The catch in his spine as he stretched out his back couldn’t be a good sign. He labored for hours over this proposal, finding mistake after mistake in his numbers. The job would be big, but not the biggest he’d ever done and certainly not the hardest. The contractor also used him exclusively, so how hard should this have been?
Over the years, he’d sat at this old desk in this old worn out leather chair for more hours than he could count, working on his business. For the first time in his adult life a sense of restless unease washed over him, making him tired. The fatigue ran deep in his bones, clouding his ability to think straight. With a shove of his palms against the edge of his desk, he rolled back about a foot and rubbed his hands over his face, before pushing them through his short hair. On a huff of his breath, he picked up his laptop and his numbers-filled scratch paper to finish this proposal in the comfort of his bed. He’d sat there long enough for one night.
His house was small, maybe fifteen hundred square feet, and he made his way through the garage, then the house, flipping off the lights and making sure all the doors were locked on his way back to his bedroom. Like every night, he looked in on the kids through the crack in their doors and both were sleeping soundly. His room sat right across the hall from theirs and he quietly pushed the door closed until only a crack remained, just like theirs. Over the years, he’d trained himself to be a light sleeper, wanting to be able to hear if they needed him in the night.
Trent laid his laptop on the nightstand before straightening the bed covers where they remained a mess from kids the night before, and then he flipped the covers back, readying them for sleep. He tossed his remote control in the middle of the bed and undressed. After a quick shower, Trent dried himself quickly and pulled on his Sponge Bob pajama pants, the ones Em had given him for Christmas, and finally made his way back to his bed.
Trent dropped down heavily on the bed, sitting on its edge. He looked at the laptop, and released a big sigh. His hands came to rest between his legs as he decided unsettled might be a better word to describe what went on inside him. He would chalk it all up to Em’s birthday, but this year, for some reason, it seemed a little harder to bear. He missed his sister. He missed their time together and he missed her as his friend.
If he were being honest with himself, it also didn’t help he couldn’t get his mind off how totally hot Gage Synclair was in real life. Dear God, could the man look any better? Hell, he knew the answer to the question: No freakin’ way!
Embarrassment stained his cheeks and replaced unsettled as the major emotion running through him. Trent rubbed his face hard with his hands and then rubbed his eyes harder trying to push the memory of meeting Gage today out of his mind.
Trent couldn’t get a good feel for whether anyone had noticed his behavior this morning. No one appeared to, or at least if they did, they didn’t treat him any differently, but he just couldn’t be sure. The site foreman stayed too taken with the curator to notice. Of that, at least, he was reasonably confident. But, the curator totally picked up on it if all the little smiles and winks she tossed his way all morning were any indication.
Dropping his body back on the bed, he watched the ceiling fan above for several spins before he repositioned, sliding up against the headboard, and placed the laptop in his lap. The alarm clock on the nightstand shined brightly; half past midnight. In about three hours, he’d have been awake close to twenty-four hours, and being sleep deprived wouldn’t help this crazy emotional state he seemed to be taking on. He tucked an extra pillow behind his back and booted up the laptop, thinking over Rhonny’s offer from earlier.
Maybe he should try a blind date. He could use the sex, but not with a professor. Trent wasn’t smart enough or trendy enough to date a college professor. What would they ever have in common? But maybe he should have Rhonny be on the lookout for someone… Or maybe he should hear Auntie Crazy out on who she’d pre-qualified on her list of eligible guys. She would certainly have someone up her sleeve waiting to be pulled out for him. She always did, but even thinking it caused a pit to settle in his stomach. No way could he trust Auntie Crazy to come up with anyone suitable to date, no matter how much she claimed to have the perfect guy. Her tastes leaned toward flamboyant, colorful, and gaudy as hell gay men. He couldn’t even consider going there with her. It must have been sexual desperation causing him to wonder about her choices right now.
Shaking his head at his own insane thoughts, he opened the proposal template—a simple fill in the blank form in Word—and he began typing the numbers into the fields. But Gage Synclair kept running through his mind. What Trent wouldn’t have given to take Gage up on his offer. To have pounded all that tension out in the bathroom this morning may have put an end to his day-long misery and all the uncertainty coursing through him. His dick still stood half erect from Gage’s hand brushing down over it, but seriously, it may have been the best moment his cock ever experienced… Gage Synclair touched my dick!
Which brought on a much bigger reveal, Gage Synclair was gay or at least bisexual. Who would have known? He’d watched all Gage’s specials, read every book and article written. Gage’s reports were intriguing, interesting, uncovering more to the world than any other media outlet he followed. Gage regularly corresponded on PBS, CNN, and CBS. He’d even watched the last interview Gage gave on YouTube no less than ten times over the last three or four months. Gage had announced clearly his plan to retire from field work, but the speculation said Gage might get his own show, move into broadcast journalism. In all the time he’d followed the stories and career, Trent had never picked up anywhere Gage was gay. He would have remembered something like that, but he’d also never inquired about it either. How did it not ever occur to him to think along those lines?