Three for the City

July: Under the Table and Dealing

Matthew James Winchester was too close to for comfort to a goddamn financial crisis at the age of twenty-two. He’d dropped his buffer zone down to $300, and had sat at their small kitchen table in the wee hours of the morning swearing under his breath at the state of his checking account.

Numbers weren’t a problem for him. He could easily hang out with the number crunches in the mathematics department – to a point – and he despised the results he was getting. When he took what he was making per week, multiplying it by the number of weeks in a month, he got a fairly decent number. Something workable. The subtracting step was harder, and when it was all said and done – not including that goddamn student loan payment he had coming eventually – he was only making a paltry $98 per month.

None of this also took into account he was going to need to rent a tuxedo for the black tie event he was attending next month with Topher and Delia. He was Topher’s boyfriend, his automatic plus one, and he needed to dress accordingly. Which would, no doubt, be ridiculously expensive.

The only good side to any of this was the minimum $120 in cash he was getting from Cadie each week for basically doing nothing but sitting on his ass and looking pretty. It still felt like prostitution, and no matter how many showers he took when he was home, or how many times he lost himself in Topher’s body and touch, he still couldn’t shake the feeling he was dirty.

Because he hadn’t told him. Matt hadn’t told his boyfriend, the man he had no secrets from, where he went every Saturday for a good chunk of the afternoon.

Topher wanted to ask. Matt could see it in his eyes both Saturday mornings in July that he wanted to know, though he hadn’t quite figured out how to ask. He was incredibly grateful for that, too, since Matt didn’t know what he would say to Topher.

It felt like cheating, and Matt was too damn afraid to address the real problem – money – with Topher, which meant he was, under no circumstances, going to be having any conversations about Cadie and her photographs in the near future.

“Can I sit?”

He looked over; Delia stood in the doorway in yoga pants and an oversized Columbia College sweatshirt.

“Yeah,” he breathed, motioning to the chair across from him. He wondered what she was doing up at five-thirty in the morning, and realized she was holding her car keys.

She sat delicately, glancing at the pile of bank statements and other papers in front of him. “Everything balancing?”

Matt gripped his pen so hard he thought he might bend the cheap plastic. Delia was more awake at this hour than he’d ever seen her, and rather than going somewhere, it hit him that she was just coming back. He was pissed at himself he hadn’t heard the door. Then again, he didn’t know how long she’d been doing it.

Not that it was any of his business, though, it was. Much the same way it was Topher’s. They had a triangular codependence that was frightening when he examined it too closely.

“Who is he?” Matt asked, answering her question with one of his own.

She stiffened. “Who’s who?”

He swallowed thickly, forcing himself not to bristle. “I’ve lived with you for over a month now. You’re no more of a morning person than Topher is, so I’m guessing you’re just coming back.” He shrugged. “Nice touch with the keys to make it look like you’re going somewhere. Maybe the gym.”

Delia’s back went rigid. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”

Matt shrugged again. “It’s one of my more endearing character traits. But seriously. Who is he?”