Five Boroughs 01 - Sutphin Boulevard (25 page)

“I thought so too.” I sniffed and dropped my arm to my side. “But it’s like… When you’re poor and you’re struggling, all you have is family. Even if your family isn’t the best, that’s who you have. I know you guys were just as poor, but your folks were always coldhearted. But mine?” I shook my head. “Even if we were dysfunctional and a fucking mess, deep down I always considered us a family. And my mom tried so hard to make it that way. She busted her ass working two jobs, sometimes three, just so we could live in a real house, but she died just as soon as she could cut back enough to enjoy it. Just as soon as she… she started fixing up the backyard and all that.”

So strange how that detail almost broke me. My chest was constricted and again my eyes throbbed with tears that I refused to let loose.

“And even if my father could be a monster when he drank, even if he didn’t help out, I never fucking hated him. I just wanted him to be better. And I know that doesn’t make sense to anyone else because he hit me and I used to be scared of him, and he made me fucking miserable, but he was still my father. He was just broken and everyone always told him he was broken, so he just accepted he was no good and that was his life. I couldn’t stand him because of that…. And I let him know. I made it crystal clear. But it frustrated me that he thought so low of himself, and I still wanted to help him. But I didn’t.”

My words jumbled together. I wasn’t positive that my point was coming across clear, or if I sounded like a brainwashed battered child abuse victim, but that didn’t change the things I’d always felt and never said.

“I know it sounds fucked-up. I tried to explain to Clive once, but he didn’t get it.”

“No, I get it,” Nunzio said, voice low. “And I get that you’re hurt because you never had a chance to tell him.”

“Yeah.” I savaged my lower lip to keep it from trembling. There was nothing I hated more than crying, but with Nunzio so close by, my body seemed to think it was safe to open the tear ducts. Like his presence made it safe to break down. “God, I hate this. Change the fucking subject.”

“Are you sure?”

I wiped my face with more vigor. He stopped smoothing back my hair, and I snuck a glance at him from my peripheral vision. Like Raymond, Nunzio’s face was drawn with weariness.

“I wanted to ask you about something else,” he said.

“What?”

“About us. Our situation.”

Four words and I wanted to skitter off and hide under the bed. “What about it?”

“Why are you avoiding me?”

“I’m not.”

“You haven’t returned a call or message in weeks.”

The conversation would have been easier with a cigarette burning between my lips. The constant inhale-exhale would calm my nerves and give me something to do with my increasingly nervous hands.

“I’ve just wanted to be alone. It’s not just you.”

A quiet laugh followed a beat of silence. “Since when am I lumped in with the masses?”

He lay down next to me, and my heart sped up. It was incredible how my body reacted to him now. I wanted to pull him close every time his hand brushed mine, and that was part of the problem. Too much was changing too fast with things that had once been constant in my life.

“I’m sorry.”

I looked at him. “For what?”

“For me. For the way I acted.”

The words didn’t bring clarity, so I frowned.

“You know what I mean,” he said. “With me pressuring you and being so jealous and angry. It was stupid, and I’m sorry if I made things awkward between us. I’m scared I messed everything up, and it won’t ever go back to normal. No matter how much I want you, nothing is worth losing you as my friend.”

I pushed myself up on my elbows and stared down at him, baffled. “You’re not losing me over anything. Especially that.”

“You sure?” Nunzio scoured my face, inches from his own. “I know your father passed right after we got into it about everything, but… I was afraid maybe you thought you couldn’t talk to me. Like I’d make you feel worse.”

“I didn’t want things to get complicated. It was just supposed to be fucking.” When Nunzio said nothing, I sat up fully. “Was it ever just fucking, Nunzio?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think. Everything changed after that night with David.”

“Mikey….” The corner of Nunzio’s mouth turned up in a small smile. “I was into you way before July. Why do you think I jumped at the chance to be all up on you as soon as your boyfriend was out of the picture? I couldn’t keep my hands off you that night. I didn’t give two shits about David. Even he noticed. He called me on it later.”

I stared down at him. His usual confidence was replaced by guardedness.

“I just thought you were all over me because you were drunk and I was single.”

“Yeah, that was part of it. I never would have had the balls to put my hands on you if I was sober. I was too scared of freaking you out. But that night… you were so hot. And the way you kept looking at me gave me some hope that I had a shot.” Nunzio huffed out a breath. “But I should have known better. I always knew that if I got a taste, there would be no going back, and I was right.”

His voice pitched lower with every word, but I couldn’t tell if he was bashful or regretful about everything that had happened.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” he said.

“It does matter.”

“Why? Who gives a damn?”

“I give a damn! Why didn’t you tell me you felt that way?” I thought back to all the times we’d screwed around in front of each other, all the times I’d brought a boyfriend along when we were supposed to hang out alone, and wondered if it had bothered him. If he’d been jealous the whole time and done such a good job at masking it that I had never noticed. Never even suspected. “I wouldn’t have been so—”

“Been so what?” The hushed confessional quality faded, and Nunzio was his brash, outspoken self again. “Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not saying that I’ve been keeping a diary about my secret gay love since we were little kids. I’m not saying I went to sleep weeping all the nights that you went to bed with someone else. I’m saying I wanted you. Ever since the summer before twelfth grade when you came back from Puerto Rico looking like a man… I couldn’t help but enjoy the view, and you made quite a few appearances in my jack-off fantasies.”

“Are you serious?”

He had never acted any differently toward me. The closest he’d come to showing attraction in high school had been excessive tackling while playing football in PE.

“You remember that party we went to for graduation?”

I nodded. “That kid Kenny threw it at his grandmother’s house by Baisely Park because she was out of town.”

“Yeah. It was the first time we got completely shit-faced because people finally came through with something other than beer and wine coolers. By the end of the night I was wasted, and you’d gone off with Deante and Anthony.” Nunzio tilted back his head, his hair spreading across the white sheet in dark whorls. “I went to look for you later and walked in on them balling you. Taking turns.”

My mouth went dry. “You watched?”

“Yeah.”

“The whole time?”

“Long enough to realize what a slut you turn into when you want dick. Before that, we’d always talked about it, and I saw you making out with guys sometimes, but I’d never seen you beg to be pounded like that. I’d never heard your voice when you moaned or saw your face when you came. I started wondering if you’d ever be that way with me. I thought about it a lot.”

The idea of Nunzio watching me get railed by two guys, and the mental image of him possibly jerking off while watching, had me semihard. I dropped my hands into my lap, hoping to hide it, and looked away from his predatory stare.

“Did I live up to your expectations?” It wasn’t the question I’d meant to ask, but it came out anyway.

“Exceeded them.”

A slice of heat went through me, warring with the pitiful darkness that wanted to keep me anchored to the ground. I wanted to grasp on to that flame, but it flickered and blew out.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you didn’t see me that way. I could tell. And after college you almost always had a man. And it was always some guy who was everything I wasn’t and nothing I’d ever want to be.”

“Like Clive?”

A measured silence went by, but he didn’t drop his eyes. It occurred to me that I’d said the wrong thing, or asked the wrong question, too late. A muscle in his cheek ticked, and he shrugged.

“Yeah. And he rubbed it in my face every chance he got, because he knew I wanted you. He sniffed me out right away.”

“But I never noticed anything.”

“Because you were so used to the way I acted that you thought it was normal. And it’s not like I was pining every night, but he saw the way I would look at you sometimes. He noticed how I got uptight when he slobbered on you and called you baby, and all of that corny shit. And he knew I hated the idea of you ever moving in with him. That was what did it—the day that conversation came up.” Nunzio snorted softly. “You’d gone to the store and left me alone with his stupid ass, and he brought it up. I must have looked like someone had just ripped off my nuts, and from then on he had my number.”

“That shit was never going to happen.”

“True. But you were still serious with him. I’d been jealous in the past because of other guys, but it was always a sex thing. They could touch you, and I couldn’t. With Clive…. For a while it seemed permanent. It was just different.”

Staying quiet was better than saying the wrong thing again, so I didn’t reply. I could almost hear the building tension in his shoulders, so I squeezed his hand. It was supposed to be a brief touch, but I brought it to my mouth. I kissed the backside of his palm and the corner of his wrist. I felt his pulse against my lips. The rolling wave of lust licked at me again.

“I didn’t tell you that so you could give me a pity fuck.”

“It’s not—” I cleared my throat. “It’s not pity.”

Nunzio pushed himself up on his elbows. “Then tell me what it is.”

We were so close. Close enough for me to feel the heat of his body and inhale his scent, and for it to be torturous to not close the space between us and lick into his mouth. To push him back on the bed and wipe that uncertain look from his gorgeous face.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s real and what’s me reacting in the moment like I always do, so I can’t explain.”

“Try.”

“Nunzio, I don’t know.” I jerked my eyes away from his. “I can tell you that it would be so easy to kiss you right now, to beg you to make me feel anything other than what I’ve been feeling for the past few weeks. But that would be me using you, not me figuring out what the hell I’ve been feeling since we started this. And I don’t know what I’m feeling. I don’t know if it’s real or if I’m infatuated with the sex or if I just like the idea of you wanting me.”

“But what if I said I’d rather have you like that than not at all?”

I released an explosive sigh. “I can’t do that to you, niño.”

Nunzio dropped back on the bed. “I should have kept my fucking mouth shut.”

I shoved his knee. “No. It can’t be like that with us. You know it. We can’t do that casual thing.”

“We could try.” Nunzio’s intense gaze found mine again. “Maybe you don’t want me here—” He brushed his fingers over my heart. “But I know when we’re having sex, when I’m in you deep, you don’t want anyone else. It’s just you and me, and it’s fucking perfect, and you’re mine. That could be enough for me.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

I knew it wasn’t true, and I wasn’t going to agree to anything with every thought stained by eight shades of depression. Between work, my father, and all of the drinking, I had no confidence in any decisions I’d make now, or even the ones I’d been making in the past few months. Making a wrong move and losing Nunzio was far more terrifying than not getting to taste him anytime I wanted.

Nunzio didn’t respond, and we sat in silence.

It would have been easy to stretch out next to him, to burrow into his side and bury my face in the crook of his neck. To let him wrap his arms around me and fall asleep that way, warm and enveloped in the arms of someone who wanted me. Maybe loved me.

I wanted that. I wanted him. But I wasn’t going to keep using him for comfort when he knew exactly what he wanted and my own reasoning was lost in a dreary abyss of confusion, self-loathing, and cynicism.

Nunzio rolled off the bed and stood. “Call me if you need me.”

I knew I should speak, but he left the room before any words came to mind.

Regents Week

I
WENT
back to work during the week of the state Regents examinations. With no classroom instruction and students only in the building for a couple of hours for testing, I didn’t have much to do. I wasn’t on the schedule to proctor all week and my room wasn’t being used, so that gave me plenty of time to throw myself back into planning.

Not that I actually planned.

After pulling down the shade over my door, I spent an hour reconfiguring the wreck of my classroom before sprawling at my desk with the newspaper. I didn’t read it, though. I just drew random things in the margin and thought a lot about going home.

No one came looking for me for the entire morning, and not falling asleep was a constant struggle. I had brief bursts of activity where I would flip through my curriculum binder and puzzle out the mess the substitute had made of my Latin America unit, but it didn’t last. It couldn’t. Not when I kept losing focus and staring into space.

I missed being home where I could bask in lethargy without shame.

“Knock, knock.”

I looked up. David’s smiling blondness nearly blinded me.

“Hi.”

David stepped into the classroom and shut the door behind him. He looked around with a pained expression. I bet it tore his perfectionist soul apart to see so many things out of order. I’d fixed the seating quads, but the room was still a disaster.

A mass of bottles had accrued on the top of bookshelves, and everything on my desk and at the computer station was in disarray. It wouldn’t have taken more than an hour or two to get the place in shape, but I was tired just from looking at it.