Gap Year - 64. Chapter 64

 

March 7, 2004

New York, NY

 

Will

JJ and I were in the elevator heading up to JJ’s condo. We stood as far apart as possible from each other, both of us annoyed. He glared at me, but I gave him a withering look in return. That prompted a sigh from him. “Will you cooperate with me on this deal?” he asked.

“Up to a point,” I said.

“In two hours, a hairstylist and a makeup artist will be here to work on you,” he said, exasperated. We got out of the elevator, walked through the entrance to the condo, and found Zanie there. It seemed like she had been walking down the hall and conveniently arrived in the foyer at the same time that we did.

“Welcome back,” she said, and gave me a polite kiss on each cheek, then gave JJ an exuberant kiss, all but exposing their relationship.

“It is good to be back,” JJ said to her, smiling as he did. Then, as if by magic, his mood changed again. “Will isn’t cooperating with the big plan to dress him up.”

“He’s not?” she asked, looking at me. Her tone had a bit of a menace to it, but neither one of these idiots made me afraid in the least.

“I’m not,” I said, then zeroed in on JJ. “You are being so fucking stupid.”

“What would you know about any of this?” he demanded, acting like I wouldn’t be able to tell Dior from Armani.

“The fashion industry is about people just as much as the clothes,” I said. They both stared at me as if they were both evangelicals and I’d just told them Jesus was a fag.

“Will, help me understand your reasoning,” Zanie prompted in a classy respectful way, making JJ look like shit.

“You do not want to win this competition,” I said to JJ, emphasizing each word.

“Are you kidding?” he asked, incredulous. “I’ve worked really hard on it. This is my chance to show what I can do.”

“And how will Bellona react to that?” I asked, and watched the horror on their faces as both of them suddenly realized the problem. “If you win, you’ve pissed her off in two different ways.”

“I can see where she would be furious that her serf did better than she did,” JJ said bitterly.

“What’s the other way?” Zanie asked.

“Bellona is dressing up Darius, her boy toy. So not only would she lose the competition, but she’d also look like shit for doing it when Darius was the model,” I said. We stood there for about 15 seconds while they pondered the abyss JJ had almost walked into.

“I think Will is right,” she said. It was hilarious to see how much that annoyed JJ; he hated to be wrong.

“So what do we do about it?” he asked her.

“We go in and tone things down,” she said. “Find small things that will make him less perfect than Darius but would be mistakes only Bellona would notice.”

“That’s impossible,” I said in a joking way. “There is no way you can make me less perfect than Darius.”

They chuckled at me in a patronizing way, then wandered off to my room to make my outfit lamer. I opted to avoid them by hanging out in the great room. My eyes fell on Marc Carmine’s picture, the one JJ had bought with Alex when he’d been in Boston. I pondered my father’s relationship with Marc and contrasted that to how he was with Jake. Dad had found a limited sense of contentment with Marc, but I decided that Marc had made Dad appreciate Robbie even more. He always said he needed someone who challenged him, and his relationship with Marc showed him he’d never be happy with someone so submissive. Instead, he’d gone all in with Jake. The two of them could be such idiots, with their inability to communicate basic issues, but they seemed to complement each other. Marc had been the equivalent of a traditional wife to my father, while Jake was truly a partner. There was noise in the foyer and I turned to see Jacinta heading to the door. She must have sensed I was watching her so she answered my unasked question. “Mr. Jeremy has a guest arriving.”

“Cool,” I said. It was probably the makeup artist, and I was determined not to have someone fuck with my face, so I headed over to the windows and looked out at where the Twin Towers had been. I didn’t think there would be a time when I’d stare at that site and not relive the horrors of that day. Things had gotten better though. Instead of just seeing the fire and flames and hearing the screams, I remembered Maddy’s face as I carried her, how she’d been so scared and unhappy, but at the same time I could tell she totally trusted me. That thought actually brought a tear to my eye, but in a happy way.

“It has to be tough being here and seeing that,” Travis said. I turned to look at him; god he was handsome. It was like my brain was moving in slow motion. I first appreciated his words, then appreciated his presence, then finally got clarity that he was here, in New York, in JJ’s condo. He must have gotten how tough this trip had been for me, especially after he’d heard my conversation with Patrick, and he’d flown all the way out here to see me. I didn’t know what this meant for ‘us’, but I was just happy he’d made the effort. I felt my smile grow so big it was like it was about to make my face explode, and it got bigger when I saw his grin get just as big as mine. I lunged at him, barely able to avoid knocking him to the floor. I was hugging him almost in a vice grip, and that would have bothered me if he wasn’t hugging me back just as passionately.

I loosened my grip so I could pull back enough to look into his beautiful gray eyes. It seemed that the blue was more intense today, which made him fucking beautiful. “It is so good to see you,” I said.

He leaned back in enough to kiss me, and we just made out like that for a while, reconnecting with our mouths. “It’s good to see you too,” he said, smiling shyly. He was so adorable, I wondered if I’d ever win a fight with him.

I broke off our embrace then giggled at how badly our pants were tenting. We stood side by side, his arm on my shoulder and my hand on his side, staring out the windows facing ground zero. “It’s kind of tough being here, but it’s also cathartic.”

“Cathartic?” he asked, teasing me for using big words.

I slapped his side for being an idiot. “At first, being here helped me realize that they were truly gone. That was tough. That was really tough.”

“That’s when Zach helped you out,” he said. His mention of Zach bothered both of us.

“I’ve gotten to the point where I look out here and I think happy thoughts about my mom, Hank, and Robbie,” I said. “I mean, I still miss them, but it’s evolved into a more muted sadness as opposed to an open and painful wound.”

“I guess that’s how most people deal with grief,” he said, probably remembering his grandfather’s death. He confirmed that with his next statement. “When I lost my grandpa, it was like I lost the only person who was important to me.”

“He was a good man,” I said, because he had been.

Travis nodded. “I think I said that wrong. I meant that he was the only person who really gave a shit about me.”

“In a way, you had it harder than me, because while I loved Robbie, Hank, and my mother, my foundational relationships are more with Grand, Stef, my father, and my brothers,” I said sympathetically.

“It sucks either way,” he said.

“It was really nice that you flew all the way to New York to see me,” I said.

“Everything is just so fucked up,” he said sadly, and actually raised the hand that wasn’t on my shoulder to wipe the tears out of his eyes. I sensed that he didn’t want to go into a full dissection of his deserting me to stay with Zach and then listening in on my encounter with Patrick. There would be an opportunity for that eventually, but we had a very limited time here in New York, and I didn’t want to ruin it with a painful conversation.

“You have to see JJ and meet his girlfriend,” I said playfully, perking up my mood to help him deal with his own. “Then you have to make sure you’re pretty enough to escort me to MOMA tonight.”

“MOMA?” he asked.

“The Museum of Modern Art,” I said. “Have you been there?”

“I was just wondering what was going on there,” he said defensively.

“There’s some charity thing,” I said. “You’ve never been there?” I asked him again.

“No,” he grumbled, because I was making him look like a backwoods chump.

“I’m going to get your MOMA cherry,” I teased, cracking him up.

“Baby, you can have any cherry you want,” he said, then we kissed again.

I broke it off again and led him down the hallway to my room, where Zanie and JJ were pondering my clothes as if they were studying for an exam. “Zanie, this is Travis,” I said, introducing the two of them while simultaneously pulling them out of their fashion trance.

“How wonderful to meet you,” she said smoothly, if a bit formally.

He bowed and took her hand, then kissed it. “I think that’s my line.” God he was sexy. It was hilarious to see how he completely melted Zanie.

“You probably remember JJ,” I said dismissively, as if he were a shirt that was on its way to Goodwill.

“Dude, you are so handsome!” Travis said, beaming at him as he shook JJ’s hand.

JJ managed to get his act together. “When I saw your photo, I told Will you looked so good you could easily model.” I tried not to laugh, because JJ wasn’t really good at this kind of small talk.

“I actually went to one of your competitions,” Travis told him. “I think it was a Grand Prix or something. You were incredible. I was amazed at how this dorky dude I’d known in middle school had bloomed into a world-famous skater.”

Zanie and I smirked at each other because Travis was playing JJ perfectly. “Thanks,” JJ said, basking in his praise.

“Well it was nice that you all met each other and reconnected, but now the two of you need to get out of my room,” I said to JJ and Zanie. “You can take my clothes with you.”

“No need,” JJ said as he hung the clothes back in the closet.

“I think we figured things out,” Zanie said as she was leaving. “Thank you for seeing the bigger issue.”

“I’ve always had JJ’s back,” I said. I thought that would annoy him, but he wasn’t facing me, so I couldn’t be sure.

He surprised me by turning back briefly. “Looks like you have your answer.” He was out of the room before I could stop laughing.

“What was that all about?” Travis asked me.

“We’ll talk later,” I said to him even as I started to unbutton his shirt.

“I feel so bad about…” he started to say, but I put my finger on his lips to shut him up.

“We’ll talk later,” I said firmly, making him chuckle.

“This really bothers me…” he began again.

“Look, I get that there’s a ton of shit we need to hash out, but right now, I’m really glad you’re here. I don’t want to fuck things up with a conversation that might end badly,” I said.

“I don’t think it will end badly, but with you, you never know,” he said, giving me shit. Before I could jibe him back, his lips were on mine, and our clothes seemed to fall off as if by magic. We collapsed onto the bed with him on top of me, frotting and making out, until I pushed him off of me and onto his back. I engulfed his gorgeous cock, sucking on it until I felt him getting close, then I stopped.

“I’ll be right back,” I said, as I hopped out of bed.

“You’re leaving?” he asked, looking desperate.

“Just for a minute,” I said. I gave him a quick kiss, went into the bathroom and cleaned out my bowels. I walked back about five minutes later and laughed at his frustrated expression.

“What did you do?” he asked, and not all that nicely.

I grabbed the lube from the drawer then laid on top of him. “I had to do some house cleaning,” I said. He laughed with me. I went to lube up his cock but he stopped me.

He moved me onto my back and started to work my hole, first with his fingers, then with his tongue. He paused to look up at me. “House cleaning worked.” I was laughing almost too hard to enjoy the rimjob. He moved up and kissed me. “I haven’t been with anyone since we were together, but I’ll wear a condom if you want me to." So he hadn't had sex with Zach, even though he'd blown off coming here with me because Zach demanded that he did (at least that's how I played it out in my mind). My feeling of euphoria surged even higher when I digested that.

“I’ve been safe,” I said. He lubed his cock and my hole, then slid into me effortlessly. We spent the next fifteen minutes fucking like crazy, and when I finally came, I felt like my soul ejaculated. We were lying in bed on our backs, enjoying a nice post-orgasmic moment, when there was a sharp knock on the door.

“Can you come out to the main room?” I heard JJ ask crisply.

“I can, in about fifteen minutes,” I said. I heard him sigh then walk away. “JJ doesn’t believe in enjoying the afterglow,” I told Travis.

“No shit,” he said, but we both got up and put our clothes back on. We walked out to the great room to find Jacinta waiting for us.

“Travis, this is Jacinta,” I said, introducing them.

“He is a handsome one,” she said to me in Spanish.

“He is,” I responded in that language.

“Mr. Travis, I took your clothes from your hanging bag and made sure they weren’t wrinkled,” she said, gesturing to some stuff on hangers. “I will put them into your room,” she said to me with a leer.

“We can do that,” I insisted.

“Mr. Jeremy is waiting for you, so it will be easier on all of us if I do it,” she said, then chuckled.

“Thanks,” Travis said to her, and leaned down to give her a kiss on the cheek. It was hilarious to see her blush slightly.

We walked into the great room to find Zanie and JJ waiting for us. “What do you want?” I demanded, so annoyed with his moods. “You managed to totally interrupt our post-orgasm interlude.” Zanie giggled, while Travis looked embarrassed.

“I wanted to inform you of our plans,” he said, acting like a little dictator.

“Do you have our tickets?” I asked.

“I do,” he said, and handed them to me. “You’re welcome.”

“Thanks,” I said insincerely. “Then we’ll see you there.”

“There’s a pre-party we were going to,” JJ said, but he realized his antics today had made me more and more irritated at him, so his tone was a little more pleasant, probably because he didn’t want to piss me off so badly that I was a no-show at MOMA.

“Have fun,” I said. “We’ll see you at MOMA.” I started walking back to my room, with Travis in tow, giggling as I listened to JJ stomping his feet.

“You don’t get along with him very well,” Travis observed.

“He’s got a bug up his ass, and when he does, he likes to work it out on me,” I explained. “I just told him that I’ve had enough of his shit.”

“If you say so,” he said.

“Who packed your clothes?” I asked Travis.

“My mother,” he said, grumbling.

“Let’s take a shower and then try them on,” I said. We took a sensuous shower that ended up with him fucking me again. We got out and started doing our hair routine and shit, until we were ready for the outfits JJ and his mother had put together for us. We got dressed, looked at each other, then looked in the mirror, and started laughing. JJ had picked out different black pants and a different black blazer for me than last night, and a look at the labels told me these were from Dior. The coolest parts of the outfit were the shirt and the shoes. The shirt was made of a matte silver metal mesh. It would have looked good on me but for the short sleeves, which did not work. The shoes were pretty slick, in that they were the same color as the shirt. I’d never had metallic shoes before.

“I guess that’s okay,” Travis said dubiously as he looked at me. His mom had picked out a dark blue jacket with matching pants. The pants had a very subtle silver pinstripe, one that matched his tie. His shirt was a light blue color that reflected his eyes almost perfectly while also complementing his jacket.

“That looks good on you,” I said, then grinned. “Although, it’s probably more appropriate for the boardroom.” He frowned at that.

“Dude, we look like total dorks,” he said, shaking his head. That sparked an idea.

“We leave in ten minutes,” I told him, then pulled out my phone and called Patrick.

“What are you up to?” Patrick asked me pleasantly.

“Travis came into town to prove he wasn’t a complete asshole,” I joked.

“If you think that’s a good thing, I’m happy for you,” Patrick said, because he was still pissed at Travis for treating me like shit.

“We need your help,” I said, truncating that line of conversation. “I’m calling a car and we’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“What do you need my help with?” he asked curiously. He probably thought it was a sexual favor, which almost made me giggle.

“We need help with our clothes,” I said. “JJ and Travis’s mom put together outfits for us, but they make us look like total pussies.”

He laughed. “Alright, but hurry. We don’t have much time.”

“We’re leaving ASAP,” I said. “In the meantime, call and order a large pizza with pepperoni and extra cheese.”

“Nothing else on it?” he asked, surprised that we had such limited toppings.

“It’s what we can both agree on,” I joked.

“Anything else?” he demanded, pretending to be bitchy at me for ordering him around.

“That’s it,” I said. I ended the call and saw Travis staring at me blankly. “Let’s go.”

“Alright,” he said a bit skeptically. JJ had taken the limo, because he thought all of us were going together, so I commandeered his Maybach, laughing at how much that would annoy him. I was lucky because we had JJ’s normal driver who was hella cool. “Where are we going?”

“We’re going to see a friend of mine,” I explained. “He’s a designer. His name is Patrick.”

His face turned red with a combination of anger and embarrassment. “I think I sort of met him,” he said in a snarky way.”

I glared at him, reminding him with my eyes that he had no grounds to give me shit about fucking Patrick. “He’s a friend and he’ll help me out,” I said firmly. He wasn’t all that placated. “Remember how I watched you fuck Zach, and how much that bothered me?”

“You were the one who was spying on us,” he responded in a bitchy way.

“Well, you were the one who eavesdropped on Patrick and me,” I said. I didn’t really know if he’d listened to our whole conversation until I’d thrown that out there, but seeing his expression, I knew he had.

“Didn’t make it any less painful,” he said, then looked away as he wiped a tear from his eyes.

“I didn’t say it did, but it’s kind of like we both stuck our noses where they shouldn’t have been, and we both got what we deserved,” I said logically.

“So this is payback?” he asked, all outraged. I pondered whether to try and tease apart the differences, but they weren’t significant enough to nitpick.

“Guess it is,” I said. “We’ll talk about this later. In the meantime, be nice to Patrick.”

“Fine,” he grumbled.

We pulled up in front of Patrick’s condo and he buzzed us into the building. We took the elevator up to his floor and found him holding the door to his apartment open. He gave me a warm greeting, probably to fuel Travis’s jealousy. I almost laughed out loud when I saw it working. “This is Travis.”

“Welcome,” Patrick said in a way that wasn’t welcoming at all, then led us into his apartment. There was another guy there who was short and older; He worked for Patrick so I’d met him at Patrick’s fashion shows. “You remember Emil?”

“I do,” I said, even though I’d forgotten his name. I shook his hand warmly, then introduced him to Travis.

“I was worried that I’d need help, and it looks like I was right,” Patrick said, shaking his head at us.

I took off my jacket and Travis mimicked my move. “I mean, this mesh shirt is pretty cool, but these short sleeves are ridiculous.”

“That is a huge bruise,” Emil said, gently touching my side where the bruise Zach had given me was probably at peak bloom.

Patrick stared at us for a bit, then got resolved. “You need a badass look.”

“The bad boys of Malibu,” I joked, making all of them laugh. Patrick made one other call, and then he and Emil began frantically working on our outfits. They decided our pants were alright, so we sat there in pants but no shoes, socks, or shirts. I was trying to figure out what I could do to help when I was distracted by the door buzzer.

“Get that,” Patrick said. “It’s probably your pizza.”

I buzzed the pizza guy in and paid him for the pies. I put Patrick’s pizza in the oven then I put our pepperoni pizza on the counter. “Here,” I said, handing Travis a paper plate and a napkin, and that seemed to be our signal to devour the food in front of us. We were both so famished we knocked the thing out in fifteen minutes. We’d just finished when Patrick and Emil came back in with our clothes.

“Christ, you ate the whole thing already?” he asked, amazed.

“We’re hungry boys,” I said in a sexy way. “Your pizza is in the oven.”

“Thanks,” Patrick said, but he was too focused on business. He handed me my shirt and made me put it on. “For you, we made the shirt rougher. We cut off the sleeves and expanded the neck opening so now it’s kind of like a wife-beater. We also made a few gashes in the metal to make it look like you’d been in a knife fight.”

I laughed at that. The ‘knife fight slashes he mentioned were nothing more than two-inch slits in a few places. “Dude, that looks really good,” Travis said.

“It does,” I agreed.

“Those shoes are way too flashy for a badass, so you can wear these,” he said, handing me a pair of black Vans.

“I love Vans,” I said, as I slipped them on.

“For you, we just replaced your shirt,” Patrick said, and handed the new shirt to Travis. Travis put it on, and it was really cool. It was a basic striped Oxford, only other than the collar, the alternating stripe was nothing, letting Travis’s skin show through.

“This is incredible,” Travis said, admiring it. “You even have little clear things attaching the stripes so they don’t fly all over the place.”

“Where did you get this?” I asked Patrick.

“It’s one of my entries for the ready-to-wear show,” he said. “We’ll just put it out there a little earlier.”

“I can’t do that to you,” Travis said. “You should save this for your show.”

“Somehow, this is better,” he said. “Just tell everyone that it’s my design.”

“I will definitely do that,” Travis said. I got out Patrick’s pizza and just as I’d put the plates down for him and Emil, the door buzzed again. Patrick got up to answer it while I grabbed a few napkins for them.

Patrick re-entered the room leading Cecille, a hairdresser who worked on his shows. “Cecille is going to fix your hair.”

“Awesome,” I said, and introduced her to Travis.

“We’re going for a tougher look for Will, and a bad boy look for Travis,” Patrick said. “And we don’t have much time.”

“I’ll get it done in half an hour,” she announced. We followed her into the bathroom, dragging chairs with us, and she worked at warp speed to get us squared away. I looked in the mirror when she was done and was amazed at how perfectly she’d given Patrick what he’d asked for. My hair was so gelled up it was crusty. It was combed forward, but it was spiked a bit too to give it some dimension. “I kept it off your forehead to show off your bruise.”

“You did an amazing job,” I said, and kissed her on the cheek.

“I didn’t make you look so thuggish. I just made you look the kind of guy who was good at fucking people over,” she said to Travis. “Kind of like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.” Her words really upset him, but he looked great.

“Thanks,” he said nervously, because he was still reeling over her critique.

We carried our chairs back in and posed for all of them. Patrick took a picture. “I don’t know how to thank all of you,” I said sincerely.

“You are both so hot, it was a pleasure,” Patrick said. “The first chance you get, as soon as you get there, ditch your jackets.”

“We’ll do that,” I promised. I gave Emil and Cecille each $1000, then gave Patrick a nice kiss and a hug.

“Uh, thanks for helping me out,” Travis said to Patrick. “I mean, I can tell you don’t like me, but you still went out of your way to make me look like I’m not some preppy beach dork.”

“You’re Will’s friend,” he said simply as he shook Travis’s hand. “That’s why I did it.” I used that line as an excuse for us to escape from Patrick’s condo. We got into the Maybach for the drive to MOMA.

“I really am sorry that I hurt you,” he said to me sincerely as soon as the privacy screen was up.

“Thanks for apologizing,” I said to him. “Remember when I was laughing at JJ earlier, when he told me I’d gotten my answer?”

“Yeah,” he said, wondering why I’d raised that issue.

“He told me that in the end, our phone calls may end up telling me something about us,” I said.

“Why’s that?” he demanded.

“Because if you didn’t give a shit about me, you wouldn’t have called me back. If you did, you’d have called,” I said.

“What does it mean that I showed up in person?” he asked playfully.

“It means that you must really care about me,” I said, smiling at him.

“I’m way beyond that,” he said. “I think over this past week or so, I fell in love with you.”

I gave him a nice kiss but didn’t let it get too passionate. “We can’t mess up our hair,” I teased as I broke it off, then got serious. “I think I fell in love with you too.”