Twenty-Four
GREG
Greg’s stomach protests when he tells Rufus and Jessica he’s moving back to New York.
“Thank you again for your generosity. I’ve had such a great time here. I’ll come back and visit often.”
“But...” Rufus begins.
“You can’t,” Jessica finishes for him.
Greg says he has to.
By the time he makes it to Martin’s Place, early for his shift that night, Greg’s stomach is hosting a whole damn rally, picket signs and megaphones and everything. He’s ignoring it as best he can. Focusing on the positive.
Augustine and Martin look at him from across the desk with twin expressions of confusion and disappointment. Like he’d just slapped each of them across the face with one of the uncooked fish filets from the kitchen.
“Is it something we did?” Augustine asks. It sounds eerily like a breakup that’s not going well.
In a way, it kind of is.
Never in a million years did Greg expect his New York homecoming to go so well. Anika and Josh greeted him with open arms, and Stryker even opened his home to him. When they were dating, Greg and Stryker floated the idea of living together, but ultimately Stryker decided he needed his space. (The first nail in the coffin of their relationship, though Greg was blissfully unaware they were about to be buried.)
Greg’s ignorance and Stryker’s decision didn’t stop them from having sleepovers. Plenty of them. They’d roll into bed together after wild nights of partying and making content.
They reprised this situation over the weekend except with one key difference: Greg took the guest bedroom instead of the other half of Stryker’s California king. It felt foreign but comforting, sleeping off his bad drinking-based decisions in a luxury high-rise miles above the noise and the problems.
When he woke up, Stryker had breakfast waiting for them. He hadn’t made it, naturally. He ordered it and had it delivered, but he got Greg’s favorite: a Swiss omelet with rye toast and a maple latte. Greg was touched.
It was the gesture that tipped the scale. Greg was taking the job and moving back.
Of course, he consulted his bank account first, toyed with some numbers, paid some bills, and made a mental checklist of how he could make it work. And in the end, he decided hecouldandwouldmake it work. That’s why he’s here, putting in his two-week notice.
“No. You both have been wonderful. I love Martin’s Place. It’s just...”don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it“...you don’t really need me anymore.”
Truly, Greg doesn’t believe it. Martin’s Place could fall apart as easily as it came together when he arrived, but that’s not his problem. This, like the sex pact with Julien, was always meant to be temporary.
He looks down at the gold watch taking up residence on his wrist. Stryker gave it back to him. Greg had left it, before the great flee from New York, on the nightstand in Stryker’s bedroom. A casualty of not telling anyone where he was going. He packed and dipped as quickly and cleanly as possible, which meant leaving things behind.
Over breakfast, Stryker apologized (A man! Apologizing! A miracle!) for what went down between them before Greg left, saying he understood why Greg wouldn’t tell him where he was going next. That was when he set the watch down on the table. Greg recognized it immediately. A gift for his birthday the year before. He rarely left his apartment without it. When he first got to Allentown, he missed it, sure, but he missed a lot of things. That watch like his Gucci belt wouldn’t make sense here, so it didn’t matter too much.
Wearing it to his shift tonight, it felt like the last phase of a transformation he had to go through.
“Hang on a second, says who?” Martin is staunch, evidently denying this.
Greg shakes his head. He won’t say Julien’s name. It’s bad enough he says it in his dreams where he can conjure Julien at will, every detail of him. Naked or clothed. “I only mean that happy hour is on the map. I’m not the reason people are coming anymore. Maybe at the beginning, but now it’s this place and the community they’ve built here.”
Taking a quick inhalation, Greg tries not to wallow over his own community, the one he’s leaving behind by making this decision. He banishes Rufus and Jessica’s upset into a shadowy corner of his mind. He’s making the right choice. Right for him. Right for right now.
“Who’s going to come up with all those crafty cocktails, huh?” Augustine asks. Martin seems a tad too bereft to even speak again. “It’s your special skill. You’re our ace in the hole. Our secret weapon. We’d really like you to stay.”
This is music to Greg’s ears—Stevie Nicks crooning after a hectic day kind of music—because it’s not often that people ask him to stay. People are often pushing him out, away. His parents. Stryker.
“What are they paying you? We’ll match it.” Martin’s gotten his voice back. It’s gruff, stern.
“We’ll double it!” Augustine chimes in.
Greg tells them.
