Cross Island

by Santino Hassell

  Cross Island, ch 6

  Chapter Six

  Victor

  Two weeks into the assignment, Stephanie called.

  I watched my phone light up and flash her picture—a saved photo a decade old when she’d been rail thin and still packed full of attitude—and didn’t make a move to pick up. Instead, I hit ignore and unbuckled my seat belt, slumping lower in the driver’s seat.

  Clive had been in this dude’s house for thirty minutes, and I was getting antsy. Me antsy looked more like me in a bad fucking mood, and it wasn’t the time to talk to my distant sister. Especially since I’d started this evening with a pounding headache and an argument with Clive over whether or not going to a stranger’s house was a good idea.

  Two weeks in… and he was still fighting me on just about everything. Still using that mocking tone, smirking at my lectures, and reluctantly negotiating every single thing I advised him to do. It was driving me nuts, and that whole “don’t be familiar” thing was out the window. I’d stopped following him during his jogs in the vehicle and had started jogging right alongside him. When he went to the grocery store, I shopped with him instead of waiting outside. I’d even stood outside his barber and smoked when he’d gone to get a shape-up.

  Because I couldn’t trust him worth a damn, I refused to let him go more than a yard being out of my sight unless he was at QFindr. There, the new office security alerted me as soon as he stepped foot in the lobby. Twice, he’d thought he was shaking me only to run into me downstairs, and then he’d stare coldly before ignoring me for hours. Some days, it felt like we were in a fucked up relationship that neither of us could get away from. Other days, it felt like I was the stalker.

  The actual stalker hadn’t reached out directly again, but my instincts went haywire every night. Even as a kid, I’d had a habit of looking out the window after dark. At first, it had been to look for my parents. Then, to keep an eye on Steph. After that, it was to smoke weed and blow it out the window while checking on whichever friend was meeting me. Even in boring ass Whitestone, I kept the habit.

  There was never anything in particular going on, but I couldn’t stop looking. Even when it seemed like no one was out there, it felt like someone was. It felt like someone was watching the house, and I only got that feeling late at night after we were already inside. I’d wait and wait and fucking wait for someone to step out of the shadows, but it never happened. Even so, I wasn’t convinced that it was in my head.

  My paranoid instincts had saved my life on more than one occasion. My hesitation, four years ago, to not run out when the streets were so hot was why I hadn’t been gunned down along with Shawn. I’d hated myself for it. Part of me still hated myself, but the nagging feeling that something bad was going to happen had kept my ass in the house for the ten minutes needed to not be murdered. And now? That same gut feeling screamed to keep Clive inside after nine. It had worked… until he’d decided he needed to get laid.

  Exhaling slowly, I glanced out the window. The guy’s apartment was above the barber shop where Clive got his hair cut. It was ridiculously close to Clive’s house—close enough to cause double annoyance for me. For one, there was the danger of Clive hitting the dude up again and deciding it was so close he could walk on his own. And two, well, I didn’t really want to deal with some random dude coming through every now and then. Things were easier, and more pleasant, when it was just the two of us. Even with the arguing. I wasn’t trying to listen to him balling another dude in the bedroom next to mine.

  My phone rang again. Stephanie.

  Sucking my teeth, I hit speaker phone. “What?”

  “Hey,” she said. “You busy?”

  I glanced up at the windows again. They were mostly lit up. I wondered what the hell they were doing. “Yeah.”

  “So you can’t talk?”

  “I said I was busy, didn’t I?”

  “Okay…” There was a pause on the line. “What’s your problem?”

  I shoved my tongue in the side of my cheek, glaring up at Grindr Bro’s windows. “I just don’t see what you want. You got your man and your friends and your nice life. What can I do for you?”

  Again, there was a lengthy wait before she replied. This time, with a defensive edge in her voice. “What do you want from me, Victor? To call you every night? Text you multiple times a day? Send you memes or add you on Snapchat? If so, that’s confusing as fuck because we have never been those people. We’ve never been close.”

  “Yeah, because—” I sucked in a breath and closed my eyes tightly. “Never mind.”

  “No, what were you going to say?”

  Upstairs in Grindr Bro’s apartment, shadows had moved on the other side of the curtains. I couldn’t tell what they were doing other than the fact that it was two people, but my brain downshifted from annoyed to intrigued. Then it started filling in the blanks. Or asking questions that required answers to fill in the blanks.

  Was Clive fucking this dude, or was he getting fucked? And what did this guy look like? Was he a little guy like Raymond’s man, or a big dude like me?

  “Victor!”

  “Fuck—what?” I jerked my eyes away from those intertwined shadows as if I’d been caught being curious and horny. “Just forget it, Steph. You have your life, I have… whatever I have. We can just keep it that way, same as always, and I’ll see you when I see you.”

  “That’s not what I wanted!” she burst out. “Why are you being so pissy? The last time I saw you—”

  “Was at that party where you didn’t speak to me.”

  “You were working.”

  “And you were with your friends.”

  She sighed again, more frustrated sounding this time. “Vic, after all this time, you’re still hung up on Raymond?”

  I put my hands on the steering wheel and clenched. “Just drop it.”

  “We’ve been dropping it for years. Even Tonya asked what the deal was. We need to talk about it.”

  “There’s nothing to fucking talk about.”

  “Are you serious?” she demanded, voice rising. “I know I’ve been distant, but you turn into the old Victor every time you see Ray or his friends. And we’re older now. You’ve been away. Don’t you think it’s time to… to just admit—”

  “Admit what?” My pulse began to throb in my ears. “What do you think you know, Steph?”

  “That you…” Stephanie took a deep breath. “Coño, Victor, you were obsessed with Ray. The way you’d look at him—"

  I ended the call with a stab of my finger. For a moment, the confines of the vehicle were filled with my harsh breathing and confusion. It built and built, a castle of panic, until I slammed my fist against the steering wheel hard enough to shake the car.

  My phone chimed. I ignored it and leaned my forehead against the steering wheel. When it chimed twice more, I sat up straight with a growl and grabbed the phone.

  Stephanie: You don’t have to be like this, Victor. I support you. I’ll always support you.

  Stephanie: I love you, okay?

  Fuck that. Fuck her support. Fuck them all.

  Had I been so obvious? Maybe they all knew. Maybe they’d all noticed the way I’d stared at Raymond while he played handball shirtless with all that hair streaming down his back. The way I’d gotten so hard for him at the worst times and had to pretend to be looking at some girl. As if I’d ever once gotten hard for any fucking girl.

  The way I’d jacked it to fantasies of getting on my knees for him so he could brutally fuck my face. Those fantasies had caused me to come so hard I’d felt like I was losing my mind—the more violent the better. And then I’d open my eyes and hate myself for imagining him using my body. I’d hated myself so much that I’d gone and taken it out on him until he hated me back. The first time he’d said it, flat-out in a cold dead voice after we’d turned a scuffle into an all-out brawl at a house party, I’d hid on a rooftop and cried.

  Which was how Shawn had found me.

  The passeng
er’s door opened, and I looked up with what was probably a monstrous glare. I tried to cool out, to fix my face and be calm, but I was so on edge that Clive fell right in my crosshairs. Even in the gloom of the streetlights, I could see he was a little sweaty. The buttons to the sweater he’d been wearing forty-five minutes ago were undone, and the shirt beneath looked wrinkled. And I could smell him. And the other guy. I could smell sex.

  “Get your fill?” I asked roughly.

  Clive froze with his hand on the seatbelt, and his eyes slowly rose to examine me. Surprise swept across his face closely followed by scorn. “He got his if that’s what you want to know.”

  My lip curled. “I don’t want to know anything about it.”

  He didn’t look away from me as I turned the keys, causing to car to roar to life. Clive watched me during the short ride home, those dark eyes narrowed but his expression otherwise unreadable. The harder he stared, without once looking away, the more uncomfortable I became. And the more uncomfortable I became, the more I wanted to melt through the goddamn car onto the street to escape the disapproval radiating out of him.

  Disappointment wasn’t new to me. I’d grown up pushing through fields of the stuff. But Clive’s disappointment burned. We were only driving a few blocks, but I still managed to run through various ways to make up for my sharp tone. I was desperate for this guy to not dislike me, maybe because he was so damn with it and cool, or maybe because he was the only person to say more than two words to me out of curiosity and not just obligation since I’d returned from Chicago.

  We parked outside his house, but neither of us moved from the car.

  “Victor.”

  “What?”

  “Why did you ask me that?”

  I clenched my jaw. “I don’t know.”

  “Bullshit unless you really wanted me to go into detail about what I did up there.” He unclipped his seatbelt. “I doubt that’s what you meant, but I can do that.”

  Tension shot through my body. I kept silent.

  “Well then.” Clive’s voice was low and scathing, chock full of condescending disappointment. “I picked him because he told me he likes his men mean and his sex rough. He told me he wanted to choke on my dick.”

  Warmth crept up my neck, but I didn’t dare look in his direction. Not even when I inhaled sharply.

  “So while you sat down here, waiting in disgust, I made a closeted Wall Street dickhead come just from having his mouth used. Then I bent him over his desk and pounded his ass so hard—”

  “Stop,” I shouted, slamming my hand on the steering wheel for the second time that night. “What the fuck is your problem, Clive?”

  He grabbed my collar and jerked it, forcing me to look in his direction. For a hot second, I’d wondered if he was trying to get a rise out of me. It’d worked, but that hadn’t been his intent. I could tell, because he looked absolutely furious.

  “My problem is that you told me you didn’t care that I’m gay.”

  “I don’t!”

  “Then why the hell are you talking down to me the first time you bear witness to signs of my gayness? Was it fine only as long as I didn’t rub it in your face?”

  I clamped my mouth shut. My nostrils flared.

  “You’re full of shit,” he seethed. “One of those people who are okay with gayness as long as it’s out of their sight, I take it? Well, I don’t do closets. And I don’t do discreet. Not for my ex-boyfriend, and not for the help. So, if you have a problem with me being gay—”

  “I don’t have a fucking problem,” I roared, finally twisting to face him. “I’m gay too!”

  The anger fled Clive’s face, replaced by wide-eyed shock. “What?”

  “I’m. Gay,” I said through jagged breaths. “Do you get it? I like men. I’ve always liked men. I’ve pretended to be into women, tried my fucking hardest, but I’m not. And no one knows that but you, so don’t you dare open your mouth to those people you work for or we will have a problem.”

  Clive scoffed, as if the idea of him confiding in his employers was absurd, but he was rapidly searching my face. “Why didn’t you tell your sister? She’s bisexual.”

  “I don’t care that she and Tonya are into women.” Their lives meant nothing to me. They meant nothing to me. “And I don’t care that Raymond is all queer and happy with his little blond boyfriend.”

  Clive nodded slowly. “That’s it, isn’t it? Why you can’t stand the sight of him.” When I glared, he gave me that narrow-eyed look again. The one that dared me to lie. Or disobey. “You wanted him, and you thought he was straight.”

  I’d wanted him, and I’d thought he was straight, and I’d imagined him wanting me back. He’d started fucking my sister instead. Since high school, I’d gotten off to fantasies of him screwing me until I’d begged and cried, and he’d gotten with my sister.

  “Is that why you would fight him? Answer me, Victor.”

  “Yes,” I growled. “That’s why. And before you ask, because everyone asks, there was no option for me to come out. It didn’t matter that my sister was into girls too. I wasn’t like her. I had no Tonya or Nunzio to be my queer gurus. I had no Raymond or Chris or Angel to accept me and have my back. I had my fists, and my friends, and those friends—”

  “Weren’t about to have your back if you came out as gay.” A bitter smile crossed Clive’s face. “You think I don’t know how that goes?”

  I looked away and shrugged, blunt and sharp. Immature.

  “I didn’t grow up poor, but I didn’t grow up with the privilege of a queer friendly group of friends. I didn’t grow up with access to other gay men. I grew up praying my grandparents would never find out, or that my parents wouldn’t try to use the church against me when they found my stash of gay porn.” Clive grabbed my chin and forced me to look at him. His fingertips pressed into my scar. “They didn’t turn on me, but that fear was real. It held me hostage until I was out of high school. Then I found out I’d lived a shadow of my life for no reason. My parents still loved me even though they had done that straight parent thing of condescendingly informing me that they’d always known. They weren’t really the problem, though. It was the rest of the world that had made my life difficult.”

  I flinched, pulling away. “I didn’t have any parents who gave a shit one way or the other. Not then, not now. They disappeared into some blackhole of crack and jail when we were kids, and I don’t give a shit. We didn’t need them. I still don’t need nobody.”

  “Do you really believe that, or are you just saying that because you think there’s no other option?”

  “I don’t think it.” I yanked the key out of the ignition. “I know it. I’m as alone as I always was, man. More so than ever, since my boys from the block who aren’t in Rikers or upstate are dead or still involved in a life I don’t have interest in anymore.” And they knew it. Had accused me of thinking I’m hot shit. Of coming back all brand new. Of being fake. Of needing my ass kicked. It was part of the reason I wanted out of South Jamaica, and away from the Avenue. “I don’t even care anymore. I’m tired of caring. I’ll just die alone as long as I can do it in peace.”

  Clive snorted. “Don’t be an idiot. You’re twenty-four. You think you’ve already met all the people you’ll ever meet?”

  “Look at my face,” I said, using his own condescending tone on him. “You think people see these scars and tats and come rushing to be my pal? You think I’m gonna end up kicking it with people who work for QFindr? Hell no.”

  “Those are not the only queer people available,” he said dryly. “And neither is the group from your old block.”

  “Yeah? You saying you want to be my friend, Mr. Baptiste?” When he raised an eyebrow in response, I absolutely could not help the incredulous scoff that left my mouth. “You gotta be kidding me. You just called me the help.”

  Clive rolled his eyes and opened his door. “I revert back to third grade with an offer of friendship, and you throw a stupid insult in my face? I was defensive be
cause I thought you were being homophobic. I didn’t mean it.”

  I threw open my door and got out. “Yeah, well—”

  My amusement, and my words, died in my throat once I turned to look at Clive over the roof of the car. Movement across the street caught my eye and for only a breath, I could clearly see a figure outlined in the shadows behind a broad tree.

  “Get in the house,” I said so low it was barely a whisper. “Now.”

  Cross Island, ch 7

  Chapter Seven

  Clive

  Victor skirted the car and started across the street just as someone broke away from the long shadows and bolted into a run. My heart leapt, excitement flooding me. The desire to unmask the person who’d been watching me won over a desire to listen to my bodyguard, so I followed him.

  The clang of a metal gate rung out in the night. I crossed the street just in time to see Victor about to vault over it. He looked back at me, glaring ferociously.

  “Get the fuck back in the house.”

  Him shouting in my face temporarily shocked me into freezing. I checked myself and anger filtered in through the surprise of being spoken to like a child. “He’s getting away, you idiot!”

  Victor threw me another enraged glare, then climbed the gate in two quick motions. He flipped over the top, landed on his feet, then flew down my neighbor’s driveway and into their backyard. I was left standing in the dark street, a ball of frustration and anticipation that could do nothing but wait for someone else to handle my problem. Not only did I have some psychotic alt right moron watching my windows like a peeping tom, but now I had a self-loathing twenty-four-year-old shouting at me in the middle of the street.

  I stood there seething for what seemed like an eternity. It wasn’t until a distance sound of footsteps rung out that I realized several minutes had passed, and Victor had not returned. The heat of my temper cooled.

  Where was he?

  I backed towards my house and pulled out my keys. Everything in me told me to get inside, but my eyes kept flicking up and down the block before darting back to my neighbor’s backyard.