AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Dorian whirled. “Phantom is your favorite? Mine too! Though Starlight Express is every bit as good without the fame, in my opinion.”
“Oh, I meant Cats.”
Dorian winced.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said, struggling not to laugh.
“You’re making fun of my taste, aren’t you!”
Dorian faced away from me while gathering clothes out of his dresser, but his back vibrated with held-back laughter. “It’s kind of a running joke among us about how bad Cats is.”
“I was a little girl!” I protested. “It was whimsical and fun.”
“No, of course,” he said, red-faced from keeping his laughter at bay. “No judgement here.”
I smacked him playfully on the arm. “You can move the rest of it yourself.”
“Aww, I didn’t mean it!”
“Braden?” I called as I walked downstairs. “I’ve decided not to move in because Dorian insulted my taste in musicals.”
I heard Braden laughing somewhere on the first floor. “Oh God, you don’t love Cats do you?”
He meant it as a joke. On the top floor, Dorian roared with laughter. By the time I reached the kitchen, Braden’s eyes were wide. “Oh shit. It is, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t say it was the best musical,” I protested. “I said it was my favorite! It was the first one I ever saw.”
“Oh, okay then,” Braden said, but he marched out of the kitchen so I couldn’t see his laughter.
By the time dinner arrived, they had gotten all of their jokes out of the way. We ate our Chinese food outside in the garden, which would have been too cold except for the heat lamp which filled the small space with pleasant pulsing heat.
“So,” Dorian said around a mouthful of noodles. “What happened today? Earlier, you said you had a hell of a day.”
“You mean besides having my taste in musicals mocked?”
“Besides that, yeah,” Dorian grinned.
I shrugged. “I got fired.”
Braden flinched. “Oh, shit. From your bartending job?”
“No, that’s my night job. During the day I work at a department store selling shoes. At least, I did work there until I cussed out an asshole customer.”
Their mouths hung open. “That’s every retail worker’s dream,” Dorian said. “To go out in a blaze of glory. Like a suicide vest of sarcasm and wit.”
“It was satisfying for a whole five minutes.” I cocked my head at him. “You’ve worked retail?”
“I bounce around jobs.”
“Dorian works for a temp agency,” Braden explained. “So the job changes almost every day.”
“That sounds fun,” I said.
Dorian rolled his eyes. “Sounds fun, maybe. I was a snow shoveler when the last blizzard hit. A lot of the jobs are data entry for firms in lower Manhattan. Sometimes we pass out concert fliers. But hey, it gives me enough money to follow my dream.”
I raised my water glass. “Cheers to that.”
