My stomach flopped.
“I don’t know…”
Hunter nodded like he understood.
“Areyouseeing anyone?” I asked. He shook his head.
“No, and I haven’t for awhile. It’s...complicated for me.”
There was something in his voice that drew my attention, a heaviness that I’d never heard from him before, and he dropped eye contact. I reached out across the table and took ahold of his hand.
“What is it?” I asked, trying to catch his eye again. “You can trust me.”
Hunter sighed. “I guess I’ll have to tell you eventually anyway, if we’re getting married.”
“Yeah, secrets aren’t going to make this any easier,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze.
“I...the reason I agreed to this marriage…” He paused to take a drink of his water, looking tense. “I’m going along with this because I won’t marry any other woman. I’m gay.”
I sat in stunned silence for a long moment.
“You’re...gay,” I repeated, and I saw disappointment flash across his face. That snapped me out of my shock. “That’s fine. Really. Totally fine.”
“You sure about that?” he asked, not looking convinced.
“Yes,” I said. “I can’t lie and say that I’m not surprised, but I have no problem with it.”
In fact, I was somewhat relieved. He would never want more from me, never expect me to love him, because he wouldn’t feel that way about me. It also answered the question about why he had agreed to our arranged marriage. I had succumbed to pressure from my parents, and he had taken the opportunity to be married to a woman that wouldn’t ask for more than he could give.
“I have big plans for my life,” he explained. “And I don’t want to fail because of something like being gay. I don’t think the world is ready for a gay president yet. I wish that wasn’t true, but it is. If I marry a man, I’ll never live in the White House.”
A cutting sadness filled me. Hunter was choosing the political career that he desperately wanted over the love life he deserved. He shouldn’t have to make that choice, but I couldn’t argue with his logic.
We dropped the subject after that, when the waiter came to our table to take our orders. I felt better after talking to Hunter and finding out where his head was at. He had his reasons for going along with this, and they were ones that I understood. Now if only I could convince myself that my own reasons were more than just a childish desire to make my parents proud of me.
Butch
I was at the bar when it happened. On a random Wednesday night, not too busy since it was the middle of the week, the police came barging in.
I hadn’t even finished my first beer of the evening yet as I sat at a table with Hawk, shooting the shit over nothing in particular. About half the club was in the bar: Pin, Snake, Chalupa, Yoda, Kim, Trainer, and our prospect, Axel. A couple of guys were playing pool, while others were just drinking. There was even a couple from La Playa that looked like they were on a date as they played darts together.
It was all normal, kind of boring. Although just being in the bar made me think of the hot sex I’d had with Sabrina last week. I hadn’t planned it, but I had no regrets whatsoever. It was the release that I needed for my sexual frustration.
Since then, we’d settled into a sort of routine. She would come to my place during the daytime before I went to work, and we’d have sex. Sometimes she’d bring me food, whatever she was experimenting with currently, which could be anything from desserts to entrees to snacks. It was whatever she could dream up and it was all delicious. I could be her taste-tester forever. She kept telling me that she needed criticism to make the recipes perfect, but so far, I hadn’t tasted a single thing that needed improvement.
She rolled her eyes every time I told her that, but I could see that it pleased her.
We had fallen into this secret relationship without talking about it much. I thought that it was because we both knew that this was temporary and talking about it would just end things that much sooner. Neither of us wanted that.
I was pulled out of my thoughts of Sabrina when the door of the bar opened and a dozen uniformed police officers flooded into the space. The last man through the door was different from the others in his jeans and button-down shirt. A badge hung from around his neck, indicating that he was a cop too, but his attire suggestive that he was above the others. A detective.
The detective had short brown hair and a big nose. His sharp eyes scanned the place, taking in all of us, frozen and watching him. Yoda was the first to move, intercepting the man on his way to the bar.
“You the owner?” the detective asked, not bothering with a greeting.
“I run the place. The owner isn’t here.”
As president of the club, Ryder was technically the owner of the bar, but he had no interest in it. Yoda had managed the place from the beginning, and Ryder was happy to have it stay that way.
