Acting Up Read online

  Cory stammered through the obligatory compliments on the apartment, which were lies since the place really was a dump. But he carried it off well enough. Besides, for all I knew, maybe to him it was a palace. He grew up in Missouri after all. Maybe the simple fact that he couldn’t smell hog doody and horse farts on the breeze wafting through the bedroom window was enough to make him all misty-eyed and fluttery with appreciation.

  I noticed his ears were suddenly red again, which was like the cutest thing ever. He cast embarrassed gazes at Beth, then me, then back again to Beth. “I’m really sorry to barge in on you guys like this. I’ll find a job and get out of your hair as quickly as possible. I swear.”

  Beth pshawed him. “You’re family. You’re not in my hair at all. And as far as Malcolm goes, he’ll be happy just to watch you dress in the morning. Or undress. Whichever. Gay guys dig that stuff. Hell, if I know Malcolm, he’s probably plotting how to get in your pants already.”

  Cory’s mouth fell open, and so did mine.

  “Bitch!” I bellowed, making Rosemary jump while Beth merely howled with laughter. “That’s not true!” It was a lie, of course. What I said, I mean, not what she said. But I certainly wasn’t about to admit it.

  While I wondered if I could get Rosemary to rip Beth’s tits off and gulp them down like meatballs, I stammered out a welcoming statement of my own—after first sticking my tongue out at Beth. Sometimes it’s the only thing that works. “Don’t listen to her. I may be gay but I’m not a perv. I’ll give you all the privacy I can. She is right about one thing, though. I’m glad you’re here too, Cory. Honest.” Rosemary stuck her cold nose into my armpit and pleaded for attention, so I twiddled her ears, which caused her back leg to start thumping. “I even like your dog,” I added, almost meaning it.

  What I didn’t do was comment on the snake. I figured my silence on that matter spoke reams.

  The red in Cory’s ears diffused outward toward his dimples. “Thanks, Malcolm,” he said, obviously relieved, and tipping up his beer bottle, he drained it in three seconds flat while his stubbly Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in the middle of his thickly muscled neck, which was rather enjoyable to watch. My God, he even drank beer sexy.

  “Can we have another?” he asked, like a little kid pleading for a second bowl of ice cream. “I think maybe I want to celebrate starting my new life.”

  Beth clapped her hands and jumped off the bed. “Hell yes! We should be celebrating! I’ll get us another round!” With that she ran from the room, headed for the kitchen.

  Finding ourselves alone for the very first time, Cory and I shyly scoped each other out. I was just about to open my mouth and blabber out some mindless drivel to put us both at ease when Beth reappeared carting three more beers. She passed them out and threw herself back on the bed with Cory.

  “So what’s this about you breaking up with your girlfriend?” she asked. “And just because you broke up with her, what was it that made you want to leave the state of Missouri entirely and traipse all the way across country to California? Your girlfriend wasn’t pregnant, was she? She didn’t call the cops on you, I hope. Or have a daddy eager to drag your ass to a hastily arranged wedding with all the hillbilly family in attendance and him standing there with a shotgun pointed at your head. Did she have teeth, this girlfriend of yours? Did she have a pet hog?”

  Cory looked appalled. Even so, before he answered he cast one more uneasy look in my direction as if he thought maybe this line of questioning might be better off reserved for family alone. Of course, I couldn’t have disagreed more. I wanted to hear all the dirt as much as Beth did. Poor guy. I could tell he was embarrassed. Once Beth got wound up, she could humiliate a fire hydrant.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Cory said.

  Beth was insistent. “Sure you do.”

  “No, I don’t,” Cory growled. “And she wasn’t pregnant. She was a nice girl. As for the rest of your questions, I think I’ll just leave them lying in the gutter where they belong.”

  Beth rolled her eyes. “Ooh. Well, that hurt.”

  Cory fell silent, eyeing each of us in turn as if realizing he still hadn’t answered Beth’s question. He looked so confused and sad all of a sudden that even Rosemary noticed. She crawled off my bed and joined Cory in his, curling her fifty or sixty pounds into his lap like a Chihuahua. Stretching her neck out, she gave her master a congenial lick under the chin, which made me wish I’d thought of it first.

  Cory gazed down at her and smiled. Then he peered over at me. “I left Missouri because I thought maybe there was a whole lot of life I was missing out on.” He twisted his head toward Beth. “And I missed my sister.”

  Beth stared back at him while her eyes misted over. “You did?”

  He nodded, said, “Uh-huh,” and scooped her into his arms for the twentieth time.

  I sat on my bed by the window and watched them. When my vision blurred, I realized Beth wasn’t the only one whose eyes were misting over. As Cory laid his cheek alongside Beth’s in the middle of the hug, he closed his eyes, and I had the perfect opportunity to study his face.

  What I saw made my heart give a tiny lurch of longing inside my chest. That little lurch was a new feeling for me. I had no idea what it signified, but I sort of liked it. I knew that much. To cover it up, however, I headed off to the kitchen for three more beers. For the dog, I also grabbed a slab of pork that had been lying in the fridge for a few days but hadn’t turned green yet.

  Since I was all out of rats, Leonard would have to fend for himself.

  BY THE time our first evening together drew to a close, we were all a little drunk. As the clock struck midnight, Beth excused herself with a final round of hugs for both her brother and me. With a tipsy giggle, she even gave the dog a peck on the cheek and whispered “Good night” to the snake. Nobody can get more maudlin than Beth after she’s had a few beers.

  Being the congenial host, I allowed Cory to use the bathroom to get ready for bed first. My plot to see him parade out after a shower in his birthday suit with nothing but a towel around his neck was foiled. He did indeed shower, but before he exited the bathroom, he had donned a battered T-shirt and a baggy old pair of lounging pants, which he crawled into bed in.

  By the time I had showered and done all the nighttime ablution things I was in the habit of doing—brushing, flossing, peeing, etc.—I flipped off the bathroom light and stepped out into the darkened bedroom in my nighty-night boxer shorts, which I always wore to bed. In the moonlight, I could see two lumps on the foldaway bed. Cory and Rosemary.

  Not knowing if he was asleep or not, I crawled beneath my covers and stretched out, enjoying the open window beside my head. The night air felt so good, I wondered why I hadn’t thought of placing my bed next to the window before.

  It was strange to hear the soft breathing of another human in my room. Was it my imagination that I even heard the sound of another heartbeat in the room as well? I had no doubt at all that I was inhaling the clean scent of another body near at hand. Cory smelled great. I mean really great. Like I said, all those new scents and sounds seemed deliciously strange coming at me from the shadows of my old room the way they were. What was even stranger was when Cory’s words carried through the darkness in a quiet, deliberate hush.

  “Thank you, Malcolm,” he said, his voice a low, sleepy rumble. “I appreciate you sharing your space like this.”

  “You’re welcome,” I whispered back. “I’m glad you’re here. Rosemary too.”

  To my utter surprise, I realized my words were starting to be true. I really was glad they were here.

  Once again, just to reassert my authority, I snarkily left the snake out of the equation. Yes, even when I’m being nice, I can be a brat.

  Cory wasn’t buying the omission. He had a smile in his voice when he asked, still in a whisper, “What about Leonard? Aren’t you glad he’s here too?”

  I’d be damned if I was going to answer that question. I grinned in the darkne
ss and pretended to be asleep.

  Cory chuckled quietly from his bed. It was the last sound I heard before sleep overtook me. I’m pretty sure I was smiling when it did.

  Later, when the moon outside my window had slid high in the sky and a cricket somewhere outside on the ledge was cricketing up a storm, I awoke to the soft snores of Cory sleeping peacefully in the bed across the room. I lay there for the longest time staring through the moonlight, watching the rise and fall of Cory’s broad chest as he dreamed his way through his first night away from home.

  As if sensing I couldn’t sleep, Rosemary rose up from the foot of Cory’s bed with a yawn and padded across the room, her little toenails tippy-tapping on the hardwood floor. With a grunt, she hopped onto my bed and, once there, spun around three times searching for a comfortable spot, then finally collapsed in a heap at my feet. Curled up in a big warm ball, she spent the rest of the night softly snoring, just like her master in the other bed.

  No one was more surprised than I when I realized I enjoyed the weight of a warm body joining me in the bed for a change. I guess I had been sleeping alone for far too long.

  Yep, the dog was a cozy bedmate. Of course, the man would have been better.

  Chapter Four

  MY ERA of being a reluctant roommate to one of the hunkiest men on the planet began with me opening my eyes to a morning sun that had already climbed halfway to its zenith. My first thought was, Thank God it’s Saturday. I don’t have to go to work. The gorillas can scoop their own poop. My second thought was, Where’s the snake?

  I blinked myself awake and fine-tuned my eyeballs to where I could actually see out of them. The first thing I realized was that the snake carrier was no longer sitting where it had been sitting the night before. It didn’t take me long to realize that as much as I hated having that snake carrier parked on my dresser, I hated even more not knowing where the heck it was.

  I groaned my way up to a sitting position and surveyed the room. No snake carrier anywhere. I cranked my stiff neck sideways and took in the folding bed where the last time I had looked, Cory was softly snoring in the moonlight and looking scrumptious while he did it. Cory was gone. So was Rosemary. So was the moonlight. Cory’s bed was neatly made up, my Ryan Reynolds pillow perfectly aligned across one end, the tail ends of his bed linens tucked under the mattress with military precision at the other.

  It would seem my new roommate was a bit of a neatnik. I was pretty sure that after living with me for a few weeks, he’d be cured of that little malady.

  I flung the bedclothes aside and sat there in my wrinkled boxer shorts, the front of which was tented rather impressively by my morning boner. I gave my head a shake, still trying to pull myself awake. Then I scratched my chest, scratched my armpits, scratched my nuts, gave my dick a squeeze just to be friendly, yawned a couple of times, and wondered where everybody went.

  Two seconds later, the bedroom door opened, and Cory strolled in, removing the leash from around the neck of a very happy pit bull. Rosemary took one look at me, gave a cheerful yip, and came flying across the room. She sailed onto my bed, tail flailing in midflight, and knocked me flat on my back. Gasping for air while the damn dog smothered me with kisses, I was helpless to prevent my boner from standing straight up into the air inside my boxers as I thrashed around under sixty pounds of excited mutt.

  When Rosemary finally calmed down a bit, I gazed over to see Cory standing in the doorway, watching us. He had a bemused look on his face, but when he saw me staring back at him, he molded it quickly into a morning smile.

  He had a wrench in his hand.

  Still flat on my back, I quickly pulled the sheet over my lap to hide my hard-on, as if Cory hadn’t seen enough of it already. Besides, it would remain a hard-on until I partook of my first pee of the day, which I couldn’t do until Cory left the room because I certainly wasn’t going to play the shy little faggot and wrap a sheet around myself just to walk to the bathroom.

  Oddly enough, Cory’s ears were red again. Maybe it was a chronic condition.

  “Good morning,” he said shyly.

  I mumbled something back that sounded vaguely like “Gut mernnag,” and then I cleared my throat and tried again. “Good morning. What’s with the wrench? Am I so annoying you’ve already decided to beat me to death?”

  He stared down at the wrench in his hand, then back at me. “No! Beth told me you were having car trouble, so I fixed it.”

  That woke me up. “You fixed my car?”

  “Yeah. That’s not to say something else might not fall apart pretty soon. It’s not exactly a Lotus. What makes you think you’re annoying?”

  I thought that one over. “My past history with everybody I’ve ever met in my life?”

  Cory laughed. “Well, you haven’t annoyed me yet. If that changes, I’ll let you know.”

  Again, I considered the wrench in his hand. “You really fixed my car? What was wrong with it?”

  “Your battery cable came loose.”

  “That’s all it was? Maybe I should look under the hood once in a while, not that I would know what I was looking at even if I did.”

  “Not very mechanical, huh?”

  I let my face split into a grin at that one. Understatements amuse me so.

  I was beginning to like this guy. “So you really fixed it?”

  “Yeah. It only took two minutes.”

  My mechanic would have taken three days and charged me twelve-hundred bucks.

  Rosemary appeared to be bothered by the fact that the conversation had nothing to do with her. She took a mouthful of my bedclothes and dragged them off the bed, leaving me once again lying there on my back with my morning woody pointing due north. Thank God I’d worn boxers to bed.

  Cory gave me an enigmatic smile. “I guess having your car fixed for free is exciting for you.”

  Now it was my turn to blush. I clapped my hands over my crotch and probably turned about fifteen shades of vermilion.

  Cory winked and backed out the door. “Maybe I’d better leave you to it,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. Did he think I was going to beat off or something? But before I could ask, he had backed out the door and closed it quietly behind him.

  I couldn’t help but notice he was blushing while he did it.

  Watching him go, I gave a shudder. It was one of those good shudders you sometimes get when you have a sexual rush come over you that you hadn’t been expecting. Men are particularly susceptible to those rushes when their dicks are already hard. I guess an erect cock works like an antenna, drawing in the horny vibes.

  I had a feeling there would be a plethora of horny vibes coming at me as long as I roomed with Cory Williams. A plethora of hard-ons too. I’d have to work at it to keep them under wraps, or he’d think I was a degenerate. Which, around his overpowering hunkiness, wasn’t far from the truth.

  Before dragging myself out of bed, I shot a quick prayer skyward thanking God for sending Cory to fix my car. What a generous thing for a deity to do. I might even consider going to church the following Sunday to show my appreciation. Well, no, I wouldn’t, but it was a nice thought.

  I peed, showered, shaved, brushed my teeth, dressed, and was out the bedroom door in twelve minutes flat, sans boner. Rosemary had lain curled on the bathroom rug watching the ritual with lazy eyes, tail thumping, chewing on a toenail. Her toenail, not mine.

  I found Cory in the kitchen sitting behind a huge bowl of Wheaties. Breakfast of champions. In front of the cereal bowl, he had the morning paper splayed out, open to the help wanted ads.

  “Where’s the snake?” I asked.

  Was it my imagination, or did Cory glance at my crotch before he answered? Checking on the state of my erection, maybe. I guess straight guys are just as competitive as gay guys when it comes to other guys’ dicks. Or maybe he was just making sure Malcolm Junior was securely locked up and wasn’t about to leap out at him and start dribbling precome all over the breakfast table. God k
nows what straight people think.

  “Beth decided to keep Leonard in her room since he freaks you out so much. He’s too cramped up in that carrier, so I’m going to go out later and buy a large terrarium so he can move around a little.” He held a hand in the air as if cutting me off at the pass. “And don’t worry. I’ll buy one with a boa constrictor-proof lid. They are excellent escape artists.”

  I could have spent the rest of my life quite happily never learning that little zoological factoid, but all I said was, “Goody.”

  Giving the Wheaties box a shake to see if there was enough left for me, I decided there was and poured it into a bowl, plopping it down across from Cory and filling it full of milk.

  Digging in, I asked, “Where’s Beth?”

  “Voice lessons.”

  I smiled. “It won’t help, you know.”

  Cory grinned. “I know. I remember her butchering campfire songs when we were kids.”

  Strangely, his eyes slipped away from my face at the memory. He stared out the kitchen window at the palm tree standing somnolent in the California heat at the edge of the apartment building. Cory’s spoon lay forgotten in his hand.

  “You’re homesick,” I said softly.

  His eyes swiveled back to me. “No,” he said, just as quietly. “Just pensive.”

  I smiled. “Hearing a big butch guy like you use the word ‘pensive’ is kind of a trip.”

  “You think I’m big and butch?”