. Not an overwhelming number and certainly no reason for his panic, except he hadn’t tried to make friends with strangers since he’d been in school. Kelly had been his social committee for so long.
“Hey man, no passing out.” A strong hand clamped down on his shoulder, and Luke suppressed a startled yelp.
Luke cleared his throat. “Uh, hey.” A slight turn to his left and a dark-haired guy, who was probably about ten years younger and carrying about thirty pounds more muscle than Luke, came into view.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” The guy was also wearing a dress shirt, but he seemed far more comfortable in it than Luke was in his.
“Uh, yes.”
The dark-haired guy peered around the room. “Usually our fearless leader greets the newbies, but I don’t see him anywhere.”
Luke took a breath and jumped into the deep end. “I’m Luke Jordan.”
“Nice to meet you, Luke. I’m….” He sighed loudly. “I’m Bennett Adrian Walker.”
Luke blinked. Was he in the right place? But Bennett just laughed.
“I can see what you’re thinking. I’m an electrician, but my parents were hoping for another doctor in the family and named me accordingly.”
“Another doctor?” That was a lot of pressure to put on a newborn, but the name certainly did suit a doctor.
“Yeah, Dad was a surgeon, Mom was a registered nurse, and my two brothers are both doctors.”
“How come you became an electrician?” Luke coughed. That was kind of a tactless question, since becoming a doctor wasn’t always a question of determination. Intelligence, skill, and grades were defining factors. It wasn’t like just anybody could wake up and decide to become a doctor.
Bennett laughed again, without a hint of bitterness. “Rebellion? No, the sight of blood just freaks me out. I supposed I could have gone lawyer or something, but I sort of fell into an apprenticeship, and I like what I do. My father sees it as an almost criminal lack of ambition, but hey, isn’t that the job of the baby in the family?”
Luke grinned. Maybe this socialization stuff wasn’t so bad after all. “I wouldn’t know. I’m an only child, and I only have one kid.”
“You’ve got a kid? Wow. How old?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Shut up. Testing the heterosexual waters as an infant, were you?”
Luke grinned even wider at the subtle compliment about his appearance. “I was pretty young, yeah.”
“So what do you do?”
“Construction manager.”
Talking shop all night wasn’t really what he wanted to do, although he wasn’t about to proposition Bennett either. The guy was good-looking, but there wasn’t much of a spark. Luke hadn’t gone through all this just to force a sexual attraction that wasn’t really there.
Bennett wiggled his beer bottle. “C’mon. You need a beer, and I need a refill. Then we can stand along the walls and wait for the boy of our dreams to ask us to dance.”
Luke snorted out a laugh. “That’s pretty close to what I was thinking. Are all the meetings like this?”
“Nah. This isn’t our usual room. And while it’s a social group, there’s usually a little more formalized interactions, like icebreakers and shit.”
“Have you been a member long?” Luke wasn’t sure about the weird note in Bennett’s voice.
“Just a couple of months. It’s a good idea, but it’s also sad that it’s necessary. Coming to the meeting makes me feel like a failure. Like I couldn’t find the right words to make the guys I work with just… accept who I am. Like being afraid of someone reacting to my ‘gayness’ makes me inadequate.”
They’d reached the cooler while Bennett was talking, and Bennett rummaged around for a couple of bottles for them. After opening them, he handed one off to Luke and the two of them stepped out of the way of the cooler. If the other guys were like Luke, the cooler would be the most popular spot for the evening.
“I know how you feel. My son was actually the one who found the group for me and signed me up as an early Christmas gift.” Luke had never really been comfortable with someone so quickly, especially not to talk this openly and easily. If only he was attracted to Bennett, he might propose this second.
Bennett lifted an eyebrow, and Luke snorted. “I know. I mean, he was right. I was in a complete rut, doing the same thing day in and day out. I don’t feel comfortable talking about my sexuality with the guys I work with, and that makes going out for drinks or whatever really tense, because I’m afraid I’ll say the wrong thing with too many beers in me.”
With a nod, Bennett clinked their beer bottles together in wordless accord.
“But it’s a bit embarrassing that my son saw enough to figure out I don’t really have friends anymore. Not since I divorced my wife.”
“Oh, you were married, too? That can be tough.”
“I was lucky, I think. My ex is a good person, and we got along really well, but we definitely made better friends than spouses. The split was easier than many I’ve seen, but….” Luke glanced around the room and swallowed a large mouthful of beer hoping to cool his heated cheeks. “I’m not a very social person. The friends we had were mostly Kelly’s. There weren’t any sides, exactly, for them to take, but it was her they connected with, not me.”
Oh God. Luke bit his lip. Now he’d just told a complete stranger that he was a complete loser. This wasn’t how to make friends. Wasn’t he supposed to pretend to be fun or interesting?
“I’m so sorry.” Luke slid his gaze to the door. “I didn’t mean to spill all that.”
Bennett laughed and punched him lightly on the bicep. “Don’t worry. You were more circumspect than my last date.”
Luke let himself relax, and they talked for a bit before Bennett took him around and introduced him to a few other guys. A few guys looked like they were going to hook up, and one of them gave him a look that Luke had no trouble interpreting, but for the most part, they were just a bunch of guys hanging out. Bennett never left his side, but he didn’t feel like he was being smothered. He just sensed a guy who he got along with, and whose company he enjoyed.
“You want to hang out again sometime? We could swap phone numbers or e-mail or something.” Bennett’s expression was a little hesitant, and instead of the confident, outgoing man he’d been hanging out with all evening, Luke saw a crack in the confidence, a guy who also just wanted a friend.