Chapter 41 - Evan
EVAN
Confession: I didn’t think leaving would be this hard.
I thought after a few days, a few weeks, a new job, maybe a hot date, that I’d hardly think of Isaac or Deacon anymore.
I thought I’d be too busy—overwhelmed even.
I thought I’d remember how to have fun and start to realize what I really wanted out of life.
Here’s the truth: I like the job. I like watching Hunter slowly coming back to life and getting his feet back underneath him.
I like the weather and the beach. I even like my apartment in West Hollywood.
It’s big and sunny and close to everything, but I am always working.
If I didn’t have to walk Apollo, I’d probably never leave my apartment except to go to work.
Throwing myself headfirst into it wasn’t even a choice—it was the only option. The company was a mess lacking organization, a clear chain of command, or any workable systems. Employees had quit who hadn’t been replaced, important jobs had been left unfilled.
I was always a fan of the team system at Polytech, and so that was the first thing Hunter and I implemented. I think something like ninety percent of the employees had new jobs by the end of my second week there.
I sent out surveys, I did interviews. I took a million notes.
By the third week, at least everyone had a supervisor or a team to supervise, a set of goals to achieve, and a small raise.
Then, once the workforce was sorted, I dug back into my software.
Hunter is really excited about it, and he wants me to have as much time to work on it as possible.
But it’s not working. It’s buggy as fuck, the user interface is slow, and every time I fix one thing, I break something else. And that’s when I started to get overwhelmed.
Like I said—I knew this change would be major, but I’m talking impostor syndrome, a total lack of confidence, and an impending sense of doom with no one to pull me back from the edge.
Yes, I was the guy who left the three-way relationship because I felt like a third body that was more fun to use than necessary, but I’m also the guy who used to fuck my boss at least once a day to let him blow off steam. It turns out, I might have needed it, too.
More than once, I’ve found myself eyeing Hunter’s office thinking maybe…?
But I can’t go there. Hunter is attractive, more now than he was when we were together, but I’m not attracted to him enough to be able to stop wishing he was Isaac.
Or to stop thinking about Isaac. The guilt has set in, too.
I left my former boss high and dry without an assistant on no notice.
And I more or less trained him to be dependent on me.
Do I doubt he has the mental capacity to use and read his own calendar?
No. But he hates it. He’s an ideas guy—not a details guy.
I’m not mad that he has to get his own espresso, but I don’t like that he has to answer his own phone. Although, maybe I’m not giving him enough credit. He’s probably got someone else’s assistant filling in, or maybe he already hired someone new and better. I hate this imaginary person.
I meant what I wrote in my letter to Deacon.
No hard feelings, no regrets. I’m trying to think of what happened between the three of us more as a lesson learned, and this job at 4PF happened at the exact right time.
However, while it’s a huge step up for me and my career, I feel myself entering a backslide.
With all my focus on work and the software, I not only have no time to date, I stopped wanting to. Like I can’t think of a single reason why I would want to put myself through that other than to get laid.
But I don’t want to have sex with a stranger, either.
None of this explains my reticence to make new friends, but there’s that, too.
I see enough of Hunter at work, and I have very little desire to hang out with him outside it.
After that first week when I was living with him and his mom and we were planning how to go about reorganizing the company, I was more than ready to move into my own place.
Now that I’m here—
Okay, I’ll just say it. I’m fucking lonely. I’m sick of eating cereal for dinner every night, and I kind of miss having someone to impress—either by making him laugh or making him groan. I miss Sam, too, but at least he texts me.
I’m not surprised neither Deacon nor Isaac has reached out.
Just because I don’t have any hard feelings doesn’t mean they don’t—or, they’ve moved on, which I actually think is more likely.
More and more I realize how much I really was in the way between the two of them, and it makes me feel like a fool. I actually regret everything.
I should have stayed the fuck out of it.
I could have gotten the hurt all over with at once, and I probably would have ended up here anyway.
But instead of this fresh start in LA being the end of my mourning, it’s only the beginning.
Like I’ve barely tapped into it yet because I’ve been too goddamned busy.
I’m terrified of not being busy. Of finishing the software. Of it actually working. Of having to think up what the fuck comes next.
It’s a Wednesday afternoon on my fourth week in LA when the email from Isaac pops up on my computer screen.
Like the conditioned animal it is, my dick perks up at the sight of his email address.
We used to have a code for afternoon sex.
He’d ask for a decaf coffee. He’d use a bland subject line, update me on whatever business needed tending to, and then he’d sign off with the decaf request. Not every day.
Not even most days.
But once or twice a week, the afternoon decaf email would pop up, and by the time I was inside his office, my erection would be tenting my pants.
With my mouse, I move the cursor to hover over the message, but I hesitate before clicking into it.
I check my phone first, just in case I missed a call or a text. I didn’t.
The subject line shows that this is the reply I never got to my letter of resignation, which is why it’s coming to my personal account. I kind of want to throw up. I don’t know what I’ll do if it’s cold and impersonal, and I know even less what I’ll go through if it isn’t.
I startle at the knock on my office door and look up to find Hunter leaning in. “I know you’re gonna say no, but I have to ask—happy hour?”
“Yeah.” I log off and quickly stand.
“Seriously?”
“Who all’s coming?” I ask.
“Just me so far, but we could ask around.”
“No—just you is fine. You know a place that has good wings?”
He grins. “Of course I do.”
Lucky fucking me. It’s a gay bar. I feel like a piece of meat the second Hunter and I walk in the door in our dress shirts and slacks.
He’s a few inches taller than I am, but I’m the prettier of the two of us.
There’s a part of me that wants to untuck my shirt to cover my ass as it tends to attract tops like a magnet, but I decide to wait and see how I feel after I’ve had a drink before I make myself look less desirable.
“Jesus,” I say to Hunter.
He chuckles. “Sorry. It was the first place I thought of when you said wings.”
“Bullshit. You come here all the time, don’t you?”
“They have a great happy hour.”
“The wings better be amazing.”
“You used to like attention,” he says as we sit down at the bar. He ensures we’re not sitting too close to each other, a signal that we’re not a couple. I resent the move.
The bartender, a big, bearded bear who looks like he belongs in a biker bar, winks at me before asking what we’re drinking. Hunter orders a light beer, but I need something stronger. “Just something kind of sweet with a lot of tequila in it,” I tell the guy.
“You got it.”
I turn to Hunter. “Don’t let me get wasted.”
He snorts. “Okay, babe.”
“My old boss emailed me today,” I blurt.
“What’d he want?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t read it. I haven’t yet, I mean. Obviously I’m gonna read it, but then you came in—”
“And you jumped at the chance to get drunk. Tell me more.”
“You already know everything,” I tell him.
“Any regrets?” Hunter asks.
I don’t tell him that my body is currently entirely composed of regrets and second guesses. “He didn’t want to choose, I wanted to be chosen, I guess, so I chose myself,” I say. Thank God my drink arrives because I need to shut up for a minute. “Damn, that is strong.”
“Name’s Kyle. Let me know if you need another,” the bartender says with another wink.
I smile and turn back to Hunter. “Oh! Wings,” I say.
“We’ll get ‘em in a minute,” he says. “Enjoy your tequila.”
In the end, it only took me four weeks and one margarita to tell Hunter the extended version of the mess I made with my boss and my roommate.
Hunter started to visibly cringe when he realized half my inability to do a three-way relationship was because of the way our own relationship ended.
That was around when I ordered another drink and we moved to sit at a table instead of the bar.
“It’s not like I blame you,” I tell him.
“For what? For offering you a job?”
“No—for like—ruining threesomes for me.”
He puts a hand on his chest. “Oh, I did that?”
“You know you did.”
“To be fair, what you’re describing is pretty much the opposite of what I did. I was an asshole.”
“Well, yeah, but how is it any different?”
“Because I didn’t give a shit about who else was there as long as he had a good dick and a decent set of abs. I didn’t want to like—start a relationship.”
“No, you were more interested in ending one.”
“Ouch.”
“Am I wrong?” I ask.
“Probably not. But it’s still my longest relationship. And my best.”
“Because I’m a good boyfriend,” I say.
“You were a great boyfriend.”
There’s an awkward silence where I’m trying to decide how to respond to that when he asks, “So why didn’t you read the email?”
“Ugh.” I drop my head. “I’m scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Scared he’ll be mean. Scared he’ll be nice.”
“So, you’re scared of how it’s gonna make you feel.”
“Obviously,” I say.
“Because you have feelings for him.”
I inhale deeply and sigh. “I thought for sure I’d be over it by now.”
“He seems like a catch.”
“Oh, he’s a catch. He’s a lot of things.”
“But you liked your roommate better?” Hunter asks.
“Deacon was more like—relationship material. I mean it felt like that before we all got involved. Might have been a misread on my part. Isaac always felt like he was passing the time with me while he waited for the right person to come along.”
“Evan…why would you think that?”
“Because he’s a CEO and I’m like—” I gesture at myself.
“The COO of an international shipping company?” Hunter helpfully fills in the blank.
“I was his secretary.”
“He didn’t treat you like that.”
I take another sip of my drink. “I know.”
“If it had been up to you, who would you have picked?” he asks.
I frown. “I wouldn’t have. Also—it didn’t feel like I was given a choice. It was either take them both or fuck off. So I fucked off.”
“Do you feel like you made the right choice?”
“I feel like—” How do I put this? “I feel like they were way too far ahead of me, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask them to wait for me to catch up when I wasn’t sure I was ever going to.”
“That’s not a yes,” Hunter says.
“I think I might need more time.”
“Time to what?”
“To find someone else,” I say because I don’t want to say what’s true. That I’m not over either one of them, and I’m afraid I left too soon.