Page 88 of Shade
This is why Tom is my best friend now that Mila replaced me for the firefighter. He just told me he liked me, wanted me to give him a chance and when I let him down, he’s onto something else.
“Sure, but no jerking off in it or sleeping with some chick in it.”
“Uh, too late.”
That dirty fucking fuck. He already did.
I LEAVE MY apartment, swing by the hotel and Mila has already arranged my leave of absence from work like the fucking champ she is. In the car on the way to the airport is when it really hits me what I’m about to do.
Sometimes you have to plunge into the unknown and the unplanned to experience life. I learned, and it wasn’t easy, that you can’t live the way I was living. Well, you could, but you’d be missing the spontaneity that comes with the thrill. Nothing compares to that.
Sure, I have a fun life in Seattle and friends, but where is it going?
I certainly don’t want to be a hotel manager, and though I enjoy working at the hotel, I think I need this in my life. I think Shade needs me. Honestly.
Chances like this don’t come along all the time. This is one of those opportunities where you know if you let it pass you by, you would look back on it later and know, fuckingknowin your gut that it will never come along again.
I once got stuck in an elevator with an actor who came up for a role in a film that didn’t appear too interesting. Well, to me, anyway. Looked like it’d bomb. And believe me, after being stuck in said elevator with this man for two hours, I knew everything about the movie.
I told him, if I was him, I’d turn the role down, but then again, being stuck in an elevator with a guy had nothing to do with advising him on which roles he should choose.
I was simply just his elevator stuck buddy. For two goddamn hours.
Anyway, the actor ended up taking the role because he had this gut feeling, this deep-down wrenching feeling, that the role was one he was meant to play. His muse, he called it.
That role, that movie, ended up topping the box office the first night it was out and sold out for the next two weeks.
You don’t walk away from gut-instinct. You just don’t.
Something in me told me I could make a difference in his life. That guy, the one troubled by the death of his friend, needed someone like me, someone who’d been through the same loss and eventually recovered.
