2. Chase
CHASE
I can still remember the way the color bloomed across my eye the moment his fist impacted my temple.
A flash of red-white, then deep burgundy, then blackness.
“What were you trying to fucking pull?” Aiden roared above me as his knuckles came down fast for another blow. “What were you doing with her?”
I didn’t know they were dating.
Didn’t even know they were a thing.
His girlfriend Anna came onto me, actually, at the party earlier that night, where she offered me a couple of unprinted green pills that I didn’t even want.
For a long time, I had known I needed to be done with that part of my life.
But my reputation wasn’t mine to control anymore.
Everyone still saw me as the guy who would do anything at a party.
I refused the mystery pills that Anna offered.
And then an hour later, she informed me that she had crushed them up and mixed them into my margarita anyway.
“They’ll make you see the stars, Chase,” she said with a wicked smile.
I was seeing them, now.
Black and white stars in the corner of my vision, from the one eye that still has any sight at all.
“Did you fuck her?” Aiden roared again, and I felt his arm come down in a bar over my chest, pinning me to the ground.
When I moved my head, it slipped on the hardwood.
I dimly registered that I was resting in my own blood.
It was strange to be rolling on some combination of Molly and who knows what else flooding my veins as I was being beaten to a pulp.
“Didn’t even know—” I tried to choke out. I coughed on the words.
Aiden spoke through clenched teeth. “You are toxic poison to everything around you, Chase. And you wonder why your dad fucking hated you.”
A bitter sinking feeling spread through my chest. I tasted the blood on my tongue and spit some out on my side.
“Go fuck yourself,” I told him in a low tone.
“What did you just say to me?”
“I think you heard,” I tried to say louder, but my voice came out hoarse. “Go fuck yourself.”
I didn’t do anything with his girlfriend.
He found me outside with her, both of us soaring through the high of whatever mix of drugs she gave me, looking up at the sky as fireworks bloomed out over the horizon.
It was the Fourth of July, and Anna had draped her arm over my chest, rubbing circles across my skin.
It felt fucking amazing.
But nothing happened between us.
“What the hell are you doing?” Anna suddenly shouted, coming into the room. “Chase didn’t do anything.”
“I don’t believe you,” he roared.
“He didn’t even touch me back,” she said. “But you know what? I wanted him to. Because you throw temper tantrums like a rabid fucking dog—”
Aiden turned back to look at me on the ground, struggling to catch my breath. Blurry vision slowly started to return to the eye he knocked out two minutes ago.
“No one wants you here, Chase.”
I could see an impressive amount of my blood on his knuckles.
“Been aware of that my whole life.”
“You can fuck every girl that pities you until the day you die, and nothing will change.”
I swiped one hand across my face, feeling the blood start to dry in places.
He doubled back quickly on his heel and gave me a hard kick right on my hip. Anna shrieked, but the pain was something I was used to.
My dad never drew blood from me, but his fist was more powerful than Aiden’s, anyway.
I focused on Anna’s sad eyes before Aiden pulled her out of the room.
It was nice, when she’d draped her arm over me.
It’s nice whenever anyone touches me.
I lean over the bar top in the Bellwood Hotel lounge, my thoughts swirling around the memory of Aiden and Anna.
That night feels like ages ago, now. High school was a different, far worse time in my life.
But history repeats.
Five minutes ago, I just saw my girlfriend walk by outside on the arm of a guy who looked like me but skinnier, with worse tattoos. They were arm in arm.
I’d suspected she was cheating, a couple of days ago.
But I didn’t actually believe it until now.
“You don’t think it’s possible that my girlfriend is secretly married, right?” I ask Julian.
My brother is refilling simple syrup bottles beside me, focused on the task.
“The girl who said you were her sexual kryptonite?”
“Yes. That girl.”
“You think a married woman was pursuing you that hard? How well do you know her?” he mutters.
“Enough that she just told me she wanted to make it serious. Official. Whatever that means.”
“What’s her name again?”
“Madison.”
Julian shoots me a grin, his eyebrow raising. “Don’t you think it’s a bad sign that you knew her for a month yet you’d never even told me her name?”
I let out a long breath. “She seemed very into me. Until she started hiding her phone from me at weird times a couple of days ago. She told me she wanted to be my girlfriend last week, so forgive me if I didn’t think she’d be cheating on me, man.”
Julian shakes his head. “Maybe she’s not cheating. You don’t know the whole story yet, so just wait it out, and talk to her the next time you see her. Don’t chew on it too hard.”
“Yeah. Maybe that guy is just her cousin, and cuddling up during walks is their way of expressing affection.”
Julian laughs. “Scandalous.”
“I’ve seen the guy before at parties,” I tell him. “Never liked him before, and now I can’t stand him.”
I grab the tequila bottle beside me, unscrewing the cap.
My brother eyes the bottle, then glances back up at me. “You know David will kill you if you get drunk, right?”
“David isn’t going to be here until this evening. I won’t be drunk by then.”
I’m not exactly breaking a rule. Our boss has made it clear that if customers purchase shots for us, we are allowed to take them while working behind the bar. And I’m going to put money in the register for this one, because I’m not a thief, either.
I just need my mind to be a little less sharp than it is right now.
“I wonder when the Scotch guy is going to show up,” Julian says.
I glance up. “Blond guy? Kind of built, but looked like he was about to say aw, shucks half the time?”
“That’s the one. Yesterday he showed up after dinner and was here all night.”
I grin. “He was here in the afternoon, too. Did he flirt with you and stare behind the bar, or to clean up after you?”
“No,” Julian says. “He was pretty normal, other than somehow being able to tank, like, 500 gallons of liquor and still remain composed. Left a really nice tip.”
Yesterday, after grabbing a shipment from the back, I came out and found the little note the guy had left me.
It’s now hanging on the front of my fridge at home with a magnet, because I love a badge of honor.
Somebody wanted to be my friend.
Gold star for me.
“He wanted my dick,” I tell Julian.
He snorts. “You think everyone wants your dick.”
“And I’m never wrong. He had this fuck-me look in his eyes that he stopped being able to hide the moment he got tipsy.”
Julian shakes his head. “Did you tell him you’re straight?”
“I did. But he’s probably one of those rich, successful guys who always gets what he wants. He looked like he wanted to win me over so badly. Swear I could have told him to bend over for me right there and he would have.”
“You’re awful.”
“He knew nothing was going to happen. I’m innocent.”
“Innocent is the last word in the English language I’d ever use to describe you, Chase.”
There’s still something that lights up inside me when I think about it. I’m a sucker for attention, no matter the source. I keep remembering the way that man’s eyes kept focusing on me. He was trying to look all cool and calm, but there was this fire beneath the surface.
He was trying so hard to seem composed, but…
I was getting to him.
And I enjoyed that.
All day I’ve been making guesses about what his life must be like. He was dressed perfectly. He obviously came from money. Drinking at 2 o’clock, like he didn’t have a care in the world. Sometimes it feels like I have to go chasing attention like it's a butterfly, but he came right to me.
Maybe I just have an overactive imagination. Or maybe it’s just because another relationship of mine is probably about to fail.
Julian glances up at me now as he’s washing out a metal canister.
“He asked about you, actually.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Scotch guy?”
“Mhm.”
“When were you planning on mentioning that?”
“I didn’t want to juice up your ego any higher than it needs to be. He asked if you’d be here today.”
“Cute. He’s fucking obsessed with me.”
“Chase,” my brother warns me, narrowing his eyes. “If you’re considering some sort of gay exploration, you really shouldn’t do that with a Bellwood hotel guest.”
“I never said I was considering shit.”
“Good. You’d break that poor fuck’s heart.”
I smile and give Julian a shove. “I’m not going to do anything with him. He’s too rich and boring anyway.”
“Are you coming to the party after our shift?”
“Fuck yes. They’re going to have someone doing stick-and-poke tattoos there. I’m getting something on my thigh.”
“You’re going to let someone tattoo you at a party? Do I even need to explain how unsafe that is?”
“It’s very safe. This girl is trained, and last time I saw her doing tattoos at a party, she had every precaution in place.”
Ever since I moved into the city after high school, I feel like I actually started to live my life rather than dream about it.
It's even better now that Julian’s here, too.
New York is expensive enough that I need to live with him and two other roommates, but I don’t give a damn that our apartment is small.
All I care about is that I escaped.
I got out of the suburban neighborhood in Queens Village where we grew up, where I knew I didn’t fit in. Sports were king at my school, and I was no one, because I never played.
My father tried to mold me in his image and it didn’t stick.
He put everything in my hands when I was a child: basketballs, footballs, baseballs, hockey sticks.
He was never impressed when I showed him a completed painting or drawing, and he’d stare at them like art was a language he didn’t understand.
He didn’t care that I won first place in a photography competition when I was thirteen, where the prize was five hundred bucks and free private art classes for the next year.
He didn’t get physical with me until just before high school.
When I told him I was kicked off the flag football team that he signed me up for, the summer before freshman year, he shoved me in the short hallway of our house. I hit the wall, my shoulder knocking against a framed picture of our family smiling at Coney Island. It fell, shattering on the floor.
My gut reaction was to laugh. Even at fourteen, I saw the bitter irony of our happy family photo getting ruined because my father couldn’t handle his son disliking sports.
But when I couldn’t bite back my laughter, he doubled down and gave me bruises on my ribs that lasted until fall. My behavior had made him look bad, he said. Who gets kicked off a flag football team? There was something wrong with me.
When I was little he called it “tough love.” Then I quickly got old enough to know it was just his own misplaced rage.
I realize my thoughts have turned to the past again as Julian comes back out from the back, carrying freshly washed dishes and plopping the rack behind the bar.
I pick up pint glass after pint glass, using a clean cloth to wipe each until it’s spotless.
You’d approve, Scotch guy.
Neat and orderly.
I narrow my eyes, looking out at the city block outside, all stone and concrete.
“I need to fuck someone,” I tell Julian.
“TMI.”
“I’ll go crazy if I don’t. I can’t believe she was cheating on me.”
“So find someone to fuck at the party,” Julian says. “Maybe a guy who isn’t a hotel guest, so you can get your weird sudden gay boner out of your system?”
“I don’t have a gay boner. I just like screwing with Scotch guy. It’s fun.”
“All the more reason you need to fuck somebody else, then.”
I don’t like it when I don’t have someone around.
I like having a girl in my bed next to me, and I like having someone that I can run my hands along, who wants to be touched just as much as I do. I thrive on physical touch. I need it.
When I go without it, the shadows start to feel like they’re closing in on me.
That’s not a place I’m willing to go ever again.