Shattered Glass (15 page)

“You hurt my Rabbit, and they’ll write horror films on what I’ll do to you.” The way he said it was so casual, I could almost feel my skin crawling away.

“And what if he hurts me?”

“Chance you take with boys like us, ain’t it?” He waved a few fingers at me, “Buh bye now,” before putting his headphones on and dancing his way back from where he came.

I headed for the entrance. Luis hadn’t moved. His gaze was fixed on the disco ball above his head until I approached. “Get it?” he asked.

“Got an address.” I held up the napkin and had to restrain myself from running out the door to vomit. I needed those terrible images of Peter with sick old men out of my head.

Three hours later, the crime scene techs had cleared out of the stepbrother’s house. We had two more victims, both adult women, safely being handled by victim services. But best of all was the brand new evidence on Alvarado, his stepbrother, birth father and two cousins. And I had the added bonus of knowing Peter had been partially vindicated before I actually dated him.

I went home and showered until my skin felt relatively clean.

It took a lot of scrubbing—until my skin was as pink as Peter’s.

In a rare physical manifestation of human compassion, I ended up vomiting into the toilet until every wretch ended up dry.

My job sucked sometimes.

I dreamed of Peter in bursts. Things that made me wake up in a sweat and, at least once, near tears. I didn’t cry. Ever. Not because I found it particularly unmanly or weak, but because, despite my naiveté with Peter, I was jaded as hell. With a little introspection I could have figured out that what I felt for Peter

was compassion, but that would have required delving into the emotional shithole that was my black soul.

After the third heart-pounding awakening, I gave up the quest for sleep at about 2:00 a.m. Padding downstairs in my boxers, I heated milk in the kitchen and added bourbon to it, then plopped on the sofa. The television illuminated the room in weird hues as I flipped through channels. I wasn’t even watching the thing. I kept picturing those animals touching Peter, hurting him, transforming those bright blue eyes into the lifeless expression that glazed over them every so often.

Across the room my cell phone lay at ease on the table. I eyed it for about two minutes before I went over, picked it up and tapped it against my thigh. I returned to the couch, shivering at least partly from the air conditioner. Lack of sleep had the same effect. Plus, I was terrified of this sudden need to protect this probably beyond-broken boy. Man. At twenty he was definitely a man.

And something else eye opening, I didn’t
want
a boy. To deny being gay, at this point, was pointless. That battle was done. At least for now. What that meant, I didn’t know. But I knew what I wanted; and what I didn’t. I didn’t want to be one of those men who touched him and thought about taking his innocence away. I wanted fully grown-up Peter; and he was no boy. Thank God.

I dialed and lifted the phone to my ear, stretching out on the sofa and throwing an arm over my eyes, blocking out the TV

light.

Six rings later, Peter answered. “Do you know what time it is?” His voice was sexily sleepy.

I closed my eyes and breathed, just taking his voice for a minute. “Tell me something good, Peter.” Silence, and then I heard a sigh, coupled with a yawn. I imagined him curled up in bed, hair poking out all over, eyes closed with those long copper lashes resting against his cheeks.

“Cai finished painting our living room yesterday with a mural depicting Darryl as president.” That was a disquieting and frightening image even without including Cai.

I didn’t mean tell me about your boyfriend
. Lifting the phone from my ear, I glared at it silently. “Tell me something
not
about your boyfriend,” I growled, phone at my cheek again.

Peter laughed, a throaty sound that had all the dregs of sleep in it. I could hear, from the noises he made, that he was stretching while he yawned again. My imagination did wicked things with that information. “Cai’s my brother, Detective.” The way he said ‘detective’ made my boxers tent.

Mentally I was doing the prize fighter just-won dance. Until I realized he hadn’t said anything about Darryl not being his boyfriend. “Darryl was interesting. I could take him in a fight.” “Huh uh.”

“He weighs like fifty pounds less than I do.” “Darryl ’s scrappy and goes straight for the balls, Detective.” I smiled. “I like that much better than Alex or idiot.” “I need to get back to sleep. I have to be at the diner early.” “You work there too much.”

“It’s just till it sells.”

“Then what?”

“Detective, can we not have this conversation at three a.m.?” “One last question?” I took the silence as acquiescence.

“Why vouch for Prisc?”

“Whatever you think you know about him, you don’t know everything. To you, he’s just a criminal. But to me he’s the guy that drove me and Cai to school every morning and picked me up every afternoon. He found Joe the diner, helped him balance the books, took shifts when people were sick, got me my first intern—”

“I get it,” I sighed.

“He got Cai a home. Everything else was just a bonus. But I’ll owe him forever for that.”

Jesus. “Tell me something good about your life,” I whispered, needing to hear that he wasn’t as broken as I thought him to be.

Peter breathed into the handset for about two minutes. I began wondering if he was about to hang up, or had fallen asleep, when he answered. “You.” It was so quiet I almost didn’t hear it. And then he hung up before I could ask him to repeat himself.

I fell asleep, grinning, with the phone still clutched in my hand and my milk souring on the coffee table.

I Am Now Fully Embracing The Gay

You

Jesus God when he said that word I swear my whole world pinholed to one person. I considered canceling the date.

BecauseI was a cowardly asshole that couldn’t handle the emotional turmoil. But my dick was way ahead of my brain—thank you, Jesus. It kept a stern navigation toward the right place.

You

An hour and half on the treadmill, thirty minutes on the rowing machine, another hour with free weights—and I still was anxious. One word repeating over and over in my head, creating a second layer of anxiety.

It wasn’t just that it was my first date with a guy. It was the fact that I knew nothing about being gay. How did a homosexual go twenty-six years without knowing about gay sex, or gay kissing. (Did gays kiss? Oh wait, yeah, I’d seen pictures of gay men kissing.) Or dating guys?

The Internet was somewhat helpful—in that it gave me a hard on and made my eyes bulge at the same time. Rimming, felching, anal, frotting.
Frotting
? What? Oh.

Backroom sex, glory holes, oral. Enemas, HIV, BDSM, bottom, top, pitcher, catcher—I was getting a headache from information overload. And it appeared that most gay men fucked on the first date. Or before their first date.

You

That one word. Maybe nothing else mattered but that. Maybe all that mattered was that I wanted to hear his snarky comments about my tie and make him laugh in spite of his best attempt not to.

Maybe all that mattered was I was mostly accepting the gay.

You.

I narrowly missed crashing the car several times on the way over to Peter’s home. And, like I’d imagined, I was nervous as hell. My fingers drummed on the steering wheel. I kept accidentally pushing ‘seek’ on the stereo instead of ‘play’. My stomach decided I was fourteen or was riding a rollercoaster.

And I had to turn the air conditioning on full blast so I didn’t

sweat through my chinos and plaster my plaid shirt to my body.

Yes, that was what I wore. I also wore a tie. Not because ties were particularly comfortable. But because I fantasized Peter pulling me into a kiss by my tie, and that had my dick so hard, even cotton chinos were too heavy. I parked at the end of his block, hands like cling wrap on the steering wheel.

You.

My worst fear was that I’d end up like Jesse, alone and miserable, hanging from a tree. Coming out wasn’t what was going to make me suddenly suicidal. I didn’t have to worry about that. I wasn’t a teenager, afraid of the loss of my parents or friends and no way to take care of myself. That loss was scary, sure, but I’d get past it. I had options. What I knew, beyond a doubt, was that if I continued to deny who I was, I’d end up with my service revolver in my mouth.

“Better cock than steel,” I said wryly, checking my reflection one last time before I exited the car.

Holy Fucking Christ, Dear Sweet Mother of God “Holy fucking Christ,” I moaned. “Are you trying to kill me?” Peter had a new piercing, in his lip; or it was an old one he’d decided to actually wear. Either way it was there, in his perfect, kissable bottom lip. Well, if I thought I’d need something to keep me focused during the night, that was now covered.

“What’s that?” He nodded toward the package I had tucked under my arm. It was just something to make him laugh—or, you know, question my sanity.

“A corsage,” I replied, and handed it to him with my kiss-me-now grin. He said nothing and tossed it over his shoulder where it landed somewhere in the depths of his living room. I used the opportunity of following its path in order to peek inside. My jaw dropped. Almost every wall was covered in incredible murals.

The farthest wall was so realistic, at first glance I thought it actually
was
a patio door leading out onto grass and a wooden deck. Beyond the deck, and this was the only reason I quickly figured out it was a painting, was the summer rain. The real world was rain-free.

What I could see of the other walls were different and unrelated scenes: an aquarium with sharks, and starfish sucking against the glass. A baseball game with a field that reminded me of the one from my old high school. Darryl in a pink suit

surrounded by Secret Service. I couldn’t stop gaping at it all.

Peter was watching me, seemingly judging my response.

“Wow. When you said Cai finished painting the living room, I had a whole different idea in my head.” He quirked up a careful smile.

I cleared my throat, waiting for Peter to invite me in, but Cai emerged from the depths of the house to do it for him.

“Hi,” Cai greeted me brightly. He had a rainbow of paint in his hair, on his jaw, nose, cheeks and neck, and sprinkled along his jean overalls; as well as what was once a pure white t-shirt.

He carried a jar with a paintbrush swirling in a clear liquid.

Another brush was tucked behind his ear, dripping yellow paint on his shoulder. I thought he may have been cleaning the wrong brush.

Cai was the kind of boy who made you automatically grin from his sheer guilelessness. The kind who attracted people through personality rather than appearance. Where Peter was ethereal in beauty, Cai was just plain goddamn capital C “Cute”.

His nose was a bit long and a little crooked— but a good fit for his face. Like Peter, his strongest asset was his eyes—not grey, not blue, but a mixture of both. But where Peter was ice, Cai was the sun. I thought his optimism might piss me off, but if I was in high school, I would have had a crazy crush on him.

It wasn’t until I looked deeper that I noticed the network of scars running from his wrists to his neck, like an ice skater had practiced figure eights on his skin. There had been a futile attempt at hiding them under Celtic vine tattoos, but the damage was so extensive, it was impossible to hide.

“Hey, yourself,” I replied, tipping my chin in greeting and

resting a shoulder against the door frame.

He extended a surprisingly paint-free hand. I shook it, noticing the other hand was layered in paint. Though he was taller than I, by at least an inch, but there was something almost delicate about him. “I’m Cai. Which you probably already knew, but still, I’m Cai. Some people call me Nikki because my name is Nicholas, but most people call me Cai. I don’t really like Nikki, but I haven’t told that to many people. I think Rabbit likes you though, so maybe you’ll be around a lot, and I don’t want to be stuck with Nikki when you could be calling me Cai.

So…it’s just Cai.”

While he spoke, he jerked my hand up and down, going on about “did I want to see the bedroom”, because he had started a new mural that, “…looks like someone blasted a hole into the aftermath of the Battle of the Granicus River”, and, “Really, it’s interesting since some people say it went one way and some another”. I stopped listening too closely after “Rabbit likes you”.

And I didn’t pick up his voice again until, “Do you want to come in? I—”

“No,” Peter announced at the same time I said, “Yes.” And as if neither of us had spoken, Cai continued to babble as he moved aside so I could enter the apartment.

“—‘ve just finished the living room, and now I’m working on the bedroom. Well, my bedroom, since I finished Peter’s ages ago. And Darryl’s painted his own room.” I wasn’t sure what else Cai babbled on about as he led me by the wrist towards a hall just to the right of the stairs. I gathered he was saying something about paints and what types he used, but I got sidetracked by the walls.