I walked through the glass doors and tried to ignore the looks I got from the people that had seen me and Ash outside. Didn't they have anything better to do than standing around ogling? Weren't they supposed to work? My footsteps were assertive as I walked towards the elevators and I realized that I wasn't ashamed as I walked past the office workers, as I thought I would be. I was pissed. What was so damn weird about two human beings showing each other affection? Were there laws that prohibited touching if it was humans of the same gender? No, there weren't. They didn't know neither Ash or me, so they should mind their own damn business.
The anger had made me weirdly energetic so work went by in a dizzying speed, and I got more done than I would have in those previous days when I had just sat in my cubicle like a corpse. The situation with Ash's apartment was temporarily gone from my head and I was just happy that I knew where he was. When lunchtime approached, Chris popped his head over the cubicle as usual. His expression was almost relieved when he saw me.
"Have... uhm, your sister gotten a hold of Ash yet?" he said airily.
At first, I didn't understand what he was talking about, but then I remembered my total meltdown a couple of days ago, and my desperate attempt at concealing it.
"Oh yeah, she has," I said as neutral as I could muster.
He slowly nodded to himself and seemed to think.
"Lunch?" he asked after a while.
What was with him? Maybe he was trying to piece together my strange behavior then, with what I was saying now and didn't manage to do it. And I was pretty certain he was suspecting something but telling him was not an option. He had to draw his own conclusions. I didn't even know how he would feel about me dating Ash. He was usually a pretty prejudiced person, and he might just as well be a downright homophobe.
We talked about the usual stuff at lunch, Chris was whining about some football game that didn't go his way and I just agreed with him, without knowing what he was actually talking about. Suddenly someone had stopped at our table and both Chris and I looked up. It was a co-worker I vaguely recognized, but I had no idea of his name. But apparently Chris did.
"Hey, Colin. What's up?" Chris greeted cheerily.
The guy, whose name was Colin, just nodded at Chris and then turned to me with a hostile look on his face.
"You and your fucking boyfriend better watch out," he spat, and I froze in my seat. "You can do whatever nasty fag stuff you want at home, I don't care, but don't doing that stuff where other people see you, it makes me sick! Got it?"
I just sat there motionless, speechless. Obviously, he had been one of the ones who had seen me and Ash this morning. My head reeled. Never had I been subjected to such open hatred before, and I had no idea how to react. I should say something, but my mouth didn't work, and my body was paralyzed. I was terrified. In the corner of my eye I saw Chris get up with such force that his chair fell down behind him. He grabbed Colin by his sweater.
"Just what the hell are you saying, Colin?" he hissed, and his voice was so threatening that I was released from my paralysis.
"You know what I mean, they–," Colin started, but Chris interrupted him.
"Don't you fucking dare threatening my buddy, ok? He can do whatever he wants to. And if you and that fucking lizard-brain of yours have a problem with that, you and I can go out back and have a talk about it. Do you want us to have a talk about it, Colin?"
Chris was above average height, but now he seemed to tower ten inches above Colin. I just stared at him and the people at the nearest tables did too. Was this Chris? I had never seen him get angry or upset, the closest thing I had seen him do was getting annoyed over some sport. And here he was, defending me like a damn 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.