Chapter 2

“Are you ready to get inside?” Turner inquired while pointing his thumb backward at the entrance to the building.

Calvin nodded. “Sure.”

Turner gave Calvin the most brilliant smile before reaching for his hand and intertwining their fingers together. Once again, Calvin was surprised by Turner’s action. He knew they were out on a date. Some forms of intimate gestures were to be expected. However, he had never been with a man as straightforward and openly affectionate as Turner. All of the older men he had dated in the past were a lot more reserved, especially at the beginning. He knew they had dated him because they liked the fact that he was so much younger than they were. On the other hand, he had gone out on dates with them because he had always been more attracted to older men. The psychologists would probably attribute that to the fact that his biological father had abandoned him and his mother when he was only four years old, so he had some serious daddy issues. Turner must have noticed the astonished expression on his face because the man quickly beamed at him and raised their joined hands up high before kissing the back of his palm with a resounding smack.

“My apologies. I hope this is okay. We had already held hands throughout that meal with your friends and their boyfriends. I figure this should be all right with you. If it’s not, please forgive me. I’ll let go—”

“Don’t,” Calvin interrupted while shaking his head at Turner. “It’s fine.”

That had to be the right response because Turner seemed elated by it. Calvin shifted even closer to Turner, and he sighed in delight when the older man relinquished his hand and slipped that same arm around his waist instead. It felt amazing to be wanted. After that, the two of them made their way into the building side by side.

“Whoa! This is unbelievable,” Turner whispered into Calvin’s ear the moment they stepped deeper inside the building.

Calvin had to agree with Turner. There had to be hundreds of stalls inside the massive hall. The room was overflowing with thousands of people, including the visitors, and the delicious aromas of all kinds of food were everywhere. There wasn’t much noise to be found inside the hall, but that was probably because most people were too busy with the samples from all of the stalls, tasting, chewing, and swallowing every morsel of free food in sight.

“This is so much larger than I expected,” Calvin muttered next to Turner’s ear before dragging the older man toward the first stall that caught his eyes.

The two of them started out at a stall that displayed some unique buns with equally special fillings. The buns were shaped to look like various types of flowers, and the fillings of the buns ranged from organic honey, mouth-watering melted chocolate, and several types of fruit jams all the way to multiple kinds of bean paste. After trying out some of the free samples, Calvin decided to purchase some to share with his friends at work. Turner raised his left eyebrow at Calvin, seemingly amazed at the amount of buns he bought.

“Are you sure you can finish them all?”

“Tomorrow is Monday,” Calvin replied. “I’ll bring them to the office. My friends are huge eaters. They will swallow everything in less than three minutes. Trust me. I know them well. We’ve been best friends and colleagues for years.”

“Do they all have such enormous appetites?”

Calvin snickered. “Yeah, especially in the mornings.”

“Wow! Yet all of them look really fit like runway models. If I were to eat like that, I wouldn’t be able to fit any of my clothes by the end of the day.”

Calvin snorted. “As if. You’re really good-looking and sexy.”

Turner winked at Calvin. “Yeah?”

Calvin chuckled. “Stop fishing for compliments. That’s so not cute.”

Turner burst out laughing. “Okay. I’ll stop.”

Calvin wasn’t really kidding about his friends’ appetites, though. David Lee, the IT Junior Manager, Justin Wong, the Human Resource Manager, and Javier Gisbert, the Marketing Manager, might be the smallest in terms of their build, but they could put away quite a substantial amount of food. Joshua Wallace, the Social Media Specialist, Vincent Yang, the Finance Junior Manager, and Keenan Underwood, the Sales Manager, were taller and had a much larger build, but they ate approximately the same amount as the other three men. Calvin only bought two buns for each of his friends because he had no doubt he would be carrying home a lot of food from the other stalls by the end of his and Turner’s trip at the food fair. He had to pace himself carefully. He was about to pay for the buns when Turner beat him to it. He stared at Turner in shock.