Drawn to You (The Call-Ups #1)

1. Gabe

ONE

GABE

Gabe was lucky he liked chaos. Between classes, two (sometimes three) jobs, and a house full of loud men, a quiet moment to himself simply did not exist. But while the chaos was welcome, the financial instability was not.

“I need a new strategy,” Gabe said as he sprawled across the couch in the living room, ancient laptop on his lap, his feet in his roommate Parker’s lap.

Parker’s tuxedo cat, Otis, who they joked about co-parenting together, was a loaf of bread on Gabe’s chest, partially blocking his view of his computer screen.

“I keep telling you that you have the perfect ass for Only Fans,” Duncan said from the kitchen table where he was picking away at a puzzle. The house was small enough that the kitchen table was only feet from the living room.

“And I keep telling you that the folks on Only Fans who are successful work hard at that. It’s time consuming. I need money to just start…appearing. I don’t need another job.” Had Gabe already done research into OF? Perhaps.

“Mac and I used to sell plasma,” Parker offered, his voice quiet as always. Of all his roommates, Parker was the only one who could sneak up on Gabe. He was painfully shy, and Gabe was ridiculously proud of having worn him down into best friendship after nearly two years of living together.

“I tried. I always have too recent of a tattoo. Or I can’t get my heart rate below one hundred beats per minute when a needle is involved and they won’t let me.” Tattoo needles and blood-draw needles weren’t even in the same category. He’d get a thousand tattoos before giving blood.

“The other thing that worked out for us was having an old relative die and leave money. In my experience, that kind of money can be enough for a down payment on a questionably shitty house,” Parker recommended next.

Parker and Mac had combined their inheritances from their grandparents to buy the craftsman they were all currently sitting in the living room of in South Minneapolis.

“Hm, I would need to have some rich relatives I don’t know about, which isn’t much of a plan.”

Gabe paged between the tabs he had open on his computer: His bank account, which always looked sad.

An email with an impending tuition charge for spring semester he wasn’t sure how he was going to pay.

His calendar app that he needed to stay on top of, lest he double book himself for shifts with his on-campus job with the grounds crew, the late-night stocking he did at the grocery store, and the occasional coffee shop shift he picked up when he could.

Everyone always asked him when he slept. That was always a laugh.

“You need a sugar daddy,” Duncan said, keeping an eye on the stove, where he had a compote simmering.

Before Mac and Parker bought this house, the basement was set up as a separate unit and had a full kitchen.

Duncan paid a bit more in rent to have his own kitchen to himself, where he ran a microbakery, but he brought his compote upstairs so he could hang out too.

“Okay. Great. How do I find one of those?” Gabe opened a new tab on his computer to search how to find a sugar daddy .

He didn’t hit enter quite yet. He didn’t think Google needed to know this about him.

Otis bumped the top of his head against Gabe’s chin, and he absently scratched his little cat cheeks.

“Who is rich? Old men?” Duncan suggested.

“Do I need that in my life?”

“Who is young and rich?”

“Athletes?” Parker suggested. Their whole household was filled with artists and misfits. They were all queer. But Parker loved soccer—perhaps for the soccer players.

“Okay. A historically queer-friendly demographic.”

“I’m coming up with ideas here!” Parker pushed Gabe’s feet out of his lap, and Gabe deposited them right back where they had been.

Gabe indulged this line of thinking. “Do soccer players make money?”

“Not sugar daddy money, I fear,” Parker lamented.

“You’re going to want to go for a football, basketball, or baseball player probably,” Duncs said.

“Hockey?” Gabe asked, to feel like he was contributing to the brainstorming. He didn’t watch hockey, but it was the only other sport he could think of.

“Hockey players make shit compared to football.” Of all of them, Duncan was raised with the most prototypical American dad and had two straight older brothers. He was the most proximal to American heterosexuals.

Gabe started searching Instagram for local athletes. “I’ll be a trophy husband. I’m hot, I can cook, I can clean. We can have sex or not?— ”

“I would hope if you’ve got an athlete wrapped around your little finger that you’d at least get to fuck him,” Duncan said. He got up from his puzzle to stir his compote, turning the heat up slightly.

“It will make any athlete look progressive and inclusive and be good for the team and league. It’s a leadership move. In exchange, they pay my tuition. It’s not that much for an athlete. I’m a bargain.”

“I’m sold. If I had the money, I’d sponsor your life.”

“Thanks, Parks.” Parker had this sweet flop of dark brown hair that he kept fastidiously trimmed short and perpetually rosy cheeks that solicited a lot of good-natured pinching from everyone in the house.

Except for Wyatt, who had moved into the basement bedroom a couple of months ago and was still trying to gel.

Gabe would consider him fully acclimated to the house when he could casually pinch Parker’s sweet little cheeks.

Shy Parker would have to stop darting out of the room every time Wyatt entered it, though.

“Honestly, it’s the best plan you got,” Duncan called from the kitchen.

“I’ll get right on it,” Gabe said, deciding to move on from that line of thought. “Right after I win the lottery.”

“I’ve wanted to try flipping furniture, if you want in on that,” Parker said.

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“We’ll borrow Mac’s pickup and drive around on garbage day to find something good, then…paint it or something. It’ll be easy. Then we can pop it on Facebook Marketplace.”

Gabe, Parker, and Parker’s older brother (of eleven months), Mac, shared two cars between the three of them.

It could get complicated, but Parker worked from home and only needed the car occasionally to go to therapy or the grocery store.

Mac was an old-school sign painter, whose jobs were irregular and often required a bit of a drive to get to.

Gabe usually ended up behind the wheel of Parker’s Prius.

Technically, Gabe didn’t have any real claim to either of their cars. The siblings were just generous.

“Worth a try,” Gabe agreed. It would be a good excuse to get Parker out of the house, which was a secret goal he, Duncan, and Mac all had.

“And speaking of being broke, it’s time for me to go to work.

” The clock on his old computer read 9 p.m. He had to get to the grocery store.

Carefully, he shut his laptop and maneuvered so Otis wouldn’t bolt out of the room at the movement.

He shifted so that Otis could replace the spot Gabe’s feet had taken up in Parker’s lap.

He got ready, hopped in Parker’s car, and headed out.

He’d been working at the grocery store for nearly two years, but recently, it had been acquired by a big grocery distribution company.

The changes, of course, made working there worse.

The old owners now lived on a beach somewhere.

Meanwhile, he now had to clock in using his fingerprint.

The late-night crew had been fairly stable in the last year-ish, though, and it meant the night stocking shift went smoothly.

They all had headphones in, and Gabe spent his time thinking about his homework.

He had a creative writing class that semester, and he had no idea what to write about for his short story.

He was supposed to come to his next class with a stack of ideas to run by a small group.

That was hard, though. What was easier was thinking about his illustration class.

He liked to work Otis into whatever he could, and since the project they were working on was developing characters, he’d made Otis into a cat detective.

All he wanted was to be at home in front of a sketchbook, drawing a cat with a magnifying glass in its little paw. When he thought about the effort he could put into his classes if he didn’t have to work a million hours a week, his frustration boiled over.

His Sunday night shifts were full eight-hour shifts, so his lunch hit at two a.m. He pulled his phone out in the break room as he waited for the hot water from the dispenser on the side of the coffee maker to cook his little dry square of ramen.

He scooped a spoonful of peanut butter out of the jar he kept in his lunch box to eat while the noodles softened, then opened Instagram.

There wasn’t a lot of fresh content in the middle of the night, but he scrolled through art posted by the hundreds of accounts he followed.

He hadn’t posted something new in a while to either his regular art account or his Patreon where he posted explicit art.

Things were dire when he didn’t want to draw dicks.

Exhaustion crept in. Normal people were asleep right now. All of his roommates were asleep. He had no one to bother with text messages.

He sighed and found the Instagram account for Minnesota’s baseball team.

It didn’t take much scrolling to find a post-game interview with a cute player.

He followed the tag to the first baseman’s Instagram account, did a quick scan of the account to see if he was married, and when he didn’t seem to be, Gabe thumbed open a DM.

Gabe

Hey, sexy. I’m a college student looking for someone to be my sugar daddy. In exchange, I’ll be your trophy boyfriend. You can be the most progressive player in the league. Real leadership shit. Tuition is eating me alive. I’m sure you understand.

He hit send. He was pretty sure that Michael Andre wouldn’t even see his message, let alone respond.

Gabe had ten minutes left of his break, so he copied the message he sent and found a basketball player and a football player too.

And even though hockey wasn’t as flush in cash as the other sports, he found the Minnesota Northern Lights’ page and clicked on the first cute player he saw. The captain, apparently.

Jackson Harper was adorable, and to Gabe’s absolute shock, was married to a man.

Two hotties. Jackson was gay and the captain.

He’d been right about it being leadership shit.

His phone beeped to signal the end of his break.

The old watch on his wrist said he still had two minutes, so the battery must be starting to go.

He’d leave Jackson Harper alone in his joyful gay matrimony.

The rest of Gabe’s shift dragged, but his mind kept going back to the gay hockey player.

How hadn’t he heard about this? If anyone would have known, it would have been either Parker or Duncan, and neither of them had brought it up.

Should he get a Northern Lights jersey? He was a little sad Jackson was married because the lure of an out gay athlete piqued something in him.

He was bone tired when he and the two other stockers finished up their work for the night and headed out to their cars. Gabe did a few jumping jacks to get the blood flowing before driving home.

And in the moment between his head hitting his pillow and his eyes closing, he checked his Instagram again. He had a response from the baseball player.

Michael

I’m so flattered. I’m straight and I have a girlfriend, so I’m not the right fit for you, but I respect your hustle. Good luck out there, man.

No one could say he didn’t try.