Unshackled

“Oh, I remember the mafia organization—”

“Comedy club!”

“Well, you do make me laugh…”

See?

But back to business. “I’ll pay you ten Gs a month, you’ll be available all hours of the day, but you don’t gotta see a soul. You’ll take the calls, you’ll respond to the texts, and you’ll schedule sit-downs for me. You can do it all from your couch.”

I knew I had him at ten Gs. He didn’t have a job lined up yet, and I knew his new address—nothing was cheap there. They may have agreed to this move because his man was some hotshot TV producer or something like that and he’d been offered a job here, but Alfie hated not contributing.

“Gimme a minute to think about it.” He took a drag from the smoke and flicked ashes out the window. “It’s not just me anymore, Kellan.”

“So you gloss over some details to your man.”

He smirked crookedly, ruefully. “It’s not just him anymore either. I was gonna wait to tell you till we got to your place, but…” He pulled out his wallet and flipped it open.

What the fuck?

It was a picture of a baby in pink clothes.

“Get the fuck out,” I said. “You’re kidding.”

“Her name is Noelle. We adopted her last year.”

“Jesus.” I switched lanes and shook my head, wondering what the hell was wrong with people. Men, in particular. Gay men. “Sometimes I wonder if gay men have forgotten that we don’t have to do shit like that.”

“There’s so much wrong with that sentence, I don’t even know where to begin,” Alfie drawled. “We can’t all be closed off like you, Ford.”

I wasn’t closed off.

“I’m not closed off,” I stated.

“Fine, maybe there’s nothing to close off in the first place, because it ain’t normal to hate kids like you do—or pets, for that matter. It’s always gotta be just you, huh? No relationships, no attachments, and definitely nobody depending on you except for your sister.”

I clenched my jaw and decided not to take the fight. He didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about.

I didn’t dislike dogs. I disliked small dogs. They were useless.

“For the record,” he went on, “when someone says they adopted a child, the normal response is congratulations—not, you don’t gotta do that shite, you know.”

I cringed. Maybe that hadn’t been my finest moment.

“Congratulations on your tax break,” I said. “Did you find her on the side of the road?”

“I’m not taking that bait, you fucking asshole,” he chuckled humorlessly. “It’s good to be home again, and nothing has changed with you, that’s clear. Still the same shithead who lashes out at others because you’re miserable with your own life.”

If I bit my tongue any harder, I’d lose a chunk of it. “Good to have you back too, sunshine. Still playing armchair psychologist, I see.”

He sighed heavily, just as I pulled up to the curb in front of a place with the best eats in the city. “Now I remember why we preferred to just make out and give each other head in college, ’cause when you use your mouth to speak, I wanna throttle you.”

I killed the engine, dug out a fifty from my pocket, and leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Gimme two extra prov wit.” Then I extended the bill.

He snatched the money and stepped out of the car.

He still had the ass… Damn.

He also had a husband and a goddamn child.

I didn’t wanna reflect on him being right in the slightest. I just knew that kids changed everything for the worse. First, you met up with your mates several times a week, then bam, kid entered the picture, and you were forgotten. Finn, you wanna stay in the city for a pint? Can’t, going home to the family. Luna, you wanna grab lunch? Can’t, gotta be here with CJ. Shan, you wanna…oh, that’s right, you’re too depressed because your kid died. And now Alfie. Him moving to Philly again this summer didn’t mean shit. I wasn’t gonna see him more often, because… Can’t, I have this kid now.

Christ, I had problems.

And the problems grew once I’d introduced Alfie to “Shan, my boss’s dad.” Who was staying with me while they “redid his condo downstairs.”

Shan was good at putting up a front, and he sat down and ate with us and showed all the appropriate interest in our friendship. Alfie explained he and I had met in college, to which Shan nodded thoughtfully and turned to me and said, “Oh, that’s right. I remember you taking some classes back then.”

After that, everything went to shit.

The baby pictures came out. Alfie couldn’t say he was moving here with his daughter—interestingly enough, not mentioning his hubby—without hauling out photos of Noelle, first the wallet, then his phone. And Shan was just as bad. He felt the need to show pictures of Autumn and Ryan in his own wallet.