Play by the Rules Read online

  Play By The Rules

  By

  Frey Ortega

  Play By The Rules

  It was just supposed to be an interview.

  It was just supposed to be one morning.

  It was just supposed to be a memory...

  How did it end up like this?

  Sensitive and melodramatic Emmett Yang has had enough of the dating world. Enter Joe Kaminski, former quarterback--driven, determined, recently out of the closet--and knows exactly who he wants. That just happens to be Emmett.

  Emmett is convinced that their chance meeting is just a one-time thing: a memory to be cherished. He doesn't think that Joe would ever really want to be with him. After all, he's...him, and Joe is Joe. He's nowhere near Joe's nebula, and there are rules and norms and mores to be followed about this sort of situation, none of which end with Joe and him together.

  But can the former quarterback show Emmett that there are no rules in love?

  Copyright ©2017 Frey Ortega

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Website: http://www.freyortega.com/

  Cover by: Covers by Combs

  Edited by: Angela Campbell

  http://addictedtoreviewsediting.com/

  Play by the Rules is a standalone gay romantic comedy in the first-person perspective. This book is steamy and includes full sex scenes, searing kisses, dramatic declarations of love and a protagonist's questionable knowledge of sexual health. It is a HEA, has no cliff-hangers or cheating, and is approximately 59,000 words

  Acknowledgements

  My sincerest thanks to the people who were kind enough to lend me their time and talents—Pat Fischer and Angela Booth, as well as my editor, Angela Campbell, who helped me make this story shine as brightly as it could. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart!

  To my readers, who, in spite of whatever rut I’ve been in, have been with me since the beginning.

  To Cree Storm and JP Dagenais, thank you for being there for me. This past year has been tough, but having amazing friends can really uplift a guy when they’re down. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  To Ariel Halford, who puts up with my bitching! LOL! :)

  I would be lying if I said I made this for you, but I definitely wrote this and kept you all in mind. I love you all!

  And finally, to my own personal Joe—I hope to find you someday.

  Chapter One

  Hey, look, before we go any further than this, I just want to be completely honest. I met someone else that I’ve taken a great liking to, and though I love talking with you and I love nerding out with you, I just don’t want to lead you on. Anyway, I have to go. Maybe we’ll talk later?

  I couldn’t help but feel the sting of heartbreak at reading that, but I guess I was a fool for believing I could find something on a dating website.

  I’ve always been told to be careful online, that sharing personal information was never a good idea. But with this one guy, I did. I shared parts of myself that were vulnerable, information that I’d never shared with anyone else before, even when the voice of my mother and my siblings echoed in my head.

  “That’s a dumb idea, Emmett,” I heard my mother’s voice nag and niggle in my head constantly. “Don’t tell him that. That’s embarrassing. Don’t talk to him about nerdy stuff. Nerdy things equal being alone forever. You’re gay, my dear, they don’t want to hear about how you used to hold a pool-stick and thought you were a wizard as a child, like in those online games you played. They wanna hear about how much of that pool-stick you can fit down your throat, so they can have you do the same for them.”

  Dating websites seem contrary to this internet-age adage, but I had friends who told me to put myself out there. They wanted me to lower my guard. They wanted me to let myself be vulnerable. Chase and Rye, my closest friends, once told me they were happy that I was putting myself out there by trying online dating.

  That didn’t really matter to me. Not at this moment, anyway.

  I was a twenty-five-year-old virgin who had never had a boyfriend. Sure, I’d come out, but did that really matter when I was basically a non-entity in the dating world? I was an overly sensitive and incredibly lonely non-entity who was beginning to think that maybe nihilism was the right philosophy all along—that there was no reason for our existence, that I was only going to live once before becoming stardust once more, that it would have been easier if I just lived my life as a series of transactions and equations, and that my consciousness would cease to be without ever having known romantic love—and that there was no meaning to our lives except one which we attached to it ourselves.

  But then again, simmering in my own negativity and dealing with the cold, hard facts seemed to be much easier than dealing with facing the undeniable reality that there might have been something about me that just…wasn’t attractive to anyone else. Having no boyfriend and having never had one was a fact. Being extremely emotional was a fact. Both of those added up to no love life.

  I stared down at my phone, feeling the heat build behind my eyes. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. This was nothing. Other people in this world were legless, blind, had terminal illnesses that still had no cure. The only problem with me was that I was too guarded for my own good, too sarcastic, and kept everyone at a safe distance to keep myself from being hurt.

  Still, as I pressed down and swiped an entire tray of apps right into the delete button of my phone, I couldn’t help but feel like this was it.

  I should just face it.

  I was going to die alone.

  Emmett Yang’s hopes for a husband, possibly two kids, though preferably just one or none, white picket fences, and a dog—born 1992, died 2017.

  The confirmation screen popped up, and I was never surer of anything in my entire life.

  Are you sure you would like to delete these applications?

  I tapped the button, and watched the progress bar. As soon as I did it, I was surprised to find a little droplet of water on my screen. My eyes had started to heat up, and my vision blurred.

  I promised myself I wasn’t gonna cry, but my body betrayed me.

  Fuck.

  I pushed up my glasses and felt the quiver in my lips. I sat up on my bed, and covered the lower half of myself with my soft comforter. Tucking myself in and watching the progress bar, I took a deep breath to try and calm myself down. I closed my eyes.

  It was so easy to cave beneath all the negativity. It would have been so easy to just let go. As the morning sun began to peek in through my windows to blind me with its summery brilliance—a brilliance that probably wasn’t supposed to be that bright, but I wasn’t feeling all too happy about this new day—the same time as my clock radio burst to life at exactly seven in the morning, I knew it was going to be a shit day.

  The song that greeted my morning started off quite aptly.

  Hello darkness, my old friend…

  Well, if that wasn’t fucking apropos and a sign from the universe, then nothing was.

  Still, simmering in my own sadness wasn’t going to fly. I had work to do. I had fluff pieces to send my editor at The Stylish, which was one of those webzines with a limited print presence, manuscripts to look over for my other clients, and a lot of other work to busy myself with. Maybe I would be okay at the end of today, after I slave through this next fifty-thousand-word manuscript from one of my author clients.

  Hell, if nothing else, I could put word to paper and get all of this out of my system.

  Fuck dating. Fuck sex. Fuck the white pi
cket fences and “being on the bottom rung of the gay social ladder.” Fuck “no fats, fems, or Asians.” Fuck being made to feel unattractive because I was born too brown to be yellow and too yellow to be white, and fuck those guys with six pack abs who make you feel like you’re worthless just because you’re a little curvier, a little chunkier, and you love yourself regardless of your size.

  Basically, fuck the world. Did I really need a boyfriend? No. I wanted one. There was a difference.

  Dying alone, clutching my life alert while twenty-seven cats waited to devour my face—because that was the most tender part of the body and easiest to eat—seemed like an interesting, and all-together too real proposition. Damn, could my thoughts be any more morbid?

  I didn’t need a man. Not really, anyway.

  At least, that’s what I wanted to tell myself. That’s what I wanted to shout at the top of my lungs, and burst out crying afterward, and just let myself dissolve into my own filth. I wanted to forget that I existed, even if just for a moment.

  But I couldn’t. So, I scrambled up from my bed, even if the comfort of the mattress and being wrapped by a comforter made me feel some sort of…I don’t know, umbilical, womb-like warmth? And it was a nice feeling. It felt like I didn’t need to do anything but just grow, and become accustomed to life.

  But I was a quarter-century in, and I wasn’t even accustomed to dating. How could I ever be accustomed to life?

  Even though everything felt like shit to me, I went straight for the bathroom and started on my daily rituals. One small thing at a time. My brain needed the little pick-me-up, and making sure that all these small tasks were accomplished was a good way for me to feel human again.

  “Brush your teeth. Take a shower. Maybe let out a long, relaxing poo. That’ll cheer you up in no time,” or so my sister, the great Dr. Emily Yang, would say. And I’d believe her. She studied that shit.

  I’m just a writer, an editor, and a homebody.

  Maybe it was just the placebo effect, but it felt nice to think that all these little chores would really make me feel better. As soon as I was clean, I started to feel better. Just a little bit, at least, because at least the filth of my outside could be easily rectified. The inside? Not so much. But wiping the grease off a car was easy. Rinsing off the inside while making sure you didn’t break anything was a whole different ballpark.

  Then again, I didn’t know anything about cars.

  I combed through my hair and set myself down in front of my desk. God, it looked like a warzone fought with red ink and a bunch of manuscripts. A haphazardly strewn-about pile of papers lay just right on top of my keyboard and my monitor. I fished for my glasses somewhere in the chaos and pushed them up on my nose when I found them.

  Then, I set all the papers aside before I put on my headset and turned on my computer. As soon as everything loaded, a notification pop-up appeared on my sidebar.

  My editor wanted to talk as soon as I was able.

  Well, there was no time like the present. Without hesitation, I immediately clicked on the chat client and tapped the call button on his profile.

  The image of my managing editor, Dale Brunson, appeared in front of me. He resembled the quintessential corporate schmoozer, with a bright white, winning smile, and a deadness in his eyes that made him look a little more insincere than most people. Blond hair, blue eyes, a smile that could have powered up a solar panel, and he looked like the kind of guy Hitler might have approved of in his heyday. Maybe ten years of working for a news site did that to you. He’d only started working on the lifestyle and entertainment section in the past two years, and it looked like he was absorbing the lifestyles of the rich and famous through his editorial writing.

  But a part of it might have been that he liked bossing people around, and he just came into his own now that he was at managerial level.

  The brightness of Dale’s smile was as fake as his tan. Maybe my mood was worse than I originally thought. Usually, he was about as annoying as a mosquito buzzing around one’s head. “A slight nuisance” wasn’t enough of a reason for me to get so uppity so early on in the day, though the fact that Dale looked so perfectly coiffed first thing in the morning just irritated me a little bit more than usual. How could someone look so chipper and ready to take the day on at eight o’clock?

  “Emmett! You’re a doll for getting to me so quick. I’m sorry to have to call you out like this,” Dale’s cloying voice felt like an ice pick lobotomy at the moment, but I powered through my distaste for him and plastered the fakest smile that I could on my face. I had to remain professional, after all. “We need to call you into the office. I know freelancers don’t need to show themselves at HQ, but it’s a bit of an emergency and I think you’re just perfect for the assignment. Are you available to be briefed about it sometime this week?”

  “Okay,” I said blankly. “Can I ask what the assignment is about? This is a first.”

  “Of course, you can!” Dale replied, as he lifted up a cup from off to the side, just out of frame. He brought it to his lips—pinky finger up, of course—and took a loud, almost obnoxious slurp. As Dale swallowed, he grimaced. “Sorry, I heard something about aerating warm kombucha, to make it taste better. It just tastes even more like piss now. But it’s good for you, so who am I to complain, right?”

  Dale’s smile was…effervescent. I wanted to slap the shit out of him.

  He set his cup to the side once more. “Anyway, the assignment is completely out of your wheelhouse because it’s about sports,” Dale said. “Specifically, someone in sports.”

  I immediately grimaced. I knew nothing about sports. “Football is the one with the goalposts and the people tackling each other, right?” I asked. “Or is it the one with the goalies and the kicking?”

  Dale shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

  Bless his little gay heart. He should thank the universe he was born pretty.

  “Why did you think I’d be perfect for this?” I asked. I knew nothing about sports. How could this assignment be anywhere near doable for me?

  “Well, you’d be providing an outsider’s perspective. It’ll be a fun, wink-y, lifestyle-and-entertainment-type story celebrating the celebrity of being a sports superstar, or something. I can tell you more details when you head over here. Speaking over video conference is so…gauche.”

  Ooh, someone’s been reading their word-of-the-day calendar, I thought to myself. But rightly so, I bit my lip from saying anything that might have soured Dale’s impression of me.

  I was just having a bad day, is all.

  But I wondered, how long would that excuse be valid?

  I nodded. “Okay. Color me intrigued. I’ll learn more when I head over there, right? How’s today looking?”

  “Oh, you want to come in today?” Dale asked, though I knew the question was rhetorical. I was almost in a caustic enough mood to reply sarcastically, too. No shit, Sherlock. If I didn’t want to come in today, I would have said I’d be coming tomorrow, right?

  But instead, I widened my smile. “My schedule’s a little free this week. The sooner I can get started with this, the better,” I said, trying to remain as calm and cool with my answer as possible.

  Dale’s smile widened in response. “Sure, why not? How’s lunch looking? I’ll get us a table at Wakaba’s. I’ll bring all the info you need over lunch.”

  “You really don’t need to treat me to lunch, Dale,” I said.

  “Nonsense. You’re the most loyal writer on this staff. Two years of your human-interest stories has put us on the map!” Dale exclaimed, as though I was this exalted writer on his staff.

  It was a lie, of course. My pieces were nothing more than fluff, with no real rhyme or reason to them except to keep people calm in between reading about gay men being killed in an eastern European country or some other war on trans peoples’ rights to use the bathroom, or something. They were tailor-made to be pleasant and pander to the audience, and to show off that the world wasn’t always a crap shoo
t. It could be pleasant, too.

  I hadn’t written anything that really spoke to me in a long, long time.

  Sometimes, I felt like it showed. I had to work hard to hide my inadequacies. There was a lack of passion in my words. It had become cold, clinical, and sometimes far too cynical, even for my tastes.

  “Maybe something out of left field would be good for me,” I said.

  Dale smiled. “Why, dear Emmett, did you just make a sports pun?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I did. I guess I know more about sports than I thought.” A lie, and we both knew it. “I’ll see you at lunch, Dale. Thanks for the treat. And the assignment.” I paused, and made sure to look my boss right in the eyes. Or, well, an approximation of where his eyes would be by staring into my web-camera. “I needed it.”

  For once, that Stepford-esque glimmer in Dale’s eyes seemed to give way to something to something…well, soft. It almost seemed like he cared. “You got it.”

  The call ended.

  Huh. Maybe Dale wasn’t so bad after all.

  At least I had something new to look forward to, now. I had barely even noticed the little pop-up notification on my phone.

  Five apps deleted.

  Chapter Two

  Wakaba’s was this great little Japanese restaurant about twenty minutes away from my apartment. The best thing about it was that it wasn’t a run-of-the-mill sushi place, but rather a ramen-and-curry place, which wasn’t as popular but definitely wasn’t as expensive.

  After all, Japanese cuisine wasn’t always just about sushi. I could go on for hours on that particular topic, but I could already hear my mother’s voice chastising me…again.

  “Emmett, if you want a boyfriend, don’t go getting your panties in a twist all over nothing,” she would say. Her heavily accented English rang in my ears, making me grin, albeit coolly. “Do you want to die alone? My son, being gay is already so hard. Don’t make it harder on yourself by being so critical and nit-picky.”