four
Duke Dolce
We hunch into our coats, hurrying down the street.
The lights are back on, the wreaths twinkling on every lamp post, heaters humming.
Traffic is backed up, though, and there’s an edge in the air, as if people aren’t quite sure whether law and order still applies.
Some old familiar urge rises, the itch to smash a window and set off a chain reaction, run screaming as the alarms blare, create a stampede, chaos in the street; to set a fire and watch the world burn.
But I know now it’s just my demon whispering his intrusive thoughts.
You don’t have to obey.
I can have the thought, know it’s not real, choose not to make it real.
Just like what happened on that rooftop wasn’t real.
I glance sideways at Colt. He has his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his parka, his head down against the wind.
Neither of us have spoken since we left the scene of the crime.
Maybe it was all a fucked up hallucination on my part, wishful thinking after all the times I’ve replayed our stolen moments all those years ago in my mind.
I remind myself that he probably never revisits those old memories. To him, they’re probably nothing but painful and shameful, better left forgotten, or in the past where they belong.
To him, I’m not the guy that got away, the one that could have been.
I’m the guy who bullied him relentlessly in school, called him every slur, burned his arm until he went into shock, beat him up.
I stood by while my brothers cut off his finger and beat him so bad he had to leave school for a year.
While they held him down, I made him suck my dick until he threw up.
Of course he isn’t thinking about coming back to my place, about seeing how good I’m doing now. That wouldn’t make him feel good. From his vantage point, I was always doing good, always on top. Seeing that I’m successful on my own would only make him feel shitty.
I clear my throat. “Hey, so, I’m sorry I freaked out back there.”
“Don’t be,” he says. “It’s kind of cute.”
“My phobia is cute?” I ask, surprised by how normal he sounds, like the weirdness is all on my end. Apparently it is.
“I mean, not when you’re freaking out,” he says. “But the fact that you have it… Yeah, it’s kind of cute that a six-foot-four guy from a mafia family is scared of the dark.”
“Fuck you.”
His lips quirk up into a smirk. “I thought I had to catch you first.”
“I’m six-five,” I mutter, scowling at a car laying on the horn.
He chuckles and pulls out his cigarettes, tucks one between his lips, and tears a match off a booklet.
“Hey,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him. “You said you were out of matches.”
“I never said that,” he says, tipping his head to peer at me from the corner of his eye like a cocky asshole. “And even if I had, which I would have if you asked, how else was I going to get you to cuddle me?”
“You’re trouble, Colt Darling.”
“Just now figuring that out?” he asks, grinning at me from behind the two fingers holding his cigarette.
“No, I know,” I say, shaking my head when he offers the cigarette. I don’t want to take off my leather gloves again, or get the smell of smoke on them, a smell that will linger, reminding me of him every time I wear them. I have enough reminders without torturing myself with more.
“What hotel are you staying at?” I ask, because I don’t want to think about what he said.
He’s just fucking with my head. There’s no reason he’d want to be close to me.
I need to put an end to this before it begins, before it goes further, before it goes anywhere.
If I don’t do it now, it won’t change anything. The ending stays the same.
It ends with Colt walking away. It always has. It always will.
“Are you offering to walk me home?” he asks, his pierced brows rising and his smile turning amused. “Don’t tell me you’ve turned into a gentleman.”
“Just trying not to get the family pissed at me,” I say. “Your brother is my brother-in-law. Your sister is my sister-in-law. I still have to see them on holidays.”
“Which holidays?” he asks. “Because I never see you at any of them.”
“My ma lives here, so we do most of them with her,” I say, then shoot him a grin. “But it’s nice to know you’ve been missing me.”
“You still live with your mom?”
“I have my own place,” I say, unable to keep from swelling with pride a little when I think about my posh apartment. “It’s nice as hell.”
“So… Were you planning on showing it to me?” He gives me a sly look from the corner of his eye, and I swear to god the guy is flirting with me.
“No,” I say, frowning at the steam rising from a grate.
Colt just laughs, like it’s easy, like it’s all meaningless.
It probably is. In the grand scheme, it’s less than nothing. I should just stop reading into it and fuck him. I would, if I knew that I could, and it would end there. If it were anyone else, that’s exactly what I’d do. But things are never that simple with Colt.
Not for me.
Maybe for him they are.
“Then show me another one of your places,” he says. “Show me New York. Not the touristy shit. Another one of your rooftops.”
“Aren’t you flying out tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” he says, checking his phone. “In the morning. Which means I still have eight hours until I need to leave my hotel.”
He’s so casual about it, like it’s no big deal to basically tell me he wants to spend the whole night with me. Like it’s a given that I’ll want to spend the night with him.
“So, what would you be doing if I wasn’t here?” he asks, pocketing his phone. “Take me to your favorite places. Show me what you do with your big, fancy life in the city.”
“I’d probably be at a club,” I admit, watching his reaction from the corner of my eye.
“Is that hard?” he asks. “With sobriety?”
“Nah,” I say. “Maybe at first, but you get used to it fast, and then you don’t need it. I don’t even miss it anymore. It’s just not an option for me. Never was.”
“You’ve never relapsed?” he asks incredulously.
“Not once,” I confirm. “When I was done, I was done.”
“Damn,” he says. “That’s impressive.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m actually pretty proud of that.”
“You should be.”
We walk half a block in silence.
“So, you go to the clubs to dance and meet men?” he asks.
“Something like that.”
“Well, you don’t need to meet a man tonight, so you’re already halfway there,” he says. “Take me to your favorite one.”
After that taste on the roof, I actually do need to meet a man tonight, but I can’t tell him that, how much one stupid kiss shook me.
I can’t tell him that even though I love my life here, and I’ll never go back to Arkansas, and I’m proud of how far I’ve come—a good job, a sweet place, a better mindset and healthy body—sometimes I look at it all and wonder what’s missing.
Sometimes, no matter how many clubs I go to and how many men I meet, no matter how many people live in a city this big, it’s not enough. The truth is, it can be lonely as hell.
I can’t tell that to Colt though. So, I take him to a club instead.
When we get there, a line has formed halfway down the block.
“Damn,” he says, sounding disappointed. “I didn’t figure that may people would be out on Christmas Eve eve.”
“It’s after midnight, so it’s technically Christmas Eve now. And not everyone can go home for the holidays.”
“Anywhere else we can go?”
“Come on,” I say, reaching for his hand. With my gloves between us, it’s businesslike. Gripping onto him, I stride ahead, leading him past the line.
“Where are we going?” he asks, hurrying to keep pace.
I stop at the front of the line and tip my chin at Luigi. “How’s it going?”
“Duke,” he says with a nod, unhooking the rope to let us past. “Good turnout.”
“Damn,” Colt says, biting back a smile. “You really do spend a lot of time in clubs.”
“Just part of the job,” I say, shrugging. But I’m smiling too, a little smug about my exclusive access.
“So this is where you having a standing reservation,” he yells over the thumping music.
“I have VIP access,” I say. “But since I don’t need bottles and I’m here to mingle, what’s the point?”
We check our coats, and I start to reach for his hand again but think better of it.
I nod for him to go ahead, definitely not checking out his ass in those Levi’s when he leads the way, weaving into the crowd like he’s the one who comes here all the time.
Above us, oiled, shirtless dancers perform in cages that circle over the dancefloor, where colored lights strobe over the writhing bodies.
We haven’t been dancing for five minutes when a short guy with the frame of a bodybuilder bulging inside a mesh tank starts checking us out.
Since I’m not sure how much Colt does this kind of thing—if he can party sober, if the fact that most people here are definitively not sober will impact his ability to let loose and have fun, if he’s ever even been to a gay bar—I’m giving him space, letting him adjust. I remember the first few times I came, how self-conscious I felt dancing without something in my system, how I kept thinking maybe one drink wouldn’t hurt.
It wasn’t much fun, so I keep an eye on Colt, in case he wants to leave, take a break, step outside.
But the other guys must think that means he’s up for grabs, because pretty soon another guy is sniffing around. Seeing that he’s about to make a move, the short guy comes up behind Colt and puts his hands on his hips.
Annoyance flares, and I step in closer, reaching past Colt to flatten my hand on the guy’s chest, pushing him back.
I shake my head at him, frowning down over Colt’s shoulder.
When the guy backs off, I stay close. The other guy starts moving in again, so I loop my fingers through Colt’s beltloops as we dance to a thumping, dance mix of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”
“What was that about?” he asks.
Even when he’s yelling, I have to read his lips to know what he’s saying. I’ve gotten used to doing that in places like this. I’m not used to how I keep watching his mouth after he’s done speaking, not able to look away.
I tighten my grip, pulling him against me, and push my thigh between his. “You’re here with me.”
“You don’t want me dancing with another guy?”
“No,” I growl, turning him around in my arms, angling my mouth against his ear. “You’re mine tonight, Colt Darling.”