Cassidy and Hughes
JONNY SUPPOSED SOMEWHERE IN THE back of his mind that he knew about Trent and Jared. He must have just glossed over the finer details, not that they were any of his business.
Jared unfurled his arms; there were tiny speckles over his forearms like goose flesh.
“Come on,” he said, marching toward him then opening the doors. “It’s a little brisk this morning. Let me cook up some breakfast for you.”
“I’m not all that hungry,” Jonny replied, eyes skirting the floor of the balcony. They stopped every now and then, taking great interest in the odd branch or dead leaf.
“I’m sure what I have to tell you is far more interesting than dead tree parts.”
Jonny looked up from his seat and before long was standing.
Jared smiled and stepped inside the house where it was much warmer.
“I’ll be glad when summer gets here and the mornings aren’t so brisk,” he said, passing beneath the arch that led into the kitchen. Pointing over toward the bar he told Jonny to take a seat.
“I’d rather keep my hands busy and help,” said Jonny.
“Suit yourself,” Jared said, walking over to the cabinet where the pots and pans were kept. Opening one of the doors, he pulled out a large copper skillet, supposedly non-stick, but most of the time if you didn’t use ample amounts of cooking spray, you’d be left with a burnt mess.
“Snag me one, too?” Jonny asked. “Can be a plain one.”
Jared did so with a smile, handing off a large black frying pan. As he did, their fingers brushed against each other and Jonny’s cheeks flushed pink when he set the pan down.
“You’re so innocent,” Jared said, setting his own skillet on the stovetop. Spraying the copper skillet, he told Jonny, “The eggs are on the top shelf, bacon should be in the drawer unless Trent already got a hold of it.”
“I’m innocent most of the time,” Jonny said, plucking the eggs and (thankfully) the bacon from their respective places in the refrigerator. Turning, he closed the door with a gentle backwards kick and took the items over to Jared. Both pans were getting hot.
As the two of them cooked breakfast, the room filled with delicious smells that transported them back to the earlier years of their lives. A time where Mom would be cooking, Dad would be reading the morning newspaper (or in Jared’s case the latest copy of Architecture Weekly), and they – as kids – would be playing. Now that they were older, both longed for that innocent time again, where others had the worries and they had the freedom to not care about anything other than which crayon would be best to color the drawing of a puppy.
Yet life could only move in one direction, and backward was not it.
“Okay,” Jared said over the sizzle of bubbling bacon. “About Trent and I…”
Jonny listened as Jared told him about their history.
It began a couple of years ago, when Trent – then with a much shorter beard and slightly smaller frame – met Jared at Swole’s grand opening. Before the rebuild and rebranding, the facility was called The Den, owned by a Charles Wilkerson who was nothing more than a hack job in it for cold, hard cash. The place was known more as a dump than a gym, with its cracked padding, rusted plates where rubber ones weren’t used, and cobbled cables. The far nicer services were on the eastern and southern edges of town, the ritzier parts where cold, hard cash did talking as well, just with better results than Wilkerson had done. Those in the north and west, especially students at Logan University with a ‘fitness center’ far worse than any hotel’s, had to travel quite a way to maintain any semblance of a healthy lifestyle, paying premium membership prices for the privilege.
Trent had an entrepreneurial spirit, seeing the potential to make some serious money in the process. Saving his cash over the years, he was finally able to take over the lease and renovate the space, Wilkerson sure to milk him for as much as he could in the process. All of it was a risk, but using his charm (and Jonny was quite sure Jared forgot to say his dick) Trent pulled a few favors for used, old-school equipment. That lured some of the bigger guys in town and along with an affordable membership fee, Swole proved just what the north side of town needed. Within a year, Trent was expanding into the space next door and setting up the different rooms that had become so familiar to Jonny over the past week.
But back to the grand opening. It was about three o’clock that afternoon when a beastly nineteen-year-old walked in through the doors, catching Trent’s wandering eye immediately. The boy wasn’t hard to miss by any means; he’d been the size of a bull since his early teens.
“Meat and potatoes never fail the Hughes’ boys,” Jared’s dad used to say, and still did when they met over holidays. He wasn’t exaggerating, all four of his boys having good genes while looking great in tight ones all the same.
Three brothers? Jonny thought as Jared rattled off their names. Oh my God…
Trent worked his moves on Jared, who was receptive to those advances but aware of what was going on. Trent had a reputation (everyone in town knows him well, remember?) but still, Jared couldn’t deny that the man had talent with respect to his craft.
Over time and many workouts, both during and after hours, something seemed to blossom between them like a garden at the end of winter’s final frost. Trent didn’t like living by himself on the west side of town so much anymore, and Jared, who was trapped in campus housing until the end of his first year, pined for more time alone with this man he was starting to care more about. He didn’t want to say love, because he wasn’t sure that was what it was nor if Trent could live up to what that word really meant. Regardless, Jared wanted to spend more time around Trent (Jonny knew exactly how he felt) and perhaps learn to change that in him.
“Some things take small steps,” Jared’s Mom used to tell him, “and though you may feel like progress is slow, any step you can take that moves you forward is a success.”
Changing Trent was no easy task, but Jared kept those words in mind and the time eventually came when the two decided to rent a house together. They both signed onto the lease to be able to afford the hillside home. It offered privacy from town and college life, but wasn’t so far removed that they’d feel isolated, and others could visit without driving an eternity. The truth was Jared could have signed on by himself, his parents were wealthy enough, but it was a symbolic gesture to him, one that promised happiness for years to come.
Yet, instead of the dream the move should have been, it was more like a bright, fluorescent light shining down on all their imperfections. Nothing could hide and every crack was exposed, seeming to widen as arguments increased over time. Then, after seven months with no alternatives other than to explode at each other even more, something snapped. The two grew to hate being around each other and Jared poured all his attention on school, moving himself into the upstairs bedroom while Trent, staying in the master suite, focused on running his gym and training his clients.
“Thinking back,” Jared said, “I think it was sometime during that first year, waiting on my sentence in the dorms to be over, that I realized Trent wouldn’t change. Maybe he couldn’t, but overall I was just fooling myself that it was possible.”
“I wouldn’t beat yourself up too hard over it. Wasn’t that around the same time we met?” Jonny asked.
“Yeah, when I was visiting Bonnie,” Jared answered, a sparkle in his eyes. “You were there at her birthday party and we started talking.”
“If you call talking to the wallpaper a conversation. God, I was such a wallflower.”
“Yup, I remember,” Jared replied lightly. “It was like you’d been superglued right there and nothing was going to move you. Got you away from the wall eventually, though, didn’t I. Jesus, you were sweating buckets on the couch.”
“So much that it looked like I’d pissed on the cushions.”
“Haha! Yeah, Bonnie asked me later if you were that drunk. I told her no, you were just nervous… and you were extremely cute.” Jared found himself looking out across the table. “Wow, I guess that’s when I first redirected my lost affections toward you.”
Jonny returned the stare, wrapped in gentle affection.
“I think that’s why I was sweating so much,” he said. “Hindsight twenty-twenty and all. I liked you, Jared. A lot.”
“Liked?”
“Still do,” Jonny clarified, then looked down to his plate.
He hadn’t eaten much food at all, already admitting that he wasn’t too hungry before they’d even started cooking. Still, he felt bad about it.
On the other hand, Jared had been shoveling food as he went; he was a meat and potatoes kind of boy after all. Setting down his fork with a clatter, the back of it smeared some golden drops of runny yolk. Jared placed an elbow on the edge of the table, made a fist which caused his forearm to bulge, and rested his cheek against his knuckles.
“Well, there you have it,” he said. “The sordid tale of Cassidy and Hughes.”
Jonny was using his fork to repeatedly stab the yolk of his over-easy egg.
“So, I need to ask, are you both using me now?”
“Yes.” The word came out of Jared’s mouth quickly and effortlessly. “J, I think we’ve been ‘using’ you to fill the gaps in our personal lives. I also think you’ve been doing the same, using us to fill the one left in your chest by that bastard Fred.”
Fred, Jonny thought bitterly; the name was repugnant. Now there’s someone I hope’s been hit by a train and put out of our misery.
“I suppose you’re right,” Jonny said, lifting a strip of bacon between his fingers. He dipped it into the opaque yellow pool, swished it around a little, then took a crispy bite. “You should call this The Sordid Tale of Cassidy, Hughes, and Cameron.”
“Trent would want it named something like Trent’s Big Swole Package,” Jared said and they both laughed.
“It’s always all about him, isn’t it?” Jonny said jokingly. “Hell, it’d probably leap off the shelves with a name like that, though.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Some guys have all the luck.”
“Oh, he’d be sharing those royalties…”
“… else I’d beat the change right out of his coin purse,” Jared said and the two erupted into howls of laughter. If Trent had been home, they’d surely have woken him.
The chuckles continued for a while, then faded into silence. Eventually, Jared got up to take his plate to the sink. Rinsing it, he placed it into the dishwasher.
“You finished my man?”
“Huh? Oh!” Jonny said, slumping over his plate. “No, not yet. I’m still picking at it.”
“Okay, let me know if you want me to finish it off,” Jared said, returning to his chair with a glass of water. “I need to eat a lot today if I’m going to be working out with the two of you.”
Coupled with the loud thud Jared’s ass made as he dropped into the chair, those words felt like a sudden punch in the gut. Jonny jolted himself upright.
“W-what was that?”
“Um, you need plenty of energy when you lift,” Jared said coolly. “That comes from eating, unless you’re a walking stimulant like Trent.”
“I… I know that.” Jonny said, unavoidably considering his smaller arms. “But, I’m confused by what you just said.”
“With the two of you?”
“Yes.”
“It was an invitation earlier, right?”
“So, you’re saying that you’re in?” Jonny asked, feeling queasy.
Jared nodded, but this time it was a bit hesitant.
“In for all of it?”
“Yes!” Jared snapped, breath sputtering after. “Unless you keep asking me damn questions. Look, I’ll do it, but only if what you said about Trent doing anything to make you happy is true.”
“I think it is,” Jonny said. “He seemed genuine about it. As much as Trent can seem genuine about anything that’s not in his best interest.”
That was enough for Jared; he knew Trent well enough.
“Okay then,” Jared said. “I’m in this for you, Jonny. As such, Trent is going to have to play second fiddle if this is going to work.”
Oh boy, he’s not going to like that at all, Jonny thought.
“You think he’s going to go along with that?”
“He has to, doesn’t he?” Jared replied. “What was it he told you to say to me? ‘We need to make sacrifices?’”
“Yeah, he did say that, but his sacrifice was apparently inviting you to Swole in the first place. I don’t know if he’s going to want to follow your lead.”
Jared notched his shoulders back, then jerked his head to the left. There was a soft pop in his neck and a look of relief fell across his face.
“Oh, that’s not what I meant at all,” he replied. “You see, if I’m going to do this then Casanova Cassidy is going to play second fiddle to the both of us.”
“What are you talking about?” Jonny asked, a little confused.
“A proposition of my own,” Jared said, smiling. “I’m talking about the man in the middle…”