Bad Boy Billionaires 2 : The Wall Street Shark(51)

She turned and glared at him. "I didn't know he was gay. I had no idea until he met me for lunch this afternoon and told me he'd met a guy, he'd fallen in love with him, and they're planning to get married."

"You didn't see any signs? Your two best friends are gay and you didn't see anything unusual about this guy?"

"He's not really gay," she said. "He told me he's bi-sexual. And get this, the guy he fell in love with is twenty years old." She smacked her forehead with the heel of her palm so she wouldn't ruin her makeup. "Now I not only have to compete with younger women, but also younger men. How fucked up is that?"

Evan put his arms around her this time and hugged her tightly. "It's not like that, it really isn't. You just got mixed up with the wrong guy, is all."

She sniffed and said, "I can compete with another woman. But I can't compete with a twenty-year-old guy. That not even possible."

Evan knew there was nothing he could say or do that would make her feel any better that night. So he took her martini glass, stood up, and walked over to the bar next to a white baby grand piano. He mixed a full pitcher of vodka martinis without even realizing what he was doing. By the time he started to pour the mixture into Michele's martini glass, he glanced up and saw both Cadin and Michele gaping at him.

They seemed to be waiting for his next move. He lifted the martini glass and smiled. "It's not for me. It's for you." Then he brought the martini to the sofa and set it on the coffee table beside the tray of party food and picked up a canopy of caviar and chopped egg and popped it into his mouth.

Then Michele started to cry and they listened to her story about the way the guy had dumped her. He'd met her for lunch in a restaurant and dumped her before they had a chance to order. As if that wasn't enough, he gestured to the front of the restaurant and the twenty-year-old guy walked over to their table and sat down with them.

Both Cadin and Evan leaned forward at the same time. "He brought the new boyfriend with him?" Evan asked, exchanging a quick glance with Cadin when Michele wasn't looking.

She nodded. "He introduced me, asked the guy to join us, and said he hoped we could all be good friends."

Cadin's mouth was hanging open by then. "What did you do?

She shrugged again. "I put up a good front. What could I do? We were sitting in the middle of a busy restaurant and I couldn't make a scene. You know how it is: women aren't supposed to make scenes in public or show aggression. We're supposed to be nice and smile all the time." 

"I would have kicked them both in the ass," Evan said. He reached for Michele's hand. "I know that's not something I would have done a year ago, but the older I get, the more tired I get of people like this guy making assumptions. I've learned a few things about some men in the past few months, let me tell you. They seem to drift through life making their own rules, expecting everyone around them to just go along with them. And I'm getting tired of it. I say fuck them all and you're better off without this guy. If more gay men and straight women took on this attitude we'd all be a lot better off for it. We need to start making our own rules."

When Michele got up to use the powder room, Cadin went to the bar and poured himself a martini. He took a huge sip and said, "God, I don't know how I'm going to get through this night in one piece."

Evan walked over and asked, "What's wrong with you?" "I wasn't going to say anything, but the guy I've been seeing just told me he thinks we should start seeing other people." Cadin finished the drink in one swallow. "And we all know what that means. He's probably already seeing other people."

"The guy with the child-bearing hips?"

"Yup."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Evan said. "I thought everything was going so well." They'd all been so caught up in their own lives in the past few months Evan realized they hadn't been paying attention to each other.

"He didn't even have the decency to ask me out to lunch," Cadin said. "He mentioned this to me on the phone."

"Oh, not the phone."

As Cadin nodded, Michele walked into the living room, took one look at their expressions, and asked, "What's wrong?"

Evan wanted a drink now more than ever. "The guy Cadin has been seeing told him he wants to see other people."

Michele reached for his hand and said, "I'm so sorry. I know how serious you were about this one."

Evan noticed that although Cadin wasn't thrilled about his situation, he sounded less upset than Michele. "I'm just sorry I told so many people about it. I introduced him to my mother, and to the rest of the family in Brooklyn. At first, I was a little worried because he's a little effeminate and my family is still not used to me being gay. But everything seemed to work out and I thought things were going so well between us."