Chapter One
THE PAPER WAS
burning a hole in his pocket, and wasn’t that
just the worst possible metaphor Riley Aylworth could have come up with? He glanced instinctively at the empty space on the wall where his favorite
mirror used to hang and grimaced. Hideous. That was the thought that had
flashed through the cute barista’s eyes as his voice had faltered and their
flirting had ground to a complete stop when Riley dared to ask him out for a
drink. What the hell had he been thinking? After a year of non-stop rejections,
it should have sunk in that he was fine as a friend but when it came to sex,
Godzilla would be preferable. Phantom of
the Opera, that was the new fucking story of his life. At least he hadn’t
killed anyone yet. Maybe he should think about getting one of those porcelain
masks and just wander around pretending he was cosplaying?
“Yeah, ’cause that’ll make people stop calling you ‘freak,’” Riley muttered under
his breath. The sour tang of the coffee lingered, fuelling his foul mood. The
drink had tasted like humiliation after the barista’s rejection, but he’d paid
for it, so he was damned if he was going to waste it. He hadn’t lingered at the
table like usual, but that hadn’t prevented him from taking a quick look round
before he left, a habit ingrained in him by twenty-seven years of watching his
mother do it. That was when he’d noticed the folded page on the floor, the
glossy paper and bright colors suggesting it had been ripped from a magazine.
Since Riley had several such pages tucked into his writing notebook—magazine
articles were a frequent source of inspiration—he’d stooped to pick it up,
thinking he’d dropped it.
One glance made it obvious that it was not
in fact his. It was a page of small ads, one of which was circled in red. Riley
had flushed the same color when he’d realized what it was advertising and stuffed
the paper into his pocket without realizing he was doing it.
Now, in the safety of his own home, he
pulled it out and studied it again. Phone sex. It wasn’t something he’d usually
consider—at least, not paying for it, and not with a stranger—but he’d been
getting increasingly dejected and desperately horny over the last year. Hell, it
had taken six months to get up the courage to go out in public more often than
when he absolutely needed to, and
another six months after that to build up to flirting again. He’d been
something of a player before the fire, which just made the constant rejections
he experienced now worse. On the really bad days, it was hard not to wonder if
the scarring was some kind of punishment for his former casual attitude about
sex. But that was just silly. God didn’t work like that, and really, wasn’t it
selfish to curse the effect of this pure dumb luck on his sex life when there
were children starving in Africa, and women in the Middle East dying in their
pursuit of a basic education?
Two years though. That was how long it had
been since he’d been touched by a hand other than his own. Phone sex wouldn’t
solve that, but at least it would get someone else involved, and damn did he miss having a connection to
another person while he was getting off. “Big Yellow Taxi” was the new theme
tune to his life, and he had a newfound hatred of the cold hard truth of Annie
Lennox’s “Keep Young and Beautiful.”
“Keep
young and beautiful if you want to be loved,” he hummed mockingly, glancing
at the naked patch of wall again. He should really get a picture to hang there
or something. Because that wouldn’t remind him at all of how much he hated his
own face . . .
~~~
The first call was more inconvenient than
annoying. Cameron was just getting ready to head out of the office at ten past
six—he’d be home early for once, and wasn’t it just too bad there’d be nobody
there to benefit?—when his cell phone began to trill, alerting him to a new
call from an unidentified number.
“Cameron Kirkwood.” Tucking the phone
against his shoulder, he continued to sort through the files on his desk, picking
out the ones he wanted to take home.
“Well
hello there, big boy. Your voice is delicious.”
What the hell?
“I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong
number.”
“Oh
baby, are you sure? I’ve never misdialed in my life, and you definitely have
the voice for the job.”
“I’m sorry, what job?” Put on the spot,
only one phone-based job that needed a good voice came to mind, and the thought
was not a good one.
“Phone
sex, of course.” The caller sounded surprised, and Cam blanched.
“You definitely have the wrong number. I
most certainly do not run a phone-sex service.”
And naturally, that was the moment he
turned around and saw his boss standing in the doorway to his office, one
eyebrow raised severely.
“You
should consider it,” the caller advised him.
“Goodbye,” Cam responded, hanging up and
dropping his phone on the desk. “Mr. Townsend, I—”
“Phone sex, Cameron? Don’t we pay you
enough?” Isaac Townsend raised the other eyebrow, and Cam shook his head
vehemently, cursing the terrible luck that seemed to be stalking him this
month.
“Wrong number,” he responded earnestly, and
Isaac laughed.
“Jesus, relax, Cam, you’re far too uptight
for phone sex. Have you got a copy of the pitch for James Anderson? I’d like to
give it a last glance through before the team presents it tomorrow.”
“I have a copy right here,” Cameron
informed him, unlocking his filing cabinet to fish out the spare. Everything in
there was duplicated in case of emergency, and he wondered sometimes whether he
should keep the copies elsewhere in case the emergency happened to be a fire or
something similar that would result in the destruction of the impeccably
arranged cabinet. Right now, he should have been grateful that Isaac still had
faith in his integrity after that unfortunate phone call, but the stab of hurt
at the “uptight” comment killed the relief.
“Excellent.”
Isaac was barely six steps out of the room
when Cam’s phone rang again, also an unrecognized number.
“Cameron Kirkwood.”
“Hi.
Um, I’m kind of new to this—what services do you offer, exactly?”
“Whatever sort of advertising you require,”
Cameron responded, settling back into his chair and relaxing. For a moment,
he’d been so afraid . . . “We can design magazine and billboard ads, plan television
campaigns, or draft radio ad scripts.”
“Oh!
Role playing, I guess.” The voice was soft and unsure, and Cam frowned. “Um, advertising isn’t really something I get
off on. Can you do, uh, emergency services instead? I kind of have a bit of a
thing for men in uniform. You know, like, firemen?”
“This is an advertising agency. If you want
the emergency services, I suggest you dial 911, though I’d advise you to have a
genuine emergency first. Prank calling the police is a serious matter.”
“A-an
advertising agency? I’m sorry, I guess I entered the wrong number.”
“No problem.”
Shaking his head, Cam hung up. When his
phone rang yet again within a minute, he could feel the end of his tether
rapidly approaching. His patience had never been great at the best of times,
and today he just wanted to get home and put his feet up, maybe order in some
takeout and watch a movie.
“Cameron Kirkwood.”
Wow. He hadn’t realized he could get so
sick of the sound of his own name.
Silence. Well, apart from an odd noise that
may have been a nervous gulp.
“Hello? Can I help you?”
“I-is
this the guy I just spoke to?” The same soft voice as last time, and Cam
cursed under his breath, a suspicion niggling in the back of his mind.
“Yes. Why are you calling this number,
precisely?”
“Because
it’s the one in the ad?” The voice sounded unsure.
“Ad?”
“N-never
mind. I guess they misprinted. Sorry to bother you.”
The dial tone sounded before Cameron could
press the guy further, and he cursed again. Well, if his suspicion was correct,
there’d be another call sooner or later, and he could grill that caller
instead. For now, he’d put the matter out of his mind, gather up his stuff, and
head home.
~~~
In the end, it took Riley two days to pluck
up the courage to call the number in the ad. There was a delicate balance
between hunger for interactive sex and shame at the thought of paying for it.
He was still debating with himself when he stripped naked and crawled into the
middle of the bed sometime after eleven p.m., phone in hand, the bedroom door
firmly closed to keep his beloved but inquisitive Samoyed, Bella, from
interrupting. Once he’d entered the number slowly and carefully, checking every
digit three times, Riley lay back, closed his eyes, and pressed the device to
his ear.
“Cameron
Kirkwood.”
The answering voice was one part
professional, one part exasperated, and one part sarcastic, and Riley frowned.
Call him paranoid, but this did not seem like a good start. Weren’t phone sex
operators supposed to ease you into the conversation and make you feel
comfortable? Riley felt like a teenager caught masturbating by his mother.
“Um, hello. I’m calling in response to your
ad . . .”
In
response to your ad? What was he thinking, speaking
so formally? There was something in the voice that compelled it, perhaps. It
was a nice voice, but it didn’t sound at all like he’d imagined a phone sex
voice to sound.
“I
work for an advertising agency—I deal with hundreds of ads every week. Did you
have a specific one in mind?” Yeah, definitely sarcasm now, and Riley had a
horrible feeling he might have dialed the wrong number. But he’d checked so carefully . . .
“The . . . phone sex
one?” he questioned, voice small. Maybe the guy only moonlighted as a phone sex
operator?
Maybe not. The sigh that drifted back down
the line in response was the most aggravated Riley had ever heard.
“Look,
buster, that ad is not for a phone sex service; it’s my vindictive asshole of
an ex-boyfriend’s death warrant. If you want to get your rocks off, you
desperate, horny freak, go find yourself a fucking rentboy, but don’t call this number again.”
The dial tone cut across any apology Riley
might have made, and he stared at the phone in disbelief. How rude! So maybe that was a fairly sucky
situation, but was it really so hard just to say “sorry, wrong number”? Without
stopping to think it through, he hit redial, sitting bolt upright and dragging
the comforter over himself.
“Look,
I told you—” the voice answered, sounding as pissed as Riley felt, and
Riley let him have it.
“No, you look, you judgmental bastard!
Where the hell do you get off yelling at people and calling them freaks for one
tiny, innocent mistake? It’s not my
fault you have issues with your ex—”
“Innocent?
Yeah, I like that, when you’re
calling a phone sex line—”
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up! You know nothing about me! You have no fucking
idea why I’m calling a phone sex line; if you’re not one, the least you can do
is politely tell me I have the wrong number.”
“You
think I haven’t been doing that? How about I advertise your cell phone number as a sex line? Call me
back when you’ve fielded thirty-nine
disturbing phone calls from horny assholes insisting they have the right number
and begging for all sorts of fucked up shit and tell me you’d be polite to lucky number forty!”
“Believe
me, if I had forty people queuing up to have sex with me, I’d be sending ‘lucky
number forty’ a fucking bouquet!” Riley shot back honestly with a stab of pain.
“Well
good for you, slut! They don’t want—”
“Don’t call me a slut, you fucking, uptight
prick! You know nothing about me!”
“So
enlighten me, why don’t you? Tell me what’s so magical and special about phone
sex that you think you need to be treated like royalty!”
“Fuck royalty; I’d settle for human!” Riley
was vaguely aware that his voice was shaking. “Look, Cameron or whatever your
name is, whatever issues you have with your ex, you’ve got it easy, believe me.
Just change your number, write him an apology or get a restraining order, and
just chill the fuck out, okay?”
~~~
Cameron should have resented being told to
chill the fuck out by the man who had phoned him back to yell at him, but the
truth was he felt better now than he had since that first phone call
forty-eight hours or so earlier. Arguing with a complete stranger had given him
an outlet to vent about the situation, and he felt some of the tension seeping
out of him.
“What’s your name?” he asked impulsively,
calming his tones, and he could almost feel the surprise radiating off the
stranger as he replied.
“Sorry,
what?”
“Your name,” Cam prompted. “If you’re going
to try and slap me in the face with reality, or whatever it is you think you’re
doing, I’d at least like to know who I’m talking to.”
A pause, and then the stranger’s voice
sounded again, much more pleasant now the anger was fading out of it.
“Riley.
My name is Riley.”
“Hi, Riley. I’m Cameron.”
“I
gathered.” Riley’s voice crackled with dry amusement. “So, you want to vent some more about this bastard ex of yours? It
sounds like you need an outlet.”
Cameron laughed. “I guess I do, though I
didn’t realize until right this minute.”
“So?
You gonna tell me the story, or do I need to turn it into Twenty Questions?”
“His name’s Chris,” Cam found himself
saying. “We were together for four years, and it was good, most of the time. He
didn’t like the hours I work though; that’s what we fought about, mostly. He
wasn’t clingy, exactly, but it was
like . . . By the end, he was desperate to settle down in a
house in the suburbs, maybe start talking about two-point-four kids and a
partner who’s around most of the time; farmer’s markets and craft fairs on the
weekend . . .”
“And
that’s not you?”
Cam ran a hand through his hair, thinking
about that one. “Well, I don’t think I’d hate
it—the farmer’s markets and shit, I mean. But the suburbs and
two-point-four kids? I’m not trying to say that my job is more important than
Chris’s was, but the idea of living farther than an hour away from the
office . . .” He shuddered. “I’m not ready to live like that
yet.”
“So
it was a difference of opinion? Like, wanting different things, growing apart
as a consequence, eventual break-up inevitable kind of thing?”
“With
hindsight . . . yes, that’s exactly what it was. It was
comfortable, it was safe . . . it wasn’t fireworks, but it
was working, and I was content for things to stay the same. I should have
realized that Chris wanted more and let him go a long time ago. Maybe he should have let me go a long time ago, but I think he kept hoping if he stuck
around long enough, he could change me, make me want the same things.
Hindsight’s a bitch.”
“Okay,
so let me get this straight . . . you know now that it was
doomed to failure because you wanted different things? And back then . . . what happened?”
“With the break-up?”
“Yeah.
It just seems to me that if you want to live in the city and work twelve-hour
days, and he wants to live in the suburbs with a nuclear family, a split is
what’s best for both of you, what makes the best sense. So, in theory, that
kind of break-up should be fairly amicable, right? So I’m curious about the
whole vengeful bastard thing. Either he was a closet psychopath, in which case
good riddance, or you must have done something really shitty. How on Earth did you get from ‘comfortable’ to having a
break-up so explosive that he advertised you as a sex line?”
“I may
have deserved it,” Cam confessed, flushing at the memory. “It was pretty much a
case of disastrous timing. We had a systems failure at work and lost pretty
much everything we had for a pitch
the next morning—the intern we had at the time was supposed to have backed it
up, but someone gave him another order right when he was going to do it, and he
got distracted by that. I haven’t delegated that task since. There was a
caricature pinned up in the break room for weeks
of me with smoke coming out of my ears.”
~~~
“You know, I met you literally a quarter hour
ago and I have no clue what you look like, but I can already picture that, Mr.
Workaholic. But you’re deflecting. So you had a work disaster; I get how that’s
a key event for you. But what did you do to Chris?”
Cam groaned, equal parts impressed and
annoyed to be called out on his avoidance tactics. Then again, they weren’t
something he usually used—he was a man who preferred the direct approach.
“That’s
the timing thing I was referring to,” he told Riley. “See, the day the systems crashed . . . that was our fourth anniversary. I left
Chris sleeping in the morning, and I got to work to find myself faced
mid-afternoon with Crashmageddon with the pitch looming in less than
twenty-four hours and no company computer systems to work with. The team ended
up at someone from Graphics’ house, using her personal computer to recreate everything. It took us all night to put it all back
together, and then we had the pitch at nine.
“I
didn’t even remember what the date was until I turned my phone back on after
the pitch to a series of increasingly livid messages from Chris—and naturally,
I was horrified. So I thought I could take him to dinner that night as a
belated celebration, and I could start making up for things by picking up lunch
on the way home—obviously, we were all taking the rest of the day off. Now, I
was running on coffee and fumes at the time. I stopped by Chris’s favorite
bakery for sandwiches and muffins, and they had this new flavor they were trying
out called ‘Toffee Delight.’ Chris loves toffee, so I just picked a few up
without reading the small print or thinking to ask about the ingredients.”
Cameron stopped and gulped, the look on
Chris’s face as he collapsed flashing through his mind again. It had been,
beyond any doubt, the worst moment of his life.
“Oh
God, I can see where this is going . . .” Riley sounded
equal parts apprehensive and sympathetic, the latter of which just made Cam
feel worse.
“Yeah,” he responded, voice choked.
“Apparently the delight was that toffee goes brilliantly with nuts . . . to
which Chris is really—and I mean really—allergic.
Cue epi pen, ambulance, and a stay in the hospital. I don’t think I need to
elaborate on what happened next.”
~~~
“Sorry?
You stay out all night on our anniversary, without even letting me know, and then you come home and try to poison
me, and all you can say is sorry?
Well I’m sorry, Cam, but I’ve fucking
had it with you! I am sick and tired—literally sick and tired!—of coming second to your work. I am fucking sick of
having a closer relationship with your cell phone than you. Hell, it’s like a
fucking ménage a trois, except it feels like I never get to see you because
you’re too busy making love to your phone. I bet you’ve even named the damned
thing. You should start a phone sex service, because you’re a complete fucking
failure at face-to-face relationships. Now get the hell home and start packing
my stuff, because I sure as fuck won’t be spending another night under your
roof.”
“What?
Please, Chris, calm down. I’m more than sorry; I’m distraught. What do you want
me to say? I’m stupid, irresponsible, the worst boyfriend ever? Done. Just
please think about this. We live together, for God’s sake—where are you going
to go?”
“The
worst boyfriend ever? Too damn right! I’m glad you realize that, but you’re
seriously asking me to stay? After this? How little self-respect do you think I
have?”
“Four
years, Chris. I love you! Does that mean nothing?”
“You
love me? You have a funny way of showing it, Cameron. What I’m looking for in
life is a home, a family, a boyfriend who’s around when I need him . . . but
at the end of the day, I’ll settle for one who doesn’t put me in the hospital.
Now, do I have to ask again? I’m serious, Cameron. Get the hell away from me
and pack my shit so I can leave, or you’ll really regret trying to add insult
to injury.”
“And
I’m serious too, Chris—I love you, and I’m worried about you. Where are you
going to go?”
“I’ll
find somewhere. Becca’s, or Colin’s, maybe even Mom’s. Yeah, Mom’s would be a
good idea. No chance of running into you in Alaska. Now please leave.”
~~~
“I
stayed and tried to fight for us,” Cameron said, his voice dreamy and far
away before he sighed. “I mean, I know
with hindsight it wasn’t the greatest relationship, but I honestly loved him,
y’know? I thought walking away would’ve been the biggest mistake of my life.
Forty freaking phone-sex calls later, I guess I was wrong.”
“You could say that. Or you could say that
Chris’s done you a favor,” Riley suggested, and Cam’s answering frown was
practically audible.
“What
do you mean?”
“Well, this break-up’s pretty recent,
right?” Riley hazarded. “That’s how you’re making it sound, anyway. And how
long does it take to get a phone-sex ad out in a major gay men’s magazine?
Like, one, two months? Maybe three, tops. And I’m not a psychology graduate,
but I honestly don’t think turning your ex’s cell into a phone sex line is the
kind of thing you do way after the break up, when you’ve had time to calm down.
It seems like an immediately-after, heat-of-the-moment kind of thing.”
“Yeah,
that makes sense . . .” Cameron agreed. “And you’re right; it was about two and a
half months ago. Our anniversary was May second.”
“There you go then. And I believe you when
you say you loved him; four years doesn’t happen without love or a lot of money involved—and because I’m a
hopeless romantic, I’d prefer to think love. So yeah—love doesn’t disappear in
two and a half months after a four-year
relationship, but I bet you love Chris a lot less now than you did forty phone
calls ago. Gotta make it easier to get over him, right?”
There was a pause, as if Cameron was
turning the suggestion over in his mind, and then a reluctant chuckle drifted down
the line.
“That
actually makes sense, and you’re right. Two months ago I wanted to scream and
cry because of the break-up; I still feel like doing those things, but for an
entirely different reason now. Fuck it if I’m writing him a thank-you note
though.”
Riley laughed. “I don’t think that’s
necessary. Just let go of the pain and you’ll be fine. I guess you’re planning
to change your number?”
“However
did you guess?”
“It might have had something to do with
your obvious aversion to phone sex.”
“Oh,
I’m not averse to phone sex—just not with strangers. It’s a relationship thing.”
Riley wasn’t quite sure how to respond to
that, given how this conversation had started, but before he could find a
neutral answer, Cameron spoke again, sounding almost nervous.
“Hey,
I was wondering . . . when I change my number, can I keep
yours and maybe call you again? I’ve actually enjoyed talking to you.”
Warmth spread slowly through Riley, and he
couldn’t help but smile. “I’ve enjoyed it too,” he responded honestly. “So
yeah, that would be okay. I’d like that.”
He could hear Cameron’s answering smile
when he replied.
“Excellent.”
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