Chapter Three
The longer Grant stared at the shirt in his hands, the less sure he was of the color. He’d thought up until now that it was a blue shirt, but the way it caught the light in front of the window made it look more on the purple side.
He was the last person who should have been judging the color of a shirt, but he didn’t even rememberowninga purple shirt. Maybe he’d accidentally washed it with something red? He’d dyed a few t-shirts a splotchy pink that way.
Was this shirt splotchy? It looked blue again, and he wouldn’t have been able to tell if it was, but someone else probably could.
Grant looked up at himself in the mirror and sighed. He looked old, his grey hairs starker than ever in the unflattering bathroom light. He needed to do something about that, for the sake of his vanity if nothing else.
If he went into work wearing a shirt with splotches of purple on it, people would laugh at him. Maybe not to his face, but they’d do it behind his back. He sighed and shrugged it off, resolving to get another one from his closet.
There were already rumors going around about him, he didn’t need to add to them.
The fact that the rumors weretruedidn’t make it okay. He’d come to terms with being out a long time ago, but he hadn’t actually told anyone in the office yet. They’d heard it from somewhere else.
No one was being cruel about it, but that wasn’t the point. This job was harder than he’d expected it to be in ways he hadn’t even imagined. People looked for fault with him now, whereas before he’d been invisible.
There was a knock at the door, startling Grant out of his thoughts.
Shit.
The interview. He’d forgotten all about it.
He turned and headed for the door, his stomach twisting as he opened it, nerves making him feel sick.
He’d accepted that he needed a PA, but it was all happening a lot faster than he’d expected.
Grant opened the door to see a dark-haired young man standing on the other side. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but this wasn’t it.
The guy was cute, though, and he was smiling brightly at Grant, which made his heart skip a beat.
Pretty young men didn’t smile at him like that.
Of course, this one wanted something, but he could let himself be flattered a little. It was the only way anyone was going to pay him any attention.
After a moment, the other man’s face fell, one perfectly-arched eyebrow raised, his lips pursed.
Grant had forgotten to put another shirt on. The maybe-purple one was still in his hand.
He opened and closed his mouth a few times, unsure what to say. Should he apologize? Or act like this was totally normal and it wasn’t weird at all to answer his own door without a shirt on?
He should have held the interview in his office. A smart person would have scheduled office-hours time to do this, but Grant had so much to do that office hours were something that happened to other people right now.
“Hi,” he said eventually. “I, uh. You’re… you’re here for the job interview, yeah?”
“Yes,” the other man said. “I’m Sunny.”
Grant blinked.Sunny? What the hell kind of a name was that?
“I, uh… I’m not wearing a shirt,” he said, his brain still working through what was happening and how he was going to solve it. “I was… this one… look, come in.”
He stepped away from the door, giving Sunny room to move past him.
“I’ll go put a shirt on,” he said, automatically holding the other one out for Sunny. To his horror, Sunny took it before he could move it away from him again.
This wasn’t going well. Grant had rarely felt like so much of an idiot in his life.
Rather than compound his mistakes, he turned to head for the bedroom, shouting, “make yourself at home,” over his shoulder as he went.
