47
Trevor changes his mind.
“I’m partying with you tonight.”
Elijah blinks. “Uh … what?”
“Invite all the interns. Invite the whole damned office,” I tell him. “I don’t care. My best friend Elijah is turning twenty-one and there’s no way in hell I’m gonna miss the celebrating!”
“My birthday was yesterday. I’m already twenty-one.”
“You know what I mean, punk!” I laugh and slap him on the back, excited. “We’re going to have a blast tonight!”
Elijah looks mildly concerned. “Are you … um … okay?”
I squeeze his shoulders and slap a kiss right on his cheek. “I am so fucking okay.”
Now he looks twice as concerned as before.
But who cares? Maybe being holed up in the apartment has made me crazy. Maybe Salamander’s fur is lodged up my nose and has planted a rebellious streak in me. Maybe I acquired a taste for partying in my sleep last night.
The reason turns out not to matter anymore by the time the sun’s down, the moon’s up, and Elijah and I are set up at a very particular nightclub down the road.
The nightclub where this whole mess began.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t crazy anxious about being at the scene of the crime all over again. This is, after all, where I first met Ben. And as the interns trickle in slowly, one at a time, my anxiety only gets worse and worse. Never mind what they really feel about the whole scandal; what if Ben himself shows up?
I interpret every shifty glance my way as a question someone won’t dare ask me. Did you seduce Mr. Gage, or did he seduce you? Is he a bottom or a top? Is Mr. Gage as cocky in bed as he is in the office?
But after a couple of drinks, the amount of shits I give reduces to approximately none.
It’s really remarkable, the magic alcohol can do to an uptight, stick-up-his-ass ex-intern like me. Ex-intern. Is that what I am now? Is my employment at Gage Communications officially over?
That last question is what Isaac makes the mistake of asking me after two full glasses of whatever fruity cocktail the bartender keeps serving me. “Well, I consider my career ‘officially fucked’, actually,” I answer lightly. “But thanks for the cement! I mean, centimeter. I mean … senti-sentiment.”
When you’re drunk and you’re not a drinker, the most normal things become royally hilarious.
Like fingers. “Elijah, Elijah, look at my fingers. They are so … freaking … long.” My observation is followed by laughter I can neither control nor stop, and yes, I do realize I’m being loud.
But when you’re drinking, you assume everyone is loud and totally appreciates your obnoxiousness. They like it, even, and all those stares you’re getting are stares of curiosity and delight. They’re definitely not judging me. Or sneering. Or annoyed.
“Trevor, bro … are you alright?” asks Elijah.
“I’m on top of the world!” I cry out, delighted. “I’m free, and I’m drunk, and I’m—”
“Delirious,” Elijah finishes for me. “And I think you need to maybe pull back a bit, yeah?”
“I know what we need.” I grab his hands. “A dance!”
“Uh, that’s a hard nope.”
“Birthday boy dance!” I pull him toward the dance floor. By now, the others in the club have all become very aware of me—or wary, it’s hard to tell as they’re kinda backing away—and then it’s just me and Elijah on the dance floor. It isn’t long before I get my best friend smiling and laughing again, though I see the flicker of concern in his eyes.
Maybe another drink or two will get that concern wiped right out like an eye booger.
I’m not sure how it happens, but suddenly I’m standing on a block of stage intended for a go-go dancer or a DJ or something. My shirt is off and circling over my head like a lasso.
“What the fuck, Trevor??” calls someone—Elijah, or maybe another intern, or maybe even my totally new number one fan whose name I’d like to know.
Provided they exist.
I’ve spent about four days feeling like total slutty scum, right? Don’t I deserve to feel four minutes of glory, like I’m king of the parties and prince of everything that feels good and completely free of consequence? Oh, wait. We’ve been partying for four hours already? It’s been four years of uprightness, studiousness, and perfectionism in high school that’s been my identity, then all of that wash-rinse-repeated for four years in college? My whole life has been one totally controlled act after another, leading up to me fucking it all up anyway?
Who can blame me? This bomb was waiting to go off since I first enrolled in that Honors English class when I was eleven years old. Each “A” I earned was another tick, tick, tick, tick.
Tonight: boom.
“TREVOR.”
The name cuts through the room impossibly, like the word was spoken by all of the walls of the club, startling me. The volume of the music even seems to cut in half, and the chatter and hollering of the room dampens to nearly nothing.
I search for the voice.
When his figure emerges through the crowd, the people part amidst gasps of shock to make room for him.
It’s Benjamin. He’s standing there in the middle of the dance floor in a pool of light. He wears the same fitted bicep-hugging blue blazer he wore that first night I saw him—in this very room. His dress shirt accentuates his pecs beautifully. With his face framed by the light from above, he practically glows with beauty.
And here I am: sweaty, shirtless, and drunk, standing on a go-go boy block.
Slowly, he lifts a dildo to his mouth.
Oh wait, no, that’s a microphone.
“Trevor,” he speaks into it, his voice dancing all around me and bouncing off the walls. “I called your name a minute ago. You couldn’t hear me. So I had to get, uh … dramatic,” he explains with a little wiggle of the microphone.
I’m stunned. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Whispers scatter through the room, and I know what they’re saying: Benjamin Gage is actually here, and he’s speaking to Trevor Woodard—the intern who had his face buried in his boss’s ass on the evening news from here to the other end of the world. It’s like the next news story has just come to life right before their eyes, and they all have a front row seat.
I hope that’s not pee trickling down my leg right now.
“What are you doing?” I ask despite the room spinning.
“What I should’ve done the first night I met you,” he replies, echoes of his words scurrying into the corners of the nightclub like shadows—met you, met you, met you. “In this very room. When we were just two men whose eyes caught one another’s. Before you were an intern. Before I was your boss.”
Your boss, your boss, your boss.
I swallow. It’s not lost on me how many phones in the past ten seconds have just whipped out of pockets to capture—yet again—another moment of our lives. Except this time, it’s public whether I want it to be or not. The world watches us right now, listening to our every word.
Well, all of Ben’s words, more like, seeing as I’m struck dumb at the moment.
“When we’re not at the office, when we’re not in front of cameras, when you’re just Trevor and I’m just Ben, I feel happier than I have in years.” Years, years, years. “All I know is, you can’t control where you fall in love. Or who it is you fall in love with. But when it happens, you gotta own it.”
Own it, own it, own it.
He didn’t just say “love”, did he? That wasn’t my ass that just fell through the floor at hearing those words, was it?
“I mean, I don’t know yet if what we have is love,” Ben adds. “Is it too soon to know? Maybe. Maybe not. But I don’t want some scandal caught on tape to take the chance away from us to figure out what we have. We owe it to ourselves to pursue this. You. Me.”
You. Me. You. Me. You. Me.
“So let’s do this the right way,” Ben finishes. “Trevor. Will you go on a date with me?”
My vision may be slightly questionable at the moment, but I see a majority of the interns at the front of the crowd, all of them eyeing us with curiosity, with excitement, with astonishment. I see Ashlee with her eyes full of that “aww” sort of hopefulness, her hands clasped together. I see Elijah right by her with a “go get ‘em” sort of smirk on his face.
I bring my gaze back to Benjamin, inspired, then take a step proudly toward him. “Ben, I’d be—”
And then I forget I’m standing on a go-go dancer block.
There’s nothing there beneath my foot.
As I twist, struggle, teeter, and finally tip over with a shriek, I feel a pair of arms rush forth to catch me. I throw my hands around my savior, clutching tightly, then bring my eyes up to meet those of Benjamin Gage, who looks down on me in his arms.
Of course there’d be a glint of dark amusement in his eyes.
“What I was going to say,” I murmur with dignity, “is that I’d be an idiot to not take you up on that offer of a first real date.”
He grins, his eyes smoldering me as his million-dollar smile shines down on my face. There’s no doubt in my mind that Ben is, whether out here on the dance floor amidst a crowd of curious onlookers or in the privacy of a peaceful cabana in Cancún, the most beautiful soul I’ve ever let into my life.
“Also,” I add, “thank you for being there to catch me.”
He still grips the microphone, even after having caught me. “Always,” he whispers to me, bringing his lips to mine, consuming me in the deepest, most breath-stealing kiss I’ve ever known. The nightclub erupts into applause and triumphant hooting.
Always, always, always …