Apartment 3B

16. New Guy?

Hayley

The Apartment gang decided to have a lunch together at Brady's on the last Saturday of November. The air was chilly and it felt like the festival season was already in gear.

Kabir had a flight later in the night. He was going to meet his sisters for Diwali; which was in a few days. The let's-open-our-own-bar conversation was on hold for the week he'd be gone but we'd all been assigned duties.

Luna was on financial duty. She was to look up investors and possible options for procuring capital. I was on location duty with Jess. We had to look for affordable places in the hot part of the town. The attractive niche of the city was close to the Apartment, the "hot part of the town" also had the bar that both the boys worked in. The street was lined with restaurants and buzzing pubs on either sides. It had loads of shops catering to all cuisines, keeping the diversity of the working bustling city people in mind. A place here would we criminally expensive and out of our reach, so we also expanded the search to our own area where Brady's and the General Store were. Lainey was on aesthetics duty and looked up cheap decor material online as well as kept an eye out for flea markets and yard sales.

The research part was pretty important and Kabir was determined to not let this go. He was going to make it happen and we were going to do everything possible to help him with realizing his dream.

The boys took the night off and we occupied our usual booth at Brady's. Sitting on the same leathery bottle green seats, ordering our usual, my senses filled with the delicious aroma of the bistro.

We saw there was a new waiter and the group talked in hushed whispers, "Who's the new guy?" Luna asked in a low voice. Everyone leaned in and we discussed possible back stories for him.

The new guy came to take our orders, he was the definition of tall, dark and handsome. He was a delicious looking man, like the chocolate brownies of Brady's. It was beyond my comprehension why he would need to work here.

Putting on my sweet flirty voice, I gave him my sexiest smile, "Hey, what's your name? I haven't seen you around here."

"I'm Gabriel. I started this morning."

"And why would a handsome man like yourself need to wait on tables?" I asked and was quickly pinched by Luna on my arm in disapproval.

He blushed and ran his hand through his non-existent hair. Who is so sexy when their head is shaved? God.

He replied, "Paying off student loans. I'm still in Uni, doing a double major in Dance and Statistics."

"Ooh, I'm impressed, that sounds fantastic" Jesse shocked us with his confident borderline flirtatious response.

Taking our order, Gabriel winked at Jesse before leaving.

Well, that's odd.

Jesse blushed and shockingly, giggled like a little teenage girl swooning over a Justin Bieber poster. Kabir teased him, "Aw, little Jesse has a crush on the new waiter boy."

"I didn't know you were into boys, Jess," I half-asked.

"N-no I'm not," he stammered but his cheeks were tomato red.

"Someone definitely has a crush, my gay-dar ain't broken," Lainey laughed.

I was flooded with emotions, I didn't know how to feel about it. Just about a month ago he was a virginal straight white Christian boy. Now he'd had sex with me but didn't even want me anymore. Now he was flirting with Gabriel, an African-American boy? What was that all about? His orthodox Christian parents would lose all the shit they have left if they hear this. Anyway, nothing is happening right now and we're just teasing him. It shouldn't bother me, even if something did happen between them. We shouldn't get too ahead of ourselves, Gabriel just winked at him. Nothing is happening.