Jordi and Joshua

By Phareal Gostfelt

After talking on Grindr, a Spanish man and an Irish man meet for a late-night dinner in Rome. That dinner, the night before they have to return to their respective countries, seals what soon turns into a long-distance friendship between Dublin and Barcelona. Unfortunately, what started very innocently soon turns into a roller-coaster of emotions forcing one of the two to travel to the other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phareal Gostfelt
• Release date: Oct 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005763367

Book preview

Jordi and Joshua

Copyright 2021 Phareal Gostfelt

Published by Phareal Gostfelt at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Rome

Messenger

Dublin

Rome

Jordi got back to his hotel exhausted. The workshop had lasted much longer than planned. He had had to answer a never ending string of questions from the participants, not that he did not like that. He loved it. But it had sapped the last of his energy. He promised himself never to accept to organise a seven day workshop again. Still, he was proud of the work he had done and gave himself a good grade. The workshop had surpassed any expectations he had had, especially considering the limited time he had had to prepare and the fact it was the first workshop in live conditions.

Jordi fell onto the bed and looked outside. It was late afternoon but the sun was still high in the sky. The view from the bed through the window was mediocre: he could see another building's rooftop and the sky. He felt a rush to go out and stroll around the city but he could not find the strength to get back up. He found a middle ground: Grindr. That would be the best way to relax, pass the time and recharge his batteries. A bonus would be to talk to a nice local, a diamond in the rough. An extra bonus would be to get an excuse to head outside and overcome the lack of energy to meet that undiscovered diamond. Jordi was getting ahead of himself.

He settled in bed, pillow behind his head, plugged his phone in the socket, switched on the TV on mute and opened the app. He had been on it a few times since he had landed in Rome but he had been too busy to pay it any real attention. He opened the app to find that he had close to a hundred messages. He felt a warm feeling of acceptance as he saw the amount of notifications. Feeling wanted was always an instant gratification that little else could match, and a hundred messages felt like an overwhelming amount of attention. He allowed himself to smile before reminding himself that his profile picture was a torso picture and that probably most of these people would vanish the moment he started talking to them.

So he did. For close to an hour, as CNN played in the back and the sun disappeared behind the building across the street, he chatted with random locals, and a frighteningly high amount of horny tourists. He was quickly reminded that men were the same everywhere they went, and Grindr was really not the best representation of what society had to offer. But he found it entertaining so he played along. It was a good distraction from his busy week and better than any show he would get on TV in Rome. This was his way of getting out of the work mentality, and prepare the weekend on a fun note.

Jordi was picky though, playing along also meant that most of these men had no chance to ever meet him. Only a few men caught his attention. They were weirdly engaging and Jordi felt compelled to answer them as soon as they asked questions. Uncharacteristically, he also felt the need to ask questions when the conversation had gone silent for only a few minutes. Two asked him out. One was several years younger than him and was talking to him as if he was a daddy. Jordi was not offended. He weirdly enjoyed the quirkiness of the conversation and he entertained the thought of meeting him for dinner for the better part of their conversation. But then Joshua came along - he had given his name right away - and that felt like an entirely new level. Joshua was around his age, 31 years old, had beautiful dark brown eyes and short, gelled light brown hair. His pictures were amazing, portraying him as happy, always a smile on. But what caught Jordi's attention was their drama-filled discussion.

He entertained a false sense of shyness, making himself all the more mysterious to Jordi. They asked each other simple questions, getting to know one