A Note in the Margin (4 page)

Even though Jamie had earlier argued with himself over the merits and pitfalls of sleeping with the new boss, there was a sadness to John that no amount of bravado could hide. There was something about him that said he needed this tonight.

Besides,
Jamie reasoned,
a few drinks and those sexy green eyes….

A low hum escaped John’s lips when Jamie’s fingers worked their way up his chest to drag his nails lightly across John’s nipple. “Fuck, lad. I think you better show me your bedroom.”

Jamie backed off just enough to pull John through the front room and into his bedroom; however, the dynamics quickly changed as soon as they were across the threshold. John’s hands encircled Jamie’s arms and spun him around until he was pinned against the now-closed door. Jamie barely had time to catch his breath before John had hauled his shirt over his head and removed his own with the same urgency.

Jamie’s head fell back against the wooden door as John bit lightly at the side of his neck. He could feel hands working on his fly, his own fingers blindly grasping at John’s hair. Despite being trapped between John and the door, Jamie was able to move his hips and legs enough to allow his pants to fall to the floor, all the while trying to pull John in for a kiss. But John was having none of that and quickly pushed him back against the hardwood of the door using his free hand to extricate himself from the last of his own clothes.

“Shit,” Jamie moaned, pulling John’s hair to make him back off a little. “I’m getting fucking splinters in my arse here.”

John chuckled, stepped out of his fallen clothes, and ran his hands all the way down the silken skin of Jamie’s sides, stopping only when they reached the gentle crease at the top of his thighs. John hauled one leg up and wrapped it over his hip, steadying himself before he was able to lift the other leg. Jamie moaned and crossed his legs behind John, squirming until he was safely cradled in John’s strong hands so he could turn them toward the bed.

With a grunted effort, John managed to get his knees onto the bed where he safely lowered Jamie to the mattress. He lay still for a moment, both to catch his breath and to give him a chance to think and gain some semblance of control. The latter was difficult with Jamie’s mouth on his throat and hips rolling rhythmically against his cock. “Oh God. Jamie, if you keep doing that this is going to be over before it begins
.”

Jamie knew full well the effect he was having on John, enjoying the small amount of momentary power it gave him, but after one more cheeky thrust he unlaced his legs and reached over to the bedside drawer to pull out a condom and lubricant. He tore open the packet and reached down to stroke John’s already aching cock.

“No, you don’t,” John muttered, clamping his hand over Jamie’s to still its action. “Turn over.”

Without argument, Jamie slid over onto his belly, silently enjoying the delicious friction of the heavy quilt stitching against his already dripping cock. He attempted another languid rub over the fabric but
John’s arm encircled his waist and roughly hauled his hips off the bed. Jamie arched back into John’s touch and the cool fingers that slid between his cheeks.

John paused, taking in the beautiful man pushing back against his hand.
This is not a good idea
. But the desperate ache in his body quickly negated any doubts. He teased two fingers slowly around Jamie’s opening before exerting enough pressure to thrust them in.

“Fuck,” Jamie grunted, trying to rise farther off the bed, meeting the probing fingers. John’s tongue flicked slowly over his bottom lip as he watched Jamie’s hips undulate in time with his fingers. He knew he couldn’t wait. He quickly removed his fingers and rolled on the condom, cursing as both lube and haste made it slippery.

Jamie braced his head on his forearms when John gripped his hips. The breach was hard and without hesitation, but Jamie remained still. He wasn’t usually this passive, but he knew it was what John wanted,
needed
.

It was so difficult to breathe buried deep in Jamie. The heat gripped him and John fought his way back from the edge, exhaling a long shaky breath.

His fingers tightened their grip around Jamie’s hip bones and with a near desperate growl John pulled back just enough to allow him to snap his hips hard into his compliant partner. “Oh, fuck.” Jamie gasped against the sweaty skin of his forearms but pushed back, urging John on as he matched the initial thrust with a second and a third.

The room faded from John’s vision as all his concentration focused on the smooth skin in front of him…
male
skin… something he’d denied himself for too long.

Above his own labored breathing Jamie could hear John’s almost pained grunts and he knew neither of them was going to last at that rate. With a little effort Jamie managed to squeeze one of his hands beneath them and took hold of his own need. Each movement brought on a gasped moan as Jamie pumped his cock in time with John’s increasingly erratic rhythm.

“Oh God. Almost there… almost.” John panted breathlessly.

Jamie wanted to answer, but was too near his own completion to formulate words; he barely managed a mantra of incoherent noises as the tension built in his body. He rocked back, vaguely conscious of John’s sweat wet between his thighs and the steady echoed slap of their damp skin. His hand gave one last twist as his orgasm hit, leaving him only barely aware of John’s strangled cry and shudder before he slumped forward onto Jamie’s back.

“Fucking hell, Jamie, I think you killed me,” John gasped into Jamie’s ear.

“Well, you’re squishing me, John.” Jamie chuckled breathlessly.

John carefully eased out and sat back on his heels to peel off the condom. “Sorry. Um, where can I put this?”

“Bin next to the bed.” Jamie pointed as he rolled over to watch John.

“So tell me, Jamie, do you always fuck your boss?” John grinned as he leaned back against the headboard and lit a cigarette.

Jamie sat up and twisted around until he was cross-legged facing John. “Eew…. Think about what you just said, John!” he exclaimed and pulled a face of disgust.

John looked blankly at Jamie for a mome
nt before it dawned on him who Jamie had previously worked for. “Oh fuck. I’m sorry,” he blurted out, embarrassed by his mistake, but Jamie simply grinned and shrugged.

“It’s
okay. So when does your girlfriend get back?” he asked and reached over to take the cigarette.

“Not sure. Soon, I think,” John said quietly, not particularly keen on the idea of discussing Marian while he was still in Jamie’s bed. “She is not going to like my new apartment though. Speaking of which, it’s time I headed home.”

With that, John got off the bed and started to dress. Jamie raised his eyebrows at John’s haste, but made no move to follow and lay back propped against the pillows to watch him. He took a long draw of the cigarette before stubbing it out in the ashtray. “You know, you shouldn’t stay with someone you don’t love, John.”

John stopped buttoning his shirt and looked at Jamie. “Meaning?”

“Just that, John,” Jamie said quietly.

“What makes you think I don’t love her?”

“Well, the fact you just fucked me through the mattress is a bit of a giveaway.”

John gave a short laugh and finished dressing without answering.

Driving home, he
did
give some thought to Jamie’s words; he
knew
he wasn’t in love with Marian and she didn’t love him. They were both okay with that because neither had time for the distraction of a “real” relationship.

Even though thoughts of Marian and work had occupied him most of the drive, by the time he was nearly home John realized he’d been subconsciously scanning the street looking for David, and had been since leaving Jamie’s.

John
watched Jamie come through the front door of the store and had all his excuses ready, ranging from
Man, we were so drunk last night
to
…
. Actually,
that
was his only excuse other than admitting that he’d been lonely. As Jamie approached, John cleared his throat and said gruffly, “Morning, Jamie.”

Jamie just looked at him with a grin and replied, “Good morning, John.” When he thought John had squirmed enough he laughed. “It’s okay. I know it was just a fun night and nothing more. My arse is sore but I’m not going to pine away until you swear your undying love for me.”

John definitely looked relieved but had to ask, “It was just your comment before I left…. I wasn’t sure?”

“Oh fuck, John. I didn’t mean me. I may look it, but I’m not that naive,” Jamie exclaimed, slapping John across the shoulder. “Although I do think you’re missing a lot of… of… I don’t know,
stuff
, the way you live.”

“Oh yeah, much clearer now, Jamie.” John smiled and raised an eyebrow.

“Oh shit. Um… okay, I’ll tell you why the name of the store is Margins; that might help, yeah?”

John folded his arms and leaned back against the counter waiting for Jamie to tell his little story.

“I remember when I was little I got really upset about something—can’t remember what now—but my dad asked me if Mum had ever told me why they called the store Margins. I said she hadn’t and….”

“Get to the point, Jamie,” John sighed.

“Anyway, he explained that the most important things aren’t always in the main story; sometimes the real meaning is scribbled in the margins. You know, when you pick up a secondhand book and people have written stuff in it. Um, read what other people think is important. Maybe they underline a sentence or just a word. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the story but how they feel at the time.” Jamie frowned because he could see John was not getting his point. “All I’m saying is that there is more to life than the main story. Check out the notes in the margins because maybe they’re even more important.”

“So tell me, what scribbles are important here, Jamie?” John asked sarcastically.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Jamie shrugged, frustrated but not defeated. “Um, okay. Look how you are so caught up with profits and meeting deadlines, yeah… and then you meet someone like David. He’s not part of your story, but he means something. He might be important.”

“Oh, that is total shite, Jamie,” John grumbled, his good mood starting to slip. “Go and put the kettle on. You’re making my head thump.”

John fished in his pocket for his headache pills while Jamie’s words replayed themselves.
And then you meet someone like David. He’s not part of your story, but he means something
. He lay the pills on the counter ready for his tea and mumbled, “How the fuck could someone like David mean anything?”

Jamie had touched a nerve and John knew it.

Between
accounts and customers John managed to shrug off the mood Jamie had put him in with his story and was chatting happily to a young female customer when David entered the store. He faltered slightly in his sentence at their brief eye contact. David gave a small smile and nodded hello. John nodded back, but David had already looked away. John felt a twinge of guilt and wasn’t sure if it was sparked by his previous dismissal of David’s importance or the fact he’d fucked Jamie.

He returned his attention to the woman and handed her the brown paper bag containing her child’s picture book.

“Was that David?” Jamie asked as he all but danced past John and headed to the back of the store. John glowered at the young man’s retreating back and muttered, “You fucking know it was, so why ask?” Suddenly he felt sick to his stomach, sure that Jamie had rushed to tell David the events of the night before.
So what.
He scowled and turned to the inventory book.
I seriously have to get some fucking computers in this place….

The numbers had only just started to swim into focus when John heard Jamie’s laugh and he slammed the accounts book shut. Stalking through the store toward the secondhand section, John growled at Jamie, “Are you doing any work today?”

But as usual Jamie took John’s mood in stride and grinned. “Oh come on, John. It’s a half-day today and we’re closing soon. I was just telling Dave that we’re moving you into Mum’s place this afternoon and that you couldn’t put up with the ‘little old lady’ furniture.”

John relaxed a little; his evening with Jamie had
not
been the topic of conversation. “Give me a break, Jamie.
You
moved out,” he said, making sure to keep his gaze away from David.

Jamie laughed, slid his arm in David’s, and asked, “Come on, Dave. Wanna give us a hand moving John’s stuff upstairs? I’ll make him buy us dinner.”

David looked briefly at John, not sure how the suggestion would go down with the dour man now watching them, but when Jamie gave his arm a tug he shrugged and said, “Yeah… okay.”

Moving
a selection of John’s possessions took most of the afternoon. Although Maggie had left the apartment fully furnished, John decided to put her furniture into storage and move in some of his own. The bulk of his belongings remained uptown in his
real
apartment; that way when the year was over he could simply settle back into his old life.

By early evening only a few boxes of clothes and peripheral items remained in their neatly printed cardboard boxes stacked near their final destinations. Looking at their progress John had to admit that although he’d initially been reluctant to let David help he’d worked hard and done the majority of the manual work. Jamie seemed to start a lot of jobs, but always found something else more interesting to do and spent most of his time looking through the boxes providing a running commentary rather than actually unpacking them. Finally John called a halt and sent Jamie for beer and takeout.

With nothing left to do, David stood uncomfortably near a stack of collapsed and folded packing boxes waiting to see what John wanted him to do.

When John turned away from the door he instantly saw David’s discomfort and gave him an equally nervous smile. “Jamie won’t be long. How about you give me a hand and we clear away some of these boxes to give us room to eat?”

David didn’t answer as he began moving the cardboard.

Little
more than an hour later, the three men had managed to empty all the takeout cartons and the debris was now strewn on John’s coffee table.

“Man, I’m stuffed,” Jamie groaned, rubbing his hands over his very full belly.

“I’m not bloody surprised,” John laughed. “For a skinny guy you can sure put it away.”

I saw you knocking back an entire carton of satay,” Jamie pouted. “And I am
not
skinny, you wanker!”

“Oh come on; you’re a twig,” John said as he leaned over to reach Jamie and pulled up the T-shirt to expose his belly. “Look at this! Nothing wobbles!”

Jamie shrieked as John proved his point by giving him a round of playful slaps. “Fuck off, you bastard. Help, Dave, make him stop.”

David sat on his side of the table and laughed at the antics of his friend. The sound made John abandon torturing Jamie and look up. He was stunned by the change in David’s features when he laughed and found himself smiling as David met his eyes.

David’s own smile quickly faded under John’s scrutiny. He decided then that it was time to go and got to his feet, looking around for his jacket, boots, and pack. Jamie saw the sudden change; he’d half-expected it because David always did this when he started to drop his guard. It had taken David months to even tolerate Jamie sitting next to him and longer still for him to accept Jamie’s touch. That was the hardest thing for Jamie to deal with; remembering to give David space and resist his inability to
not
touch and hug people.

“It’s gonna be cold tonight. Find somewhere warm, okay?” Jamie said as he got to his feet to see David to the door. He knew David had little choice over his sleeping arrangements, but hoped the hot dinner would help.

“Yeah, thanks for the help today,” John called as David closed the door behind him.

When Jamie turned away from the door it was obvious that his previous light mood was gone. Seeing his expression, John frowned and said, “Come on, Jamie. He’s had his nightly weather report. He’ll be okay.”

“It’s a cold night, John, and it’s late.” When it was obvious John didn’t get the intent of his words Jamie continued. “It’s late, John. The shelter will be closed. David knows that and he has nowhere to go.”

“
Then why
didn’t he fucking say so?” John rolled his eyes and growled. “Why didn’t he
ask
…?”

Jamie shot John a withering look and said, “Would you?”

John felt the air leave his lungs. Of course he wouldn’t. His fucking pride wouldn’t let him, but he still tried to reason. “Look, he’ll find somewhere.”

“Yeah, John… and he can always call the hypothermia emergency line if he can find a phone that hasn’t been vandalized!” Jamie spat out.

“Come on, Jamie. I’ll drive you home,” John said quietly, wondering if there
was
such a thing as a hypothermia emergency line.

It was bitterly cold and had started to rain by the time they reached the car, but neither man acknowledged it. They sat in silence while John peered through the fogged window waiting for the demister to clear the glass. They were several blocks down the main road when John pulled sharply into the curb. He hit the button that lowered the electric windows, leaned across Jamie’s lap, and shouted, “Get in!”

The icy wind rushed in through the open window, making Jamie’s eyes water, but he was still able to make out the somewhat surprised and confused expression on David’s face. He just stood there staring at John unsure what to do. Jamie had no clue what John had in mind, but he mentally willed David to walk to the car. He could feel John growing impatient when David didn’t move so he called, “Come on, Davey. Please get in.”

Jamie held his breath for what seemed an age until he saw David start to walk toward them; he quickly twisted around in his seat to open the back door. David lowered himself into the car and didn’t say a word. He just sat and waited for John to explain the invitation.

John hadn’t really thought that far ahead, but managed to come up with, “Look, it’s fucking freezing and um… you may as well crash on the couch tonight. After all, you did help move it.” Jamie knew it sounded pretty lame, but he gave John an appreciative smile when David closed the door and mumbled his thanks.

Jamie chattered happily the rest of the way to his apartment making sure to cover up the silence in the rest of the car. When John pulled up out front Jamie mouthed
thank you
to John before making a dash through the rain to his front door.

John could
feel
David sitting quietly behind him and wondered what the hell he was doing taking this man home. After a moment or two he turned around and asked, “Want to sit in the front? That way I’ll feel less like your chauffer.”

David looked at him before giving a small nod and stepping out of the car to swap seats. He wasn’t totally sure what was going on here but John seemed okay, and Jamie liked him. Once the car was in motion John commented on how quiet it was now that Jamie was gone and went on to tell David about Jamie’s ability to talk nonstop without taking a breath. David visibly relaxed and smiled at John’s observations.

They were nearly back at John’s when he stopped outside a pharmacy and said, “Need some supplies if you’re staying over. Not be a minute.”

David felt his stomach plunge as he watched John jog into the store.
There’s always a cost…. Even for a night on the couch.
He squeezed his eyes shut and contemplated just getting out of the car, but was too tired and simply didn’t have enough energy to move. David didn’t look at John when he got back into the car but eyed the small paper bag warily before it was tossed onto the backseat. He spent the rest of the trip in sullen silence despite John’s attempts to make conversation.

When they got to the apartment he walked quietly behind John and stood still as the door was closed behind him. David felt the familiar wave of helplessness as he waited for the inevitable rough touch.

John was confused by the change in David. He’d not moved since John closed the door and his entire body language radiated fear. John knew he was out of his depth with this man; he hadn’t meant to make him feel so uncomfortable. He passed the bag over and said in a hesitant voice, “I didn’t know what you had so I just got some of the basics. Look, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, but… oh fuck, I don’t know….” John’s sentence trailed off as he closed his eyes and wearily rubbed his hand across his forehead.

Slightly stunned by John’s words, David looked down at the paper bag in his hands. He cautiously unfolded the neat crease to find a toothbrush, bar of soap, and a razor. He felt a rush of both relief and shame; relief that he was wrong and shame for not trusting John’s intentions.

“Thank you, John. I appreciate it,” David murmured, still looking at the contents of the bag. “Can I use your bathroom?”