Coda Books 04 - Strawberries for Dessert (MM)

not mine—”
    “ What ?”
    “—and it’s not my problem if you’re embarrassed by your sexuality.”
    “I’m not embarrassed about being gay! I’m embarrassed by you !
    Why do you have to act so goddamn flamboyant?”
    He froze. For just a moment, he was deathly still. And then he turned, very slowly, to look at me. “What did you just say to me?”
    There was an angry warning in his eyes, but I ignored it.
    “You heard me.”
    “Of course I heard you,” he said icily. “I thought I would allow you the luxury of taking it back. Rather diplomatic of me, don’t you think?”
    “I don’t need to take it back!”
    “Are you quite sure about that, darling?” He turned away from me with a perfectly orchestrated toss of his head.
    He was giving me a chance to get out of this before I pushed it too far, but I wasn’t about to take it. All I could think about was the way he had acted with my father and the embarrassment on Marcus’s face, and it made me furious. “I don’t want to take it back, Cole! I want you to answer me! Why do you have to act like such a, a, a—” I stumbled, stopped short, not really wanting to say any of the words that had popped into my head. But it was too late.
    He turned and pinned me with a piercing stare. “A what ?” he asked, advancing on me. “Which term will you throw at me, lovey? Do you think I haven’t heard them all? Queen, fag, fairy, flamer—”
    Those were the terms that had come to mind, but they sounded even worse out loud than they had in my head. It should have made me ashamed, but instead it only made me angrier at him for throwing them back in my face. “Jesus Christ, Cole, I wasn’t going to say any of those things!”
    “Don’t kid yourself, darling. It was all over your face.” He put one hand on his hip, cocked his other hip out, and tossed his head back.
    He was amping it up, turning it into a performance just for my benefit.
    He batted his eyelashes at me. “Does it offend you so much , darling?
    You never seem to mind when we’re in the bedroom.”
    “Goddamn it, Cole, I’m not talking about in t he be droom ! I’m talking about when we’re out in public ! Why do you have to act like every bad stereotype Hollywood has ever dreamed up for us?”
    “Why do you have to act like such an arrogant, uptight prick?”
    “So we’re going to resort to name calling, rather than discussing this rationally?”
    “Oh, I’m sorry. Are we actually discussing something? You’ll have to forgive my confusion. I thought you were simply attacking me for not being a perfect carbon copy of every straight man you’ve ever wished you could fuck!”
    That word, coming from him, sounded more obscene than normal.
    I realized I had never actually heard him swear before. “Cole, stop ! I’m not attacking you.”
    “It certainly feels like you are. My mistake, darling.”
    “My name is not ‘darling’. It’s Jonathan . And if that’s too hard for you to remember, you can just call me Jon.”
    “I can think of plenty of other things I would rather call you right at this particular moment.”
    “That was my boss , for God’s sake. I have to work with him! I need him to respect me! Would it kill you tone it down a bit?”
    His eyes flashed, and to my surprise, in the blink of an eye, he cut the act. It was like a curtain came down, and suddenly he there in front of me—no affectation at all. And he was livid. “Do you think you’re the first man to be embarrassed by me, Jonny-boy? Do you think you’re the first man who’s ever asked me to ‘tone it down’? Because you’re not! Better men than you have asked me to change, and I’ll tell you what I told them: go to hell!”
    He turned and headed for the door, grabbing his keys off of the table as he went.
    “Damn it, Cole! Wait!”
    But he didn’t stop. He slammed my front door so hard that my windows rattled. I didn’t go after him.

Date: October 12
    From: Cole
    To: Jared
    Good lord Sweets, if you never set me up again, it will be too soon! I honestly have no idea what you were thinking.

    I THOUGHT at first that he would call. He didn’t. I thought that when I got home from work the next night, he would be there waiting for me like always. He wasn’t.
    I realized then that it was up to me.
    I was torn. Part of me was still angry. I didn’t believe that I had done anything wrong. I had seen him turn the levels of his flamboyance up and down like the volume on the TV. I knew he