The Out of Towner Read online

  “I haven’t noticed,” Thomas told him. It was the truth, but Jimmy wrinkled his nose at him like he was being coy.

  “About the wine,” Thomas clarified.

  “I’m supposed to believe that all kinds don’t come up and hit on someone like you when you go to a bar alone and sip your grandmother’s cocktail?”

  Thomas blushed. “What are you doing in Minneapolis? I heard you were out in New York.”

  “I am out in New York. New York City, actually, but I’m celebrating a successful work trip before I go back. I was in town to do some interviews. I work in radio and my show is doing some stories about The American Metropolis. Minneapolis is in our ‘secret gem’ category. Very affordable, very well educated, very healthy. Low crime, good wages. Good entertainment for everyone from families to a single man about town. Gay, straight or somewhere in between. And no one knows anything about it, or if they do they think it’s a frozen tundra. The boys upstairs knew I was a native son, so they sent me back for a couple days to do lunches and ‘man on the streets’. It’s been good time. I needed a vacation. What about you?”

  Thomas debated lying for a moment. Telling the truth would stop the flirting, which he was getting a kick out of, but it was cruel to lead someone on, and if Jimmy was, as Thomas suspected, looking for a corn-fed lay before he went back to the big leagues, he deserved to know that he was barking up the wrong tree.

  “I’m… I’m waiting for my fiancé, actually. We’re meeting here for cocktails and appetizers. Carlos Gutierrez. You remember him?”

  Jimmy looked him up and down again. “Do I ever. I was so disappointed when the two of you got together. Two boys I wanted, suddenly taken off the menu.”

  Thomas nearly choked on his drink. Jimmy Colton had actually known who he was back in college. What a thing to learn nine years too late.

  “So, still together after all this time and wedding bells in the future. Congratulations.” He raised his drink, Thomas mirrored the gesture and they touched their glasses together with a little ‘tink’. “Many happy returns. He in the bathroom or something?”

  “We’re…” Thomas laughed self-deprecatingly. “We’re playing a little game, honestly. We’ve been so overwhelmed with wedding plans that we both needed… I don’t know, to shake things up a little.”

  “Yeah. I get that. My sister’s planning her wedding too. I don’t envy anyone trying to do it.”

  “It doesn’t help that my family isn’t super supportive. Or that his family is crazy excited. His mother called us screaming when the news about legalization came through. We just set the phone on the coffee table and waited for her to calm down.”

  “That is adorable,” Jimmy told him. “So what’s the game?”

  “Oh. We’re pretending that we’re strangers. Carlos is going to find me here. I’m going to let him seduce me, and then we’re going to go home. Too much talk about caterers and place cards will kill the romance in your life.”

  “Ah. Okay. I see. Are you going to play hard to get?” Jimmy’s smile was brighter than ever as he picked his drink up again.

  Thomas bit his lip. “It depends on whether or not he brings his A-game, I guess.”

  Jimmy nodded. His reached out and plucked Thomas’s glass from his hand, then took a sip of his drink. “Mmm. That is good.”

  It was just a little too flirtatious. Just a little too familiar. “What are you doing?” Thomas asked.

  Jimmy winked at him. “Carlos just walked in.” He handed the glass back, looked at the door, where Carlos must be standing and smirked. “Should I leave you to your game?” He leaned a little closer and set his hand to Thomas’s knee. “Or maybe stay and play along for a little while?”

  Thomas’s entire body froze up, like it had been dropped in ice. Jimmy’s warm hand smoothed over his kneecap. He glanced over at the door, where Carlos, who was obviously late due to trying to make an entrance, was framed in the heavy wooden door. He looked incredible in his navy suit with a striped tie and a white shirt. It was a little bit old fashioned, a little too 1960’s, but it made him look like a movie star, all cheekbones and coiffed hair and white smiles. He straightened his shoulders and came over to them both.

  Thomas gulped. “Play along?”

  Jimmy finished his drink. “Yeah. You know. He comes in to find you with another man after you.” He slid his hand a fraction of an inch up Thomas’s thigh. It took everything in Thomas not to flinch. “He gets to play the big man and fight me off, claim what’s his? Possessive-slash-jealous sex is fan-fucking-tastic.”

  Thomas took another gulp of his drink. “Uh… that could be fun… yeah.”

  Jimmy’s wholesome grin turned a little crooked. He scooted his stool closer, so that their knees were touching. Thomas, blushing furiously, cast another glance at Carlos, who looked dumbfounded. He gave his boyfriend an apologetic smile, and tilted his chin up a little bit, a gentle “come over here”. Carlos’s look of confusion, edging toward hurt, softened and turned to intrigue, then a predatory grin.

  ****

  Thomas wasn’t quite sure how they got to this point. Unremarkable chit chat about their jobs somehow got the point across that the game was still going on and that Carlos’s role changed from the handsome stranger who picked Thomas up in a bar, to the manly fiancé staking his claim against the interest of Jimmy’s handsome stranger role. They’d left the bar for a booth, tucked into an alcove warmly lit by a sconce and a large candle at the center of the table in a red cracked-glass candleholder. Carlos sat next to Thomas, with his arm wrapped around his back. It was more PDA than was usual for them after this point in their relationship, but it wasn’t entirely out of character. Jimmy sat across from them. They laughed about old college stories. Their hot pepper calamari and prosciutto wrapped mozzarella arrived. Jimmy started playing footsie with Thomas under the table. Carlos ordered everyone another round of drinks and started stroking his palm gently up and down Thomas’s thigh.

  The friendly night kept up the pretense of Jimmy trying to steal Thomas away. It was fun to pretend that two beautiful men really were fighting over him. And then things took a turn. Thomas mentioned that he was a yoga instructor. Jimmy’s mild flirting became a little more sexual. He asked if Thomas could put his legs behind his head, and bit his lip when Thomas said he could.

  Carlos, still stroking his thigh, set his hand to Thomas’s crotch and gave his half-hard cock a quick squeeze.

  Thomas jumped up so hard his knees hit the table and everything on it clattered loudly.

  Jimmy reached across the table, caught Thomas’s chin and fed him a piece of squid, his bright blue eyes burning into Thomas’s as he placed the bite of meat into his mouth. The picante flavor spread over Thomas’s tongue, as he swallowed and fought for words, staring into the face of an old crush who had become an even more stunning man, with his lover’s hands between his legs. A soft “uh” escaped his lips.

  “You are really getting turned on by this, aren’t you?” Carlos’s voice was quiet, but not so quiet that Jimmy couldn’t hear them easily. Thomas couldn’t force himself to reply. Carlos set his lips to Thomas’s ear and whispered to him again. “You getting really hot for us, baby?”

  Jimmy’s throat bobbed before he pulled back and said, in an admirably level voice, “How far are we taking this game?”

  “Well… we have sort of talked about how we have this… fantasy,” Carlos answered, his voice steady and confident.

  Jimmy’s smile curled up again. “Everybody does, boys. Everybody does.” He leaned back in the booth, grinning like the cat who got the cream. “I have a hotel room downtown.”

  Thomas tried to set his hands down on the table, in the same sort of gesture that important people trying to gain the upper hand might set their hands on their desk. But, overloaded, his hands banged on the surface with a loud thump. And old man at a table a little ways over, who had been nursing an Old Fashioned for half an hour, gave them all a nasty look.

  Carlos moved
his hand back to Thomas’s thigh.

  “Baby?” he started gently. “It’s okay if you aren’t on board with this.”

  “I … umm,” Thomas managed. “This is not what I was expecting today. I’m a little—”

  “What do you need?” Jimmy asked. His tone was low and careful and helped Thomas ground himself.

  “I––” Thomas started. “I need some air.” He scooted out of the booth and tried to walk across the restaurant as nonchalantly as he possibly could with two men behind him and a noticeable erection nudging at the front of his trousers. He walked down a hallway that turned out to be some sort of ‘employees only’ section of the restaurant. A cute young waitress, who was obviously doing everything in her power to keep from indicating that she had seen his predicament, gave him directions to the bathroom.

  Thankfully, no one else was in the men’s room.

  Thomas bent over the sink and splashed cold water on his face, let the water drip down his cheeks and chin, then did it again.

  He and Carlos had talked about doing this before. A few years ago they hit a dry spell and admitted to being bored, and The List was born. Whenever anything they thought might be interesting, or sexy, or a break from the usual, occurred to them they wrote it on a worn and increasingly crumpled piece of paper from an old yellow legal pad, which they kept in their nightstand. Sometimes things got crossed off right away. Some experiments were so successful that they became part of the usual, and the occasional thing was such a disaster that all attempts at continued sexual congress devolved into giggling, moaning in pain while trying to get the charley horse out, or immediately running for the shower.

  The list also encompassed a few things that neither of them had the balls to actually try yet. Adding another man was in that category. It was more complicated than anything else they might do together. They were in a committed, long term, monogamous relationship. Sleeping with another man, even if they both agreed, even if they were both present, brought up a whole host of complications.

  Thomas splashed his face again. This was ridiculous. Was Carlos really thinking about doing this? With the wedding less than two months away? He was the one who had asked for a night centered around pretending they weren’t getting married. Was he getting cold feet?

  Thomas held his wet hands over his face and breathed deep. No… this wasn’t about cold feet. Not really. They were both men. They both liked men. They had been together for a long time and Thomas was thinking about this too. He’d been imagining Jimmy’s hands on his calves, not just his shoes brushing at his ankles. More than Jimmy’s fingers against his lips.

  The door to the men’s room creaked open. Thomas stood quickly, grabbed a rolled up washcloth from the fancy basket on the counter and started dabbing his face. The smell of lavender detergent didn’t quite cover up the smell of bleach. He heard foot falls on the tile.

  “Baby?” Carlos said quietly. “You still need a minute or can we talk?”

  Thomas dabbed the soft cloth against his face again, then tossed it in the basket for used towels.

  “You guys must think I’m such a square for flipping out.”

  Carlos shrugged. “You’ve always been a square. I have always loved that about you.”

  Thomas looked at Carlos in the mirror. He looked so different than he had when they’d first gotten together. Squarer in the jaw, broader in the shoulders. The small scar at his hairline from the car accident he’d gotten into three years ago. His hair cut by someone who actually knew how to cut hair, not by his mother in the bathroom over school breaks.

  “Look, this doesn’t have to be a big deal,” Carlos said. “If you don’t want to go back to Jimmy’s hotel, just say so. We’ll go out there, I’ll pick up our part of the tab, pretend to rub it in his face that you picked me. We’ll go home and I will tear you out of that suit and fuck you like I almost lost you.”

  Thomas chuckled at Carlos’s ludicrously serious expression. The corner of Carlos’s mouth twitched up as he stepped closer to Thomas. “Or, if you’re curious…” He set his hands on Thomas’s shoulders. “Or interested. Or the idea makes you hot.” He leaned forward, pushing Thomas back against the counter and pressing their groins together. “Then we can just go back to Jimmy’s room and see what happens.”

  Thomas tilted his head forward so that his forehead touched his fiancé’s. “This is a little intimidating.”

  “Why?”

  Thomas scoffed. “You know why.”

  “Mmnnnmm. Tell me.”

  “Because I wasn’t a slut like you were.” Thomas had never slept with anyone but Carlos, ever. He hadn’t come out until college, and Carlos was his first, for everything. Carlos, on the other hand, went through what he referred to as “a little bit of a slutty phase”. It was a slutty phase that lasted from his first blow job at fourteen years old to about two weeks before he started going after Thomas seriously. After they were official, they hadn’t had sex for months and months because Thomas had never so much as kissed a boy and he was intimidated by Carlos’s experience.

  Carlos laughed. “You’re hardly a virgin now.”

  “It’s a bigger deal for me to double the people I’ve slept with then it is for you to add one more to the pile.”

  Carlos pulled back and slid his hand around Thomas’s jaw. “I haven’t slept with anyone but you in nine years, either. I’m aware that breaking that streak is a big deal, but this isn’t about getting to fuck Jimmy Colton. This is about doing something a little crazy, sowing some wild oats, with you.”

  Thomas shivered in Carlos’s arms. “I like that definition.”

  “I want to see another man get turned on by you. I want to see another man touch you. Adore you. Make you feel good.”

  “Okay,” Thomas said with a sigh. “And you want all this before we get married?”

  “Thomas, you’ve never even kissed anyone but me. Are you telling me that you’ve never wondered what another man might be like? At all?”

  “Maybe a little,” Thomas admitted.

  “Uh huh. And you’ve been drooling over him all night. And you’re right. We’re getting married. No matter what happens tonight, you’re still going home with me. Jimmy will go to the airport. You and I will go back to our apartment. With our cats. And bicker with our family about the details of this huge elaborate ceremony to prove that we are going to spend our lives together.” Carlos kissed him. “And none of that is going to change, just because I got to watch some gorgeous boy suck you off.”

  Thomas’s hips rocked against him involuntarily and he shifted out of Carlos’s grip and cleared his throat. “Okay. Alright. Whatever happens, I don’t want it to happen in a men’s room.”

  “Deal.”

  “And we need… guidelines.”

  “Safety words?” Carlos grinned.

  Thomas wagged a finger at him. “Don’t be like that right now.”

  Carlos held his hands up, placating. He walked to the door and held it open for Thomas.

  Back at the table, Jimmy was signing the check. He looked up at them with a sincere, hopeful smile. Carlos and Thomas slid back into their side of the booth.

  “What did you gentleman decide?” Jimmy asked.

  “That it’s a perfect night to go back to your hotel for nightcap,” Carlos said. “We just need”––he glanced at Thomas––“A minimum expectation to work with. What’s the minimum that would make this worth your while, Jimmy?”

  “I’m an easy guy to please. Bare minimum, I could have a nice night watching the two of you together.” There wasn’t a trace of embarrassment or hesitation in his tone. He sounded like he’d done this before, like the idea of a live show was exactly what he’d come here looking for. “You’re handsome fellas. You don’t owe me anything.”

  Thomas was more relieved than he thought he would be to hear that. “Okay. Yeah. I can work with that.”

  Carlos kissed Thomas’s neck. “Let’s head out, then.”

  ****

  Ji
mmy’s hotel was only a few blocks away. Carlos slotted his hand into Thomas’s as they walked two paces behind Jimmy, who led the way. The slight chill of the spring night was rejuvenating. Energizing. Carlos thumbed over the back of Thomas’s hand, the way he did when he was really pleased about something.

  The hotel lobby was impressive: high ceilings, glossy white end tables, leather furniture and huge windows. Every light fixture and piece of furniture was ultra-modern. Their quick steps rang loudly in the empty anteroom’s the three of them tried to hurry to the elevator as nonchalantly as possible. Carlos’s hand tightened around Thomas’s as the elevator doors dinged shut, and Thomas braced himself, expecting, now that they were somewhere semi-private for the first time tonight, that he was about to be ravaged, like a steak thrown into a piranha tank. But all that happened was Jimmy settled back against the wall on Thomas’s other side and set his hand to the small of Thomas’s back. He wondered, with a twinge of embarrassment that bit into the pleasant tingling down his spine, if the other two were playing it so cool because he had freaked back at the restaurant.

  The lights kept moving across the top of the elevator, from one all the way to fifteen, while the three men stood quietly, unmoving hands burning against each other until the bell finally dinged and the doors slid open.

  The three of them walked into a foyer built like the entryway but on a smaller scale. Carlos’s hand stayed tight around his, but Jimmy’s slid up between his shoulders. They were both innocent enough touches, but Thomas couldn’t help but feel like anyone who saw them would have a pretty clear idea what their plans for the night entailed. Thankfully, they didn’t cross anyone’s path on their way to Jimmy’s room.

  Jimmy pulled out his keycard, slid it into the door and ripped it back out, then flung the door open and ushered Thomas and Carlos inside. He flicked the lights on, illuminating a rich, elegant room. Everything in it was black, white, gray or a neutral, woodsy brown. All the lighting came from warm sconces on the walls. It should have been gloomy, but it wasn’t. It was restful. It might have been the cocktails, or the touching, but Thomas also felt like it was sensual, as though a hotel near the conference center and all the downtown businesses specifically designed itself for the sexual misadventures of traveling executives. Maybe it had. Thomas was hardly in a position to gather empirical evidence on the subject.