Housekeeping

Nicky took a sip of his iced coffee and sighed, "Maybe I made all the fuss."

Ivan raised his eyebrows in disapproval, and Powell snorted back: "You saw them fucking, Nicky. You didn't make a fuss at all."

Ivan also nodded: "Not at all, dear."

"But... a lot of people don't have one-to-one relationships," Nicky said. "You guys sometimes pick pretty boys to bring home. Like the one you guys told me about last month."

"The little league baseball player?" Ivan asked. "Oh, he's delicious. His ass is the cutest I've ever seen…"

Powell poked her husband's arm: "That's not the point. Although it's true, Nicky, we do have sex with other people sometimes. But we're two of us with him. We decide whether we want to play together, choose and Whoever plays, even plays Double Fly together. We won’t cheat on each other with slutty waiters.”

Nicky knew his friends were right.In the matter of Tom's cheating, what hurt him the most was not that he fucked someone else, but that he failed his own trust.In the past few years, men with good faces or good figures have hooked up with Nicky from time to time, but Nicky never thought of responding, just because he didn't want to betray Tom.But things have come to this point.He frowned. "He's stressed—"

"Fart," Powell interrupted loudly, "everyone has stress. I didn't mess around when I was preparing for the bar exam, and he didn't mess around when Ivan's mom was dying. If you're stressed, let yourself go." Take a break, hang out with your friends, and ask the doctor to prescribe Xanax for you. You can't break your lover's heart."

Note ①: Xanax, also known as alprazolam, is an anti-anxiety drug.

Nicky bites on the straw. "I know." He said bitterly.Then Ivan and Powell began to babble about Tom, starting with his bad taste in music.

Nicky appreciated the support but didn't pay attention to what they had to say.Because a handsome man two tables away from them caught his eye.The man had extremely short black curly hair mixed with a little gray, light brown skin, and light green eyes.His cheekbones were wide and his lips were thick enough to be a model, not to mention his sculptural body.But his expensive-looking suit was wrinkled; his tie was crooked and his shoes needed polishing.He hung his coat casually on the back of his chair, focusing on his laptop, frowning slightly.

Ivan and Powell finally finished their tirade against Tom, and Ivan went to refill a cup of coffee.When he came back with coffee, he sat on the other side of the table and took Nicky's hand: "You know you can come and live with us, right? You can live anytime, baby."

"Thank you. I may have to accept your invitation." Nicky has been tossing and turning from sofa to sofa for two weeks.He stayed at Becca's the first night because hers was near Tom's.But she was still working at the Phoenix Pavilion, and Nicky didn't want her to be in the middle.He then stayed a few nights at the house of his friend Pauline, but her husband didn't like Nicky very much, not to mention they had a nine-month-old baby to attend to.So Nicky moved to Max's house.Max was single, had no children, and didn't work for Tom, yet he had the most sex life of anyone Nicky knew.Nicky woke up every morning and saw strange girls in disheveled clothes in the kitchen. He was fed up with the same clothes every day.He could sleep on the sofa bed at Ivan and Powell's house, but that bed was in their guest bedroom, which Powell usually used as a home office.

"At my age, I still have to spend the night here and there..." Nicky said wearily.

Ivan patted Nikki's hand reassuringly: "This is all temporary. You will be on your feet again soon."

"I'm homeless, Evan. I'm one step away from moving back to Bakersfield to live with my mom. I don't have a job, and I'm never going to be hired. I'm so miserable..."

"You are really miserable only if you are immersed in self-pity and can't get out."

Nicky flipped the middle finger and managed to make all three of them laugh.The handsome guy looking at the notebook glanced at them and frowned again, as if dissatisfied that they interrupted his work.But what the hell, fuck it.This is a public cafe.

Powell muses as he bites into a giant chocolate chip cookie: "How's your job search going?"

"It's terrible. My resume sucks. I sent a few resumes to the shopping mall the other day, and I didn't get a reply. I'm not even qualified to sell mobile phone accessories and cinnamon rolls." He was really trying to suppress his wailing impulse.

"What about school?" Powell asked. "Didn't you take a few classes too?"

"I did a semester and a half at UC Bakersfield, but that was a million years ago. I guess I'd have to start from scratch." And, he's embarrassed to say, even though he never paid the rent , but the deposit is still not enough for him to complete two years of college to get a diploma.During the time he worked in Phoenix Pavilion, Tom never paid him a salary seriously.Nicky thought it was fair, since Tom was responsible for the mortgage, utilities, and other day-to-day expenses.Tips are his only source of income.

Powell scratched his cheek thoughtfully again: "A partner of mine at work will go to Cabo for a month's vacation in December. But he and his wife have a few cats. Would you like to help them look after the house? Cats? They have a nice house. Just giving you time to find other, more stable work."

Nicky is allergic to cats, but a homeless vagrant has no options: "Sounds great."

"That's great. I'll give him your contact information tomorrow."

"Thank you. Thank you both. That's nice of you."

Ivan winks playfully, blows him a kiss back, and steals a Powell cookie: "Eating off someone else's plate doesn't count as a calorie," he says.

Nicky felt that the focus of the topic could not always be on him alone, so he leaned back on the back of the chair and said to the two of them, "Didn't you guys go to see a show last weekend?"

And then there's the successful start of the two friends' lengthy bashing of actors, plots, dialogue and costumes.Nicky listened with a smile, but still focused on the handsome man typing anxiously on the keyboard.Ivan impassionedly sprayed the eighteenth generation of the choreographer's ancestors, and in the middle of spraying, Nicky saw the handsome man knock over the coffee cup with a stretched arm, spilling coffee all over his sleeves. "Fuck!" he growled, startling the laughing teenagers at the next table.Then, staring stupidly at his sleeve, he looked like he was about to cry.

By the time Nicky realized it, he had already rushed over.He grabbed a stack of napkins from the napkin box on the man's table and lowered his head to help the man dry up the coffee on his sleeve. "You didn't burn yourself, did you?" Nicky asked.

"Uh... no. The coffee is cold."

"Well, that's good." Nicky looked critically at the blue cuffs with brown stains. "Not optimistic, but you might salvage the shirt in time. Go home and soak it in Shout now."

Note ②: Shout, American detergent brand name.

"Shout?"

"bleach."

The man shook his head blankly: "I don't have that."

How can you live without bleach?Nicky sighed. "Then change it: Soak it in warm water and add some dish soap. You should have dish soap at home, right? Then use a sponge dipped in alcohol to wipe it, and it should be solved."

"I... I think I'd better throw it away."

Nicky shrugged.The shirt was estimated to cost a hundred dollars, but that was none of his business. "Okay." He clutched the stack of napkins, thinking he should walk away, but those green eyes held him in place.His eyelashes are too pretty, aren't they really fake eyelashes?How can someone's eyelashes be so long and dense.

"I have a meeting in 45 minutes," the man said, bewildered like a lost child. "It's very important."

"Then, this stain probably can't be hidden, even in your short coat. You see, the cuffs are all covered with coffee stains." Nicky pointed to the man's cuff and said, pretending not to notice the man's wide and thick chest. palm.Of course, he didn't even think about what it would feel like to touch his skin with that hand.

"Oh... shit." The man's voice sounded so helpless and desperate that Nicky's desire was diluted by his heartache.

"Listen. There's a Kohl's a few blocks away, just turn left out of the parking lot. They don't sell as good a shirt as yours, but I bet you can get a simple Elegant shirt, put it on for a meeting, there is plenty of time."

Note ③: Kohl’s department store in the United States.

The man smiled at him.One of his front teeth was a little crooked, but it somehow made him look more handsome. "Thanks, buddy. Are you the fabled Guardian Angel?"

Nicky grinned at him too. "If I were, I'd save you before the coffee spills. Well, also, when you go shopping for shirts, you better buy a pair of socks. The two you're wearing are not the same pair."

The man looked down at his ankle and muttered, "Isn't it?"

"One navy blue and one forest green."

"I'm colorblind."

"Then get a clerk to help you. Have them find you a pair of black socks."

"Thanks. I... I should go."

Nicky took a step back, watching the man close his notebook and hang his jacket over his arm again.The man held out his coffee-stained arm and shook Nicky's hand. "Thank you again, thank you very much." His hand was full of strength.

Nicky wanted to help him straighten his tie, but anyway, the man was about to change his clothes, and it was useless to tidy up now: "I wish you a smooth meeting."

He watched the man leave.