Love Happens Anyway

Derek

There’s an urgent call for you on line one, sir, it’s your mother.

And what was urgent about mom calling me?

Client calls went to team leaders, or people who actually knew what they were doing. All I got were calls from my parents, both wanting to comment on various parts of my life. Why they didn’t leave that for when I was at home I don’t know, although part of me thought they enjoyed embarrassing me at work. Why my PA called them urgent I have no idea, but I knew it would be one of them.

Why aren’t you married?

When will you take the agency over altogether? You’ve got the office now, and all you have to do is implement the ideas I gave you.

I have this nice boy I want you to meet.

You know you’re good enough Derek; you just have to learn the process. Trust the process.

Edith has a son…he’s a doctor you know…

We’ll pick this up after lunch. I ushered my ad execs out of the door, closing it after them and leaning there for a moment. Just a few seconds, because I couldn’t leave my mom hanging, but enough time to get my head around the fact that I needed to corral my lies and make sure I got my story right. I pulled my notebook from the top drawer and opened it at the right page.

Mom, I said as soon as I connected the call.

Derek, darling, how is work? She was using her breezy ‘I have something to tell you that you won’t like’ voice.

I looked at my empty office, at the sterile desk, and the garish pink snowman in the white blizzard resting on an easel and shook my head. Work is good, I lied. Work was never good, it was just work. The ideas I had about what I wanted to do, how it had been when I had interned here had flown out the window.

I used to be one of the guys. I used to go out for beers with some of the younger ones. Not anymore. As soon as I had taken over this office, the camaraderie had just fallen away.

Loneliness in a company that employed over two hundred people was a very real thing.

I’m so pleased you’re enjoying it. I know your dad is so pleased, he’s even dusted off his golf clubs. It’s so lovely to have him at home.

The noose tightens.

Great, I said, because mom had paused for me to acknowledge her excitement at her husband of forty years retiring.

Now, the reason for the call is that, did you ask Marcus for dinner on Sunday as I asked you to?

My stomach sank. Why couldn’t she ask me how I was feeling, at least more than just the generic, how is work? Why did she launch straight into the topic of my boyfriend and the fact she hadn't met him yet? Mom wasn’t gently meddling in my love life, as much as acting like a drill sergeant wanting names and numbers and potential life match status, all listed for her to assess.

I did but I’m not sure his shifts will allow him to, I said, pushing the appropriate amount of regret into my tone. Too much and it sounded phony, too little and it was as if I didn’t care.

But you did ask him, sweetheart?

Yes, I lied.

I could imagine my mom’s face. She’d be biting her tongue, desperate to say something about how she and Dad had never met Marcus and how did I know what kind of man he was? Also, wouldn’t it be better if I married Leo, the son of her friend who was a doctor or Johnny, because even though he was in a rock band he was still quite rich and from a good family.

That was all Mom wanted for me. There’s no angst in my coming out story. I’d told my parents when I was eighteen, when the pressure inside had become too much. I expected to be disinherited, or some other wildly dramatic response, but all they did was change their plans.

They didn’t care I was gay; Mom switched her matchmaking to finding me the perfect guy and that was it, the fun hadn’t stopped since. Twenty-nine, running the family company, and not married yet? That horrified my mom.

Anyway, they didn’t need to know what kind of man Marcus was.

Because I knew exactly.

I knew Marcus was six-two, just a little taller than me. I knew he had blue eyes, and dark hair with red tones in certain light. He had a brother, but they didn’t see each other much, being that his brother was in the Navy. His parents were retired in Florida, but they’d had Marcus and his brother Adam late in life. Marcus was twenty-nine, same as me with only a few months separating our birthdays, and he was a firefighter. Oh, and he was a good, kind man who was thoughtful all the time and treated me like a prince.

That’s such a shame. Anyway, how are Marcus’ kittens? Mom asked. I pulled myself back to what she was saying. It was never good to not pay full attention to anything Mom said, otherwise you’d end up agreeing to all kinds of things she’d throw at you when your defenses are down. I loved her dearly but she was sneaky like that.

Which is how I got myself into this mess with Marcus in the first place.

They’re fine.

Did he find good homes for them?

Absolutely, the last of them went to a widowed grandmother in his apartment block.

Socks? The dark one?

I glanced at my notes. No, you remember Socks went to his uncle; Spider went to the old lady.

Oh yes, of course, although why someone would name a kitten Spider I don’t know.

There were spiders in the house where Marcus found the kittens.

I still don’t understand how there could be spiders in a burned-out house.

Shit. Spiders are hardy.

You said the house was razed to the ground, dear.

Now I was losing the will to live. "Well, maybe the spider was outside. Mom, I need to go, Moira is at the door and she needs me to sign off on the new AbbaLister raisins account."

Of course dear, just, please tell Marcus he is welcome at any time. We so want to meet him and thought it’d be better at the house.

I will, I know he’s keen to meet you.

Oh good, she said, and I knew I’d fucked up and somehow given her an opening. I’d never mentioned once that Marcus wanted to meet them, because that would just give them the impetus to take matters into their own hands. My worst fears were confirmed. Oh, I’ve had the most wonderful idea.

Oh God, what?

Your dad and I are coming into the city on Monday; book us dinner on any night, or lunch, breakfast, anything. I want to meet this young man of yours and if it has to be in a restaurant then so be it.

I’m not sure⁠—

Derek, he can’t be busy every night next week, and every lunchtime, goodness me, we’ll even take a quick coffee if that is all he can manage.

Shit. Shit. And double shit.

I’ll see what I can organize. I kept my tone regretful, to at least give the impression I would try to organize them meeting Marcus, but that it would be unlikely.

We finished the call, and I replaced the handset in the cradle, fighting the urge to throw it against the wall, sit and cry at my desk, or maybe, less drastically, move to Montana and become a cowboy.

So many lies.

There was no Moira standing at my door. It was still closed and I’d lied to my mom.

There were no kittens, I made those up, and the spider story. The word spider came about because when I’d been talking to my mom about Marcus and the kittens, a tiny spider had crawled over my notes.

I closed the notebook in which I had the names of five kittens with their various characteristics listed.

Mom wanted to meet Marcus, any night, any lunch, anytime.

Which sucked big hairy balls.

Because that was another thing I had made up.

There was no Marcus either.

Luke

The call came in exactly sixty-seven minutes after I’d left the bank. I knew that, because at eleven a.m. the bank had turned me down for the loan I needed. My last hope had vanished just like that and I was hiding in my car with my cell phone on my lap.

I should’ve phoned my sister, to tell Sara how fucked we were, but right now I couldn’t do it. Then it rang and I recognized Alan’s number immediately. He was my real last hope, a wheeler and dealer who said he’d help if all else failed.

Alan didn’t mince his words. He was speaking under his breath and his voice echoed as if he was in a cupboard. Luke? I have a potential appointment for you.

I don’t do that anymore.

I’d done what he’d wanted on two occasions, both innocent, and I wasn’t going there again. If I couldn’t have my first choice of work then I was putting everything into creating something with my sister.

Get over here now, this is perfect, I have a solution to your problem. I know you said you wouldn’t do it again, but really, you have to get here. Right. Now.

What?

Money, so much money, for you, he said.

Jeez, Alan.

Do you want the bar or not?

Put like that I didn’t have much choice. Anyway, he’d already hung up. He hadn’t even given me a chance to answer, I guess he assumed that I’d do what I’d been told.

He was right. I’d had a miserable meeting at the bank and Alan was a person who had a lot of ideas as to where a man could get money. All legal but most of them speculative. He was the guy with the big ideas and the inability to see them through; that was, until this latest venture which, to my recollection, was entering its third year and had been successful enough for him to be riding around in a top-of-the-line Audi.

An aboveboard companion agency. Or at least that is what he told me, with the proviso that whatever his clients did with their companions away from his office, he didn’t want to know.

I’d been one of his guys twice. Once, where I posed as a boyfriend for this young woman who’d needed to be taken seriously at a chemistry conference. Apparently, in her male-dominated world she needed validation. Sex was not on the agenda, and I’d made that clear when we’d met to discuss how things worked.

I wasn’t doing that, getting paid for sex. Nope.

Then there’d been the guy who’d just needed to take me to a bachelor party, as his boyfriend, because he would be the last in his group who wasn’t coupled up.

There was no sex involved there either, although the kissing on the dance floor had been nice. I mean, he was there, I was there, the music was loud, and we’d kissed.

He’d wanted to see me again. I’d declined.

The money from both of those had meant nothing to me, I was just doing Alan a favor as he set up his business.

But now, three years later, I needed money.

He’d asked me to visit his new office so many times, and I’d been putting it off for months, because, as my sister said, Alan could’ve sold anything to anyone. In college he’d always managed to drag me into these god-awful get rich quick schemes and I was too much of a pushover to say no to half of what he suggested. I mean, I could say no when he asked me something by text or email, but face to face? Nope.

Hence the two dates I’d helped him out with.

But this time I was desperate, and that was a whole different proposition. I wanted to dismiss him out of hand, but if I didn’t get the rest of the money I needed, then I stood to lose what we’d invested so far in Halligans. The bar was half way between a station house and a cop precinct, the ideal place for a community to meet and drink and my family was so damn close to making it something good again.

At that moment I could have done with one of Alan’s dates but I doubted anyone would want to pay twenty-thousand dollars.

Although, I guess anything helped.

One of Alan’s schemes was my last hope really; otherwise it was back to the drawing board and me looking for a job. Which meant my mom and sister running the bar on their own.

And who was going to hire me anyway; someone with a bum leg and night terrors?

I made it to Alan’s place in a little over five minutes, climbing the stairs carefully, and I could hear the raised voices