6 Ollie
Ollie
“YOU TOOK HIS PHONE?” Nicole practically screams. Ollie flinches. He’s sitting right next to her, Brandon and Ian on the other side of the table at brunch. Pete, curled up under Ollie’s chair, doesn’t seem to notice the yelling. “Do you know what kind of trouble you could get in?”
“I know I could get fired,” Brandon says, “but, I mean, I already fucked him at the hotel, so—”
“Forget getting fired ,” Nicole says, almost spilling her mimosa as she lets her hands explode in front of her. “You’ve committed theft! A phone might be expensive enough that it’s a felony, too. Probably not. But if it’s a work phone, there could be confidential company data on it or—”
“It’s not a work phone,” Ian interrupts.
“You’re defending him?” Nicole asks.
Ian laughs, rolling their eyes. “Absolutely not. Stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever done, honey.”
“Thanks,” Brandon says, toasting.
Ian clinks their glasses, and they both drink.
“I think it’s romantic,” Ollie says. “Like Cinderella.”
Brandon smiles hugely at this. “That’s what I think!”
“Do not encourage this,” Nicole says to Ollie, shaking her head. She looks like she’s coasting that line between amused annoyed and real annoyed.
Ollie feels the urge to respond but instead reaches out for some of his bacon, breaks off a piece, and holds it under his chair. Pete gobbles it up.
“This is what’s-his-name all over again but with criminal charges,” Nicole says, not ready to let it drop.
“Which what’s-his-name?” Ian asks, smirking.
“The one where he—remember—he wrote a poem about all the moments they’d had and read it aloud to him from outside his window.”
“Marcus,” Brandon says, lifting his chin a little, “and everything on that list was true.”
“But it left off that he was straight and fucking half the girls in our dorm,” Nicole says, pointing at him.
“Oh, that’s not even my favorite.” Ian waves his hand at Nicole like he’s interrupting one good story with a better one.
“You have favorites?” Brandon asks, eyes wide in shock, or maybe hurt.
Ian nods. “Oh yeah. My favorite was Mr. Beard.”
Brandon sighs softly, looking at his drink. “We had a moment. His hand was on my lower back. There was a spark, a thing!”
“He was our biology professor and pointing out the parts of the spine on you for the class,” Ian says, smirking again. Ollie flinches, remembering the secondhand embarrassment. Brandon was talking about their “moment” for a solid month afterward. And he was so sincere about it.
“Doesn’t mean we didn’t have a moment,” Brandon says, looking up but still a little hunched over with shame. He takes a breath, straightening up. “But Jon is different, anyway. We actually did have a moment. We had sex. He knew my tattoo was from DSLWLS. And he gave me his phone number.”
“And then you took the whole phone.” Ian pats Brandon on the back, as if proud.
“How do you know it’s not a work phone, anyway?” Nicole asks Ian.
“You don’t give a hookup your work number,” Ian says simply, crossing their arms.
Nicole sighs, leaning back, and Ollie reaches his hand out to Brandon, who looks forlorn. Brandon grabs it for a moment and squeezes before letting his hand drop back down to the table, only to raise it again with his glass.
Brunch isn’t supposed to be sad, Ollie thinks.
Or angry. They’ve been coming here for years, this weird little café with endless mimosas and white wooden benches, the wallpaper all flowers and birds.
It’s not the kind of place that gets crowded for brunch, but the waitress knows them and their orders on sight now, which makes it feel special and means the food comes faster.
“I still can’t believe you did it,” Nicole says. “You should go drop it down a drain right now. If someone traces it…” She shakes her head.
“I just want to give it back to Jon,” Brandon says.
“Then you should have given it to the guy who came for it.”
“He said he was Jon. He wasn’t.” He takes the phone out and puts it on the table, between all their plates of pancakes and eggs. “Is there some way to look up, like, who bought it? It has a SIM card or something, right? Can you trace that?”
“Me?” Nicole asks, half laughing. “I’m not a cop. I can’t do that. But someone will.”
“I might be able to do something,” Ian says, taking it.
“Stop encouraging him,” Nicole says.
“I’m not encouraging,” Ian says. “If he finds this Jon guy, maybe he’ll give the phone back. Jon probably doesn’t want to explain why his hotel hookup has his phone either, right? Give him the phone, win-win. Everyone walks away not arrested.”
“And maybe he’ll be grateful,” Ollie says, watching Brandon’s face and wanting to cheer him up. “Maybe you guys will talk.”
“Talk about pressing charges, probably,” Nicole says. “The guy who came back for the bag could have been working for him.”
“Okay,” Ian says, swiping open the phone.
“Password, of course. Could try to force it, but it might lock us out. I could reset it to factory, if you wanted, but that would erase everything. Then you’d have to restore it, which would take a while.
Might not work unless I can access— Oh, but there are unread messages.
He didn’t set it to hide those; we can read them. ”
“They’re from me,” Brandon says, a little embarrassed, scraping some egg yolk with his fork. “You don’t have to read them.”
“One isn’t,” Ian says. “These other three are though… Oh, honey.” They pat Brandon on the shoulder. “We gotta talk about your texting game.”
“How do you know how to reset a phone to factory?” Nicole asks, suspicious. “Or hack a password?”
“What’s the one other message?” Brandon asks, looking over Ian’s shoulder as everyone ignores Nicole’s question. “From his wife?”
“Just from a number, no name saved. Same as yours.”
“Maybe he didn’t see them, so he never had a chance to enter my name,” Brandon says quickly, defensively. “My texting isn’t that bad.” He downs the rest of the mimosa, probably trying to hide his blush and failing, Ollie thinks.
“‘Let me know when you’re up. We can do something fun. Again, I mean,’” Ian reads. “And ‘sleep well?’ the next morning.”
“Ooof,” Nicole says, cutting into her eggs.
“What?” Brandon asks, looking at Ollie.
Ollie makes himself smile. “I mean, it’s sweet.”
“Desperate, you mean,” Ian says.
The waitress comes by and refills everyone’s mimosa. Everyone drinks. Ollie gives Pete more bacon under the table.
“We really connected,” Brandon protests, trying to take the phone back. “What’s the last message anyway?” He grabs it from Ian. “It didn’t pop up for me before. It’s an address. And today’s date. Two p.m.”
Ollie’s ears perk up, his body straightening. He suddenly wants to say something when he’s been so quiet. “Address, date, and time? Sounds like a meeting.” That’s something for him to do—something for them all to do. Together.
“Yeah,” Nicole agrees, then takes a long drink of her mimosa. “Maybe someone else he was screwing.”
“But he’ll be there,” Ollie says, so excited that he points his fork at Brandon. “If he saw the message—and he had it set so he could read texts quickly off the lock screen, right? So he might have seen it, and he might be there today.”
“I could give him the phone!” Brandon says, grinning. “But then why didn’t he text me back?”
Ollie hadn’t thought that far ahead. Hadn’t even thought of finding this guy.
It is romantic, returning the phone, and he’d love Brandon to be happy, but it’s like his brain is running on autopilot: This is what they’d do in a podcast. A mysterious time and location—go to it.
It’s a clue. “We can ask him and find out,” Ollie says, thrilled to be able to help Brandon in that way, too.
“You’ll look like a crazy stalker,” Ian says.
“And Ian would know,” Nicole says, making everyone, even Ian, laugh.
“I’ll go with you,” Ollie says. “It’s sort of where I walk the dogs. If you want, I mean.”
“You walk the dogs on weekends?” Ian asks. “Aren’t their owners home?”
“Some, but some like the routine for the dogs. And not having to pick up shit, probably.”
“And some people work weekends,” Nicole says. “It’s very normal.”
Everyone is quiet, looking away from Nicole, sipping their mimosas. Ollie looks at Brandon, waiting for him to say yes (he really hopes he says yes!).
“Let’s do it,” Brandon says to Ollie, breaking the silence.
“I won’t look as crazy if I’m with a friend.
And then…and then”—his voice gets louder, his mimosa sloshing—“I can say we found the phone after we gave the bag to the guy! Like it had fallen out. And I was holding on to it because I didn’t trust someone at work not to steal it. Yeah! That sounds believable, right?”
There’s another silence no one seems eager to fill.
“Well,” Brandon says finally. “Anyone else want to come?”
Nicole and Ian raise their glasses in unison, not making eye contact with Brandon.
“Fine,” Brandon says, smiling at Ollie. “Just us, then.”
“I have to work, anyway,” Nicole says.
“You can’t even take all of Saturday off?” Ollie asks. “We miss you.” He reaches out and takes Nicole’s hand and squeezes it.
“I wish. I miss you guys, too. But I just gotta—when I’m a senior associate, y’know? Then maybe…” Her eyes drift off, and she looks down, sad.
“What?” Ollie asks.
“I think—so there’s the cute girl at the coffee shop by work, and I’m pretty sure she was flirting with me, but—”
“Ask her out!” Ian says, slamming the table. “You need to get laid more than anyone I know. More than Ollie even.”
“Hey!” Ollie says, surprised anyone, even one of his friends, keeps track of his sex life. “Why me?”
“Sophie was four months ago, and you two lasted three weeks. Juan was, like, three months before that. Unless there’s someone you haven’t told us about?”
“That just means I’m right on track for someone new,” Ollie says, making himself smile. He’s been kind of lonely, he thinks, but it’s not so bad. And he hasn’t been so horny. At least not in a way a toy couldn’t handle.
“You’re depressed,” Ian says.