Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) (20 page)

It must be around one or two A.M. when he
says to me, “Blaze, I think I should go.”

My stomach clenches. My hand tightens
around his fingers. “No. Please don’t.” I pull him toward
me.

He kisses me
, and then again.

Soon
, his hand’s inside me once more.
Oh, yes
.

He takes me to climax. But
this time, when I rub him back,
he doesn’t say no.

I push him over the edge.

And there’s something piercingly poetic
about the way he shudders under my hand, his lips quivering under
mine, while his arm holds me to him like a glass of water to a man
in the desert.

I wake up to a kiss, soft and yearning.

With my eyes still closed, I wrap my arms
around his neck.

“
Now I really do need to go.”

I open my eyes but: “It’s so
dark.”

“
It’s five-thirty.”

“
Wow. I can’t remember the last time I got
up this early.”

“
I need to work. Got three moves today.
That’s twelve hundred bucks. Then we need to train again later—it’s
off-season but we can’t let our fitness slip. And...well, I’d also
like to see you. If...you have time? Tonight?”

I can’t stop the smile forming on my
face.
“Yes, I’d like to
see you tonight. But don’t think of putting me anywhere near that
gym. Every muscle in my body aches.”

He runs a gentle hand across my cheek,
doesn’t speak.

There’s only one thing I’d like to do with
Declan.
One
. And a
little voice in my head tells me that I shouldn’t be doing that so
early. That relationships are more than that. That they should be
slow, and planned.
You shouldn’t jump into them so quickly!
my mom had once said to me.

That same v
oice also tells me that Mamah is alone. That she
had a perfectly good chance to be with a man who loved her, right
here, and who could provide for her.
It’s different when you get older,
Błażej
, she also
said.

Every cell inside me fights
th
ese voices. As if
there is something fundamentally wrong with their logic. As if
their logic is all that is wrong with the world and every
sociological and ideological problem within it. Because
all I want is you,
Declan. You, now, in this bed.

“
My place again?” I say.

He grins, and his cheeks go rosy. He moves
down to kiss me. It lights my lungs up. Sultry, hot air. “Mmmmmm,”
I moan. I wrest myself away from him and lie on my hand, facing the
other direction. If I look at him any longer, he won’t be moving
anything today, and I’ll miss my meeting at eleven. “I think you’d
better go now or else I’ll hold you here all day.”

When his warm hand rubs down my
tatted arm, my eyes close as I
wait for the inevitable touch of his lips to my skin.

That touch
arrives, soft and hot. And down below, it moistens
me up like a crashing wave. I inhale deeply, exhale
slowly.

When he
does leave, I take a shower. A cold one. An
extremely cold one. And when that’s done, I’m
still
thinking of him. I’m thinking of nothing else,
actually.

And that’s bad.

Because life isn’t only about a
boy.

Clubs feel different in the day. They’re
colder. And the smoke in them is stale. In the day, you see
rips and tears on the
faux-leather couches. Couches which, under black light, look like
nothing less than god’s gift to his people.

In the day, y
ou see stains. Tables have scratches, and gum
peeks out from underneath their edges.

Sacrament
is like the Brooklyn Underground’s
equivalent of the huge and glorious
Club Pacha
in the city. Massive and thrumming. An underworld
of decadence. There’s only one dance floor. Leather couches along
the walls. Stairs on either side leading up to a mezzanine with
lots of other, more comfy, couches. Couches made for lying down.
Perfect for two. At night, blue lights and red flames on the walls
make it look like the bee’s knees of overindulgence. Now, it just
looks like the gutted warehouse that it once was.

And
essentially still is.

The meeting was changed from Randy’s DJ
gear store to
Sacrament
.
“You’ll see when you get here,” Xavier told me.

Randy greets me with open arms
inside
the club.
“Heaven-Leigh!” He hugs me warmly.

Xavier
sits at a couch a few feet away, smoking. Dressed in a
cream designer suit. He gets up and gives me a hug as well, not as
warm, purely for form’s sake. “Blaze.”

He holds me back by arm’s length,
eyes me down with a Mr. Hyde
smirk. A flashback hits me: Our backs against a wall in Savannah’s
apartment as Xavier and I sat with our toes pointing up at the
ceiling. She and Patryk on the couch, her pants to her knees while
she giggled and he kissed her
there
.
I was so zoned out that all I registered was smoke flowing from
Xavier’s mouth next to me like a dragon. And then, as if it were
only an instant later, that same mouth of his licking me.
There
.

I knew little about boys in those days.
And there’s more history to me and Xavier besides drugs.
Mountains of
it.
I’ve known him since
I was five and he was eight. One thing led to another. I can’t
blame that I was totally zonked out when it happened, because I
know I played along with the obvious flirting even when I wasn’t. I
believed I felt something for him back then. I believed a lot of
different things back then.
That drugs fuck with your mind
wasn’t one of them. So I widened for him,
and pushed him into me with my hands, deeper...

Urgh.

“
Xavier.” I keep my response as cold as
possible.

“
Keeping well?”

“
Fine.”

Randy, smiling like he just won a game of
high-stakes poker, says,
“Heaven-Leigh—”

“
Blaze,” I say. “Heaven-Leigh’s my stage
name.”

“
No problem. Blaze. Xavier will be joining
us for our meeting. Is that OK with you? It’s only fair, seeing as
he’s the one who discovered you.”

Oh, so
that’s
his pitch. My skin cools. Xavier smiles wickedly. “Is he
with the label?”

“
Oh, Blaze, we’re not in label discussions
right now. We’re...just seeing where things might go with
you.”

You mean, how
he can best use me
to make a profit?

My skin bristles...but I hold my cool.
Best to hear them out. I’m still at the stage where I can pull
out.
That’s
also what I said when I smoked my first joint
.

“
So, Xavier here tells me
yooze
used to be good friends at one
stage.”

“
At one stage.” I burn Xavier down with a
stare, try and reach the Jekyll inside him. Because I’m not in the
mood for his shit right now. He’s right that I need a
break—desperately, probably—but he’s wrong if he thinks I owe him
anything because of it. “But then we had a fallout. Call it
irreconcilable
differences.
Isn’t that
right, Xavier?”

His smirk softens a little. His amber
eyes—
Savva’s
eyes
—rage with an
emotion I don’t quite place. I wish it was regret, but I know it
isn’t. Sometimes I think I’m the only one who regrets her
death.

Maybe Patryk does. Maybe. But regret and
“feeling sorry for something” are far from the same thing. I know
Patryk’s sorry for it, but
regret
?

Xavier
looks up at Randy. “It’s true, Randy. We had a fallout.”
Then he turns to me, and, as a firm warning, “But that’s all in
the
past,
isn’t it,
Blaze?”

Sensing the tension, Randy says, “Blaze,
we have some bubbly here.” He turns to show me a table behind him.
Four glasses set up, and a bottle of
Krug
. “Not the most expensive. But not the cheapest, either.
Consider it a thank you from me to you.”

OK, he’s trying to butter me up. I can
deal with
that. Let’s
just see where it goes.

We sit. “Who’s the fourth glass for?” I
ask.

As if on cue, a door opens up in the back.
The man who comes out is tall and strongly built. He has a mane of
golden hair that looks like an eighties shampoo commercial.
His
light brown eyes
match his disco shirt.

And he’s tall.
Really
tall. “Randy, honey. Let’s go in here.”

Randy looks at Xavier and raises an
eyebrow. “Well, Blaze. It seems Gavin’s more excited to meet you
than I expected.”

We get up, bubbly in hand. Xavier grabs
the fourth
flute. When
we enter the door that Gavin the Golden Haired is holding open for
us, I realize there’s more to
Sacrament
than meets the eye.

Much more.

Like, cages and chains more.

And a whole new world beneath the one
that’s apparent. A world I fought so hard to leave. And which I’m
slowly getting roped back into again...

“
It’s not a
secret
club, Blaze,” says Gavin the Golden Haired—owner of
Sacrament
,
including its “not secret club” that we’re currently sitting in. He
lights up a smoke on a cigarette holder, crosses his leg and
exhales slowly. With one hand tucked under his elbow, close to his
chest, he says, “It’s a
liberal
section to the club, let us say.” He flourishes a hand to
the cages, the red ambient lights, the wall-chains. “And it’s on
the right side of the law. There’s fire exits and all that jazz.
It’s just...not everyone’s cup of herbal tea, shall we say. It
pulls in a special clientele. High-rollers. Men and woman who like
things the way they used to be. You know, before the Giuliani
apocalypse. That motherfucker really screwed things up for those of
us who played it straight. Then again”—he takes a drag,
exhales—“Gatien’s tax evasion didn’t help much. But, anyway, I’m
probably boring you with this shit. People my age tend to reminisce
about the nineties a lot. Not so, Randy?”

Randy smiles wistfully.
“Those were the good ol’ days.” In his Sri
Lankan-Brooklyn mix, he says
Those
like
Doze
.

Gavin smiles, eyes glinting.
“Actually, if I’m honest with
you, I remember more the
Club 57
days. Orgies with Madonna and Cyndi Lauper and Fab Five
Freddy. Hoh! Those were the days. This was before AIDS and that
shit of course. How I didn’t catch it is beyond me. Anyway, good
ol’ days. But that’s because I’m the oldest one at this table. But
amongst us girls, no one’s gonna let that slip, now are
you?”

Randy and Xavier shake their heads.

I say nothing.

After a bone-cracking moment of silence,
Gavin leans forward and steeples his fingers. The cigarette dangles
from them like someone leaning off the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge.
“Blaze, here’s the simplicity of it. You have talent. But you need
friends. Talent will get you nowhere. The people at this table
will.” I swallow. “Now, it’s no secret that a residency at an
establishment like mine will have you voted up into
DJ
Mag
’s
Top 100
almost by default. And then
you’ll go off and make lots of money and chat with Paul van Dyk
about how bad drugs are for your body.” This elicits a cackle of
laughter from Gavin and Xavier.

I don’t laugh.

Gavin
notices and goes quickly serious. “But that’s also if you
DJ out
there
.” He
points at the door we walked in through. “To get out there, you
have to go through here. My rules. It’s just the way I like to do
it. It builds trust. And, to get out there, my regulars here have
to vote you out—or, vote you
in
,
shall we say. You get voted in when you’re good. I have very
influential people who come in here for a good time.” He looks at
Randy. “It’s a pity old Giuliani never came here!” And another set
of cackles from him and Xavier.

I can’t help but notice that, although he
does laugh, Randy’s heart’s really not into any of the
“jokes.”

“
So, what I can offer you is the
following.” He raises an index finger. “
One
gig. Four hours. Two Saturdays from now. You’ll be
the main DJ. Randy played me a recording of your set at
House
Market
.” He leans back,
exhales and fans himself. “Ooh, girl.
Hot
. But my crowd’s a little different. We need
something a little more”—he waves his hand in the
air—“
sensual
. Think:
Paul Emmanuel’s remix of
Give it to me Right
. Or Gus Gus’s
David
.
To
be Real
, by Lady
Cop.
Love
for Love
—Robin S. Maybe
the greatest House song every made. You know the tunes?”