Anything Could Happen (9 page)

He quickly went to the next picture, but of course, it was too late.

“How’d you get that one?” Guy asked. And was that a slight smirk on his face?

Austin was sure by this point he was so red his hair would catch on fire. “Sleepover,” he muttered and put the phone down on the table, upside down.

Their lunch arrived then, saving Austin for a while at least. He’d ordered the
gambak berakatz eta limoarekin tximinoiak
: shrimp sautéed in butter with garlic, parsley, and a touch of lemon. It was a safe choice, and delicious besides. Uncle Bodie had elected to have the
albondigak
, which turned out to be tangy meatballs served with a brown sauce and peas.

It was Guy’s meal he scrutinized suspiciously. It was
txipiroiak bere tintan
—baby squid cooked in their own ink. The entrée arrived in a casserole dish swimming in a thick and murky puddle of sepia, and it looked a bit gross to Austin. Guy assured him it was rich, and even though a steak knife was provided, the squid was tender enough to be cut with a fork. “You sure you won’t try it?”

Austin shook his head vigorously.

“Bet you would try it if
Todd
made it.”

Austin wasn’t sure if that was true. Maybe only so he wouldn’t hurt his friend’s feelings. He elected not to try the dish or take a taste from Uncle Bodie’s plate, either. It made his excuse that what he had was plenty a little more credible.

When a woman came out onto the floor—dark hair pulled tightly back, dressed in a white chef’s coat—Austin suddenly decided he’d waited long enough. He realized she must be Izar, the owner, as she walked from table to table, smiling and checking with the customers. She had no sooner arrived at their table when he had his phone in his hand and was pulling up Todd’s picture.

“Good afternoon,” she said, radiant despite the fact that beauty was not a word Austin would use to describe her. Her skin was quite pale, making her red lipstick all the brighter. “Are you enjoying your meal?”

“Everything is wonderful,” his uncle said before Austin could open his mouth.

“You’re a friend of Peter Wagner’s, aren’t you?” she asked.

Peter again? Who was this guy?

“Yes, I am,” Uncle Bodie said.

“Well, any friend of Mr. Wagner’s is certainly a friend of ours. Anything I can help you with? You know, let me get you some
Txakolina
. Do you all drink?”

“What is Tax-a… colin?” It was the closest Austin could manage. All the consonants, especially those Xs, were tricky.

“
Txakolina
is a fizzy white wine. I am sure you will love it. And it’s on the house.”

“That would be marvelous,” Uncle Bodie cried.

She smiled and had turned to leave when Austin stopped her. “Excuse me… Miss… Izar?”

She came back to the table. “Izar is my first name, and please feel free to use it.” She stopped their waiter, who was just passing, and asked him to bring a bottle of the wine.

“I’m looking for a… a friend of mine. He’s kinda disappeared.”

“Oh dear,” she replied.

“He’s talked about you and your restaurant for as long as I can remember, and how he was hoping he could be your student one day—”

“I don’t take students,” she said, interrupting him.

“—and I was hoping maybe he had stopped by?”

Their waiter, already back, placed three tall glasses on the table and opened the bottle as Austin held up his cell phone. “Can I show you anyway, just in case?”

She pursued her lips, and her annoyance was obvious. The change from cheerful host surprised Austin. She shrugged, glanced down at the small screen at the picture of Todd in his coat, and then shook her head. “Sorry,” she said and turned away.

“Jesus,” Austin said. “What a—”

“
Austin
,” his uncle warned.

“I can’t help it. She didn’t even look and—”

“Excuse me,” said their waiter.

They looked up as he poured the pale-green wine into their glasses from a surprising height. He then scanned the room quickly before bending slightly toward Austin’s ear. “I’ve seen him. I couldn’t forget him.
Very
cute.”

Austin sat bolt upright in his chair. “What? When? Where?”

The waiter scanned the room again quickly. “He came here asking for Miss Goya to teach him, just like you said.”

“When?” Austin repeated, ready to leap from his chair.

Another look over his shoulder. “She threw him out. She was pissed. Bitched the rest of the day about how audacious it was of him to ask. She went on and on about how many chefs had begged her to teach them, and here he’d just walked in off the street and thought he could become her student.”

“Damn,” cried Austin, suddenly disliking the woman and not wanting to touch another bite of his food. “What a bi—”

Uncle Bodie cut him off once again. “When was this?” he asked.

“About a month ago. More or less. Look, I need to check my orders.”

Austin felt like he might cry.
No!
So close and so far away.

“Did he fill out an application or anything?” Guy said, breaking his silence.

The waiter shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure he didn’t.”

“Can you check? Isn’t there a law that a business has to hold onto an application for a while? A year, I think. Maybe there’s something in the office?”

The waiter’s eyes went wide. “I couldn’t go into her office. At least not to snoop around.”

“You sure?” Guy asked and slipped a twenty-dollar bill on the table.

The waiter swallowed hard, looked around once more, and snatched the money off the table. “I’ll try. You got a number or something?”

Guy nodded, pulled his wallet from his jacket pocket, fished out a card, and handed it to the young man.

“Don’t expect me to call back soon. This isn’t going to be easy.”

Guy nodded while Austin shook in his chair. “I understand.”

The waiter turned and fled.

“Fuck,” muttered Austin, a word he rarely used, especially out loud. He reached for the wine, despite the thought he didn’t want anything more to do with Izar Goya’s hospitality. He slugged it down in a few quick gulps, barely tasting it. “I-I don’t believe it.”

Guy reached out and laid a hand over Austin’s. “It’s okay, Austin. Don’t worry.”

Austin stared at their hands, right there on the table, and… froze. He didn’t know what to do, what to say. There was a part of him that wanted to jerk his hand away—this was a public place. And yet? And yet there was a part of him that was suddenly and deeply amazed at the sight. Those two hands. Male. They were two men, touching in a way he had only seen men and women, boys and girls, touch before. His heart was unexpectedly racing. He glanced up into Guy’s face. Guy: rugged, so male, hair cut almost military short, brown eyes, nose large and masculine, and with a shadow of beard across his jaw. Handsome.

Why can’t you be Todd
? he wondered. Quite suddenly, he saw that while Guy was older, his face not as wide, he shared a lot of Todd’s attributes. Dark hair, brown eyes, masculine, the slightest bit scruffy….
God. My type
. He almost laughed at the thought.
I have a type. Imagine
.

“We’ll find him,” Guy said then. “Either that waiter will help, or maybe at that sci-fi group or just driving around looking for him.”

Austin nodded. “You think?”

“I know.” Guy squeezed his hand. Strong. Protective.

That’s how Austin felt, suddenly. Protected. It was nice. It was how it was supposed to feel. There was a… masculine energy. It felt amazing.

Shit. Now what?

Now I wait. Go according to plan. I find Todd. One way or the other. Find out if I have a chance. And if not?
He looked into Guy’s eyes.
Who knows? Anything could happen
.

A
USTIN
kept himself busy over the next few days. Word that Austin had moved in spread quickly, and the tenants were warm and friendly. Apparently, they liked his uncle a lot, and while he had only lived in the building about ten years, not the lifetime most of them had, and while he was gay to their straight lives and marriages, they considered him one of their own. It seemed any nephew of Bodie’s had a place in their hearts.

They found things to keep him busy. Things they’d been reluctant to bother an old man with were not too insignificant now that there was a young man in the building. Plus, Austin suspected they all wanted to meet him, see for themselves who he was. He was the first new thing that had happened to most of them in quite a while.

So he moved refrigerators so kitchens could be cleaned like they hadn’t been in years, replaced an electrical outlet with only one working socket, substituted new light bulbs in the high stairwells, shaved the top of a door that wouldn’t close correctly due to decades of the building settling, and even changed the spark plugs in Ortisha Walker’s car.

He had enough to do that he almost forgot the tryouts for Guy’s play. Or maybe he’d wanted to forget? The whole idea was turning to a stone in the bottom of his knotted stomach. This play wasn’t going to be performed for a high school of under two hundred students, or for the community theater for two weekends in a town of less than 3,000 people. Kansas City had a population of half a million people, over two million if you counted the metro area. Guy had told him that a play performed at the Pegasus might be seen by up to 3,000 people, 150 in one night. People who loved plays and saw them all the time, not small town people who were thrilled with the cracking, sometimes flat voice of the mayor’s daughter.

Damn. Could he do it? Did he even have the balls to try out, let alone perform in front of such audiences? And what would Guy think of him if he stank? Sure, Austin had standing ovations. But that was by classmates. People who had known him all his life and loved his grandparents.

As a matter of fact, Austin had all but decided he wasn’t going to audition for the play after all; he would find an excuse. He was too busy with the work he was doing for his apartment building. Something.

But then Guy called the night before and filled the phone with his rugged voice, and Austin had pretty much melted. He couldn’t refuse.

“Of course you’re going,” Uncle Bodie told him. “Not only that, you’re going to get your first part. And I am going to be your number-one fan.”

Austin couldn’t help but smile, despite that brick in his stomach.

It was with great trepidation that he arrived at the Pegasus that Saturday afternoon, barely a week after his first day in Kansas City. How could your life change so fast, he wondered.

But then, he knew how fast life could change. What was the cliché? Life changed on a dime? That was true. Because one day, not all that long ago, he had been best friends with a boy named Todd Burton. Then, in one evening, in less than an hour, less than fifteen minutes, he’d given his best friend a blowjob. And that was the end. Suddenly, everything had changed. Not for the better, either. Then three nights later, he’d had sex with a girl. Todd’s girlfriend. It had lasted all of half an hour. That thirty minutes changed his life again. He was no longer a virgin to heterosexual sex. He had used someone in a way that made him ashamed. And he had lost his best friend for sure.

One day he had a best friend.

Three days and thirty minutes later, he didn’t.

Had a blowjob been worth it? Had sex with a female been worth it? Had surrendering to his base nature been worth turning his life upside down?

Life did turn on a dime.

Who knew what direction it would turn today?

“A
USTIN
!”
A huge smile spread across Guy’s face the minute he looked up from that clipboard of his and their eyes locked. He strode across the room and gave Austin a hug. “So glad you made it.”

“Thanks,” Austin said.

“I want you to meet someone.” He placed his hand low on Austin’s back and guided him over to a woman standing nearby, reading from a sheaf of papers. She was short, looked to be in maybe her late forties, and had curly black hair. “Jennifer? I want you to meet my friend Austin.”

She looked up with large dark eyes through wide red-and-black glasses. Her smile was dazzling. “So nice to meet you. You’re all Guy’s been talking about lately.” She held out a hand. “I’m Jennifer Leavitt.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Austin said, his nerves ramping up a notch or two. He was all Guy had been talking about lately?

“Jennifer is the Producing Artistic Director of the Pegasus.” He turned to Jennifer. “How many years now?”

“Almost thirty, thirty next year.”

“Thirty?” Austin exclaimed. “Did you start when you were ten?”

Her eyes went wide. “Listen to you! You didn’t tell me how sweet he is,” she said to Guy. “I first started working with the Pegasus when I was twenty-two.”

Quick math in his head told him that meant she was fifty-two. “Wow. Do you have a painting in your attic somewhere that ages without you?”

Her grin intensified. “Damn.” She started to laugh. “Hardly. And just to let you know, flattery gets you nowhere in an audition, okay?”

“Oh no! That isn’t what I was trying to—”

“Take it easy, kid. I’m just playing with you. Sit down. Relax. We’re just about to start.”

He gave her a little nod and turned back to Guy, eyes wide.

Guy just laughed. “Come on,” he said. “I can’t wait to see what you can do.”

Austin nodded, felt a buzzing in his ears, heard his heart pounding. When he turned to the circle of chairs, saw the twenty or so men, the sound leapt to a trip-hammering in his chest.

The men ranged in age from eighteen or nineteen to fifty, maybe sixty. And it was only men. What kind of play was this? He knew he should have googled it, but he hadn’t really planned on auditioning.
Dammit! What’s wrong with me?

Austin sat down in an empty seat between a guy about his age—quite pretty and almost effeminate—and a powerhouse of a man with amazing muscles and just beginning to gray at his temples. He might have been forty, but no older. He was quite attractive. Austin nodded at them both, and his nervousness rose several notches. Usually, he wasn’t so tongue-tied. He could talk to anyone. But of course he knew, at least by face, almost anyone he’d ever talked to. Living in a small town, you might not know everyone personally, but you got to a point where there was rarely a strange face.