Noah's River (manxman)✅

Chapter 2

The Man in the White Undies

Rain pounded the window, waking me up from a restful, deep sleep. Usually I was home by now, out the door as soon as the guy fell asleep unless they paid me to stay. Tonight was different. Tonight I fell asleep in another man's arms. My job was to make people feel good. My clients rarely, if ever, made me feel good except for last night. What a fucked up feeling.

The guy last night was so inexperienced yet so sweet and kind, I wished we had met under different circumstances.

As I rolled over, I discovered Noah was gone. Damn, I thought to myself, sad to wake up alone, hoping to see him one last time.

On my way to the dresser, I tripped, stumbling to the floor. On the floor, in front of my face, was a brown wallet. I opened it, discovering it belonged to a Noah Carmichael, age twenty-six, six feet tall with green eyes who lived in Somerville. I didn't live too far away in Medford. I felt like he was a Cinderella who dropped his glass slipper in the disguise of a wallet.

Before Noah last night, I had been with Leo Napolitano, one of my regulars and the party's organizer who let me have this room for the night. He was also my biggest referral source. I was heading to New York City in two weeks to perform at a private party for some big VIP who remained nameless, thanks to Leo's connections.

I didn't have time today to go to Somerville to drop off the wallet. My sister was probably watching the clock, waiting for me to relieve her. She did most of the babysitting while I earned most of the money.

Things were soon to get trickier with school starting in a couple of weeks. Juggling my schedule was always a challenge.

"You had a good night," my seventeen year old sister, Melody, said as I approached her and our mother in the living room.

I placed a box of blueberry muffins on the table, along with a box of munchkins for our six year old brother, Aiden; treats for a Sunday morning.

My sister knew I was a male escort and occasional stripper, but I never outwardly told her I accepted cash for sex. I made an unusual amount of money as a stripper and male escort, but she never questioned it.

"Yes, I did," I said, bending down to kiss our mother.

Our mother, Paula, suffered from epilepsy her entire life. Two years after our father was sent to prison for embezzlement, she had an unusually long seizure that caused an anoxic brain injury. In other words, she had severe brain damage because of a seizure. Melody and I refused to put our mother in a nursing home. If she went to a nursing home, then we'd all be torn apart, forced to live in various foster homes. We didn't want anyone to know our mother was incapacitated.

Besides Melody and Aiden, I also had a fourteen year old sister, Joy, and a ten year old sister, Olivia. We all wanted to stay together even if it meant we lived in a tiny two-family duplex.

My father was sent to prison when I was fifteen; six months later he was found dead in his cell after he hanged himself with a sheet. I never cried over his death. He deserved what he got.

Before our father went to prison, we lived in a giant house with a pool and summer vacations to Hawaii. As a hospital administrator, Edwin Sweet embezzled millions of dollars from patients and insurance companies and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, leaving our mother to care for five children. I'd never forgive him.