Irresistible

Chapter 1: The Rudder

Chapter 1: The Rudder

At The Rudder, a chic little bistro on Stanton Street in downtown Pittsburgh, I read out loud to Gloria from the e-magazine, Money + Art + Life, on my phone “Brent Cassidy’s castle-like residence, Chantilly, is worth nothing, a blur of black and whites without any life. It makes one feel dead inside, insubstantial, and hardly worth the time to look at or live in. The house lacks substance, a block of nothingness and…”

“You lost me,” Gloria said, looking over her Long Island Ice Tea. “Maybe I’ve had too much to drink.”

I closed the app and told her, “The writer sounds like a pompous prick. I can’t stand him. He’s never given me a high review of one of the houses I have sold.”

“I wouldn’t object to that.” Forty-year-old Gloria Linear winked at me and flipped her red mane to the right. Drunk again, she hid from her cheating husband by hanging out with me and probably wished she could have married me instead of Leonard Linear, the physicist without a personality.

Matthew “Miller” Van Millerhowsen, our regular waiter in tight jeans and a cobalt blue T-shirt glued to every one of his chest muscles, overheard our conversation and spun around from the table he tended. “Calm down. They’re just words. They can’t kill anyone. People have died over worse things.”

I knew Miller for the last ten years, but didn’t consider him a friend. Yes, we worked out at the same gym, Dude Pumps, where we occasionally bumped into each other. We didn’t hang out at bars, go dancing, eat meals together, or go to the movies together. Miller had his life, and I had mine. He always treated me with kindness, though, respectful, and graced me with compliments about my clothes, eyes, and everyday whatnots, always flirting with me.

I didn’t like Miller the way he liked me. I thought him handsome, intelligent, and talkative, but not alluring. When he asked me out on dates, I always told him no. When he professed his undying love for me, I laughed his comments off. Although he joked about being my boyfriend and loving me until the end of time, his romantic idealism would never happen. I would never fall in love with him and get hitched to the man. We wouldn’t honeymoon together on a private island in Mexico. Our lives in Pittsburgh would forever be separated, whether he wanted them to be or not.

Gloria and Miller knew what I did for a living: high-end realtor in downtown Pittsburgh for an elite company called Breeze Realty. I steered wealthy women and men to high-priced properties, mostly residences.

“My boss personally emailed me and asked if I had made a very bad decision in recommending one of my clients to purchase Chantilly.”

Gloria waved a hand at me over her drink, huffed, and rolled her green eyes. “Emails don’t count when it comes to bitching someone out. Have some balls, pick up the phone, and tell your boss Chantilly is a lovely house next a sleepy lake. Hell, if I divorce Leonard, which I inevitably will, maybe I’ll buy and move into the place. Chantilly and I can have a grand love affair. Shame on your boss for thinking the place a hole.”

Miller laughed, filling our waters. Then he scuttled away.

Gloria and I ate lunch at The Rudder almost every day. Gloria bitched about her twenty-year-old marriage and a cheating husband who had recently become obsessed with two of his female students, both of which had blonde hair, plump lips, and curves in places Gloria didn’t anymore.

I usually bitched about my job, how I hated selling high-end property for Breeze Realty. I needed a new career and maybe a new life. It exhausted me to read articles about beautiful houses like Chantilly.

Gloria got to the point of my life in four short words, “Find a new job. Start selling skyscrapers. Work for a different company. You’re bitchy, angry, and not yourself these days. Breeze Realty isn’t for you anymore. Plus, you need to get laid. You haven’t had a man in how long?”

“Eight months.”

“That was Regan, wasn’t it?” she asked, raising an eyebrow, happily drunk.

“The wide receiver for Pittsburgh Iron.”

“A certain wide receiver who decided to f**k the Cleveland Claws’ quarterback, right?”

Both of us knew the hardcore and bitter facts of my past relationship with Regan Field. The tall, dark, and handsome stud was the cheating cliché I thought he would be when first going on a date with him. I should have known not to socialize with the jock, particularly without my clothes on in his condominium overlooking Pittsburgh’s skyline. The guy turned out to be a total jerk and left me single, brokenhearted, and an emotional wreck because I had fallen in love with him.

Gloria leaned over the table and semi-whispered in a slurred tone, “We both know you’re down on your luck regarding men and you need some dick.”

“Down on my luck,” I repeated, nodded. How right she was.

Lunching patrons heard her comment. Miller did, too. He chuckled as he filled more water glasses, shuffling from one table to the next.

“Gloria, please keep this conversation G-rated,” I begged her, blushing.

Miller stepped up to my side and whispered in my ear, “We’re all adults here. Plus, she’s being honest. We all need some d**k sometime.” He winked at me and ruffled my hair.

I laughed, shooed him away, and told Gloria, “Eat your salad. We’re done making a spectacle here.”

* * * *

Before leaving The Rudder without Gloria at my side—she wanted to stay behind and have a few more drinks by herself, contemplating hiring a divorce lawyer and suing the balls off Leonard—Miller moved up to me, shook my hand, thanked me for coming to his uncle’s luncheonette again.

“May I be blunt, Victor?”

When wasn’t Miller blunt? I wanted to roll my eyes but didn’t, keeping my composure. Instead, I checked the thirty-eight-year-old from toes to eyes: not bad to look at because of his coconut-colored hair and matching eyes, thin eyebrows, five-elven frame, and muscular chest. I knew he worked out at least four times a week at my gym, Dude Pushes, and he didn’t put any junk food inside his body, minus alcoholic sweet cocktails. I also knew, throughout our waiter/patron relationship for the last decade, that he enjoyed running, rowing on the Monongahela River, and biked some.

Then he checked me out, knowing my stats as if I were a wide receiver on the Pittsburgh Iron: two hundred pounds, six-one, blond crewcut, baby blue eyes, thin stomach, and sort of on the lanky side with no extra hair in weird places. He studied my forty-four-year-old frame, maybe concentrating on my khakis and Kenneth Cole shirt, the stainless-steel belt buckle at my center, and my narrow chin.

He didn’t wait for my response to his question and said, “I’ve made a list of guys for you to date. Personal friends of mine. If you need a fix of d**k, these guys will do the trick. They’re not out to fall in love or have long-term relationships with men.” He passed me a piece of notebook paper with his blue script.

I looked down at the paper and read five names and five phone numbers (all local) under my breath. I then looked up and asked him, “Why aren’t you dating these guys?”

He shook his handsome head. “They’re not my type, and we’re friends. It’s not wise to date or f**k your friends. Besides, I’m holding out for you. Someday, you’ll be my boyfriend and marry me. We’re meant to be together.” He rolled two fingers against my chin, winked, and grinned, obviously happy.

I didn’t object to his comments and rationale, even though I wanted to. Instead, I folded the list, pushed it into one of my pockets, and thanked him for being my reliable waitperson, for his time, and his concern for my boyfriendhood, even if we would never be lovers like he wanted us to be.

He patted me on my back as I left and told me to use the list. “You’ll have a good time with the guys. They already know you’ll be calling them. They beg for d**k and always want some.”

“Thanks,” I said over my left shoulder, walking into the March cold. I didn’t really mean anything by the comment. Not at all.

* * * *

Confession: I thought Miller over the top a little too much. If asked to describe the man, I would have said the following, “He’s patient when he wants to be, always cute, and he doesn’t take any s**t from anyone. He’s a very good waiter, and he never messes up our lunch orders. He’s always polite, knows his job well, and he’s always charming when he wants a better tip. Never do I hear him complain, always positive.”

My thoughts ran away with me regarding the man:

Things I know about Miller that maybe I shouldn’t: he likes to nap, and he still blames his father for his mother’s death from cancer. He’s not racist, but he has no affections whatsoever with red-haired dudes from Ireland. He’s the worst driver on the planet, and he doesn’t know the first thing about controlling his road rage, or so he has told me.

Things that stand out: he’s caring and likes to give people tiny gifts when he can. He knows how to make alcoholic beverages and wants to fall in love with a guy. He speaks well and has a thing for Londoners when they sometimes visit The Rudder. He doesn’t pose a threat to anyone, and he loves animals, particularly cats, since he owns two Siamese.

If I were stuck on an island with Miller, we wouldn’t really hit it off. The conversations would be meaningless, and he would make me figure out how to fish and cook coconut-flavored meals. He’d make me keep a tidy, palm-covered abode and create a happy life for us. And he would ogle me in the distance, on the beach, wanting to be my lover, into me, desiring me; something that would never happen, of course.