Meat Cute

By Imogen Markwell-Tweed

It’s Thanksgiving in the Bible Belt and Danny is working the deli aisle at the local superstore.

There’s a joke there, he’s just too tired to find it.

Danny’s twenty-five, listless, bored, and vegetarian. He hates his job at the market, but he’s got no other plan and no real desire to find a plan, so, he’ll just keep shaving turkey and making pasta salads.

Callum, on the other hand, is made almost exclusively out of plans. He has three planners, a color coordinated Google Calendar, and a three, five, and ten year plan — that are all on track, by the way.

When Callum is fired unexpectedly from his high corporate job, he has no choice but to return to his hometown for the holidays. Tasked with making the Thanksgiving meal, and having never made anything more complicated than a reservation, Callum has a hell of a time grocery shopping — not made any easier by the surly twenty-something that refuses to answer his questions on how to stuff a turkey.

When Danny’s parents mistake Callum for his boyfriend, Danny and Callum are faced with an option: clear up the humiliating misconception, or let it play out so that they both look a little less pathetic for the holidays.

Callum has handled board meetings, screaming CEOs, and a rigorous 50 hour work week on top of his Master’s program. Danny has handled belligerent customers, PETA activists, and an underpaid, overbearing manager. Neither of them are prepared for each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Shorts
• Release date: Jun 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781094435244

Imogen Markwell-Tweed

Imogen Markwell-Tweed is a queer romance writer and editor based in St. Louis. When she's not writing or hanging out with her dog, IMT can be found putting her media degrees to use by binge-watching trashy television. All of her stories promise queer protagonists, healthy relationships, and happily ever afters. @unrealimogen on Twitter and Instagram.

Book preview

1

Danny knows that out of all the jobs in all of Blue Bell, the grocery store meat counter isn’t the worst one.

Harry, a friend of his from high school, part of the never-leavers, as they depressingly dubbed themselves one night while cross-faded, works at the local kennel, for example. Danny would hate that — to begin with, Danny hates animals most of the time, and cleaning up their shit and piss for minimum wage while Debbie from high school demands bi-hourly updates on her poodle? No fuckin’ thank you.

And then there’s the DMV, where Scooter works now, and the fuckin’ bank, which has better hours but an entirely soulless wardrobe. Both Allison and Punk Rock John work there, and they’ve all lamented endlessly about how not punk rock that is.

So Danny working the meat counter at the grocery store is absolutely not the end of the world.

It’s just — Danny is a vegetarian, and he used to faint at the sight of blood.

But Danny is doing his best, even if right now his best is glaring at a customer that is his age, give or take five years, and give but definitely not take five notches above his tax bracket. Danny can only muster so much care about the man who did not plan for his Thanksgiving at all.

Dude, it’s November twenty-third, he says, as if the man owns a Rolex but not a calendar. There are no turkeys left.

But I need a turkey, the man repeats for the fifth time.

Danny thinks this might be it. This might be the thing that breaks him.

I have just as many turkeys as I did when you said that last time. Which, he adds when the man goes to interrupt, "is zero."

The man pinches the bridge of his nose.

Danny takes the time to scoop more pasta salad into discount pint containers. This batch did not sell well at all, probably because Danny insisted on adding Kewpie mayo instead of regular mayo and black olives instead of green ones, and the clientele of fuckin’ Blue Bell couldn’t see taste if it bit them on the ass—

He accidentally flings a spoonful of the pasta salad. Some of it smacks into the clear glass window separating the goods from the customers.

Mr. Turkey scowls at him like he did it on purpose.

I’m sure, he says through literal gritted teeth, and Danny fights the urge to laugh at the ridiculousness of getting angry about his own poor planning, that we can come to some sort of arrangement.

Arrangement? Danny repeats, to make sure he heard correctly.

Yes, Mr. Turkey says, sighing. He pulls out his wallet.

To be clear, Danny says, eyes locked on the — holy shit, one-hundred-dollar — bill that Mr. Turkey is pulling out as he steps closer to the partition, you’re trying to bribe me for information on turkey carcasses?

Meat attached, the man says dryly, and Danny swallows back a laugh. Assholes shouldn’t be allowed to be funny. That’s so annoying.

Okay. He accepts the bill, squints at it, grins at Mr. Turkey’s glare, and then shoves it into his pocket. He leans in, all conspiratorial-like, and whispers, There are no fucking turkeys, dude. It’s the day before Thanksgiving.

Mr. Turkey splutters and pulls back. He scowls, points a finger at Danny, and then storms away. Danny is very sure it would have been impressive if only Mr. Turkey weren’t pushing around a bright-yellow shopping cart.

Snickering to himself, Danny finishes up with the pasta salad and then texts his group chat, a thread aptly named The Goats Are In The Mountain!! RUN!! because they formed it right before they went to a pop-punk concert.

DRINKS ON ME, B*TCHES.

Danny goes to shove it into his pocket, but Punk Rock John has already texted back.

GET OVER IT!! MIDORI SOURS ARE NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN!!

Danny glares.

They’re GOOD i’m sorry i have TASER

** TASTE

He laughs at the string of emojis that Scooter sends, which depict a yellow version of himself drinking himself into the ER, and thumbs-downs the crying emoji that they placed between the hospital emoji and the headstone emoji.

Dude, too dark for a Wednesday morning.

Allison’s message, though practically true, immediately receives thumbs-downs from every member of their group.

A line of people start to form and Mrs. fucking West is tapping her foot impatiently, so Danny shoves his phone away and smiles apologetically to the woman who called the cops on him for playing with fireworks in the ninth grade.

Hi, Mrs. West. How’s Artie doing? Artie, her fucking menace of a son, as big as a linebacker and as dumb as a brick, has just moved back in with her. Danny can appreciate that that sucks, even to people who sucked first.

He’s well, Daniel, I’ll let him know you said hello, Mrs. West says.

Danny’s eyes widened. Oh. Did I? Then, remembering himself, he adds on, What can I get you for?

Mrs. West places her order, and then the next ten people place an order, and Danny tells no fewer than eight people that there are no secret, hidden, magical your-Thanksgiving-is-more-important-than-everyone-else’s turkeys hidden in the back. None respond quite as lucratively as the infamous Mr. Turkey, but Danny gets equally annoyed with all of them.

He is, if nothing else, an equal-opportunity deli worker.

The sun goes down outside the wide, smudgy windows. Danny watches it from between scoops of potato salad and slices of extra-thin chicken breast, thinking about how he got here before the sun came up and he’ll leave long after it’s gone because having nearly twenty-four-hour access to a fuckin’ deli counter is so important to the Blue Bell population.

The near-winter darkness of the Midwest creates a particular kind of ennui that Danny, even with twenty-two years of experience under his belt, has no chance of overcoming. There’s something about having never left the small town that he used to be so certain he would get away from, something that sits beneath his breastbone like a raised pudge of skin, a boil that blisters beneath his T-shirt every day, that he can’t stop feeling and no one else can see but if they did, they’d be disgusted.

It’s like he’s waltzing through the endless parade of three-a.m. thoughts while high, and the smoke and darkness are nearly interchangeable—

Danny stops and pulls out his phone again, repeating that thought in his head over and over again until he can get it recorded in his notes app. That would be really good for a song, he thinks. He should send it to Punk Rock John.

He finishes cleaning his station and then pops his head into the back, where the deli manager is going over payroll or something else that somehow means he gets paid two dollars more than Danny. He waves a hand to get Peter’s attention while grabbing his lunch pail, a woefully ugly thing that Harry decorated for him almost a decade ago now. At the time, he had been too uncomfortable to say anything, and now he has, unfortunately, bonded with the inanimate object. If he ever loses it, he’s going to walk into the ocean.

Hey, Pita Bread, he says, grinning at Peter’s rolling eyes. I’m taking my thirty.

Peter waves him away, already annoyed at Danny’s presence, and Danny salutes him before ducking out of the store, ignoring the customers asking for help and instead slipping out the automatic doors as soon as they open.

The parking lot is half empty, despite the store being full, and it’s a depressing little vignette that sums up Blue Bell itself, sitting on the cold bench that has the faded, graffitied face of real estate agents from a generation ago and staring out at the empty lot with the empty field behind it. In the warmer months, there’s at least wheat that pops up in those fields, painting the image of his lunch breaks with gold and yellow. But now, teetering toward December like they are, the whole world is just mushy grays and lackluster blues.

He eats his sandwich slowly, savoring each bite, as this is the only part of his day that doesn’t somehow belong to someone else, and he tries to match his chewing to the pace of the sun falling down beneath the horizon.

Danny is so busy watching it that he doesn’t notice when someone stops in front of him. It takes the person clearing their throat for Danny to look over.

He immediately chokes on his sandwich and watches through teary eyes as the man — Mr. Turkey, his oxygen-deprived brain supplies — watches on with horror. Danny has half a thought that it’s rude that Mr. Turkey is not even attempting the Heimlich, but then he manages to swallow, and though his pulse is weathered and harried in his neck, he’s survived.

I’m alive, he gasps out, and then fishes inside his lunch box for his Capri Sun.

Mr. Turkey’s expression settles and a contemplative twist of his brows makes Danny briefly curious. Are you an actual child? Mr. Turkey asks, nodding toward Danny’s juice pouch.

Danny laughs. "No, but I am a man of taste," he says, and then laughs again when he remembers texting exactly that to his group chat.

Jesus above, give me strength, the man mutters, and then situates himself next to Danny on the bench.

Now that he’s not towering above Danny like some harbinger of death, Mr. Turkey seems like a deflated version of the briber from before. Danny sips his juice, tucking one of his legs underneath his thighs as he twists slightly to blatantly stare at the other man, and waits to see what’s going to happen next.

Mr. Turkey, Danny realizes with a startled choke on his juice that makes the other man’s eyes widen again, is hot.

There’s a clench to his jaw that makes him look annoyed,