Chapter 29
“I knew Jerry had to be gay the moment I saw him put an outfit together.”
Harrison glanced sideways at Jeremy. “Jerry?” he mouthed.
Jeremy shrugged, a ‘just go with it’ expression on his face. They were ensconced in the corner of a small, but classy, restaurant in the centre of the city with Jeremy’s oldest friend, Travis, and his partner, Noah. It was the last Friday night before Christmas and every table overflowed with diners enjoying the festive season.
“No straight man under the age of thirty can dress himself worth shit,” Travis continued. “I will never be convinced otherwise.” Having said his piece, he took a long sip of the bright, blue cocktail he’d ordered. “Although Jerry beat me to the punch and guessed I was gay first.”
“Well, you did speak first,” Jeremy conceded. “Your voice was forged from the flames of pride, Trav.”
Travis batted his eyes in delight at the compliment. “You always were a poet.”
Harrison smiled at their banter, glad he’d made the effort to come tonight. When Jeremy had first received the dinner invitation from his old friend, Harrison had been reluctant. He hadn’t met any of Jeremy’s friends yet and doing so would be stressful at a time when he was doing his best to avoid stress. But Jeremy had been so excited, declaring it the perfect opportunity to show off his gorgeous new boyfriend. Harrison couldn’t bear to disappoint him.
He’d spent the first half hour gripping Jeremy’s hand so hard under the table he worried he might cause damage. But Jeremy had gripped him right back and put an arm around the back of his chair. Just as the entrees were being served, Jeremy leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you for coming tonight,” he said in a low voice. “It means a lot to me.”
“Dear Lord,” Noah crooned from the other side of the table. “Look at you two. You’re adorable.”
Jeremy pulled away, chuckling at his friend’s comment. “We are,” he said with a long-suffering sigh. “It’s true.”
“And you and Jeremy were friends from that first day you worked at the department store together?” Harrison asked Travis, hoping to shift the attention back away from himself.
“Absolutely,” Travis exclaimed. “Everyone else in the place was over forty and there we were, a couple of gay teenagers barely out of high school. We had to stick together.” He laughed suddenly, putting a hand on Jeremy’s arm. “Do you remember the time we got drunk on butterscotch schnapps and spent the whole night commiserating over the fact we never fell for each other?”
Jeremy covered his face with his hands as he groaned out loud. “Yes, I do,” he admitted. “It was Valentine’s Day,” he explained to the other two men, “and we’d both been dumped by whoever the hell we’d been dating at the time. We decided life would be simpler if we fell desperately in love with each other.”
“Jerry had read some article about how if you stare into someone’s eyes for four minutes straight without talking you’ll fall instantly in love,” Travis said with dramatic flair. “So, we decided to try it.”
“Only we couldn’t stop laughing long enough to do it,” Jeremy continued. “There was nothing there, so we gave up and got drunk instead.”
“Our lack of spark turned out to be a good thing, because a couple of years later this obscenely sexy guy came into work wanting to buy a suit and I got to serve him. It turned out I was saving all my prolonged eye contact for him.” Travis wrapped one arm around Noah’s neck as he spoke, and ended by pressing a wet kiss to his forehead. The other man grinned, his hand coming up to stroke Travis’ cheek.
“It was a shitty suit,” Noah said. “But my gift with purchase has been outstanding.”
Jeremy shook his head at the two of them before turning to Harrison. “They’ve been disgustingly in love from that day forth. Luckily, they continued to let me hang around until I found a true love of my very own.” He waggled his eyebrows before adding, “And I didn’t even have to buy a shitty suit to get you.”
“We did lose you for a few years there, Jerry,” Travis said with a playful frown. “And we missed the hell out of you.”
Harrison knew Jeremy had lost contact with all his friends in the final years of his relationship with Aaron, and most of his family as well. He was glad Jeremy had managed to reconnect with these people he obviously loved being around.
When he pulled his gaze away from Jeremy, he saw Travis watching him closely. “We do hope you aren’t planning to steal our boy away again now he’s back in the fold.”
Shaking his head, Harrison assured him, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Excellent.” Travis rubbed his hands together in delight. “Then you’ll definitely agree to come out dancing with us after dinner. We want to check out a new gay club down the road from here. It’s supposed to be the bomb.”
Jeremy’s fingers tightened around Harrison’s. “I don’t know,” he said with a laugh. “I came straight here from work, I’m not exactly dressed for clubbing.”
“Honey,” Noah ran his eyes over Jeremy’s usual fitted black t-shirt and suspenders, “you look hot enough to singe fingers in that get-up.”
Jeremy smiled. “But clubs aren’t really my thing anymore and we both have to work tomorrow.”
Harrison’s jaw clenched as he listened to the conversation. Jeremy had turned down the offer to go out after dinner because of him—because of his insistence on monitoring every minute of sleep like some lunatic. In that moment he wondered if perhaps he and Aaron weren’t so different, after all.
Aaron had stifled Jeremy’s natural exuberance with his possessive nature and jealousy. Harrison didn’t harbour those qualities, but he was still in danger of making the same mistake. Jeremy was an outgoing person. He loved being around people and having a good time, just as much as he loved spending nights at home watching re-runs or reading. Harrison didn’t want to hold Jeremy back in any way, not when doing so would threaten the very qualities that had caught his attention in the first place. Nor did he want Jeremy to have to settle for going out without him. Jeremy had taken a risk by choosing to be with him, now it was time for Harrison to do the same.
“I think we should go,” he said, interrupting the good-natured argument about what constituted a feasible reason for going home early.
