7. Blaise

SEVEN

I'm late,thanks to one of my favorite clients coming in five minutes before closing. Silas—or as I privately think of him, the hot grouch—is a professor at Franklin and completely clueless when it comes to clothes. He basically tells me what he needs and lets me pick what I want. I try to dress him to match his conservative vibe, and I must be succeeding, because one time, he thanked me for picking clothes that didn't make him feel like he was wearing a costume. Tonight he wanted to get the jump on his spring wardrobe, so I'm not mad about staying late and making a fat commission. Drinks are on him.

But the store closes at nine on Fridays, so Shenanigans is already busy by the time I roll in close to ten. There's a text on my phone telling me my friends are in one of the back booths, so I weave through the crowds to find them.

"Finally!" Butch cheers, lifting her glass in salute. "We thought you'd ditched us."

"Customer," I explain, sliding in beside Harold (No last name. It's his thing.). "He's paying for the next round." They all cheer this time, even Phil, and Calla slides a glass and the pitcher across the table to me. "So what'd I miss?"

"Harold told his client she has bad taste," Butch says. Her name is actually Belinda, but she used to find herself saying, "Yes, I'm butch, get over it," so much that it was just easier to call herself that. Now she introduces herself with "Hi, I'm Butch." She also says it works like magic on dating sites.

"I didn't tell her she has bad taste," Harold corrects. "I said she has no taste."

I wince. "Because that's so much better. What did your boss say?" Harold's an interior designer and works for a big local firm. It's a cherry job, but he and his boss (who is not a designer) find themselves at odds a lot.

He shrugs. "Unhappy, blah blah, need to grovel, blah blah. You know what these corporate philistines are like. The other designers all agreed with me. She wanted a green velvet couch?—"

"You love those," Calla interrupts, surprised.

"Let me finish. With orange shag carpet and purple satin drapes."

We all suck in deep breaths.

"Wow. Psychedelic," Butch comments.

"Like an acid trip," I add. "But still, I bet the other designers wouldn't have told her she has no taste."

He pulls a face. "Maybe. They did say something about gently steering her away from those choices or talking her into muted patterns where those colors work together."

"Was your boss mad? Or will apologizing to the client fix it?" Calla asks.

"I have to crawl, he said. But someone in the moving crew dropped an eighteen-thousand-dollar custom hand-blown vase about an hour earlier, so he was distracted by that."

We pause to take that in. "Yep. That'd distract me too," I agree.

"Imagine putting that on an insurance claim." Butch holds up her hands as if she can see it written. "The claims adjuster might have a coronary."

Laughter echoes around the table. Even Phil, the quietest member of our group, joins in. We're pretty sure he's some kind of neurospicy, not just regular shy, but we haven't asked. He doesn't talk much and often blushes when he does. We took him under our wing last year—he hangs out with us, and we don't make him join in if he doesn't want to.

When he does talk, he usually has great insights. And he's an incredibly talented designer. Calla's mentioned to me that she's thinking of asking him if he wants to go into partnership with her after they graduate. She'll handle all the business stuff and do the garment construction, and he can design and make the patterns. I think it's a fabulous idea.

I order another couple of pitchers as the conversation switches to Butch's family, who think if only she'd give up art, she'd no longer be a lesbian. "So I told Mom I'm not giving up art or vag, and if she's got a problem with it, she can give up quilting and stop being hetero."

Harold sprays beer across the table.

"Gross," I say as Phil passes him some napkins. "Also, be careful. This is a nice shirt." I turn back to Butch. "Um, does she not realize you get the artsy genes from her, the seven-times winner of the state quilting association Best Quilt award?"

"Right?" she exclaims. "Art and queer aren't synonymous." She shakes her head. "Now my sister's gonna call me and tell me to be nice to Mom, and why can't I pretend to be straight to make things easier with the family?"

"Is this the sister whose husband insists she needs to cook potatoes as a side for at least four meals per week? And bought a new recliner for himself with the money she'd earmarked for a family vacation?" Harold asks.

Butch nods, smirking. "Yep."

Calla snorts. "Her life would be a lot better if she told her husband she was leaving him to be a lesbian."

I laugh and take another sip from my glass, glancing around the bar. It's completely packed now, the noise level extreme. I love it. There's so much color and personality and fun at moments like this. I see some people I know from classes last year and wave. Then someone moves, and my eye falls on a table of loud, must-be-center-of-the-universe-at-all-times jocks.

More specifically, on Jordan. He's standing, waving a glass around as he tells a story, and his friends are split between laughter and jeering. There's a huge grin on his face, and honestly, I've never been more attracted to a jock in my life. Except for when they do those shirtless charity calendars that I always buy, even though I've never used a paper calendar.

We made tentative plans on Wednesday to meet up next week, since apparently he can't this weekend. That's a shame, because it's the only weekend this month that I'm not working.

The sound of Calla banging her hand on the table gets my attention, and I turn to look at her. "Was it too hard to say, ‘Hey, Blaise'?"

"I said that, but you were too busy daydreaming."

"I wasn't?—"

"You were," Harold cuts in. "We looked to see what you were staring at, and Calla recognized someone called Jordan and said you had news."

I blink. She can't mean…? No. There's no way she could know. Not unless Jordan told her, and somehow that doesn't fit. Especially since there's no reason for her to even know Jordan personally. Though she probably knows of him, since she's the sports lover of the group. "I do?" I raise my brows at her, playing it cool.

"I heard that you sold a suit to Jordan Marks, that you're kind of friends now, and you told him your life story."

I breathe a little easier. "Where'd you hear that?"

"From Jordan. He's in my stats class."

"Who's Jordan Marks?" Harold leans forward, his avid gaze darting between me and Calla. He's a gossip whore.

"He plays baseball," I tell him, then look back at Calla. "And I did not tell him my life story."

She smirks. "Yet somehow he knows all about the Joy Inc. internship. Yesterday he got so upset about it being unpaid that he swore at the server in the dining room."

My jaw drops. "He swore at a server?" Not something I thought he'd do, and totally not cool.

She seesaws a hand. "Not at, at, but he swore at the exact moment the server was waiting to take his order. He apologized. Anyway, that's not the point. Since when do you get all deep and meaningful with your customers?"

"Is talking about an internship with a student actually deep and meaningful?" Butch wonders.

I shake my head. "No."

"Yes," Calla argues. We look to Harold to break the tie.

"Ehhhh, it depends. Were you already talking about internships, jobs, or work of any kind?"

"Who even remembers? I guess so—I was saying how I wanted to break into wardrobe and costume design, and how tough it was. The internship just came up."

Harold grimaces at Calla. "Sorry, sweetie. That seems like a legit segue."

"Is it, though?" she counters. "Why were you talking about being a designer while you were selling him a suit? He doesn't seem the type to want to go custom."

I roll my eyes. "You're really reaching now. I didn't bring it up; he saw Hector and?—"

The group gasp cuts me off, and belatedly I realize what I've done.

"He saw Hector?" Butch breathes.

"He was at your apartment?" Calla shrieks. Luckily, the place is so loud, nobody notices.

"Yeah, this changes my ruling," Harold points out. "Why was he at your place… in your bedroom?"

Even Phil leans forward, elbows propped on the table.

"It's not like that," I insist, even though it totally is. I scramble for a believable lie, because I am not going to out Jordan. Not even to my best friends who I could trust not to gossip about it to anyone else.

"How is it then?" Calla demands. They're all staring at me, and I'm pretty sure I just broke out in a sweat.

"It's like he told you—we're kind of friends now. He bought the suit on Sunday, came to pick it up at the end of my shift on Wednesday. We were talking, I had to clock out, and we decided to hang out. That's it." I wait to see if they'll buy it.

Phil slowly shakes his head, and Butch says, "That's weak, Blaise. So weak, if it was beer, we'd call it piss water."

I lift my glass to salute her. "Cheers."

"Why'd you have to go to your place to hang out?" Harold asks.

"Where else would we go?"

Calla scoffs. "You were literally at the mall. The mall. Also known as the place people go to hang out. Or you could have come, you know, here. A bar where people also hang out, much like we're doing now. Or?—"

"Yeah, okay, I get it. There are other places we could have hung out. But we went to my place, and that's all."

"It doesn't explain why he was in your bedroom, though," Butch says, drawing out "bedroom."

"He wasn't," I reply smugly, glad that this, at least, is completely true. "The door was open, and he used the bathroom." To shower, but they don't need that little tidbit.

It shuts them up for about fifteen seconds, then Harold shakes his head. "I don't know. It still seems suspicious to me."

"Me too," Calla agrees, eyes narrowed.

Butch turns to her. "What do we know about this baseball player, other than that he plays baseball and is in your stats class?"

"You're not going to ask me, his kind-of friend?" I demand, irrationally annoyed.

"He's good at baseball, but not obnoxious about it," Calla begins. "He's detail-oriented too—the one who makes the list for group projects. And he pulls his weight. But he gets bored really easily during class and doodles instead of taking notes, then begs them from his friends."

"Are his doodles any good?" Harold asks, and I pay close attention to her answer. Hey, we're in the arts. We care about that stuff.

Calla shakes her head. "Nope. No talent whatsoever. One time I had to ask him why his stick figure had no elbows."

I cringe. "It's a stick figure. How hard can elbows be?"

She shrugs. "Whatever, he's a nice guy. He'll be a good friend."

I frown. "Calla Lily?—"

"Ooooh, Blaise is real-naming you," Butch says. "This must be important."

It's true that we don't usually use her full name. People start jeering when they hear that her whole first name is Calla Lily. Especially because her surname is Gardner.

"I'm just saying… even implying something more happened could have a big impact on Jordan if someone overhears you."

Grudgingly, she nods. "Fair enough. No more jokes or innuendoes… when we're in public."

That's the best offer I'll get. "Thank you."

"But since you have a friend on the team now, you have to come to a ballgame with me."

Fuck. Really? "You're kidding, right?"

She shakes her head. "Nope. Gotta support your friend."

"I doubt me being there would?—"

"I'll come too," Harold announces. "A friend of Blaise's is a friend of mine."

"And me," Butch adds. "I've always thought we should support school sports more." We all look at her like she's crazy, but she ignores us, turning to Phil. "You coming?"

He nods emphatically, cheeks pink. For once I think it's excitement and not social anxiety.

"Excellent," Calla declares. "The team's away this weekend, but I'll get tickets for next Saturday."

I leap on the excuse. "I'm working."

"But you're not working this weekend," Harold helpfully points out. "See if someone wants to switch for Saturday."

Sighing, I give in. "Fine. But that means you're all coming to the open-air cinema at the beach with me next week. I heard the ‘reality' show production the senior performing arts class is doing will be filming there, and I want to see some behind-the-scenes stuff."

"I saw them filming in the dining hall the other day," Calla says. "I love that they included a queer couple in the cast, and Chase and Amos have chemistry. I wanna see what's happening behind the scenes too." She smirks and wriggles her brows, and I roll my eyes.

But yeah. That too.

"What's showing at the cinema?" Butch asks.

"Jaws."