Chapter One – Jamie Whatever
Tall, dark, mean, sleeve tattoos… does this description ring any bells, boys of Sunny Hill? And yes, I'm talking to all of you because you've either wanted to be under him, on top of him, or kick him where it would hurt him the most. His Ego! Pull your minds out of the gutter already. Gay boys melt, girls swoon, everywhere this man goes, the floor gets wet.
But should we call this… Jamie Whatever, a real man? Someone who gets off – pun intended – on breaking hearts and dealing low blows? He's in our crosshairs, and we're on a mission to teach him a lesson!
"Oh, really, and how do you intend to do that?" Jamie mumbled with an amused look after checking the link attached to the message he'd just gotten from one of his many campus connections.
He smiled at the cutie leaning over the counter. That preppy look was perfectly seasoned with equal parts candor and wickedness. It really worked for him.
"What can I get you today, sweetheart?"
"Your number would make me happy."
"Sure. With coffee to go?" His smile turned dazzling. He'd been told that about it at least a hundred times, so he had no reason to think otherwise. "Are you a Sunny Hill student?" he asked as he placed the order in front of his customer.
"Yes. I heard you have it bad for guys who go there." The cutie cocked his head to one side and gave him a long look.
"You heard correctly. By the way, do you happen to know who the asshole who runs your local gossip rag is?" He showed the guy his phone screen and waited for a reaction.
The cutie only shrugged his shoulders. "Don't take it to heart. Anyone with half a brain wouldn't bother with it. But I suppose that's a privilege reserved only for college students." He gave Jamie an arrogant yet still somewhat cute smile.
"You cheeky ass," Jamie grinned. "What? You think yourself better because I'm behind this counter and you're on the other side?"
The guy shrugged again. "Hmm, I don't know, maybe."
"I'll have you know this is a side hustle, nothing more." Jamie gestured around at the half-empty coffee shop. "I'm actually a musician."
"You don't say," the cutie drawled. "How big are you?"
"Wouldn't you like to find out?"
"Jamie, stop flirting with the customers already," his boss's shrill voice made him jump.
Janet was a great girl, but she had the kind of voice that recommended her for mid-management positions, even if what she said during an interview was pure gibberish.
The cute guy grabbed his coffee and made himself scarce. It only hit Jamie one minute too late that he'd forgotten to give the college boy his number.
"Great," he said, throwing his arms out. "You scared him off."
Janet hit him with her towel as she skirted around him. "Don't worry, he'll come back. They always do. By the way, do you have a magic stick in your pants? Why do they all drool over you?"
"Are you a hardcore lesbian? Because I think that could be the only reason why you'd ask something like that. I mean, just take a good look." He did a slow three-sixty and came back to face her.
"Yeah, yeah," Janet said and rolled her eyes. "So, you're good-looking. Big deal."
Jamie wasn't the kind to give up that quickly. "It must be my hip move." He stole a glance to see if his exchange with his boss had an audience – something he didn't usually mind having except now he did – and pushed his crotch forward.
"Okay, Elvis the Pelvis, stop that already," Janet admonished him and, this time got him good in the face with her towel.
"Ouch, grandma." Janet was in her forties, and running a coffee shop was half her life – the other being her family. However, she knew her music better than most people who pretended to be experts. That was one of the reasons why Jamie got along with her as well as he did.
"So, when will you be out of town again?"
Another reason why he loved his boss to pieces was that he could make his own schedule, depending on what gigs his band happened to score.
"Not sure. Mitch said something might come up next month. Until then, I'm all yours, honey."
"Mine and half the block's," Janet commented, pursing her lips to keep herself from laughing. "Which Mitch was that?"
"Mitch the voice," Jamie replied promptly. His band was called The Wicked Mitches of the West, and he was the only one not sharing a name with the rest.
"Just curious, don't they ever get confused?" Janet asked. "How do they talk to each other? Mitch this, Mitch that?"
"No, they call each other Voice, Lead G, Bass, and Fiddle."
"Are you pulling my leg?"
Jamie shrugged and shook his head. "I wish I was."
"And what do they call you? Drums?"
"No, what the hell? They just call me Jamie."
Yep, he was an outcast in their little merry band. Even the violin Mitch, or so-called Fiddle, with his classical music background, had received a warmer welcome in their midst than he had. Sometimes, Jamie wondered whether they were all just waiting for a drummer Mitch to come along so they could fully embrace their band's name.
No, who was he kidding? They knew value when they saw it. And Jamie knew he was one hell of a drummer.
***
"So, your place or mine?" Jamie whispered in one perfect little ear while leaning forward. He was about to go for another kiss when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
He had been working his next hookup for the last half hour, so interruptions weren't welcome. Sure, they were in public, right outside the Sunny Hill campus, but no other soul had been in sight at that hour.
Still, he was a pleasant guy, so if it was security or something telling him to beat it, he needed to pump his charms up and get him and his date out of that situation.
When he turned, however, he was dumbfounded to find a guy dressed in what looked like a Sherlock Holmes costume. "Um, how can I help you, detective?" he asked, offering a pleasant smile. It was dark enough that he was unable to see the guy's facial features clearly, but that deerstalker hat was a dead giveaway.
"Inspector, to be precise," an annoying voice with a lilt corrected him.
"No shit, I thought Sherlock Holmes was a detective."
"I'm not Sherlock Holmes." The trouble-seeker sounded quite indignant over the confusion.
"Who are you supposed to be?"
Jamie's date cleared his throat to regain his attention.
"I'm--" the guy in the weird hat started.
"Whatever," Jamie interrupted quickly, "what do you want?"
"I believe I am your date," the strange dude said.
"Nope, that can't be," Jamie said.
"Is this your way of springing a threesome on people?" Great, his actual date sounded annoyed.
"No, I'm not that kind of asshole," Jamie replied.
"A-ha," strange hat intervened with satisfaction, "so you admit that you're an asshole. Is that an official statement?"
"The hell is wrong with you, dude?" Jamie's eyes measured the guy up and down. Compared to him, he looked short and didn't seem like he could weigh more than one hundred forty sopping wet.
"This is way too weird for my taste," his date said in an aggravated voice. "I'm not into roleplaying and stuff like that. Also, not into threesomes. Didn't it say that in my profile?" He leaned over Jamie's shoulder to get his attention.
"And it's not a threesome," Jamie insisted. "This lunatic just thinks he's funny. I guess I have to teach him a lesson." He cracked his knuckles for show. He wasn't one to usually engage in brawls, but if provoked, he didn't mind the occasional outbreak of fisticuffs. Usually, he ended up the winner. And the sex afterwards felt great.
"You liked all my pictures," strange hat insisted. "And you said you wanted us to make the beast with two backs, and that you'll have my corn ground into tomorrow."
"No, really." Jamie found himself at a loss for words. It only lasted a moment. "I wouldn't be caught dead talking like that. What century did you say you crawled out of?"
"Are we doing this or what?" Jamie's date grabbed his shoulder to make his annoyance known.
"Wait, just give me a second. I need to set this weirdo straight."
Okay, wrong choice of words, because his date, the usual college boy with a chip on his shoulder because he read books written by authors Jamie didn't care about - or had ever heard of - burst into laughter.
"The day you set a guy straight, Jamie, will be the beginning of the end for you."
"Okay, I get it. You're cute, but you're not that cute," he growled at his date, hoping he sounded playful and not annoyed.
"Well, if you're so keen to play detective with the little guy in the strange hat, I won't stop you."
Gosh, no wonder he had to put in the work with this guy. He was as slippery as they came, and the appearance of this wannabe detective--
"Inspector," the weirdo insisted, correcting Jamie's date. "I'm not Sherlock Holmes."
"And I don't give a damn who you are or you pretend to be," Jamie said and took two very menacing steps toward the intruder. "Beat it, asshole."
The strange hat guy jumped back and put one hand up. "Wait a second now, I must remind you that I'm against violence of any sort."
"Too bad, because I am all for it," Jamie said with a grin he was sure the other couldn't see in the dark.
"Jamie, is this your idea of foreplay?" his date moaned, making his exasperation known.
"Sometimes," he said. "But don't worry, it's never the same guy I fight and fuck."
"Is that an official statement?" the weird hat dude asked.
"Are you a broken record? You asked that before."
"About a different thing."
"You're an annoying jerk, and you're going to have your ass whipped. How about that?"
"No need to get physical, mister."
"Jamie, this is it, I'm leaving."
Jamie hesitated between pouncing on the weirdo and convincing him he didn't want to have his ass handed to him and going after his hookup date that was slipping through his fingers. Half an hour of charming the sexy asshole, who had already made a lot of naughty promises, wasn't supposed to go to waste. Ignoring the 'inspector', he turned on his heel and hurried after his date.
"Hey, let's just leave this asshole behind and have some fun," he suggested as he grabbed the guy by the shoulders and urged him to walk fast.
"I must warn you, I will take notes," the 'inspector' said, quickly hurrying after them.
"Are you for real?" Jamie stopped and turned to face him again. "In what universe is what you're doing okay? Damn Peeping Tom."
"Peeping is not by far the kinkiest sexual activity known to humankind."
"No? Then it must be the creepiest."
"That is also not true," the weird hat guy continued, obviously unfazed.
"Whatever, the fact that you want to watch still makes you a pervert."
"Jamie, I think I want to go back to my room," his date said. He also stole glances over his shoulder at their pursuer with increasing discomfort.
"It works for me, baby," Jamie said.
The guy unglued himself from his embrace. "Alone. I don't intend to put on a show for perverts."
Perverts. The use of the plural form wasn't lost on Jamie. "Call you later?" he asked, making one last attempt at getting the other's attention.
"Maybe," the promise was thrown over one shoulder, making it sound more like 'no' than 'yes' when it was usually the other way around.
"That's it, you're going to get it for this," Jamie promised, but when he searched for the unwanted third wheel to this date with his eyes, no one else was there. "Just great," he mumbled under his breath and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans.
Well, it wasn't the end of the world if one of his dates didn't work out and if he didn't end up hooking up once in a blue moon. Seeing his almost perfect satisfaction rate - ten out of ten college boys would hook up with him again - he couldn't complain.
Who the hell dressed up to harass people, though? An inspector, he called himself. Jamie shrugged. He wouldn't lose sleep over something like that.
***
"What did you do to get in Xpress's good graces like this?" Rusty thumbed through his phone, grinning like the big goofball he was.
"Hey, I called you to help me out with this, not laugh at me," Jamie warned. "It's one of your people, now advise."
"My people? What do you mean by that?"
"Don't play the innocent. Aren't you their king? The same idiot keeps calling you that."
Rusty scratched his head. "Yeah, well, that was in the past. I mean, I don't care about stuff like that, now that I have Matty."
"And a freaking musical career. I can't believe you kept that from me." Jamie punched Rusty in the shoulder, hard enough for his friend to massage the area with a grimace on his face. "How many times have you watched me play? Didn't you ever itch to sing along?"
"Not really. Your style's sort of weird."
"So is singing opera in this day and age."
"No, it's not," Rusty protested. "Okay, what do you want me to do?"
"Tell me who this guy is."
"I would but I have no idea. No one knows. Xpress has just always been."
"Since forever?" Jamie asked, dumbfounded by that statement.
"Sunny Hill is not that old," Rusty said. "What I know is that it existed before I got here. Or so people say." He continued to look through the latest posts with a grin on his face. "I gotta say, when it's not about me or my homies, this stuff can be pretty funny."
"I'm not your homie, asshole?" Jamie grinned and pushed two coffees to go in front of his friend. They had never been thick as thieves, as Rusty had his friends and college life, but they'd had good moments that made them pals for life. Like a summer hunting gigs all over the place, with no pay for Rusty, who looked every bit like he needed the cash and couldn't have afforded to waste his time like that. "This one's sweeter. It's for Matty. Tell him it's from one sweet guy to another."
"Fuck off," Rusty said without rancor. "The guy is mine."
"Yes, I know, you marked your territory. You straight guys should keep in your lane, though. You're messing up other people's game."
"I've done no such thing," Rusty said. "And it's different when you do it like me."
"Like you, how?"
"You know, for real. Not just fooling around."
"Shut up, Parker, you were as much a player as me before meeting Matty. Only you worked a different lane, and that was fine by me."
"Don't worry, I'm not in yours. I'm not in the race anymore."
"Properly retired. Who would have thought it?" Jamie bumped his fist against Rusty's. "Just take good care of your guy. He's worth it."
"Yeah, I know," Rusty said with a smile. "Now, since you bribed me with your best, tell me how I can help you. For the record, greater men have tried to unmask Xpress and failed, according to local history."
"Just tell me if you hear anything. I mean, I know what the guy looks like, in a way."
"What? Did you meet this guy?" Rusty stared at him in disbelief.
"Yes. The first of my dates he crashed was two weeks ago. He was all dressed up like Sherlock Holmes but asked to be called 'inspector'. And he kept hounding me, asking if this or that was my official statement."
"That's weird. I've never heard of Xpress getting so close to their subject matter, so to speak. It's always like whoever's behind it is completely invisible. So, didn't you get to see him well, this guy? Just describe him to me."
"He was in disguise, and it was dark. But he was skinny and short, that I can tell you."
"So it could be a girl for all you know," Rusty said with a shrug.
"Nope, I don't think so," Jamie replied.
"How come you didn't wring his neck if he got so close?"
"I ignored him the first time, and it looks like he's preferred to stay in hiding for the rest."
Rusty took a look at the long string of posts. "Are you telling me all this stuff is real? Do you always start by caressing the guy's right ear, giving it a," he paused to stare at the screen, "two fraction of a second lick on the lobe, and then ask if he's ready for a romp in the hay?"
"The hay part is how this asshole talks," Jamie grumbled. "You know, it's really weird to have your technique dissected and disclosed like that. There should be laws against it."
This time, Rusty looked at him with sympathy in his eyes. "I have to admit that this Xpress person has gone more than one time beyond the call of duty with the crap they put on the page. Seriously, it's like they don't know when to stop."
"Really? That's good to know." Jamie grinned, already feeling better.
"How so?" Rusty asked.
"If what you're saying is true, he won't let go. I'm going to catch this asshole and teach him a lesson."
Rusty chuckled. "Funny choice of words. Wasn't that what Xpress promised to do to you? Like a hunter."
Jamie got up and took off his apron. "So what? It takes one to catch one."
TBC