Irresistible Read online

  The small urban park was overfilled with picnicking families and couples. Cal scanned through the crowd and spotted a spare spot centrally located for viewing. It looked like a tight fit, but when he led Derek across the lawn to claim it, some very nice ladies with shellacked helmets of hair and Broadway T-shirts looked up at Cal and quickly shrugged back their blanket to make space. A pair of older gentlemen stared at him dreamily and scooted back in their lawn chairs so Cal would have some room in their direction as well.

  Cal unrolled a tatami mat from his college backpack, and he and Derek seated themselves hip to hip. Cal unpacked two fried egg sandwiches and a sixteen-ounce can of Budweiser, which he portioned into paper coffee cups liberated from a nearby deli. They chomped on their sandwiches as the opening credits blared from the giant screen.

  Mae West had always been a campy curiosity to Cal, but he found his attention drifting away from the film. Was the guy he met in the store earlier that day for real? It felt like it had been a dream. He wasn’t supposed to be fishing for dates while he was working, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Brendan was gorgeous and smart and really sweet and considerate, and he knew about Arthur Rimbaud, and he’d minored in classical studies. He was a native New Yorker, which made him something like five thousand times more interesting and worldly than anyone Cal had met before. And like a total airhead, Cal had asked him if he did a lot of traveling, working in the shipping business, as if he freighted the goods across the Atlantic himself. Brendan probably had some high-powered executive job. Cal winced, thinking about how dumb he’d acted.

  Meanwhile, his companion was having a hard time paying attention to the movie for different reasons.

  “I know we’re homosexuals, but do we have to live out every gay cliché known to man this summer?” Derek said quietly.

  Cal whispered back, “What do you mean?”

  “Last night, it was the Jackie Onassis Hat and Apparel exhibit at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The day before was the Breakfast at Tiffany’s walking tour of Greenwich Village. Tonight, it’s Mae West?”

  “You said you liked the walking tour.”

  “I did. But I’m beginning to feel like I’m turning into Truman Capote.”

  Cal guffawed. Derek looked nothing like Truman Capote. He was a slight guy with jet-black hair who looked like he worked at a tech company and skateboarded to work. Cal trapped his mouth with his hand, hoping his laughter hadn’t annoyed anyone nearby. The Midwestern housewives were timidly watching him like they’d spotted a celebrity. One of the older gentlemen leaned forward and asked Cal if he’d like one of his chocolate-dipped strawberries. Cal thanked him and declined. He gathered that side conversations at a reasonable volume were acceptable during the outdoor film.

  “I’m glad you mentioned Truman Capote,” he told Derek. “It reminds me—Columbia has a free lecture this Friday on the art of writing the nonfiction crime novel.”

  Derek gave Cal a lopsided grin. “You really can’t stop yourself, can you?”

  “We have seventy-one days left until the end of the summer,” Cal said. “We’re budgeted at forty dollars a day, max, and that includes meals. I want to get in as much as possible.” At the end of the summer, Cal would be starting a master’s degree program in classical studies. Derek would go back to his odd jobs as a math tutor and working at the health insurance call center.

  Derek’s shoulder leaned against his. “Don’t forget— I want to go to the beach.”

  Cal grinned. He and Derek had been best friends since freshman year in college. In fact, Derek had been his only male friend for the past five years. With other guys, complications had always cropped up. They acted like they wanted to be friends, and then it turned out they wanted to jump Cal’s bones, which wasn’t bad in and of itself, with the right guy, or even the semi-right guy if Cal was in the mood. But it seemed like the only thing guys ever wanted was sex, and Cal had a knack for attracting the most intense and possessive types. That was why Derek was so great. They could hang out all the time and do regular things without any sexual tension and drama.

  “There’s a beach on Coney Island,” he told Derek. “You can walk to it right from the subway. I looked it up. The subway fare’s only two seventy-five. The first sunny day both of us are off from work, we’ll go.”

  Derek grinned and leaned into Cal some more. “Hey, what about going down to Little Italy tomorrow night?”

  “Oh. I can’t.”

  Derek gave him a double take. He was aware Cal closed up his grandfather’s shop by seven o’clock at the latest. They’d never made plans without the other. Neither of them even knew anyone else in New York. “You can’t?”

  “I met someone.” Cal’s face bloomed. “We kind of have a date. Or, I think we have a date. Or, it could just be getting together as friends.”

  “When did you meet someone?”

  “This morning. At the store.”

  “A customer?”

  “Yeah.” It felt like sunshine was spreading over Cal. “His name is Brendan Thackeray-Prentiss.”

  “Jesus. Did his family come over with the first gay pilgrims?”

  Cal giggled. He evened out his enthusiasm. “He’s probably too perfect to be real. And it’s only going out for ice cream. I think he was just being friendly.”

  Derek shot him a crooked glance.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Cal, you can be so oblivious when it comes to guys.”

  “I don’t think I’m oblivious,” Cal objected. “It’s not a hookup. I didn’t get that impression at all. You think after everything that happened with Steve, I’d be giving out my phone number to random strangers?” He sat up straight, self-righteous. “I’ve actually been super conscious about not giving off any sexual vibes.”

  Another crooked glance came back at him. “You’ve been super conscious about not giving off sexual vibes,” Derek repeated flatly. “Wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Want a lick?’”

  “It’s ironic,” Cal said. “The whole T-shirt is meant to be ironic.”

  “There’s nothing ironic about you, Cal. That’s the problem.” Derek dug his cell phone out and started tapping on the screen. His face twisted up skeptically in the blue light of the phone, and he turned the display screen to Cal. “That him?”

  Brendan’s strong-jawed, handsome face sparkled in Cal’s vision. Cal took the phone so he could admire the photo more closely. Brendan was wearing a tuxedo for some society event. His wavy, dark brown hair was shorter and perfectly groomed. He stood in a ballroom filled with people who looked like they owned islands in the Caribbean. A modern-day prince.

  “How did you find him so quickly?”

  Derek took back his phone. “Brendan Thackeray-Prentiss is not exactly a common name.” He swiped and tapped at the screen. “And there’s, like, a zillion articles about him.” Derek read from one of them. “New York Magazine— Heir to Thackeray shipping magnate hosts fundraising gala for LGBTQ homeless teens.”

  “Really? That’s so sweet.” Cal reached for the phone. Derek held him back as if Cal were a toddler trying to grab his lollipop.

  “Stalk him on your own time,” Derek said.

  Cal took his arm and nuzzled up close. “But I want to stalk him with you.”

  “Don’t come purring up to me,” Derek scolded him mildly. “I turn my back for a half second, and you’ve got guys luring you into ice cream parlors to get down your pants.”

  “Brendan’s not like that. He buys Victorian cameos for his grandmother. And he was really shy about his family being wealthy. It was cute.” Cal brushed his hand through his thick, wavy blond hair. “I don’t know. I’ve got this really great feeling about him.”

  Derek took a long, stiff draw of his beer. “That’s great. So what’s going to happen? You two are going to run off and make genetically gifted babies, and I’m stuck hanging out in New York all summer by myself.”

  “No,” Cal said. He squeezed Derek’s arm. “I’d ne
ver do that to you.”

  “It’s cool, Cal. I mean, it’s not like I can expect a guy like you to stay single for the rest of his life. You walk down the street, and people are falling over each other to try to inhale the air you breathe.”

  Cal gazed at Derek steadily. “That only happened once.” A smile crept up his face, which earned a mild chuckle from his friend. Cal nudged Derek on the shoulder. “We came down here to experience New York together. I’m not going to renege on that. Brendan and I have known each other for, like, five seconds. It’s nothing serious. You want me to text him and cancel for tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  Cal’s heart sank in his chest, but he rummaged in his pocket for his phone.

  Derek caught him by the arm. “No. I was kidding.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m not going to be a total dick,” Derek said. “Hey, maybe I’ll do you one better and meet some billionaire to take me out for an actual dinner.”

  “Thanks, Derek. Have I told you lately you’re the best friend in the world?”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  Cal kissed him on the cheek. “You’re the best friend in the world.”

  “You still owe me the beach, you frickin’ ho.”

  They scowled at each other, and then they tucked in to watch the rest of the black-and-white movie on the giant movie screen.

  Chapter Three

  AFTER STROLLING AROUND the block three times, Brendan arrived at Frozen Zachary’s thirty-one minutes in advance of his date with Cal. That was not cool, and starkly not letting-things-happen-at-the-universe’s-own-pace as Dr. Clotilde Trapp had advised. In his typical fashion, Brendan had overbudgeted on time and underbudgeted on sanity. His neurotic fugue had begun when he left the antiques shop thirty-two hours earlier.

  After a pleading phone call, Dr. Trapp had agreed to squeeze him in for a second appointment that week. Brendan needed to process his chance meeting with Cal and obtain a professional green light to try dating again. During the session, he traversed the emotional landscape from manic exuberance to sobbing despair. This, Clotilde Trapp pronounced as “promising,” and she’d ushered him out the door to face the world beyond her office’s Danish modern furnishings.

  Forty-five minutes of free weights, two maximum-resistance courses on his elliptical machine, two Klonopins, and a tumbler of scotch later, Brendan was flipping through channels on his sixty-five inch, flat-screen smart TV. He became fascinated by a series marathon of the Hallmark Channel’s turn-of-the-century period romance, When Calls the Heart. Curled up in his bed, staring at the screen while shucking edamame, the only thing his nervous stomach was able to hold down, he finally passed out in his workout gear while the TV blared.

  He woke up in a panic at ten o’clock the next morning when The Golden Girls had overtaken his TV. His date with Cal was to take place at eight o’clock that night. He had to pick up his laundry. He had to balance his chakras with his daily yoga workout and meditations. He had to brush up on Rimbaud and ancient Athenian history and Greek tragedians in case those topics came up in conversation. Not to mention, he had to shower, shave, groom, and pick out an outfit.

  All of this, Brendan accomplished by five minutes past noon.

  Trying to distract himself with a bit of routine, Brendan took lunch with his grandmother at the Sutton Place townhouse and later coaxed his best friend and squash partner, Louis Jeffries, to skip out of work early for a quick match at the tennis and racquet club. Brendan’s play was aggressive and unreliable, and after losing the first ten points in the game, he broke down in a regrettably maudlin scene wherein he confessed to Louis if things didn’t work out with Cal, he wasn’t sure his life was worth living.

  Louis then shouldered him to the lounge, deposited him into a Chesterfield chair and called out to the bartender with a tone of urgency for two very dry martinis. When the drinks arrived, Brendan managed to swallow one sip before looking at his watch and taking flight like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. He arrived back at his apartment at five-thirty.

  Then, after taking a thirty-minute shower, moisturizing from head to toe, reexamining his nostrils for wayward nose hairs, hiking up a brand new pair of gleaming white briefs, flossing and brushing his teeth, lacquering his armpits with deodorant, stepping into distressed designer jeans, buttoning up a tailored, peach, micropaisley Oxford, pulling on black cotton socks over his cold and sweaty feet, and stepping into his favorite pair of horsebit loafers, Brendan paced the apartment.

  He still had an hour and a half to spare.

  Obsessive worries bore down on him. The elevators in his building might be out of service. They had been, just eighteen months ago. He had to budget time in the event he would have to take the seventeen flights of stairs down from his apartment.

  Had he heard something on the news about a section of Third Avenue being closed for gas line repairs? Circumventing the construction area could cost him who knew how much time? His building was only ten blocks from his rendezvous with Cal, but Brendan ventured out of his apartment at seven fifteen, leaving nothing to chance. With his mental state as fragile as a Tiffany ornament, he envisioned a thousand obstacles. If he arrived late, he would hurt Cal’s feelings. Cal would come to the conclusion Brendan was not serious about wanting to get to know him. He might give up on waiting for him and decide he never wanted to see Brendan again.

  Now, Brendan stood in front of the glass-paned ice cream shop. He was bitten by a new swarm of worries. People were queued out the door. The prospect of claiming a table in the tiny shop was beyond discouraging, and how would they make conversation while standing around with their ice cream cones dripping down their hands? Going out for ice cream had been a horrible idea. Brendan was apt to be a total klutz. He might lose hold of his cone and drop it all over himself. He might drop it all over Cal.

  It was now 7:35 p.m.

  Brendan rechecked his text messages to make sure he’d given Cal the right address. He should have provided a link to a Google map in case Cal had trouble finding the place. Cal had said he was new to the city. He could easily get lost. But if Brendan sent the link now, Cal might think he was an impatient worrywart, which Brendan undeniably was, but no one liked an impatient worrywart. Wandering behind a curbside tree, he discreetly tried to sniff his armpits and breath. He popped another breath mint and cracked it with his molars, sparking a shooting pain into a filling that had him clasping his jaw.

  That agonizing gaffe made for a time-killing distraction. But as the throbbing pain wore off, minutes ticked by, and anxiety returned to him in the proportions of vertigo. Approached by passersby, Brendan practically jumped out of the way. This had all been a very bad idea. He was too emotionally brittle. Cal was an eleven, and he was—on his very best days, with the right photo filter—an eight. It was too soon after he’d been psychically mauled by Thiago. What if he couldn’t hold it together? He envisioned throwing himself at Cal’s feet, begging Cal to love him.

  Brendan texted Dr. Trapp an urgent message, confessing all of these things as lucidly as thumb-typing would allow.

  A short reply dinged back: Leave it to Jesus.

  He stared at his therapist’s text bubble. What did that mean?!

  “Brendan!”

  Brendan startled at the voice, and his cell phone flew out of his hand and into the tree’s little square iron-fenced plot, which was filled with pink spotted impatiens. He dropped to his knees to scrounge it out, and a pair of tan suede sneakers appeared in his peripheral vision on the sidewalk beside him. He slowly gazed northward of those sneakers past a pair of perfectly formed, blond-hair dusted ankles, farther up to cuffed denim joggers, all the way to the entirety of the heaven-spawned young man that was Callisthenes Panagopoulos.

  Cal stooped down to help Brendan retrieve his phone. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I saw you, and I got excited. You must think I’m the biggest dork. Same thing I did to you yesterday at the store.” Cal rooted the iPhone out from t
he flower bed and examined it. A grin spread across his face. “Hey look—not even a scratch! You got lucky.”

  Brendan grinned back. Somehow, the awestruck jitters that had nearly paralyzed him when they first met sublimated into the twilight. Which was not to say he wasn’t happy to see Cal. Cal looked even more handsome dressed up for a date in a tropical pattern button-down, with his wavy hair still damp and fragrant from the shower. Brendan took the phone from him. “Thanks.”

  They stood, Brendan a few inches taller at six-foot-one, Cal practically vibrating with his infectious energy.

  “Wow. You really look great,” Cal said.

  “You look great too.”

  “You didn’t seem like the kind of guy who dresses down a lot. But I figured, it’s an ice cream parlor. Can’t get too dressed up for that.”

  “I love your shirt.”

  “I love yours.” Cal looked to the store. “Guess you’re right about this place. What a line!”

  “It moves pretty fast. C’mon.” Brendan led him to the queue, and they stood side by side, like boyfriends going out for ice cream. There must have been a glow of happiness radiating from both of them. Two teenage girls passed by, and they made “aw” faces.

  “How was your day? How was work?” Cal asked.

  Brendan hesitated. “I think you should know. I don’t really work much.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, my grandfather runs the company. Along with a lot of other people. Some of my older cousins are involved. I’m kind of…superfluous.”

  “Does your father work there as well?”

  “No,” Brendan said. “The company belongs to my mom’s dad. My mom does some work with the company’s charity organization.”