You Can Let It Go [ZARRY]

Five

Zayn:

I got the job,” I said, sliding onto a barstool next to Louis.

His favorite bar, Smoke & Mirrors, was like his loft industrial chic with brick walls, ductwork, and with a mirror behind the bottles of booze that enhanced and reflected the light. It was busy for a Wednesday night.

Louis took up one rounded corner of the bar with his friends, Malcolm Nelson and Charlie Bryant. Over the last few weeks, those guys had become my friends too, though Charlie’s eyes always raked me over with a slightly more than friendly interest, and his smiles for me were always loaded, as if he had a secret he was itching to tell me. Charlie gave me one of those knowing smiles now.

“Déjà vu. Weren’t we just here a month ago, toasting your employment at Virginia Mason?”

“This is how Zayn gets us to pick up the tab,
” Louis said,grinning over his White Russian. “He announces major life events. Next week, he’ll come out of the closet. Again.”

“Once was plenty, thanks.” I turned to the bartender and said over the noise and music, “Soda water with lime.”

“I’m happy for you, man,” Malcolm said.
“You were starting to look a little haggard. I was getting worried.”

“Same,” Charlie said.

“Thanks,” I said. “Though I’m not sure this job is going to be much easier. The interview was brutal.”

“But you aced it and now you’re. . .” Louis raised his eyebrows. “Wait, are you allowed to tell us?”

He turned to the other guys. “He’s hardly said a word to me. Top secret stuff. Very hush hush.”

“It’s hardly James Bond level intrigue. I’m now a personal nurse on a team for a very wealthy individual.”

To put it mildly.

I coughed into my drink, thinking of the salary Cesar Castro, the Styles head of household, had floated at me.

“A very wealthy individual,” Louis teased.

“Sounds silly, but I can’t say more,” I said. “My hand cramped from signing NDAs.”

I turned to Louis. “But I can tell you that starting Saturday, I’ll be off your couch. It’s a live in position.”

“Not a cupboard under the stairs, I hope, ” Louis said.

“Not quite. They gave me a room in the mansion.”

“Fancy. Are you still in the city, at least?”

“Across the lake, over in Bellevue,” I said with a smile and sipped my soda water. “I can still hang out on my days off .”

Charlie eyed me over his beer. “Good to hear.”

“Cheers,” Louis said, raising his glass. “To Zayn and his new job, taking care of a Rockefeller or one of Bill Gates’people.”

He froze, then clutched my arm. “Oh my God, is it? Is it Bill Gates? He lives in Bellevue. It’s him, isn’t it?”

“If it is, tell him Explorer crashed on my computer,” Malcolm mumbled into his beer. “Again.”

“It’s not Bill Gates.”

But in the same billionaire ballpark.

The guys toasted my job, and I smiled back and turned to scan the crowd of men and a few women talking at small tables under the ’90s’ alternative music playing over a sound system.