Five Boroughs 01 - Sutphin Boulevard (19 page)

The bigger question was why I’d been so positive that my expeditions up to Captain Tilly Park had been so clandestine, or why I’d never considered the possibility of my bratty little brother tailing me after being brushed off one too many times.

The idea of mini-Raymond getting an eyeful of some dude balls deep in my mouth or ass was enough to make me want to fling myself off the nearest bridge.

As I worked myself up to a stroke, Nunzio was still hacking, his eyes tearing up as he doubled over and held out the pipe for Raymond. My brother took it with a self-satisfied grin. It was halfway endearing now that I knew he’d been onto my secret for years.
Years
.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” I asked, finding my voice.

“’Cause you clearly didn’t want me to know. I guess you thought I was going to call you a fag and hate your guts?”

The answer to his question was not a quick find, so I sat on the edge of the bed. With my feet planted on the floor and the weight of the mattress under me, it was easier to gather myself enough to form a coherent response.

“I wasn’t going to come out to our parents, so I decided not to tell any of you. There were times when I wondered if you were onto me, but that was when we got older.”

“Shit.” Nunzio grabbed a beer from the nightstand and gulped it down. “Jesus, Ray. That messed me up.”

“Good for you.” Raymond put his pipe in the drawer of the nightstand. “You all are some pussies, all scared of being honest and getting judged. I don’t even know why you thought I’d give a damn about you being gay when I was still cool with Zio after he dropped the homo bomb. What, you thought I’d tell Pops?”

“I don’t know what I thought, but I didn’t want you to find out.” I lay backward on the bed. “Don’t take it personally, okay? It’s no one’s business who I like to sleep with, and I didn’t want to discuss it.”

“I can relate to that,” Nunzio chimed in, voice still strained from the toke gone wrong. “I did that ceremonial rite of passage coming out to the parents bit, and it was the worst idea I ever had beyond shaving my nuts with soap and water.”

Raymond shook his head. “No one needed to know that shit, man.”

“Look, I’m just saying, it don’t always go right.” Nunzio put a hand on my forehead for no reason that I could discern besides wanting to touch me. His fingers slid into my hair and scratched along my scalp. “He didn’t even tell me for a while, and I’m his best friend, and he already knew I was pretty fruity based solely on my appreciation for Nick Carter.”

“You even had those fucking trading cards,” I said, smiling at the memory. “You were a lame kid.”

“Shut the hell up.” Nunzio gave my hair a tug. “Anyway, don’t get mad, Ray. He’s just a secretive asshole. Like how he’s always trying to front and act like he’s not trying to get with this guy we work with.”

I shoved his hand away. “Okay, time to change the subject.”

“What dude?” Raymond asked, looking between us with obvious curiosity. “Yo, I always wondered—do you take it up the ass?”

“Wow.”

Nunzio cracked up. His shoulders shook with the force of his laughter.

“This conversation is officially over,” I said, pushing myself up. “I don’t even want to know why the hell you’re wondering about what happens to my ass.”

“It’s a normal thing to wonder,” Raymond said defensively. “Like, how do you even fuck? I mean I know how you do it—it’s my lucky day whenever a girl wants to do anal, but—”

I interrupted him with a loud groan and hunched forward, covering my face with my hands. “Can you just go check and see if dinner is almost ready?”

“You really ain’t appreciating my effort to be supportive.”

“And you fail to understand that your effort to be supportive is disturbing.” I shoved him off the edge of the bed. “Vete. She’s been roasting that fucking pernil for, like, twenty hours, and the turkey is done.”

Raymond managed to look indignant while red-eyed and squinting after marinating himself in THC. “You better keep your hands off my weed if you’re sending me off to fetch dinner like a bitch.”

“Why does everything have to be like a bitch? You sound like my students.”

“Just don’t be smoking my shit.”

I refused to look at him and didn’t drop my hands until I heard his footsteps tromping downstairs. He was so damn loud that I heard him halt in the archway to the living room and inquire about the game instead of going to the kitchen. He needed some Adderall like my uncle needed the stick removed from his ass.

I groaned again and looked at Nunzio. “Let’s pretend we’re twelve and go hide in my room. I need to recover from that plot twist.”

“Fine by me.”

We took the narrow staircase to the attic. Compared to Raymond’s cluttered, narrow room, it was a studio apartment.

Nunzio stepped inside, and I flipped the deadbolt on the door.

“Damn, I haven’t been up here for a long-ass time.”

“You haven’t visited the house in general since I moved back.”

“Because you always come running to me.”

Nunzio stood by one of the circular windows and peered out at the large snowflakes that had begun to drift around in the wind. A tiny smile appeared on his face, and I had to force myself to look away when the fondness in my chest swelled to a suspicious portion.

“Want a drink?”

“Definitely. Having your aunt and cousin grill me about my love life for two hours was pretty stressful.”

Nunzio turned away from the window and plopped down on the bed. He reached over to my nightstand and poked at a messy stack of books that I’d discarded there months ago. There had been a time when I’d refused to unpack fully while I fibbed to myself about only returning to the house for a month or two to make sure everything was in order. But a month or two had turned into a year, so it was time for me to just rearrange my bookcase and quit living in a fantasy world.

“It seems like everyone in my family is obsessed with your love life.” I grabbed a sleeve of plastic cups from the top of my dresser, a half-full bottle of rum, and joined Nunzio on the bed. “I had my dad and uncle practically accusing me of fucking you.”

“They’re pretty perceptive about gay sex for some drunk old guys. They never showed this much interest in your love life before.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, measuring out the amber liquid like it was life blood. “Just because Raymond is cool with it doesn’t mean they will be, and I’m not planning to have the conversation tonight.”

I handed Nunzio one of the cups. We toasted, and I muttered a salud. I’d intended to nurse it, but a baby sip turned into a continuous swallow. Nunzio kept his head tilted back, ever competitive, but failed out before me and set his cup to the side.

“What did Clive think about you being in the closet with your folks?”

The empty cup crinkled in my hand when I started to refill it. “He thought I was a coward and a big baby, and made sure to tell me in detail about his own dramatic coming-out adventure and the harrowing tale of striving for acceptance.”

“How did you deal with that guy for two years? He talked so much bullshit I was tempted to wipe his mouth anytime I was forced to be around him.”

I turned sideways, not hiding my wry smile. “He thought the same thing about you.”

“Me?” Nunzio stared at me, disbelieving. “That guy was saying shit about me and you never told me nothing?”

“Yeah, because you would have started something.”

“Oh, because I’m that immature?”

“Yup.” This time, I nursed the drink. “He thought you were this loud, ghetto guido, and tried too hard to prove yourself.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Clive just liked to make a lot of assumptions because he was insecure. I told him you came from the same neighborhood as me, and you didn’t have to prove anything to anybody. After that, he quit criticizing you in my presence, but I’m pretty sure he just found it annoying that you knew my whole family when he never got to meet anyone.” I tipped my head back, regarding him. “He also claimed you would brag about it to him every chance you got.”

There was not even the thinnest veneer of shame when Nunzio replied. “Yeah, just like he made sure to brag about how hard he tapped your ass every chance
he
got.”

“What the hell? Did you two sit around trying to one-up each other about me?”

“Pretty much.”

I hadn’t spared Clive a thought in the past several months. A relationship that had once seemed so steadfast and imperative had ended with an unchecked breakup that I hadn’t even mourned. A lot had happened since then, but maybe that was just an excuse and I was as capricious with my lovers as I always accused Nunzio of being with his.

Nunzio drained his cup, and I took another chaste sip from my own. The addition of more rum to my bloodstream was starting to make me woozy.

“What was the point of you trying to make Clive jealous?”

“Why the hell was he trying to get
me
jealous?”

I licked the traces of rum from my mouth. “Because he was intimidated by you.”

Nunzio brightened. “Yeah?”

“Yes. He swore you wanted to fuck me, and that’s why you convinced me to go out and drink with you so much. But I don’t think any normal person would be cool with the number of times we got wasted and passed out in your apartment. What isn’t normal is the two of you sitting around bullshitting each other like immature-ass kids.”

“Hey, he started it. Always telling me how hard he made you come, and wondering why you never gave me the time of day. He loved flaunting that he had you and I would never get you.”

There was no use in feeling mortified about something that had happened months ago, but it still hit me like a truck.

“Come again?”

“Oh, forget it. It don’t matter.”

“Uh-huh.”

I wasn’t sold on the idea of it not mattering, but I let the conversation come to a full stop and drained my second cup.

I scooted back to lean against the wall but followed my body’s command and lay down instead. I looked out the window, tracing the swirls of snowflakes and wondered whether it would stick. The little kid in me wanted to see snow on the ground, but the adult who trudged from Queens to Brooklyn every morning wasn’t thrilled about an added complication to that commute.

With my nerves pacified by over-the-liquor-counter sedatives, the combination of snow, the smell of Thanksgiving dinner, and the muffled cacophony of salsa, football, and loud voices, I found a grain of comfort and eased into the lull.

I was vaguely aware of Nunzio rummaging around beside the bed, and was only a little caught off guard when he exclaimed, “Holy shit, you have an arsenal of sex toys in here.”

My head lolled to the side. Nunzio was pawing through my nightstand. He looked half-scandalized, half-intrigued, and I didn’t even have to ask what he was seeing. The drawer was filled with enough condoms, lube, and sex toys to keep the entire staff of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch entertained. A couple of vibrators, cock rings, three different Fleshlights….

Nunzio lifted a curved, black prostate massager. “You use all of this stuff on yourself?”

“Yeah, why the hell else would I have it?”

“Obviously but—shit man, I never knew your alone time was this exciting. I just get busy with some lotion and a tight grip.”

“And when exactly would that come up in conversation?” I asked, grinning at Nunzio’s shocked expression. With his tan gone and his complexion back to its typical sandy hue, the rosy flush stealing over Nunzio’s skin was easy to notice. He wet his lips and tore his gaze away from the device to look up at me.

“You don’t want to know what I’m imagining right now.”

“Try me.”

Nunzio rose from his kneeling position and reached down to adjust the crotch of his pants. I knew he was hard. He threw off pheromones like a beast. His lust was so intense I could practically smell it, and my own dick stiffened in response.

“I want to watch.”

I slid down on the mattress until my hips and the small of my back were mostly flat against it. Nunzio’s gaze darted down to my stomach when my shirt skewed up, and then slid down to my dick.

“What do you want to watch?”

“I wanna watch you fuck yourself.” Nunzio held up the prostate massager, rapt expression tipping toward the kind of filthy leer that made me pant. “And then I want to see you fuck one of those Fleshlights.”

“Now? Here?”

“Where and when else?”

I swallowed. “You have to be insane. My whole family is downstairs.”

“You have a dead bolt on your door.”

“Oh, that’s not suspicious at all.”

The mattress sank beneath Nunzio’s weight when he knelt at the edge of it. “Don’t hold out on me, Mikey. I need to see.”

“Need?” The question came out breathless when Nunzio slid the rounded tip of the massager along my erection. The pressure wasn’t enough, but I still canted my hips up with a hint of desperation. “You don’t need it.”

“I do. For when I’m having my own alone time.” Nunzio dragged the massager up, digging into my torso and then the hollow of my throat. “Come on. I bet you put on a show for Clive.”

“Nope.”

He inched the toy up to my chin, but I turned my head before he could touch it to my mouth.

“Good old Clive didn’t want to watch his baby,” Nunzio drawled, always having hated when Clive called me that, “fuck himself like a slut?”

“He wondered why I needed all of that.” I was overly conscious of how fast I was breathing and how difficult it was to keep my hand away from my crotch. “He was insecure.”

“I’m not.” Nunzio dragged my lower lip down with the tip of the vibrator. “Suck it.”

“No.”

“Please.” His voice was velvet and sex, somehow commanding and pleading at once. “I love to watch those lips work a dick.”

I groaned and reached down to grab myself through my jeans, losing all self-control and opening my mouth so he could plunder it with the vibrator. I didn’t know what he got out of it, how he could possibly be so turned on by watching me blow the curved silicone until it became slick with my saliva, but Nunzio’s eyes were glued to the spectacle and dilated until the blue was just a thin ring around his pupil.