Call me kitten (boyxboy love) ✓

23. Chris the grizzly

"Ok, sorry," Colin mumbled, pale as a ghost, and Chris let him go.

Colin quickly disappeared and Chris straightened his chair again and sat down smiling and continued to eat, like nothing happened. I had to say something. Anything.

"Thanks," I said in an exhale.

He grinned at me.

"That stuff about your sister was just too ridiculous," he said. "I'm not that stupid. First you got all happy when Ash started working here, then when he was gone you were a total wreck, and now you're like a happy camper again. It's nice that you met someone."

Apparently I had misjudged Chris grossly. He was more attentive than I would have ever believed him to be.

"Was I that obvious?" I said laughing, somewhat embarrassed.

"Are you kidding me? You had it written all over," Chris said and leaned forward with a grin, his voice getting lower. "So, you're his pillow prince?"

So that didn't get past him either. I groaned.

"Damnit, Chris, give it a rest," I muttered.

He just shrugged, his expression utterly innocent.

"Just curious!"

"What are you curious about?" a familiar voice came behind me and Ash pulled his cart up to our table.

"Is Jack your pillow prince?" Chris said happily to Ash.

I wanted to crawl into a hole.

"Who the hell is Jack?" Ash said confused.

"That would be me," I grumbled. "Chris calls me that."

Ash lit up and looked at Chris.

"If you mean Jamie, then yeah. Why?"

"Just nice to know," Chris beamed.

"Please," I pleaded desperate. "Can you stop talking about that here?"

"But he asked me," Ash said, smiling like a damn angel. "Anyway, Chris, great thing you did there with that dude. If I had been here, he would've been in a bloody pile on the floor by now."

"No problem," Chris said calmly and got up. "See you guys tomorrow."

Then he left for the office again and I sat there on my chair in some form of daze. What had just happened was so inexplicable that it didn't even seem real. If people had heard what that Colin guy had said, the gossip would travel faster than the speed of light. But people would also know what would happen if they talked too loudly about it. They would get a fistful of Chris the grizzly. And that just made me burst out laughing.

When I returned to my cubicle, I had a text from Zoey gelling me to call her.

"How're things with Ash?" she asked at once.

"It's ok now, we sorted it out," I said and hoped that she wouldn't ask anything more.

"Good," she said and dropped the topic at once, to my big surprise. "It's dad's birthday party at the lake house on Saturday and I told mom that you would bring Ash."

She did what? Anger welled up in me in an instant. I had hardly come to terms with it myself that I was dating a guy and now my sister had gone and told the whole damn family?

"What the hell, Zoey!" I hissed, trying to keep my voice low. "That wasn't your secret to tell. You can't just go ahead and tell mom everything just because you think it's a great thing, I'm the one who should be telling her, not you. And in my own fucking time."

"Hey, take it easy. I just told her that he's a friend of yours," she replied and didn't seem to care how upset I was. "I'm not that evil that I would pull you out of your own closet. I'm upset that you would even think that I would do that. But you're coming, right? Mom would be so happy if you did."

I sighed in relief. She hadn't said anything. Although she had practically promised mom that both me and Ash would come, but that wasn't as bad.

"I'll have to check with Ash," I said.

"Do that," she chirped. "Oh, and mom said to tell you that she'll swing by your place tonight at six, something about making sure you had a suit."

"She could just call me and ask?"

"I know, but we're talking about mom here. Call me later!"

I sat there with the phone in my hand and looked at the empty screen. My mom was great in many ways, but she tended to never believe that I could take care of myself. It was only in the past year that she had stopped calling me to remind me to pay my bills, and that was after I had basically yelled at her to stop. She meant well, but it was too much sometimes. And now she made my plans to go to Ash after work null and void, something that I had looked forward to. I wanted to talk to him some more in peace and quiet, not just on the way to work.

It hit me suddenly that I maybe should tell my mom about Ash. About what he really was to me. That he was more than a friend. But the question was if I had the guts to tell her. Somehow it would become proof that what I had believed myself to be all my life, that I was straight, a lie. It felt strange, but I didn't even know what I was. Then I remembered what Ash had said about himself. That he didn't label himself with anything because he didn't care. And truth be told, I didn't care what I was either. But could I say something like that to my mother, would she even understand? Or would she react the way Ash's family had done? I didn't think she would, but I wasn't sure.