5. Jordan
JORDAN
What do you wear for your first visit to a glory hole?
I knew the whole point of Quincy suggesting we use the one at The Port Hole was that we couldn’t see each other, but really, it was just our faces we’d be hiding. He’d still be able to see my shoes. My pant-legs. Possibly a hint of shirt cuff or hem, depending on how big that hole was.
Every little thing counted. I wanted to get this right. After all, I wanted to keep him coming back for more. And possibly tell a friend or two to join him.
Come to think of it, did Quincy have gay friends? How did he know about this glory hole, if he’d never hooked up with a guy before? And what were the chances he was even going to show up tonight, given how nervous he’d told me he was?
To be perfectly honest, the more I thought about this, the more I wondered if I was making a mistake. On the surface, this was exactly what I’d wanted when I made my profile. But I’d also made that profile this morning. Before I saw Cam.
Ugh. No.
I wasn’t allowed to think about him. It was creepy enough having a crush on a straight guy, but it was way worse when he was my brother’s best friend, who would be horrified to know I was thinking about him this way.
I had to push Cam out of my mind and concentrate on the task at hand—or mouth, in this case. Focus all my attention on the holing process. Or would that be glorying? What was the word for glory hole participation, anyway?
Glorification? That sounded a little religious. But then, a really good orgasm could feel kind of spiritual, so maybe that was appropriate.
Not that I was after anything morally upright or pure here. No, the point of meeting up with Quincy was to engage in meaningless, anonymous sex. To feel slutty and whoreish in a bone-deep way, pun fully intended.
Sure, Quincy was just one guy, and this was his first time, but if I did my job well enough, I could potentially have a truly irresponsible amount of sex before I went back to New York.
I might not have a career or boyfriend or functional family life, but if there was one thing I knew I could do, it was get on my knees in a public restroom and suck off a stranger.
And that was what I wanted…right?
Levi’s apartment, where I was staying, was located above The Roastery. I’d just gotten out of the shower and was toweling off when he shouted up the back stairs, his voice panicked.
“Fuck, fuck! Jordy? Hey, Jordy, can you—shit!”
I grimaced. That nickname again. I knew he was trying, but could he try a little harder? Then again, it also sounded like Levi’s hair was on fire, so maybe now wasn’t the time to nitpick.
“Coming!”
I threw on sweatpants and a T-shirt and bounded down the stairs. Whatever Levi needed had better be quick, because I was scheduled to do a different kind of coming in half an hour. But that thought flew out of my head when I reached the chaos at the bottom of the steps.
The Roastery’s kitchen sink was exploding.
That was the only word for it. The door to the kitchen was swinging wildly back and forth, and through it, I could see a fountain—no, a jet—of water spewing from the sink like a fire hydrant, getting everything wet. Well, wet-er. The floor was already an inch deep in water.
“What the hell happened?” I yelled, hovering on the second-to-last step.
“No idea!” Levi called back, looking harried.
“I tried turning the faucet off after washing up, and it started gushing.” He grimaced down at the pipes below the sink, and a wrench lying uselessly next to them.
“I’ve tried to turn the water off here, but the valve won’t move. Can you grab my old waders and help?”
“Don’t you want your waders?”
Levi shook his head. “I’m already soaked.” His long-sleeved Henley, apron, and jeans were pretty wet. “And I need to go shut the water off at the curb. But if you can stay here, and let me know when I get it—”
“Yeah, yeah.” I was already dashing upstairs. “No problem.”
We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, and almost everything we owned was second-hand.
That hadn’t stopped Levi from holding onto anything he thought might be useful, though, including a decrepit pair of army green waders with stretched-out suspenders, stashed in the closet behind a croquet set that was missing two mallets and a tennis racket that needed to be restrung.
I threw them on and ran downstairs, taking Levi’s place at the sink while he went outside. There was another inch of water on the floor by now, and it smelled curiously salty. Which was better than some things it could have smelled like, I supposed.
I tried sticking my hands over the drain to keep the water in, but it just squeezed around the edges and sprayed me in the face. I shook my head and stepped back, letting the water arc up through the air before spraying back down to the tiled floor.
It reminded me of the splash pads they had in city parks for kids to play in. Almost cute, except that coffee shop kitchens weren’t supposed to include water features for toddlers.
Finally, the jet of water began to shrink, growing shorter and shorter until it disappeared completely. The sink itself was still full, and still smelled like the ocean, but at least nothing new was pouring out.
I had no idea where Levi was, but the kitchen wasn’t going to clean itself, so I sloshed out to the back hall and grabbed the shop vac from the storage closet.
I’d filled the drum, emptied it outside, and filled it halfway up again by the time my brother came back in.
I was on my hands and knees at that point, trying to get the hose into a far corner underneath the kitchen counter.
“What are you doing?” Levi asked.
“What does it look like I’m doing? Trying to keep your business from becoming permanently Atlantis-themed.”
“Yeah, but you need a rag for the corners. You’ll never get it all up like that.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course I was doing something wrong in Levi’s estimation. Of course I was.
“Here.” He pulled the hose from my grasp. “I’ll empty this out. You can find rags in the mop bucket in the back.”
“I know where to find rags.” I did my best to contain a sigh. “You showed me yesterday.”
“I wasn’t sure,” Levi said, like he was being nothing but reasonable. In his eyes, he probably was. “You haven’t lived here in six years.”
“Yeah, but I’m not an idiot.”
“Okay, okay.” He didn’t contain his sigh, which only annoyed me more. He began rolling the shop vac out, only to stop at the door. “Oh, and Jordan?”
“What?” I snapped, wondering what else I’d managed to fuck up in the past ten seconds.
“Thank you.” His voice was gentle. “That’s all I was going to say. Just, thank you.”
He was out the door before I had a chance to apologize. I groaned. Now I looked like the asshole. Somehow, that always seemed to happen.
Maybe it was just that Levi had it all together, plumbing mishaps notwithstanding.
He’d had The Roastery for years now. He and I had the same messed-up childhood, but he’d made a life for himself on Summersea despite that.
A good life. A stable one. People loved him, counted on him. And he never let them down.
Me? All I’d ever done was run away from the past, and then fail to make something of my future. There was freedom in New York, in no one knowing who I was or what circumstances I came from. But it was amazing how much freedom felt like loneliness.
Amazing how I could miss things I never thought I wanted.
I grabbed some rags and floor cleaner, and got to work. I would show Levi I knew how to do this properly. Show him that this, at least, I could handle. That I wasn’t just his idiot little brother who still needed hand-holding.
“Oh, Jordy, you didn’t have to do all that.”
Levi’s voice startled me, and my head snapped up—right into the underside of the sink.
“Fuck.” I rubbed my skull as I backed out from under the sink more carefully, then looked at Levi. I hadn’t realized he’d come back inside. “I’m sorry, did you not just tell me where the rags were?”
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t mean you had to do it all yourself.” Levi shook his head. “You could have asked for help, you know.”
I made myself smile. “It’s fine.”
It was. I was drenched in saltwater, and had been crawling around on my hands and knees long enough to have developed a backache, and I hadn’t asked for help because I didn’t want a twenty-minute lecture on the proper way to wring out a washcloth, but honestly, it was fine.
“I just came in to tell you that all the businesses on our side of the block had this problem,” Levi continued. “It sounds like they were doing something with the water mains down by the harbor, and some dumbass—”
“The harbor!” My mouth dropped open. The harbor, where The Port Hole was located, where I was supposed to meet Quincy—I glanced at the clock on the wall—twenty-five minutes ago. I’d completely forgotten.
Levi looked at me in confusion. “The harbor?”
“I have to go!” I scrambled to my feet. There was no time to shower again. No time to even change. I was going to smell like a tidepool to Quincy, and that was assuming he was still there by the time I arrived.
“Where?” Levi asked. “What are you—”
“No time!” I yelled, heading out into the hall, waders wobbling with every step. “I’ll be back later!”
I was halfway to the bar when I realized I hadn’t even grabbed my phone. Fuck. If I went back for it now, it would only make me later. Better to just get there and check for Quincy as soon as possible. I could always apologize later if he wasn’t there.
I was running by the time I got to The Port Hole. Not the smartest thing to do in general, and even less smart when you’re wearing waders that jiggle with every step, throwing you off-balance. I pivoted towards the door and the next thing I knew, I was lying on the sidewalk, looking up at Cam.
Did I have a concussion? Was I dead? Those were the only two reasons I could think of for why he would be staring down at me, his blond hair haloed by the setting sun.