Cross Island

by Santino Hassell

  I’d selected him as—well, demanded he be—my personal bodyguard after overhearing him bravely tell his supervisor that his approach was wrong. Victor had been right of course. If I’d walked into a room full of people informing me of who would be living in my house, I’d have shut down the entire idea. No one told me what to do. Especially not in a situation like this.

  Out of them all, he’d been the only one to think that far ahead. I suspected Tonya Maldonado had been on the same page as him, but she was military and less likely to overtly challenge her superior. But not Victor. He spoke his mind. And he was self-aware enough to know that speaking his mind, and being abrasive, were not things that would get him far in personal protection services.

  I liked that. I liked that he knew his personality had a weakness but wasn’t going out of his way to completely erase it. I’d tried to erase my own, to blend in, when working at my previous firm—had scrubbed my identity of everything but a lawyer who was clean cut and sophisticated enough to work side-by-side with the boys’ club. I’d never fit in entirely considering I was black and gay, and the partners were all white and dried up, but I’d tried my best.

  However, I’d lost parts of myself after so many years of wearing that mask.

  I wondered how differently my life would have been if I’d come up acting a little more like Victor. Brashness that was present and tempered, yet unapologetic.

  I liked it. I liked him. And I didn’t typically like anyone.

  “That’s it?” I asked, watching him transport two duffel bags and a single box from the company-issued SUV to my house. “We don’t know how long we will be cohabitating.”

  Victor carried the box upstairs, the duffel bags hung crisscross over his shoulders. “This is all I own.”

  Damn, but he made me curious. I’d scanned every word in the dossier Kenneth Stone had provided about Victor Quinones and nothing had shed light on why he was public enemy number one in the popular Rodriguez crowd, or why he’d been ushered off to Chicago. My employers at QFindr had claimed to not know anything other than vague stories about “drama”, and I suspected at least Aiden was lying. There was no way his lover, Chris, didn’t know more.

  I’d started to look Victor up in every database I had access to, but discomfort had moved through me at an alarming speed. It was bizarre. I had zero qualms about researching the people I did business with, and he should have been no exception. However, I’d pictured the guarded way he’d sat away from me when I’d pushed at the diner, and had shut my laptop.

  Whatever had happened to him, or whatever he’d done, Kenneth Stone had apparently not held it against him when taking him on as an employee. It would have to be enough for now.

  I followed him upstairs, eyes on his ass. This whole situation would inevitably be painful and awkward, but at least he was magnificent eye candy.

  “There are three more bedrooms up here,” I said. “One is my home office, the largest is my bedroom, and the guest room is next to mine.”

  I pushed past him to open the door to the guest room, flipping on the light. I’d ripped down all of my grandmother’s wallpaper and removed the carpet, so it was updated but barren. All that was in the room was a full-sized bed, a chest of drawers, and a lamp. I looked from him to the bed and back again.

  “Will you fit?”

  Victor snorted and dropped his box on the chest. “I’ve slept in smaller.”

  Questions entered my mind—did he sleep curled up, and if so… how flexible was he? I entertained the thoughts while watching him bend and stretch to put things away in the closet and in the drawers. He really didn’t have much. A few pair of jeans, some shirts, underclothes, and the box was full of toiletries and a few electronics.

  “Do you have any questions?” I asked as he made all of his belongings disappear in a couple of minutes. “Do you want me to show you around the neighborhood?”

  “Nah, there’s no need.” He kicked the duffel bags into the closet and shut the door. “I won’t be going anywhere without you, so…”

  “What if you want to get breakfast in the morning?”

  Victor looked at me sideways. “If someone’s watching you, they’d see me leave.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What makes you think my so-called stalker will see you and assume you’re a trained bodyguard? We’re about the same size and equally fit.”

  “You’re right.” Victor surveyed the room with his hands on his hips. “They’ll probably think we’re fucking. Or that I’m a boyfriend who just moved in.”

  “Does that bother you? My neighbors might think the same.”

  “I don’t really give a damn what some random people on this block think. It will actually work in our favor. If he is fixated on you, he might go after me to prove a point or to get your attention. That’s really what these type of people want. Attention.” Victor jerked a thumb at the bed. “You got extra sheets for me?”

  “Yeah. Let me finish showing you around.”

  We did the rest of the grand tour of my house, and I became overly aware of how large it was for a single person. On a typical day, I didn’t think about it. I’d spent a lot of time here as a child, and I was used to the space, but it had to seem completely excessive to someone who only owned two duffle bags of clothes and a single box.

  I led him downstairs to make some coffee, and mused over how distracted I already was by his presence. Obviously, he was attractive, but it wasn’t really about that. It was him in general. I kept comparing us even though we had little in common except for the fact that we were outcasts in a social circle that should have included us.

  He sat on one of the tall bar stools along the counter as I turned on the Keurig and let it do its thing. I pointed out the different cabinets for silverware, cups and dishes as we waited, and turned to find him looking more tense than he’d been during our casual discussion of people thinking we were fake lovers.

  Although he was still clinging to that default blank face all of the other security agents also wore, his entire body was strung tight. Shoulders hunched, hands clasped, and it looked like he was ready to spring off the stool at a moment’s notice. His body language, along with his scarred face and crude tattoos, made him look very out of place in my redone kitchen. Everything was white and black, porcelain and sterling silver, and he was angry slashes, busted up knuckles, and a tightly coiled ball of energy just waiting to explode all over my counter.

  I wondered if that was the way I’d looked back when I’d first started at my old firm. I’d been fixated on all the ways I hadn’t fit, and my first year or two had been spent with me in a constant low grade sense of anxiety about having to constantly watch myself. Play the part. Wear the mask to keep my job.

  “Victor.”

  His eyes jerked up to me from where they’d been glued to the now gurgling Keurig. “What?”

  “You look fucking miserable,” I said plainly. “Tell me again why you took this job?”

  A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Honestly? I need the money, Tonya wanted me to move out so she could have some privacy with her girl, and I’m sick of watching the door.”

  “But?”

  He spread his hands on the counter, once again flashing ink and poorly healed bones. He must have been in a lot of fistfights to have hands that scarred and knuckles so deformed. “But… I’ve never stepped foot in a house this large, you’re rich as fuck and mad classy, and this neighborhood is full of people who’d love to chew me up and spit me out judging from the political signs I peeped while driving here.”

  “You’re right, and yet I manage to live here all on my own because I don’t give a shit about those imbeciles.” I removed the first cup of coffee from the Keurig and slowly pushed it at him. “Do you really care what other people think, Victor?”

  Maybe it was the pointed question, or the way I said his name, but those intense eyes lifted as he took his first sip. “No. I’m worried about how I’ll act if someone says the wrong thing. I can be on my best b
ehavior and act like I’ve turned over a brand-new leaf and what not, but I don’t know how that will hold if the wrong person says the wrong thing at the wrong time.” He paused, seeming to choose his words with care, and then shot me a look full of warning and self-loathing all at once. “I guess you could say I used to have a temper. The right person can bring it out of me.”

  I shoved my cup beneath the Keurig’s spout and shrugged, unaffected. “I think you mean the wrong person. They’d be the right person only if you wanted to lose your temper.”

  He grew silent, and I glanced at him again. Some of his tension had eased, and now he was squinting at me. “Are you really giving me a little lesson on proper word usage right now?”

  “I’m always up for correcting someone. It’s in my nature.”

  “So, you’re a know-it-all?”

  I nodded. “More or less. I’m not sorry.”

  “You’re not sorry for being an obnoxious know-it-all?”

  “There are a lot of wrong people in the world, Victor. They need to be told.”

  His mouth twitched, then the smile that spread over his face was a little stunning. The scar wasn’t so foreboding anymore, and he looked as young as his years instead of wearied by whatever he’d experienced in his short time. As impossible as it should have been, my attraction to him tripled while he was wearing that smile. Then my attraction quadrupled when he hunched his shoulders and tried to hide that brief moment of genuine good humor.

  As messed up as it was, I was drawn to that overexposure and vulnerability. Who was this young man who thought he didn’t deserve to do something as simple as smile? I tossed the question around, coming up with various bullshit answers, as we both sipped coffee and studied each other. If my directness made him uncomfortable, as it did so many others, he didn’t show it. He just watched me in turn.

  I’d assumed he was straight, but now I wondered whether that was accurate. To me, meeting someone’s eyes was as normal as breathing. To a heterosexual cis man, looking into another man’s eyes for more than half a second was the gayest of gay. Yet, Victor had been looking into mine for an entire eight-ounce mug of coffee.

  This was just about the time when I’d normally ask someone if they wanted to go home with me. Too bad we were already home, and he was a decade too young.

  “All right,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’m going to make it simple. We’re going to go on a walk around the neighborhood, and I’ll show you the best Italian grocery store—”

  “I want to see your running route.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t interrupt while I’m speaking,” I said.

  He looked down, long lashes nearly obscuring his gaze. “Sorry, Clive.”

  My pulse jumped. Well, well.

  After taking a slow breath, I tried again, “I’ll show you the best grocery store, the bus stop, and then we’ll go on the route I take when I run. I think time jumped ahead last night, so you’ll get to see how it looks when it’s dark outside.”

  Victor slid off the stool. “Sounds good. Do you have any other plans tonight?”

  “Not unless I meet someone on Grindr.”

  He nodded slowly, almost thoughtfully. “All right, well, you just let me know how you want to play that.”

  For standard operating procedure, we’d have to play it with me picking up a guy who wasn’t on the DL, and who had a house we could use. In my filthy imagination, Victor would stand nearby and listen to me fuck a vocal bottom. Not because I told him to. But because he wanted to hear.

  I looked away. “We’ll see.”

  ***

  Victor

  The walk around the neighborhood took longer than I thought. Somewhere between the Italian spot and the Greek spot, I forgot this was supposed to be work and started enjoying myself a little too much.

  I wasn’t stupid. I knew Clive had taken me on this multicultural tour of his mostly white hood to show me there were gems among the uber conservatives and racists, but I liked it anyway. I also appreciated the fact that he was even considering my concerns enough to go out of his way.

  Armed with more coffee from the Italian grocery store, and a bag of premade pasta, we followed the route he took on his morning runs. The sun had already set, and it was quiet and deserted along Utopia Parkway. Even without the stalker creeping around, the place gave me the fucking creeps. I wasn’t used to neighborhoods this quiet, and other than a random person here or there, it felt like anyone could come up on us and try something.

  The idea of him running this route at the crack of dawn while wearing earbuds gave me chills. Since I was a kid, when I’d watched a nightmare play out every day in my house between me and Steph’s parents, I’d gotten used to expecting the worst. Not just things going wrong, but things getting violent. People getting jumped or robbed, fucked up or murdered. I’d go into an anxious trance as a kid, hypervigilant of every potentially bad scenario, and would picture bad things happening.

  Stephanie getting snatched. My dad getting shot in a crack house. My mom getting harassed by the cops. I’d play it out in my mind until the waiting would drive me out into the street to look for signs that nothing was happening. Or, if something was happening, it wasn’t to my family. It was that worrying and seeking that had originally got me talking to the bad people around the way. In asking them if they’d seen my parents, or my sister, I’d befriended them. Then they’d distracted me from all that worry with other ways to occupy my time.

  That had worked until the one evening when I hadn’t immediately acted on my paranoia, and a friend had wound up dead.

  Even after years away from South Jamaica, and those memories, I’d never stopped visualizing the bad stuff. I was doing it now.

  I could very clearly see Clive in his dark clothes running with his music blasting and not hearing the threat coming up behind him. Someone grabbing him around the neck and taking him down to the ground. Beating the shit out of him. Or killing him and dumping him over the railing into the water.

  “Hey.” Clive stopped walking and turned to me. “I can hear you having an anxiety attack over how dark it is.”

  “Dark, proximity to water, nobody around—Do you run with music?”

  He looked amused and nodded. “Of course.”

  “That has to stop.”

  This time, he actually scoffed. “Be serious.”

  “I’m being perfectly serious. You need to be aware of your surroundings, man. You’re not some random person anymore. There have been actual threats made on your life long before dickhead with the sharpie left you that note.” I shook my head and surveyed the road again. Headlights rushed up the street, moving too fast, and a car sped by us. “Like that? Right there? Would you have even heard that car coming?”

  “I don’t run in the street so it’s irrelevant.”

  I was definitely starting to see why Aiden and Caleb were so consistently frustrated with him. “That car could have come up on the sidewalk and smashed you. Carajo, son. Be real.”

  Instead of getting annoyed at my griping, Clive smirked. “You sound like my ex.”

  “Yeah? He didn’t like you traipsing your ass around in the pitch black while blasting dance music either?”

  “Who says I listen to dance music? Is this a gay stereotype?”

  I glared at him. “I’ve got no fucking clue what you listen to. I don’t actually care.”

  “I listen to classical music and opera, if you must know.”

  “You’re some kind of weird liar.”

  His smirk widened. “Maybe. Either way, my ex-boyfriend hated that I went on long runs at night or early in the morning. He swore I’d get robbed one day, but he could never get up early enough to go with me.”

  “Smart dude. Sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.”

  “Or… he’s as paranoid as you are because you grew up in the same neighborhood.” Clive’s brows rose just slightly. “I suspect you know him. Michael Rodriguez?”

  My irritation
at his extreme arrogance relating to his safety switched out with an actual heart attack. “Michael?”

  “Yes. Michael Rodriguez. You do know him, right? And his brother, Raymond.”

  I went back to analyzing our surroundings. “Yeah, I know them. Didn’t know you were with Michael, though.”

  “Or, what? You wouldn’t have taken this job?”

  I scoffed. “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, you didn’t, but you reacted the same way to Michael and Raymond’s names as you did to the idea of me running while blasting music. Which is interesting.”

  “It’s really not that interesting. I have no problem with Michael. He was out of the house by the time I—” My mouth snapped shut, nostrils flaring. Fucking lawyer. Making me say way more than I’d anticipated. Years of being interrogated by cops for various reasons, and all it took was a good-looking dude with fast talk to make me slip up. “I don’t want to talk about my issues with his brother.”

  “Why not? I’m not friendly with either of them, and I’m curious.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m curious as to why Michael isn’t sharing that big house you have. Seems like y’all should have been a pretty solid couple. So, tell me that, and I’ll tell you why I have issues with his pretty boy brother.”

  This time, it was Clive who rocked back on his heels with his arms crossed over his chest. He stared me down, not looking thrilled at my refusal to be forthcoming, but seeming oddly… intrigued at the challenge.

  “I’m willing to exchange that information,” he said finally. “When the time is right.”

  As far as I was concerned, the time would never be right. Especially not to a lawyer who’d been out with his sexuality for, from what I’d understood, going on twenty years. My issues with my own gayness never needed to be a topic for conversation. Especially since the one and only person I’d ever slept with, the one person I’d come out to, had wound up being gunned down a few blocks from the park.

  “Let’s just get back to work,” I grunted.

  He didn’t push, and we turned back to the route leading to Fort Totten Park.