Tough Love (15 page)

“Fucked a guy who taught me how.” Now his smile wasn’t just nostalgic, it was tender and sad. “Taught me my Spanish, my business and how to not fuck myself up. He was a good friend of Steve’s, which is how I met him too.” He cut a glance at Chenco. “Steve’s taken a real shine to you, and I can’t help but notice it’s mutual. You choose to go anywhere with it, I’ll tell you this—you won’t ever find a stronger, more loyal, more devoted man.”

Remembering the fierce, conflicted look on Steve’s face and the force he’d used to grind Chenco’s face against his cock, Chenco swallowed hard.
Don’t think about that.

Mitch ashed out the window. “Can’t fucking believe we both came out queer. I hope Dad got the fucking runs thinking about it.”

“I’m fairly sure he did.”

“Why’d you volunteer to live with him?”

Chenco shrugged. “At first it was some sort of fuck you to the universe, but then it became practical. You know how much money I saved with no rent? I don’t work much at the restaurant, so I can practice and take jobs doing drag—I’d quit Palenque outright, but I like the extra cash to keep things flush. I kept trying to save up to move out when Cooper was alive, but he conned me into helping him out in the home, lying about leaving me the trailer, and I was dumb enough not to get proof. Booker’s always wanting to take the show on the road, take Caramela up to Austin and the gay circuit there—hell, he wants to go to Filthy Divas—but it takes cash. Lots of cash.”

Mitch smoked for a minute. “What’s Filthy Divas?”

“It’s an annual drag competition in L.A. Kind of like RuPaul’s drag race, but no reality show broadcast. It’s more about bringing your act and showing it off. The cash prize is only okay—covers your expenses and a good night out—but the real prize is being able to say you were there, you went down the runway, you stood on the stage. If you win, you pretty much won’t ever beg for a gig again. Book wanted us to win and tour the continental U.S. as RuPaul & Company Part Two. It isn’t going to happen.”

“Never say never,” Mitch drawled.

“Life says never to me every damn day. I like to flip it the bird, but I try to get myself into the best position possible first. I’ll get to Filthy Divas someday, if I want to go. Maybe I’ll do something else. It’s just gonna take some time. Also, Book’s either got to ditch his boyfriend or convince him he can actually leave town.”

This made Mitch frown. “What?”

“His guy, his Dom or whatever—Tristan is a bit of a shit as far as I’m concerned. Booker loves him, but he’s mean sometimes. I’ve wondered more than once if all Book’s bruises were from consensual play.”

Mitch went quiet, and it gave Chenco the opportunity to realize they had wandered away from McAllen and were heading east. “You missed the turn for Palenque.”

“Didn’t think you wanted to go there.” Mitch’s voice was suddenly a bit sharper, more focused. “This Tristan have a last name?”

Uh-oh. “Shit, I stepped in something, didn’t I?”

“I’m more a tourist in the lifestyle, but you tossed up a big red flag someone should check out. There’s shit here, maybe, but it ain’t yours.”

“But—”

“You try telling what you told me to Steve and see what happens.”

Chenco’s sense of what Steve would say was very clear. “Fuck.”

“He’s not going to be pissed at you. But you can bet Booker’s boyfriend will be getting a visit. Don’t give me that look,” Mitch said, his voice getting sharp when Chenco paled. “Unless you think it’s a good thing for your friend to have someone fucking him over?”

“Shit. No.” The more he sat with the thought, the crappier he felt. “Fuck.
Fuck.
I should have said something sooner.”

“Unless you knew someone in the scene, no you shouldn’t have. This is a self-policing community.”

“What, they’re going to rub Tristan out?”

Mitch gave him a
come-on
look. “They’re BDSM, not mafia. If he’s in the official scene and he’s gone bad, he won’t get laid again anytime soon, not local. If he’s not, he’ll get a swift education about what those letters really mean and the responsibility that goes with them.” He took another drag and swore under his breath. “Everybody reads a fucking book or hops a few websites and thinks they’re cool to play around.”

Chenco, who had indeed read a book and visited a few websites, felt foolish. He wanted to crack the door a little more open, ask how he’d find out without books or websites, maybe before he got too comfy about the idea of letting Steve play with him, but then Mitch turned the truck off at the exit leading to the flats. “Oh shit. Steve said I wasn’t supposed to take you back to the trailer.”

Mitch grunted. “Yeah, well, he ain’t my Dom, and neither are you. I want my fucking closure.”

Chenco wanted to tell him that where Cooper was concerned, he wasn’t ever going to get it, but he figured it would be a waste of breath.

As they turned into the trailer park, Mitch had much the same reaction as Steve about the condition of the neighborhood. He drove slowly, taking in the decrepit trailers, the aluminum foil on the windows to keep out the heat—it was too early for that yet, but some people didn’t want to bother putting it up and taking it down, and there wasn’t anything to look at outside anyway. Chenco liked the light, so he pulled it down in the winter and waited to put it up until the first May day that tried to bake him raw. Rusted trucks stood on blocks, yards were weed traps. No kids ran the streets, no old men sat on lawn chairs. It wasn’t that kind of neighborhood, not anymore. The flats were where lives came to die.

They pulled up to the trailer but didn’t get out of the truck, not right away.

“Looks smaller.” Mitch’s voice was a little gruff. “Rustier.”

“I thought about painting it, but I figured I might as well take out an ad saying
good shit to steal inside
. Except it’d say it in Spanish.”

“
Buena mierda adentro para robar.
”

That wasn’t just Spanish—it was Spanish with all the right moves and notes and a bit of valley for the cherry on top. Chenco gaped at Mitch, and his brother stared back at him, brow lifted in silent question, looking like a kindler, gentler version of Cooper. Speaking fucking valley Spanish.

“Fuck you.” Chenco shoved him. “I’m half goddamn Mexican, and you speak better Spanish than me.”

Mitch grinned. “Yeah, well, fuck wisely and you might learn to
hablar Español
too, gringo.” When Chenco swore at him again, he laughed and cracked open his door. “Come on. Show me what you’ve done with the place.”

It made Chenco feel good, knowing Mitch liked what his little brother had done with his childhood home.

Chenco gave him the fifty-cent tour, stem to stern, and Mitch paused a lot to smile and remember. Occasionally he didn’t smile, pointing out a dent in the wall from one of Cooper’s drunken swings or when he’d locked himself in the closet because his father’s poker buddy had wanted to show him something in the bathroom. Mostly he liked how Chenco had reclaimed the space. “You healed it,” he said more than once.

Partly due to this warm reception, Chenco allowed the tour to extend to his dressing room.

It was Cooper’s old bedroom—Chenco still lived in Mitch’s, and he’d been able to show him some of the childhood posters he’d found in the back of the closet. Chenco got a sick thrill out of putting on pantyhose in the room once belonging to his fuckhead of a father. With Mitch, he was revealing a part of himself he didn’t hide but didn’t share easily.

“How’d you get into drag, anyway?” Mitch asked as they settled down in the kitchen, Chenco making them breakfast.

“Sideways, pretty much. I kind of always had it in me, but I didn’t know what I was doing with it. I wanted to be a girl, but I didn’t want to
be
a girl. I’d watch Beyoncé videos and Nelly and JLo—God, Jenny, I worshipped her so hard—and dance like them and beg my mom for a sparkly leotard. Then one day I snuck into a gay club, saw a drag show, and it was over.” He flipped eggs over with his spatula and smiled. “Heide and Lincoln helped me get my shit together, come out to my queen and she to me. Guided me through the ropes. Only trouble is, Caramela is all glam. God, but I wish she’d be happy with fifty-dollar wigs from the costume shop, but no. She wants to make JLo herself look like a bad copy.”

“Well, you’re good. She’s good. Fucking amazing. I’ve seen drag all over the country. You could take any of them. Are you gonna perform again pretty soon?”

“I’m supposed to next week.” Chenco tried not to melt under his brother’s praise, but it was impossible. “Are you saying nice things about my act because we share a gene pool?”

“Shit, no. If you were crap, I’d tell you to knock it off and try to teach you trucking. You’re good. You need to get your ass to the Filthy Divas thing.”

“Well, unless you come with a trust fund you feel like sharing, honey, that’s not happening anytime soon.”

Mitch huffed a laugh. “I don’t, but—well, let’s say I bet Randy’s already made some calls.” He stood and stretched. “I’m gonna nip out and have a smoke, if I’ve got time.”

“Sure. This’ll be a few minutes yet.” He smiled a little shyly. “Thanks for this, Mitch. For coming here, for saying nice things. It means a lot.”

Mitch gave a gruff nod as he headed out the door. “Keep ’er warm for me.”

Chenco smiled to himself as he put Mitch’s omelet onto a plate and served himself up a bowl of muesli and almond milk. It was cool having an older brother who thought he’d done okay with himself. It had been a long time since he’d allowed family to matter to him, and while it still felt a little dangerous, it was also beginning to feel more than a little bit okay to let down his guard.

As if that thought had personally gone out and stirred up trouble, no sooner did Chenco think it than Mitch came tearing back in, his cell phone to his ear. “Chenco, we need to get you out of here. Right now.”

The world shifted slightly sideways. “What? Why? We haven’t had breakfast.”

“We can’t have breakfast. And when I say you need to get out of here, I mean you need to get
out of here
. Like, you can’t come back. Ever.”

“
What?
” Chenco’s heart slammed at the top of his throat. He swallowed it back down. “No way. This is my life, my stuff—”

“
Chenco.
” Mitch pointed out the window. “Sometime in the hour since we’ve been here, somebody painted a gang symbol on Steve’s truck.”

“They do it all the time. It’s our welcome wagon.”

“Steve has a very distinctive truck. A lot of people in the valley know it. A lot of dicks in the flats know it. They enjoy bashing in the heads of homeless people for fun. Homeless people who live at the cannery.”

Oh no.
A cold, terrible wind whipped through Chenco.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.

Oh yes,
Mitch’s face said. “They know this truck. They know Steve. They hate Steve. I just drove Steve’s truck into their turf and parked it in front of your house.”

For a horrible second Chenco stared at his brother. Then he melted, slow motion, into a chair.

Mitch hauled him back to his feet. “
We have to leave.
”

Chenco was going to be sick. “If I leave, they’ll trash the trailer. They’ll trash my stuff, Mitch.
Caramela’s stuff.
I can’t leave her to them. It’s her back there. It’s not just my head, it’s her stuff. I can’t do this to her.”

“Then start packing. If you have a gun, I’d appreciate knowing where it is.”

“Under my bed. Bullets in the bedside drawer.” Chenco headed for the dressing room, but he stumbled. “Oh my God, Mitch.”

“Steve’s on his way, and he called some of the guys.”

“Not Randy?”

“Randy is at Steve’s house, keeping my husband from coming along.”

Chenco couldn’t ask any more questions because Mitch disappeared into his bedroom. To get the gun. To defend the trailer against the Donna gang.

Chenco moved in a daze, at first simply spinning in vain, trying to decide how to start, then ruthlessly combing through from one side of the room to the other, identifying each item and deciding whether or not it was essential. It was extreme reverse hoarding—to each item he asked,
do I need this to live my life? Does Caramela?
The answers sometimes surprised him.

She rose up too, making it clear what was at her core, what she could not leave behind and what was frivolous. When he threatened to fall apart, she soothed him, reminding him all this could be replaced, that they were queens the both of them, that they were strong and nothing and no one could get them down.

Even so, when Chenco saw Steve filling the doorway to the dressing room, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He broke down.

Without saying a word, Steve took charge of the room—a few other men Chenco didn’t know had arrived with Steve, and they all moved to Steve’s orders, taking Chenco’s things, finishing the boxing up and moving his belongings outside.

Sitting on Steve’s massive thigh, Chenco curled into his neck, calming, accepting strokes on his arm and thigh. The uncertainty, the wildness of the night before, was gone. This was the Steve who had petted him, the Steve who had carried him out of the club.

“I have control of this, Chenco. You do not need to worry about this anymore. I will take your things to my house, and I will keep you safe until you choose to leave.”