Men Who Love Men Read Online Free PDF Page B

regaining my stride, “tomorrow’s kind of busy for me…”

    “I really enjoyed meeting you, Henry. Can I call you in the morning?”

    “Like I said, tomorrow is kind of busy…”

    “But can I just call and see if things lighten up for you? I’d really like to see you again, Henry. Maybe we can just, you know, get together for a little while?”

    This is one pushy kid. I should just say no, end it right here. But instead I say, “Yeah, okay. Call me tomorrow afternoon.”

    “Awesome. Talk to you tomorrow, Henry.” And he hangs up.

    I smirk. By tomorrow Luke will have met someone else, probably some hot boy closer to his own age, either on the dance floor at the A House or on the steps of Spiritus Pizza, and he’ll have forgotten all about me.

    Unless, of course, he still wants to meet Jeff badly enough.

    “ Henry! ” Jeff hollers up the stairs. “Are you coming ?”

    I head down. “I had a call,” I tell him as I enter the guesthouse’s common area. “This may be hard for you to accept, Jeff, but I do have a life of my own. Sometimes your beck and call has to wait.”

    Jeff just smirks. “Oh, Lloyd, our boy is feeling rebellious tonight.”

    “We do appreciate you coming down, Henry,” Lloyd says from the bar. He comes around from behind, carrying a bottle of champagne and three glasses.

    “Well,” I say, “I guess this really is a celebration. What’s the big news?”

    “Don’t rush things,” Jeff says, settling himself onto the couch and propping his feet up on the coffee table. “We need the proper mood.”

    Lloyd sets the bottle and the glasses down and softens the light. I sit in a chair opposite Jeff, wondering what this is all about. It’s more than just a book deal. It concerns Lloyd, too. I watch him move across the room to the front desk, where he turns off the ringer on the phone. Lloyd might not be as put together as Jeff, but he still looks damn good for his fourth decade as well. Buzzed head, a sexy soul patch of hair below his lower lip, a tattoo of a dragonfly on his well-rounded shoulder. He’s wearing a white ribbed tank top and low-rise jeans, and for a moment my mind flickers back to sex with him, as those green eyes hovered above me, those lips softly touching mine…

    “Okay,” Lloyd says, breaking my reverie as he plops down on the couch next to Jeff, putting his arm around his lover’s shoulders. “You want to tell him or should I?”

    “Tell me what?” I ask, sitting forward, finding myself getting anxious, despite the happy grins and the bottle of champagne waiting to be opened.

    Jeff holds my eyes. “We’re getting married,” he says.

    I look from him over to Lloyd.

    “The middle of next month,” Lloyd adds.

    “I know it’s not far away,” Jeff says, “but we want it to coincide with the anniversary of the day we met.”

    “So we can keep the same anniversary,” Lloyd says.

    “And Henry,” Jeff says. “We want you to be our best man.”

    The words haven’t fully penetrated my mind. “Married,” I say.

    “Yeah, one hundred percent legal,” Jeff exults. “After sixteen years I’m finally gonna make an honest man out of him.”

    They giggle like schoolgirls.

    “Married,” I say again.

    “Well, what do you think?” Lloyd asks.

    “Well,” I say, unsure of my thoughts, “I didn’t think marriage was something you’d be interested in.” Years of political pontificating from Jeff and Lloyd come flooding back to me, their endless rant against the status quo. “I mean, marriage is a failed heterosexual institution, isn’t it? You’ve both called it that.”

    “Sure it is,” Jeff says, “but maybe we homos can improve on the formula.” He’s beaming like a jack o’lantern.

    “But,” I say, feeling the need to somehow challenge them, “you both have always rejected the whole marriage thing. I mean, when have you guys ever been monogamous?”

    “Why does monogamy have to go part and parcel with