About an hour later, Marc and Jay got out of Marc's truck and met with a corner grocer who Marc had had dealings with before (but nothing to do with his "special" food). He explained (without going into too much detail) about the food he had been growing and preparing and was trying to get the grocer (Fred Wilson) to sell it in his store. At first, Fred wasn't interested, but Marc did his best to convince him, and Fred agreed to sell some of what Marc had to offer. If it did well, then he'd ask Marc for more. Thinking that was a fair deal, Marc went for it.
"Uh, and who's this?" Fred asked, nodding towards the boyish-looking guy hanging off of Marc's arm.
"Oh, this is Jay. My boyfriend," Marc said matter-of-factually.
Jay beamed when he heard Marc call him his boyfriend.
"Don't mind him," Marc said. "He's a little possessive, that's all."
"Oh," Fred said. Gays always rubbed him the wrong way, especially swishy twinks like this Jay fellow. He had no idea that Marc was gay. He had known the man for years. But Marc was a very private man, so maybe Fred shouldn't have been too surprised. Regardless, he was hoping that none of his customers saw the twink. This was a very conservative town. Seeing someone like him hanging around might cause Fred to lose a lot of business.
Little did he know that after people started eating Marc's "special" food, there would be quite a few more gays around in this town than Fred ever thought possible.