2 Chapter 2

As I drove home, I knew avoiding Jared’s call was a mistake. If he couldn’t reach me by phone, he’d just come to my apartment and if he couldn’t reach me there, I’d just see him at work tomorrow. Jared and I worked together—well, I worked forhim. He was my manager. When he hired me six months ago as an assistant marketing coordinator at Axis Medical Publishing, we’d only known each other vaguely through mutual acquaintances (i.e., other gays around town). But soon after I started working for him, he and I started dating. We had to keep our relationship under wraps though, since he was my boss, so at work we played it cool. We never went to lunch together and only talked about work-related or mundane things in the office. But that didn’t mean the manager/employee boundary wasn’t crossed from time to time. Jared often sent me dirty text messages during the day (from his personal iPhone, not from the Blackberry he used for work—he wasn’t stupid). I’d hear my phone buzz and see that I’d received a message asking if I was wearing underwear or if my cock was hard. And one night while we were both working late to finish some ads for a new neurology book, he cornered me in the men’s room and we had sex in one of the stalls. I was scared to death that a cleaning lady or someone would walk in and catch us, but thankfully, no one did. Unfortunately, the thrill of dating my manager wore off quickly and I soon found myself growing tired of it all. Plus, Jared was kind of a dick.

Even though he was only seven years older than I was (thirty-one to my twenty-four), he acted like he was some kind of worldly sage whose life experiences triumphed over my own. He also thought he was big shot because he was an assistant marketing manager, a job I heard he’d only gotten after the previous manager left the company and the department was in a bind. He took special pride in bossing me and the other marketing coordinator, Ashley, around. He loved redoing the work we’d already done and returning ads to us for multiple changes. Make this text boldface. Move the picture of the brain over. No, I don’t like that, so move it back to where it was. Oh, and change the font.This kind of thing went on and on. Ashley and I were too low level to work on book covers or anything big, so we were stuck handling direct mail and journal ads, the kind of stuff no one really looked at. Since we reported directly to Jared, we were forced to deal with his wrath on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the title and power had gone to his head. Still, he was good at what he did and the changes he asked for did make the ads look better (most of the time). He had an eye for things and it showed in the work our department churned out. Thankfully, his Princeton degree hadn’t gone to waste. Yes, he was an Ivy Leaguer, adding a level of douchebaggery to his dickishness. So why date someone so awful? Because he wasn’t truly awful. He could actually be very sweet on occasion. And he was cute. And good in bed. And I’m an idiot.

My phone started ringing again as I parked my car in an empty spot a few blocks from my apartment. Living in the Washington Square neighborhood of Philadelphia was challenging for people like me who owned cars. Street parking was ridiculous. My mother told me I should just bite the bullet and pay for a garage, but I refused. I paid enough in rent for my tiny apartment in a converted brownstone. Paying for parking was an additional expense I just couldn’t justify at the moment. I figured if I didn’t take whatever empty parking spot I saw on the street within a decent radius from my building, I’d end up circling for the next hour trying to catch someone pulling out.

“Hello, Jared,” I said after answering the phone.

“Where are you?” he asked. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the last hour.”

“I was at my mother’s house.”

“Are you home yet?”

“No. What’s up?”

“Nothing. I just want to see you.”

I really didn’t feel like seeing Jared, but I was horny, so I told him to come by in half an hour. When I got to my apartment, I immediately opened a beer and turned on the television. Even though I enjoyed living alone, I found the silence of an empty apartment a little depressing, so I usually kept some kind of background noise going. Hearing other voices or music made me feel like I wasn’t alone even if I was.