Cupcakes

Chapter 10: Love and Cruelty

Chapter 10: Love and Cruelty

Cozy on his sofa, I was offered a strawberry-flavored margarita and a gossip-filled transaction. He spent twenty minutes telling me about a male couple in their early sixties who were purchasing a lake house together, their second summer home in three years. He also told me that the men behaved like catty queens and completely exhausted him. Then he mentioned Hayden, which was a perfect introduction for my spiel, and the reason why I had visited him in the first place.

“Listen to me, Jarr. You have to leave the kid alone,” I said, a little drunk after four cocktails, but not too drunk to blow off my warning. “Richter and I would appreciate it if you didn’t mix your c**k with our bakery. What are you views on that?” My flood of words sounded abrupt and rough, but I had wanted them to. Someone had to be honest with Jarr, and who better to carry out the job than me. I took a deep breath and added, “Hayden is not your personal toy. Besides, he’s too young for you. We both know that you need to f**k around with people your own age and…”

I stopped speaking, which he was probably thrilled about. And then I looked into his lifeless eyes, which clarified to me that my words were dead on him. Maybe he could hear me, but he surely wasn’t absorbing what I had to say. Jarr had zoned out, mentally numbing and vanishing from his third floor apartment, going off and far away, somewhere. His stare was glassy and emotionless, and his lips were just slightly parted and looked like immovable wax. He was distant, lost on his own planet, maybe not part of the living anymore, a zombie in the hit show The Walking Dead.

“Jarr,” I said. “Are you with me?” I snapped a thumb and finger together in front of his face, almost brushing the pair against the nub of his nose. “Snowden to Jarr. Are you there, my friend?”

He blinked, shook his head as if he had just surfaced from the deep bottom of a pool, and admitted in a calming whisper, “I think I fell in love.”

* * * *

Love was cruel, wild, and dangerous. It could burn anyone if they just happened to get too close to its ravenous beauty. Jarr was not a man who could love, I knew, and learned throughout our years together as friends. Numerous men had found their naked ways under his sculpted skin and spent passionate nights with him. None of those men carried out long-term relationships with him, and never would. I didn’t want to call Jarr a player, and wouldn’t, but he liked to spread himself around Snowden, Erie, Rochester, Buffalo, and Niagara Falls. He was promiscuous and somewhat broken, but not unkind. Love was just a word to the man. Love was blasphemous next to his heart. Love was—

He wasn’t in love. I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t, and wouldn’t. There was no way in hell I could take him seriously. Love didn’t exist in his world, and never would. And maybe that’s why I said to him, “You’re tired, Jarr. You’re working too much. Take a few days off from the bakery and your house-selling. Get some air. Relax.”

He said, “Ryan Glayson is the guy’s name. He turns my world upside down.”

But I didn’t believe him—because I really didn’t want to believe him, because I couldn’t believe him—and ignored him. Instead, I rose from my seat and shook my head. “You don’t even know what you’re saying now. I have to run. I have a date with my man. Richter is waiting up for me. It’s movie and popcorn night in front of our Sony. Take my wisdom and get some rest. Don’t ignore me about this. Get your head together. R and R up, my friend.”

I walked out of his apartment and down to my own apartment thinking: He’s maybe drunk. Out of his head. Or maybe he’s smoking pot again, but I didn’t smell anything. Whatever. I did what I had to do. My warning is out there. I said my piece, and Richter’s.