Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 75720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
I got out of my car, the late-spring breeze carrying with it the sting of an extra-hot summer waiting in the wings. The sun was just beginning to set, throwing a bucket of orange-and-purple paint all over the cloudless sky. The clean glass facade of the modern grocery store reflected some of the colors and made it seem as if I was walking directly into an impressionistic painting. The bright fluorescent lights and chorus of high-pitched beeps and casual conversation washed over me. I’d never been to this store, so I had to orient myself first, scanning the aisle markers and stopping when I spotted the liquor aisle, along with the familiar face that walked out of it.
Noah.
It was my smile-prone and slightly messy coworker who was quickly turning into a good friend of mine. I always enjoyed our lunches together, which would usually devolve into a fit of laughter over our half-eaten plates of food as Noah recounted some viral video he’d watched or a crazy story of the trouble he and his group of friends got themselves into.
It certainly didn’t hurt that Noah wasn’t bad to look at.
At all. His grin came easy and never failed to light up that handsome face with his lopsided dimple and honey-gold eyes. He had a great sense of style, blowing my basic khakis and gray polo shirt out of the water with his stone-gray pants rolled up at the ankles and a floral black-and-blue button-up half tucked into the waist. His sleeves were also rolled, and a thin golden necklace shone around his neck, gleaming brightly against his tan skin. He was a little shorter than me—which I liked—and was blessed with an ass that could double as two basketballs if the NBA ever found themselves in some kind of dire shortage.
Noah spotted me and offered a friendly wave, walking over with two bottles of white wine in his hands.
“Hey there,” I said, moving aside as a determined grandpa pushed past me with a cart full of Lunchables and toilet paper.
“So you do exist outside of the 9-to-5,” Noah quipped, reaching out and poking me with a finger and nearly dropping one of his bottles.
“Do I? Or am I just in your head?”
“Don’t do that to me right now, Jake. Grocery stores are already hellish enough. I don’t need to have an existential crisis while I’m in here.”
That got a laugh out of me. “Good choice of wine,” I said, pointing at the bottles in his hands. “I’m a pinot grigio kind of guy, too.”
“It’s not just for me,” Noah clarified. “It’s for my book club.”
“Oh, you’ve got a book club? What’s it called?”
“Reading under the Rainbow. It’s a bunch of queer people getting together and reading mystery and thriller books. We talk about the chapters we were assigned that week, get drunk on wine, and end up talking shit about one thing or another. It’s fun times.”
“Sounds like it,” I said. “What book are y’all reading now?”
“Just Beneath Her Bones. It’s about a girl who—”
“Who’s being stalked by someone, and then she finds out the jewelry she’s been ordering online is actually made of human bones.”
“You’ve read it?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.
I nodded, feeling a spark of something in my chest at how impressed Noah appeared to be. “Just finished it last week, actually.”
“I didn’t know you were a reader.”
“I think there’s a lot about me you don’t know,” I said, cocking my head.
Noah licked his lips. Nodded. Looked down at the floor before pulling his gaze back up to mine. I couldn’t tell if it was just in my head or not, but I could have sworn his eyes lingered a moment on my crotch before jumping up to my face. “You know, we’ve got an open spot in the club. I don’t know what your plans are for the night, but if you’re free, you can come join. You don’t have to be gay or anything to read under the rainbow. We accept the straights.”
Internally, I winced at Noah’s categorization of me. I didn’t blame him or feel offended. I understood that I presented as a typical heterosexual dude in society’s outdated terms, and Noah had likely seen me with Ashley at some point, further cementing his idea of me. It wasn’t his fault or his burden to carry. It was something that repeatedly occurred to me as a bisexual person. The assumptions and erasures of entire identities solely because of the way they present and who they’re with at the time. It was like assuming someone who ordered fish at a restaurant was a strict pescatarian and not just craving a little bit of salmon and capers.
But it wasn’t the time to go into all that with Noah. Maybe that conversation would come up some other day, but for now, Noah was expecting an answer. Did I take him up on his offer and crash his book club, or would it be better if I stuck to the original plan and headed off on my dick appointment with a bottle of wine and a condom in my back pocket?