Loving Jay (2 page)

I stared dumbly at him and wondered what the hell it was about this guy. Why was I attracted to him? Not that I am gay or anything. But if I liked makeup so much, why didn’t I have a thing for girls?

I suddenly realized that I was standing there like a flamingo on one leg, staring dumbly at the guy and not responding. I felt the heat bloom in my chest and on my face. I called myself all types of idiot and tried to unglue my tongue from the top of my mouth to speak like a normal human being.

Jay’s eyes flicked from the train leaving us behind to my face. Immediately he frowned and his eyes glanced down to where I was rubbing my thigh and holding my foot off the ground. His eyes grew big and I looked down too, fully expecting to see my erection showing through my thick coat, but all I could see was my single right foot planted firmly on the ground and my bent left leg, held gingerly in the air. Dorky I admit, but nothing tragic.

But Jay’s hand began to flutter in the space between our bodies. “Oh my Gawd! Oh my Gawd! Did you hurt yourself? Did you sprain your ankle? I saw you running. Did you do your knee in?”

I winced and placed my left foot on the ground. I anticipated the pain and flinched, but thankfully it wasn’t as bad as I feared, so I leaned on the chair a bit more and finally managed to say a decent sentence. Sort of. “Nah. Old injury. Not allowed to run.”

Now that was a lie. I was allowed to run, and the physiotherapists actually encouraged me to run. But they were specific on their instructions—no running on uneven surfaces, no corners, no jumps. Just a smooth gait and a steady pace. Whoops.

Jay was still fluttering in front of me, his hands reaching out to touch, but pulling away before they could make contact.

“Oh my Gawd! What are you going to do? Can you walk? Should you sit down?”

“I’ll be fine. It was just a twinge for a moment. Thanks.” I didn’t like making a fuss over my injury. I’d spent ages in the hospital and then in and out of physio in the seven years since it happened. Sometimes the attention was nice, but mostly it reminded me of my limitations and that I couldn’t always do “normal” things anymore. I walked a couple of steps, managing to only limp slightly.

“Okay. If you’re sure.” Jay didn’t sound sure at all, and watched me like a hawk.

I sighed and looked up at the board announcing that the next train heading for Perth was due in twenty-two minutes.
Shit!
I looked over at Jay, who was still watching my feet as I stepped lightly on my injury. I didn’t want our conversation to end.

I told myself that it was a way to pass the time. After all I had twenty-two minutes to fill and he was the only other person on the platform. But I was lying to myself. Again.

“Is your boss going to be really mad?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes theatrically at me. “Nah. He’ll shout a bit and have to get his own coffee, but in the end he knows I’m worth the wait.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. Was that a sexual innuendo? Was he really worth it?

Fortunately, Jay didn’t require a response. He looked up at the message board too and then glanced over at me. “Are you sure you are okay? Can you make it to the escalators?”

I was defensive. “Yeah. Of course.”

“Then come on. We have twenty minutes. Let’s go and get a coffee from the place up top. It’s freezing this morning and I need my caffeine hit.”

Coffee? Together? Was he asking me on a date or something?

“Come on,” he encouraged. “The tables won’t be taken this early in the morning and it’s out of the wind. I’m sure your leg needs a rest.” He motioned me to follow him. “Come on, man. It’s not a marriage proposal. Just coffee.”

I gave in to my baser instincts—the ones that said he was being truthful, not the ones that urged me to take him back to my place and strip him naked—and followed him to the escalators. I knew he was using them for me because he usually athletically skipped up the stairs. Not that I noticed or anything.

The little café just outside the train station thankfully opened at 5:00 a.m. The tired-looking teenage girl inside was wiping down the counter and took our orders without changing expression. Jay and I settled down at one of the tables inside—where I deliberately ignored our knees knocking together—and waited for the coffees to arrive. He was still watching me like a hawk as if I were going to keel over at any minute.

“I’m fine,” I snapped, still rubbing my thigh. “I’m not ready for a disability pension yet.”

Jay took my snark with a grin and simply teased me back, “I don’t know, man. I think I see a couple of gray hairs coming through there.”

Involuntarily, my hand rose to my hair and Jay grinned.
Damn!
He’d got me.

“Relax, man. You look fine.”

I scowled at him but a grin broke through on my face at his teasing. “Arse!”

“Yep. It’s my middle name.”

The sullen teenager arrived with our drinks and I watched as Jay smiled and thanked her. He was looking spiffy today. He had on a black bomber jacket with an oversized zip and had a red scarf wrapped around his neck twice, then tucked inside the collar. His hair had been gelled and combed back and I could see the comb’s teeth marks where he’d perfected the ’50s biker-boy look. I wasn’t sure if the boys of the ’50s had fake diamond earrings, though. They looked hella-delicious on him. Not that I’m gay or anything.

I watched carefully as Jay wrapped his hands around his steaming paper cup as if warming his hands. My own flat white—no froth, no toppings, just regular coffee—had been placed in front of me but I needed to make sure my hands had stopped shaking before I tried to drink it.

“So. Where do you work, man?” I thanked the gods that Jay knew how to start a conversation because I had been starting to panic.

“Umm. St George’s Terrace. BHP. Finance Department.” My brain couldn’t function past more than a couple of words in a sentence. I hoped he didn’t think I was stupid or anything.

“Cool.” He was nodding and trying to look suitably impressed.

I laughed self-depreciatingly. “Not really. It’s as boring as all fuck but it is a career and it’s money.”

He smiled in relief. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to put a downer on your job or anything. It’s just not my cup of tea, if you know what I mean?”

“No problem. It wasn’t my first career choice either.”

He tilted his head to the side, then looked at me enquiringly as if he really were interested in me. “So what was your first career choice?”

“I wanted to be a policeman.”

“So? What happened? You fail the morality test or something?”

I laughed like I was supposed to, relaxing in his presence a bit. “Accident.” I thumped my leg for emphasis. “It was a car accident when I was sixteen. They nearly had to amputate my leg but the doctors managed to save it. It’s got more metal in it than most foreign cars these days. Sets the metal detectors off every time.”

I usually made the situation humorous to stop sounding like a whiny little kid. Jay continued to smile brightly at me, nodding. “Get strip-searched a lot do you? Like that guy on the Bonds ad?”

“Nah. I think I need to lift a few more weights before the girls deliberately set off metal detectors to get me stripped to my boxers. But I tell you, it was a total pain in the arse to start work at BHP, though. They have metal detectors at the front door and every morning there seemed to be a new guy manning the desk. I had to carry around my medical certificate and my X-rays just to get to my floor. Now I know X-rays are supposed to be of bones and all, but if you look really closely you can see all my privates in the damn thing. Gives a whole new meaning to whipping it out if you ask me!”

Jay spluttered into his coffee just like I had hoped. I basked in the warmth of his smile and his focused attention. I wanted to know a little more about him, though. I psyched myself up. I could talk to him. I could casually ask him about himself. I could. I was just interested in general, right? “So where do you work?”

“Hay Street in East Perth. I work for 95.2 FM. I do research work and stuff for the PQ Program.”

“No shit? You work for the Poofs and Queers Program?”

He rolled his eyes at me and, clearly exasperated, said, “It’s not Poofs and Queers, idiot. It stands for Personal Questions. Gawd, I hate that other name. Just because we focused on a few gay issues we are suddenly the Poofs and Queers Program. We talk about issues that are relevant to Perth people today, not just the gay community. We are talking to the Premier today about his capital works programs and his recent win in the state election, so see? There is nothing about homosexuality or anything.”

I rested my chin on my hand and watched him get up on his soapbox. He raved about how mainstream media had hijacked their program and turned it inside out. He waved his hands around and spouted off about all the people who had recently been on the program and had spoken not one word about homosexuality. As I sipped my coffee, he glared at me and raged on about uneducated people who now disparaged the program because of the words “poof” and “queer” and how people couldn’t see past the derogatory names to see that the program was brilliant. I finished off my coffee and glanced at my watch. I could stare at him all day but the next train was on its way.

He broke off mid-sentence. “Shit. Sorry, man. You need to learn to stop me when I get going on a subject. Total verbal diarrhea. I don’t have an ‘off’ switch so you just need to slap me or something.”

I smiled at him, completely enchanted. “No problem. Most of it was pretty interesting. Your whole job is interesting. Beats the pants off my career.”

Jay laughed, and for the first time I saw him deliberately turn the “gayness” up. He fluttered his eyelashes at me and tilted his head in a flirty manner, dropping his shoulder like a glam starlet. When he spoke, his voice had risen a whole octave and came out in a breathless puff. “Oh, daahling. There are so many ways I could respond to that!”

Oh, yes—there were about forty things I could say too, and thirty-eight of them didn’t require Jay to be clothed in any manner, shape, or form. I flushed and stood to cover my embarrassment—and my arousal. Not that I am gay or anything. It’s just that thinking about Jay and discarded pants…. Well, you get the picture.

“We should go.”

Jay cocked an eyebrow at me and rose obediently, the starlet act dropped. “Sure, man.”

The train station had more people milling around now and we walked—limped!—to the platform in silence. Right on time the train pulled up and we surged on, joining the other commuters for our daily dose of get-up-close-and-personal-with-a-stranger. The first train of the morning was usually as good as empty, with each person able to pick and choose a seat at will. This second train was a bit more full. I could’ve easily avoided Jay by plonking down on a single seat, forcing him to choose another, but instead I found myself pushing through the crowd to the end and finding two seats side-by-side.

Jay slipped into the seat beside me. “You okay with me sitting here?”

Is the earth round? Is the Pope Catholic? Did I mind? “Sure. No problem.”

In silence we waited for the annoying voice to inform us the doors of the train were about to close. Then the train smoothly pulled out of the Cockburn station, gathering speed, and soon we were hurtling along the tracks, bypassing cars and trucks headed in the same direction. Cockburn is located twenty kilometers directly south of Perth along the Kwinana Freeway, which makes the commute from the area to the city a quick twenty-minute drive—unless it is peak hour. And even calling it peak hour is a misnomer—the inference that it is only for one hour. It is more like three hours each morning and each evening. The sprawling city, heavily reliant on cars, is then even further congested by the fact that Perth is the second-most-isolated capital city in the world. Anything that is sold in Perth needs to be trucked across the extensive width of the continent. Coupled with the fact that Perth is the nearest city to the mining boom towns of Karratha and Port Hedland, and every second vehicle these days is a twenty-two wheeler.

So I stared out the window at the grayness, watching the traffic and trucks, and wondered what god I had pleased recently to be given this chance to speak with Jay.

The silence between us grew and I desperately fished around in my suddenly-empty brain for something to say. However, before I could formulate a new conversation starter, Jay apologized.

“I’m sorry if I offended you.”

“Huh?”

“You know. With the flirting and the ‘darling.’ I wasn’t coming on to you or anything.”

Pity. “I know. It’s cool.”

“I mean… if you gave me the green light or anything, then I would definitely flirt with you. You are really nice and all and I could totally go for you. But I can tell you’re straight and all so I wouldn’t. Just because I’m gay it doesn’t mean I can’t talk to a straight guy, right? I mean, I am allowed to have friends, aren’t I? If I wasn’t able to even talk to straight guys, then that would be a problem. Like there are some guys you just can’t tell with, right? How is everyone meant to know? Do we wear badges or something? Like, ‘Hi! My name is Andy. I’m gay.’ Pfft! And what if you are bi? Then are you not allowed to talk to anyone? And how are you meant to judge suitability? Is there an age barrier? Do you have to say—hey, man, I don’t sleep with guys over forty so I can talk to you? I don’t sleep with twinks and you look like a bear so it’s okay? Does it mean I can’t talk to a male relative? And what about—”

I grinned to myself and butted into his monologue. “Jay, dude. Verbal diarrhea, anyone?”

“Shit! Sorry.” He looked mortified and covered his mouth with long slender fingers, as if he could physically hold the words in. “I told you so.”

“No problem. As I said: It’s cool.”

He frowned at me, tilting his head again, assessing me from the corner of his eye. It was puppy-dog adorable. I hoped he would do it all the time. “What did you just call me?”

I thought back and came over all cold as I realized I had called him “Jay.”
Oh, my God! Oh fuck! Now he is going to ask about it. How the hell am I supposed to confess that I think about him all the time
—
most nights in fact. He’ll think I am totally lame. He’ll think I’m gay. And I’m definitely not gay.