“Okay. I like that idea. Can you handle the reservations?”
“Don’t ask dumb questions. How long do you want to stay?”
“The whole summer,” he said, not even second-guessing himself. “Or, at least, I want to give myself the option to do that.”
“I understand. I’ll handle everything. And, if you don’t mind me asking, is everything okay, Drew?”
He sighed and watched an old couple, presumably married, in matching teal jogging suits, totter past his windows. Another stab of regret hit his stomach.
“Thank you, Estelle,” he said. “Everything’s not okay, but I’m hoping it will be, after I have some time to think.”
Chapter 2
Gabriel
Gabriel Ackermann loved romantic comedies,even though he knew that they weren’t all that realistic. He loved the way that characters in a rom-com bantered, how no matter how bad things got, you could be assured they would end up together. It was comforting.
All his life, Gabriel had wanted to have his rom-com moment.
So far, no luck.
There’d been a few guys in college who werealmostpromising, though Gabriel was pretty sure that he was reaching when it came to seeing certain interactions as meet-cutes.
It didn’t stop Gabriel from hoping. He saw each new interaction with another queer man as a potential meet-cute, hoping that, one day, one of the men would surprise him.
Unfortunately, Gabriel’s chances at a meet-cute had severely decreased since he’d graduated from college a year ago. He’d studied at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It was a good education at a good college town, and he missed his friends from there. He also missed the men. He’d had several short-lived situations with other students (and local men), though none of them had lasted. They’d been fun, and instructive, and had prepared him well to enter into the vibrant queer neighborhoods of Chicago, which had been his plan after he graduated from college.
Unfortunately, due to circumstances he could not have predicted, he hadnotended up moving to Chicago, and instead moved back to his small hometown in northern Michigan, which meant that his chances of meeting a cute gay barista, or a thunder-thighed spin instructor, or a clean-cut gay finance bro, had dropped to almost zero.
Orion, Michigan, had many wonderful things to offer, but a rich queer community was not one of them. There were a couple of older queer couples, and a few kids bravely coming into their identities, and the odd queer tourist here and there, but most of the queer men of a compatible age with Gabriel had moved away—or he’d grown up with them, messed around with them in high school, and shared a mutual disinterest in reopening life chapters better left closed.
That meant that when Gabriel wanted to fulfill his sexual appetite, he usually had to go outside the town limits of Orion. There were several surrounding towns and small cities, and he generally had more luck on the apps if he set his location there. He’d even once driven three hours south to Grand Rapids for a weekend-long romp with a real estate agent who had an apartment overlooking the Grand River.Thathad been fun.
He knew that most of these hookups probably wouldn’t be the rom-com meet-cutes that would lead to a satisfying romance, but he had more or less given up on looking for that.
It wasn’t romance that had brought him home to Orion. Rather, family duty had called him home—and kept him there.
Last night, Gabriel, with nothing else to do, had gotten on his phone and opened his favorite hookup app. Favorite not because it was easy to use (it was notoriously bad for its user experience and interface), but favorite because it was, by far, the most popular and most convenient.
He’d perused his options for about twenty minutes, messaged several different guys, politely requested face pictures from those who didn’t have the pictures in their profiles, and blocked the men who refused to send face, but were more than happy to send cock or hole.
Finally, he’d connected with a guy named Vinnie, a man who lived thirty miles down the coast of Lake Michigan in an elegant lake house.
He’d first learned that Vinnie was twenty-seven, was 5’11”, weighed 175 lbs, preferred twinks to bears, was “open to fun,” and was absolutely “DTF.” Face pictures and a link to Vinnie’s social media profile showed that he was cute, fit, and seemed nice enough.
That was enough for Gabriel. He’d showered, trimmed his pubes, dressed in a tank top and running shorts, thrown a bottle of lube, a dildo, condoms, and a bottle of poppers into a tote bag, fueled up his 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee, and set off on an adventure to meet Vinnie.
Vinnie had been nice. His house was even bigger than it had looked on social media. He clearly had money from something, but admitted that most of his money came from his family. They’d started with a glass of wine on the deck, looking out over the yellow-white beaches and blue waves of Lake Michigan.
Halfway through their second glasses, they’d abandoned their wine and moved inside, where they’d quickly shed their clothes and spent several hours exploring each other’s bodies.
Gabriel usually didn’t spend the night at a hookup’s house. He preferred to go back to his own place (technically his parents’ cottage), use his own shower, and sleep in his own bed. But Vinnie was thirty miles from Orion, and it was past midnight by the time they finally collapsed after hours of sex. Vinnie had invited Gabriel to stay, and Gabriel had taken him up on it.
One rom-com cliché that Gabriel always found annoying was the hero or heroine waking up at the start of the film, messy-haired and inevitably late for something. Wasn’t there another way to show that someone was a mess?
He was very disappointed in himself whenhewoke up in Vinnie’s bed, messy-haired and (as it turned out) late for a meeting with the staff at his parents’ summer camp, where he would be working this summer as the assistant director.
“Oh, fuck,” he said, looking at his phone.
