Chapter 6 Evan #2
Sometimes I wonder if maybe the fantasy of Deacon is better than actually having Deacon.
What if hooking up with him meant a one night stand and a lot of ensuing awkwardness?
What if we decided to date for a while, and it didn’t work out?
What if he really does have an out of town girlfriend or boyfriend, and I turn into a way to pass the time like I am with Isaac?
I’m not sure I’d be able to shove my feelings to the back burner the way I can in the office.
While I remember all my unrequited crushes super fondly, I can’t say the same about the people I was actually involved with.
Except Hunter? Maybe.
“Sorry about missing Sunday,” Deacon says. “I looked up that restaurant you were talking about. It looks good. Are you free Wednesday night?”
My eyes blow wide open, and I immediately work to school my expression into something more casual.
He’s not looking at me anyway, so it doesn’t really matter if I’m making heart eyes at him. “I think so.” If I’m not, I’ll make sure I will be.
“Cool. I wanted to talk to you about something, so…” he trails off and starts backing out of the room.
Wait. That’s not what I agreed to. He can’t drop a bomb like that and run.
“Wait—Deac—should I be nervous?”
“Huh?” He pops his head back in the room, and I can’t help but notice he’s practically glowing today. Was it the workout? His shower? Espresso?
“Is it bad? What you wanna talk to me about?”
“Oh—no. Just, you know…roommate stuff. Nothing serious.”
I might have a heart attack. “That actually does sound serious. Do I need to start looking for another place?”
He jerks in surprise like I just clashed a cymbal. “No, no. Nothing like that.”
“Can you just tell me?” I fling the stupid pillow onto the bed and take a few steps closer.
He takes the same amount of steps back toward the hall. It’s beyond painful to witness.
I literally repel him.
“It’ll keep until Wednesday. Honestly, it might not even be worth talking about by then.” He checks his watch. “Oh—next weekend. I’m gonna do a dinner party. Mal talked me into it. Are you free?”
I’m relieved. If that’s all this is about, I’ll be able to proceed with my week as normal.
“Like in two weeks? Yeah. What are you cooking?”
“Haven’t decided yet, but I was gonna go to the Farmer’s Market and see what I can come up with.”
“Sounds good.”
“But about this Wednesday—you can meet?”
I frown. “Wednesday isn’t about the dinner party?”
“No,” he says obliquely. “Something else. I gotta catch the train. See you later.”
“Wait—”
“Wednesday,” he says, and he continues to leave. “Seven, if that works.”
“Five-thirty,” I call after him.
“Okay,” I hear him say from the living room. “Five-thirty.”
The door closes, and I drop back a few paces into my bedroom, my hand on my heart. I wish I could say I have a good feeling about this—that this is the kind of opportunity I’ve been waiting for and totally makes up for him no showing on Sunday, but I’m now chock full of dread.
And I’m supposed to live like this for two days? Why can’t it be tonight? Or at lunch, even? This is going to make me crazy. It already is, and it’s been five seconds. What could he possibly need to talk to me about besides moving out? Maybe he wants to get a cat? But why wouldn’t he just say so?
I put my face in my hands and let out a low scream. I fucking hate myself.
Not giving a fuck what I’m wearing anymore, I grab the first thing I reach for in the closet.
It’s not a dress-up-all-the-time kind of company, but I usually try to look nice.
We don’t have any meetings today, though, so I’ll be wearing jeans and a sweater because I can’t be bothered to put together a look. Isaac can take it or leave it.
My hand is shaking by the time it’s time to shave my face, so I put the razor down and make the executive decision to go in with scruff for the first time ever. My contacts? Fucking forget about it. There’s no way I wouldn’t have a meltdown if one slid off my finger, and I had to go looking for it.
“Jesus Christ, I didn’t even recognize you,” Isaac says as he stops at my desk.
I look up at him through my wire-rimmed glasses.
His gaze softens immediately. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine,” I say, the word sounding long and pathetic. “Would you like me to email your schedule for the day?”
He scowls. He looks incredibly good this morning in a crisp blue shirt and charcoal gray slacks.
His wool coat is draped over one arm. His shave is perfect, the line of his beard so precise it looks professionally done.
He also has a glow most people don’t have in the winter.
Everybody had a great weekend but me, I guess.
“No,” he says. “I’d like to go over it with you like we do every day so we can decide how to tackle it. ”
It’s a schedule, I want to tell him. It doesn’t need tackling. It just needs to be followed because it’s all like—right there.
Needless to say, Isaac was the inspiration for the scheduling software I’ve been working on.
It started as a modest integrated Alexa-slash-Siri reminder system for him, but it quickly evolved into everything I think an individual calendar should be.
And now it’s become a workforce scheduler that can be used for hundreds of employees or scaled down to a personal self-management system.
“The only calendar anyone would ever need again” is my working pitch.
Granted, it’s morphed into a bit of a monster, but if I can get it to work, I’m convinced it’ll help add order to disorganized people’s and company’s lives.
Even Isaac’s. And maybe, in the meantime, it’ll make me rich.
Ever since I deleted my Chaturbate account and stopped jerking off for strangers on the internet, I’ve had to be a lot more careful about where I spend my money, and I’m sick of worrying about it.
Being a solo cam boy wasn’t as bad as Hunter charging strangers for a view into our sex life, but a history of sex work tends to come up when applying for jobs in the tech sector.
Those hiring managers are way too good at image searches.
Luckily, Isaac never saw my internet history, or, more likely, he didn’t care. I nod at my boss. “Sorry. I didn’t sleep well. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. I’m returning an email.”
“Okay.” His hand lingers a moment longer than necessary on my desk before he proceeds into his office.
He closes the door. The blinds, as always, are also shut.
It’s a nice office once you get in there, but out here where I sit, I get none of the benefit of the natural light because of those ugly blinds.
My job as Isaac’s assistant isn’t as lame as it sounds when I tell people what I do, but the longer explanation is boring.
I have a masters degree in computer science and programming, and this is the entry level job I got.
Isaac—when he’s not figuring out how to “tackle” his schedule or shoving his cock down my throat is also training me via specific tasks to give me more experience in the industry.
He started out as a programmer, but he’s extremely smart and has big ideas.
On top of that, he and his former business partner grew this company from the ground up.
Polytech, like the ridiculous name implies, does a little bit of everything.
Data analytics, development of data products, data automation, workflows, frameworks, and everything else that’s no fun to talk about at parties.
We have clients from hospitals to hotels to international shipping companies who hire us to support their large organizations, and we also make about a thousand apps.
One day, he might even want to add mine to the list.
Anyway, as shitty of a boss as Isaac might sound like from a human resources perspective, I really like working for him.
I’ve learned enough to get a better job at another company by now, which makes Hunter’s offer extremely tempting, but the perks here are nice, and it helps that my boss literally never gets irritated with me.
I can do no wrong, and that’s far from the norm in this industry, so I’ll probably stick around until I get my software market-ready or Isaac yells at me. Whichever comes first.
He opens his office door. “Are you coming?”
Still frazzled, I run my hand through my hair and stand, picking up my iPad before walking into the door he holds open for me.
“You sure you’re all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” I tell him.
Closing the door, he says, “You look upset.”
I sit down in the chair opposite his. “It’s not a crisis. Just some personal stuff. I promise.”
He hesitates, but then eventually crosses the carpeted room to take his seat. He’s got the schedule pulled up on his monitor, but as I’m not feeling particularly sexy today, I stay put. If he wants me, he can ask. He knows I won’t say no.
He’s staring at me, so I stare back. “What?”
“You can talk to me.”
The people pleaser in me wants to spill just because he’s asking so nicely, but there are lines and there are lines.
I like this job, and I need to keep the lines we’ve already established in place.
If I start confiding in him, the feelings I like to pretend I don’t have for him might get harder to ignore, and I can’t afford that when it comes to the most eligible gay bachelor in the Bay Area.
Locking in, I give my head a short shake.
“I appreciate that, but I’d rather get to work. ”
His lips press together, and he sighs. “I only wanted to know if there was any way I could help.”
“My roommate dropped a bomb on me this morning, and I got a little rattled. That’s all I wanna say about it.”
“Okay. Rough morning—”
“Rough weekend.”
“Ah.” His gaze flicks down, and then he turns toward his computer screen. “Okay. That Power Point you mentioned explaining your software. Is that something you have ready, or you need to put together?”
I hate that he knows me well enough to know I was bluffing about the Power Point. I thought I played it cooler than that. “The issue is more that the software isn’t up and running.”
Isaac shrugs, unbothered. “That hardly matters. It’s in development, and you have a plan, which means it will be working at some point. I assume you know we have teams of people who could help you with it.”
“I want to try to do it on my own.”
His gaze lingers on me a moment longer, then flicks to his computer screen. “Speaking of the teams. Can you put a meeting with Green team on my schedule for tomorrow?”
“Green team?” That’s Deacon’s team. “What’s the meeting for?”
“All the teams, actually. I haven’t touched base with the team leads in a while, and I feel like I should.”
“Worried about the employee survey?” I attempt to joke.
He huffs a laugh. “Something like that.”
“Sure. It might take a couple of weeks to get them all in, though, unless you want to combine them.”
“No. One at a time is how I want it.”
“Yeah.” I make a note. Schedule team meetings with Daddy. “They’ll like that.”
“Good. I’m glad you think so.” After another moment of staring at his schedule, he asks, “Are you planning to stay in the chair?”
“Where would you rather have me?” I ask, my usual flirt falling a little flat.
He takes so long to answer, I feel my face heat. And then he says, “You can stay there if you’d like.”
With that little slap in the face, my day goes from shitty to abysmal.