Salt & Pepper

Chapter 1

1

Tim had never felt more alone than he did sitting in a dingy coffee shop that he’d never heard of waiting to meet his best friend. The sad, shitty hipster music blaring from the overhead speakers certainly wasn’t helping lift his mood.

Eric had left three months ago, and the sting of his absence still hadn’t passed. In fact, Tim couldn’t believe that it had already been that long. It seemed like yesterday that Eric had told him that he thought they should see other people while they sat on the couch watching some mindless crime drama like they did every night.

He missed the simple things like that more than anything else.

“Tim Moore, it’s a good thing that you just got dumped because at least you have an excuse to look like hell,” Sarah said, startling Tim out of his spiral of negativity. She carried two mugs of steaming coffee, one of which she handed to him with a sad smile. She looked as quirky as ever, wearing neon pink tights and a shawl that Tim thought would be better suited as a rug in the dive bar turned coffee shop she’d picked for them to meet at.

“Thanks, it’s good to see you too,” Tim said, raising an eyebrow at her. It was the first time he’d had the courage to meet with her since Eric had run away from the Shrek-like creature he told Tim he’d become. OK, he hadn’t put it that bluntly, but he’d definitely made it known that he didn’t find Tim attractive anymore.

“I mean no harm, I’m calling it like I see it,” she said. Sarah had a habit of talking turkey that Tim hadn’t been ready to hear—in fact, he still wasn’t sure he was ready to hear it, but he’d been unable to continue dodging her calls. She sat down across from him and the old wooden chair’s legs groaned.

“I knew you had strange tastes, but this?” Tim asked, gesturing around the room. The paint on the walls had turned yellow from years of neglect and the tables scattered around looked like they’d been sourced from a series of foreclosed bingo halls.

“I think it has character,” she said.

“I think you’re insane.”

“God, I’ve missed our banter. Where the hell have you been?” she asked.

“You mean other than locked in my bedroom with Netflix and an endless supply of Reese’s cups?” he said as he watched her tear open four sweetener packets, each one a different color, before dumping them in her coffee. Strange tastes, indeed, he thought.

“Yeah, about that… I can’t have you not returning my phone calls. Answering calls is explicitly stated in section 2 of our friendship agreement.”

“I called you today, didn’t I?”

“For the first time in three months, yes,” she said. “You fell off the face of the f*****g Earth. What happened?”

“Do I really need to tell you?”

“No, because I ran into Eric the other day at the grocery store and he told me all about it already, but I want to hear your side of things. You know how much I love to see you suffer. It’s honestly the only reason I agreed to meet with you today,” she said, wearing a wry smile.

“Well, it’s true. Eric dumped me,” he said, “And not exactly in a let-me-down-easy kind of way.” She sighed, running a hand through the wild red tangles of her hair.

“I’m sorry,” she said, seeming suddenly delicate.

“Don’t play nice, honey, it doesn’t suit you,” Tim said and Sarah erupted into laughter, her booming cackle overpowering the music and the other hushed conversations happening in the café. Tim felt dozens of pairs of eyes on him, but he’d learned long ago not to give a damn when Sarah was around. It was inevitable that she’d draw attention to herself and, by extension, to anyone sitting with her. If her boisterous personality didn’t do it, her questionable wardrobe would. Besides, it felt good to laugh with her. It’d been too long since he’d allowed himself to.

“OK, but seriously: how are you handling it?”

“Is that a rhetorical question? I’m handling it about as well as an umbrella handles a hail storm,” Tim said, wrapping his hands around his coffee mug, his fingers drinking in the warmth that they seemed incapable of keeping these days. When Eric had moved out, it was almost like he’d taken all of the heat along with him.

“Fine, so life hasn’t been treating you real well, huh?” she asked.

“Let’s not sugarcoat things here: life f*****g sucks.”

“I still can’t believe it’s over, just like that. I mean, I had a feeling you two were on the rocks for a while, but Jesus…”

“That makes two of us,” Tim laughed, and his head began to spin again, the same way it did every time he thought about his life since Eric had told him that he was done. They’d been a couple for over five years, lived together for more than three of those years, and then one day after work it all came crashing down. It hadn’t been totally unexpected, though. Tim knew from experience that Eric’s ever-later arrivals home from work were a red flag, but he was too stubborn to acknowledge it.

“Forgive me the cliché, but let’s say I’ve learned the hard way that we never really know what we have until it’s gone,” he said. Now that he found himself sitting in a rickety chair sipping coffee that tasted no better than battery acid because he had nothing else to do and no one to do it with, he realized how true that statement was.

When he came back down to Earth, Sarah was staring at him with a mixture of pity and concern coloring her face. She rarely wore that look—nothing really mattered to her that much—which only made Tim feel worse. He stared back at her for a moment and offered a weak smile when he couldn’t take the emotional scrutiny anymore.

“Are you going to be OK?” she asked.

“Honestly, I don’t know.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“He didn’t need to. His face and the way that he looked at me, the same way he’s been looking at me for months now, told me everything I needed to know.”

“I’m not following. Did you forget that I haven’t seen or spoken to you in like a decade since this happened?”

“Fine, let me spell it out for you: I’m old, fat, and boring. I’m not the trophy boyfriend he wanted.”

“I’ll give him old and boring, but fat? Please,” she said, taking a deep swig of her coffee.

“Was that supposed to make me feel better?”

“It didn’t? I’m joking, you know that.”

“God, I f****d up everything,” Tim groaned, cradling his head in his hands.

“Tim, honey, don’t be ridiculous,” Sarah said, reaching across the table to grip his forearm. “None of this is your fault. Eric’s an asshole. I’ve told you that since the day you met him. His pea brain doesn’t allow him to think beyond muscles and d**k, and now you know that as well as I do. He’s shallow and petty and he’ll get what’s coming to him.”

“If I’d gone out more instead of being such a potato, gone to the gym with him…”

“Why? So you could make yourself crazy trying to meet his ridiculous standards? You didn’t cause this, this isn’t anything you did wrong,” she said, shaking his arm forcefully.

“He didn’t put the fork in my mouth,” Tim said.

“True, but you also didn’t put the piece of coal in the center of his chest where his dead, blackened heart used to be, either,” she said. “Look, this is a good thing.” Tim glanced up at her and she raised her eyebrows, shaking her head yes. “It is, believe me. I know this all sucks major ass, but it’s for the best,” she said and weaseled her fingers between Tim’s to squeeze them.

“For the best? I feel like I’m in free fall, like everything is spinning away from me. Every day I wake up hoping that I’ll feel better, but so far I’m still falling.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll hit the ground eventually,” she said and Tim couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “But seriously, you’re going to be fine. Right now I’m sure it feels like you wasted five years of your life with this asshole, but in a year, maybe five years from now, you’re going to look back on this and think it’s the best thing that ever happened to you.”

“I want to believe that, I really do. God, is this what a midlife crisis feels like? s**t, midlife crisis, listen to me. I really am old…” he groaned.

“Tim, you’re 39. You aren’t some withering, frail fossil. You can call this a midlife crisis if you want—I won’t stop you—but I see this as a second chance,” she said. “Imagine how miserable you’d have been if you stayed with this jerk for another year or longer and pretended like nothing was wrong. The writing was on the wall. He’s an overgrown frat boy with a club queen addiction. It was never going to work.”

“Ouch.”

“Hey, no one benefits from having their pity party attended,” Sarah said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You’re looking at this the wrong way and it doesn’t make me feel sorry for you. It actually makes me want to punch you. ‘Oh, woe is me, the sad middle-aged gay guy who got dumped by his hot-but-vapid boyfriend and thinks he’s hopeless—stop me when you feel like you’ve seen this movie before,” she said.

Silence fell between them and Tim felt shame burning in his stomach—because she was right. Realistically, though, what chance did he have now? Gay guys over 35 were practically invisible to everyone else, especially if they didn’t have rock solid abs or a rock solid bank account—neither of which Tim had. A professor’s life didn’t exactly afford either of those things.

“What other choice do I have?” he asked, keeping his gaze on the table in front of him to avoid Sarah’s piercing eyes.

“Choices, plural. You have plenty of them. You want my honest opinion?”

“Based on how this conversation has gone so far, no, not at all.”

“Bullshit. You wouldn’t have finally called me back today if you didn’t. So, here’s what I think you need to do. You need to get out there and make the most of this. This is your chance to be happy,” she said, practically coming out of her chair.

“As a lesbian, let me tell you something: you’re a baby in the gay world and you’ve got a lot of growing up to do, so you don’t have time to sit around feeling sorry for yourself. You rushed right into things with Eric and you haven’t known anything or anyone else for five years, but now it’s time to get familiar with the world around you. A lot has changed since you spent those five years in suspended animation.” She was right, though Tim didn’t want to hear it. “Have you gone out at all since he left?”

“Do trips to Costco for pizza slices count?” he asked. She gave him a stern look and he sighed. “I haven’t felt up to it, honestly. Can you blame me?”

“What the hell are you waiting for? You need to get out there, go to some bars, kiss some guys, suck some d**k. You need distractions and experience. They’re the only things that will get you through this.” Tim looked up at the passion in her eyes and couldn’t help but smile. She straightened her shirt and sipped her coffee while he eyed her.

“Is this your idea of a pep talk?”

“Something like that, yeah. And I had a feeling you might need a kick in the ass, so I brought something for you.” She gave Tim an overly enthusiastic smile as she pulled her bag up from the floor and slid her laptop out of a small compartment within it.

“Oh no, I know that look. What the hell did you do this time?” he asked, legitimately afraid. “My heart can’t handle another one of your surprises.”

“This one is a little bigger than usual,” she said, winking at him as she whipped her laptop’s lid open and fired off her password. The last time she’d attempted to give him a “kick in the ass,” he’d ended up in the hospital with a broken arm. Learning to ski wasn’t the push he’d needed to get out of a career funk, nor was the push she’d given him down the slope to “encourage” him to face his fears.

“I started working on this before I came, but let’s put the finishing touches on this puppy,” she said, clicking and typing in a flurry. Tim sat dumbstruck. “There, done,” she said and flipped the laptop’s screen around. She’d pulled up a receipt of some sort. He read over it as quickly as he could, not totally understanding what he was seeing.

“What is this?”

“An all-expenses paid vacation for two weeks at a BnB,” she said, concrete proof that she had more money than sense.

“In Soo… Soogatuck?”

“Saw. Saugatuck. It’s a really cool, quirky town in western Michigan,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it.”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Ugh, of course you haven’t,” she said, rolling her eyes. He could only imagine what the place must be like if it was on her radar.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Think about it, Tim. You need a change of scenery.”

“But what about work?”

“What about it? It’s summer, you’re a college professor, and jack s**t is going on right now in Chapel Hill. This is the perfect time to get away for a while, clear your head… Get some strange,” she said with a wink.

“You’re unbelievable.”

“I prefer the term unpredictable.”

“That too,” he said, slumping back into his chair. He couldn’t possibly run away for two weeks like this… Could he? Then again, maybe Sarah was right—maybe he did need to leave all of this crap behind and figure out what exactly he wanted.

“A-ha!” she shouted, pointing at me. “I can see the cogs turning in your head. You know you want to. It’s perfect. You can work remotely from the BnB if you have to, I’m sure they have internet there. Besides, you don’t do anything but sit at a desk and let computers teach your class anyway. Actually, I bet the rest of the staff would be glad to get your mopey ass out of there for a while.”

“I knew I could count on you to lift my spirits,” Tim said and she laughed, her cackle filling the café again.

“There’s plenty of stuff to do there. You can go kayaking, hiking, shopping at the quirky markets, or just sit and have margaritas in the sand all day,” she said. “Annnnnnd,” she continued, twirling her finger in the air in front of her, “It’s super gay friendly.”

“So that’s what this is all about. You’re trying to get me laid. I knew you were up to something.”

“Is that such a bad thing? If I know you at all, you’ve been sitting at home sucking down wine and feeling sorry for yourself. You need something or someone a little stronger to shock this out of your system. So, what do you say?”

“How am I going to get there?”

“Ugh, always with the technicalities. Don’t you think I’ve already thought of that? Here,” she said and rummaged around in her giant bag again to pull out an envelope, which she pushed across the table. Inside there was a plane ticket for a flight this afternoon and a rental car receipt.

“Sarah… What? You want me to go now? This is too much.”

“It’s nothing. Call your boss, tell him you’re taking some time off. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“How much did you spend on all of this?”

“Never mind that. Consider it an early 40th birthday present.”

“Oh God, you had to remind me…”

“Just go, Tim. You won’t regret it. Take some time to yourself, you deserve it,” she said, smiling again, this time without a hint of her usual mischief.

Tim picked up the envelope. He had no idea what he was getting himself into, and he still wasn’t sure that he wanted to go, but there was no way to get her to back off until he at least made it look like he was considering it.

“If you need a ride to the airport, I’ll take you, of course,” she said.

“Looks like I’ve got some packing I need to do,” he sighed and she shrieked with glee.