Read The Guy With the Suitcase (Once Upon a Guy #1) for Free Online Page B

after months on the streets, but other than that he had nothing in common with these people. Not anymore, anyway. Coming from a deeply religious family he probably was never exactly like them, anyway. But close enough.
    He turned around to leave.
    “Hi, table for one?” the host asked him before he could escape.
    Pierce turned to the host with reluctance. He grimaced and paused. Only for a moment, however, before he placed his smile on his face and approached the stand.
    “No, actually, I was looking for a job,” he said and his sweaty palm tightened around the handle of his suitcase.
    “Okay. I might have an opening for a person. Do you have any experience?” he asked.
    Pierce was dumbfounded. The guy hadn’t given him a once over like all the others had. He was actually asking him a genuine question.  
    “Just a little. Bits and pieces over summer vacation and during college,” he replied.
    The guy nodded. “Okay. Okay. How old are you, kid?”
    Pierce hesitated. He wasn’t even sure if he could work in an alcohol-serving bar before he turned twenty-one. If he couldn’t, he was doomed already. “Twenty,” he said.
    “All right. Do you have a resumé?” he asked.
    Pierce almost overcame with tears. He wanted a resume. Was this place that had made him feel so out of place a few moments ago gonna be his lucky charm? Pierce nodded and knelt down to retrieve on one from inside his suitcase. He felt the eyes of the guy heating the back of his head. He got one out, closed his suitcase back down, and stood up.
    The guy’s eyes were slit now. He was calculating something. He didn’t take Pierce’s resume when he waved it in front of him. Just stared at Pierce.
    “Are you homeless, kid?” he asked him.
    There it was. The question that he dreaded being asked despite not having been asked it before. Everyone either assumed it or deducted he was one. No one had asked him yet. It was his time to lie. But when he opened his mouth he found he couldn’t do it.
    “Yes,” he said and lowered his head.
    The guy shook his head and grimaced. “I’m sorry, kid. I can’t hire someone like you, in your state. Come back when you’ve sorted yourself out,” he said in a very fatherly tone that brought memories to Pierce. Memories he wasn’t very pleased with. Memories of his own father telling him what an abomination he was. Memories of his father pushing him out of the door, while he struggled to grab everything and anything that he could.
    The anger blinded him that instant and he didn’t hold back. “Come back when I’ve sorted myself out?” he scoffed. “You know how many times I’ve heard this today? Do you? Of course you don’t. You all think you’re so much better than me. You all think you know everything about me. You take one look and you see the hobo you don’t trust. You see a junkie. A pathetic crazy person. You see a beggar. A criminal. A delinquent. Right? Am I right?”
    The guy barely nodded, still in shock of being confronted by the homeless kid he had rejected.
    “But you see looks deceive, don’t they. You were going to give me a chance before you saw the suitcase, my shoes, my clothes, whatever the fuck it is that gives me away, even though I’ve made myself presentable.” He noticed a few of the patrons had turned to look at the two men’s encounter in the front of the bar. “But no. You have to tell me to go and sort myself out. Like I don’t know that. Like that is not what I’m trying to do. Like that isn’t the reason I’m out, spending whatever money I’ve managed to make to print me resumés so I can go and ask for a fucking job. I could have bought a coat, a blanket, something valuable so I don’t die out in the cold fucking winter that is coming. But no. I chose to do this. And you have the nerve to tell me to go and sort myself out. Tell me, how is a homeless kid, rejected by his family because of his sexuality, with no security, no one to take care of him, supposed to