Greg turns toward the mirror over a table in the entryway and realizes that he does look ridiculous. How anybody took him seriously tonight is beyond him. “You’re absolutely right. I’m off to get changed and get to sleep.”
“I’ll be sure to keep the volume down,” Rufus says, courteous.
Once upstairs in the swampy, slightly oppressive heat of his AC-less room, Greg strips off Julien’s button-down and lays it on his bed, conjuring a picture in his mind of the mysterious, spilling sommelier who’d rather stand at the bus stop alone than take his ride.
He’s suddenly struck by the urge to pick up the shirt and sniff it. Embedded in the fabric is his own familiar scent mixed with an unknown detergent—honeysuckle. It’s delectable. He presses his nose farther into the shirt while his free hand wanders down his naked torso and stops against a bulge that strains the front of his jeans and presses into his zipper.
There’s a vague grating voice in the back of his mind telling him he shouldn’t remove his pants, lie down on the bed, or allow his hand to grab hold of his semierect dick while he huffs his new coworker’s spare shirt, but he ignores that voice. He hasn’t taken his medication yet tonight—the medication that balances his mind but reduces his desire for this kind of pleasure. The kind of pleasure that Stryker seemed to want and need more of than Greg could feasibly satisfy without sacrificing his mental health.
Instead of lingering on those unpleasant thoughts, he decides to reach into his dresser drawer, pull out the water-based lube he bought at the drugstore on a toiletries run, and slick his stiffening shaft with steady, tight pumps.
At first, he mines his usual spank bank—buff celebrities from action movies and past crushes—but his mind keeps pivoting.
Flashes of Julien’s long, slender face and hooded eyes overtake him. Briefly, Greg manifests the heat of Julien’s stare as it lingered over his skin in the yellowish bathroom light when he handed him this shirt. This shirt that is now draped over his face as he thrusts himself into his fist, sensing once more that delicious heat.
In the thick of it, unable to fight it, Greg fantasizes—with verve and great detail—that Julien was the one he gave a ride home to. That Julien invited him to his apartment for a nightcap, and Greg took him up on the offer.
Over conversation, before any clothes shed or kisses shared—if any at all—he’d let his walls down and open up about all the things he can’t usually find words for. Because he has this formidable inkling that he and Julien were somehowmeantto meet.
In his mind’s eye, he’s lying in a different bed in a different room smelling this honeysuckle sweetness from its source. He wishes he were not imagining a heat, but rather feeling it up front. Skin to skin. Mouth to mouth. Cock to...
He comes. Hard. And he muffles his moan with his left fist because otherwise he might wake his new neighbors. His body continues to shudder even as he falls off the high of it, even as he starts catching his breath.
He hasn’t been that aroused in...a while. With the breakup and the move and the frequent dysfunction side effects, his mind has been pulled in every other direction but this one. Except tonight.
Tonight, something changed.
Five
JULIEN
Change, in the restaurant industry, happens swiftly. Over the course of a single week, Julien’s head hasn’t stopped speeding with all the newness Greg has unleashed upon Martin’s Place. It’s impossible for him not to begrudge Greg for spectacularly disrupting his routine. He has a one-track mind, after all.
Blame it on the OCD. When his brain sticks on something, it’s done with Gorilla Glue, not Elmer’s. Which is why he’s having such difficulty performing two new duties at once: upping his friendly tableside manner as per Uncle Martin’s request (demand) and avoiding Greg Harlow at all costs.
These things seem mutually exclusive because he, as a server, is unable to avoid the bar. Patrons order drinks, and Greg makes the drinks, and Julien has to get the drinks to serve them. He is so wrapped up in the minutiae that he has spent no fewer than three restless nights thinking of ways to subtly convince Aunt Augustine to stagger their schedules so they’re never working on the same nights, which would directly go against his promise to try to befriend Greg.
Those sleepless nights are to blame for the extra-dark bags under his already perpetually sleepy-looking eyes and the sluggishness of his mid-shift gait as he saunters over to his section, where a new couple has just been seated at the two-top by the window. He swears Braydon is purposefully putting all the walk-ins in his domain, making his night more hectic.
Julien grabs a full carafe of water from the server stand and tries not to think about that, but once again, his brain has latched on to something and refuses to set it free like a hawk with a field mouse in its talons.
“Welcome to Martin’s Place. My name is Julien. I’ll be taking care of you this evening. Are we celebrating anything special?” Aunt Augustine advised this question to the entire staff to spark conversation and show interest in the customer. He frankly doesn’t care much for what brought them into Martin’s Place, only that they are there, which is good for all involved.
“It’s actually our first date,” the white man—bearded with longish black hair—says, reaching a hand across the table to his companion, a dark-skinned woman with a bright red manicure wrapped around her empty water glass. Julien tips the carafe he’s been carrying and fills it.
“Wonderful. Happy to have you!” He hopes he doesn’t sound as false as he feels spouting Aunt Augustine’s words and sporting a goofy service smile like Greg’s.
Greg.He needs to not think about Greg. Or Braydon. Or Greg and Braydon. And whether or not, like the couple in front of him, they’re forging something romantic together.
Because his rational brain knows it’s none of his business. But his rational brain is not the part of him responsible for the rambunctious conga line of jealousy snaking through his chest right now. Upon reflection, while standing at the bus stop on Greg’s first night, he replayed their interaction after the spill in his head. Often, he needs remove from a situation to fully assess his actions and emotions, so on that empty street at 11:30 p.m. while listening to Mozart, he did a rundown of his evening. Declining the cocktail was rude. Fleeing after making a mess was disrespectful. Not only did he owe Greg his clean shirt back, but he owed him a proper apology.
After his conversation with Aunt Augustine, he was more than ready to give one and the ride home seemed like the perfect place to do it...until he saw Braydon in the passenger’s seat of Greg’s car and his mind turned to unimaginable static.
“We’re happy to be here,” the woman says, jolting Julien before he overfills the glass and floods the table. “We saw this place on TikTok and decided to stop in since it’s so close and we didn’t even know it was here.”
Julien chooses to ignore the TikTok comment. “Would you like to hear our specials?”
When the couple nods, he reaches for the pad in the front pocket of his black apron and begins his recitation, which hampers his racing thoughts and cools down his body.
