by A. J. Downey
A few moments later, the strong sound of a motorcycle starting split the morning air. It revved once, then twice, and faded into the distance. I cuddled down into Angel’s big bed and breathed him in, and slept some more.
When I woke for real, I sat up and stretched. I found my bathrobe on the floor and pulled it on, pulling my hair from the collar. I padded barefoot downstairs and found a note and a set of keys on the dining room table beside a French press loaded with dry coffee grounds and an empty mug.
Good Morning, mi alma,
Have some coffee. Here’s a set of keys in case you get home first. You have my number but I don’t have yours, so give me a ring when you get up, okay? Please, make yourself comfortable. Put your things away. This is your home, too. I hate leaving you this morning and I can’t wait to see you again. Try to have a good day.
Yours,
Angel
I closed my eyes and looked around feeling a little foreign being alone in his space. I went to my purse on the bench seat and pulled out my phone, powering it on.
While I waited for it to boot, I put the kettle on to make my coffee. He was so sweet, thinking of everything like he did. While I waited for the water to come to a boil, I added milk and sugar to my coffee mug and stared at the bathtub, deciding ‘What the hell’.
I started the bathwater and went back to my phone, picking it up to a slew of messages from my circus family. Most were from Aleksi and Giada, wondering why I wasn’t answering them, demanding if I’d found my Angel yet.
I couldn’t bring myself to text back the news, deciding instead that I would see them in a few hours and that I would tell them then.
I didn’t want to lie about it. I already felt guilty enough over the whole thing. I knew it would be worse seeing their faces, harder, but it was no less than I deserved. I had a feeling their disappointment, much like my brother’s, would be palpable.
I fixed my coffee, took it and my phone over to the bath, and shut off the water and got in. I took in the view and sipped, letting the peace of the water out there soak in, and after a little while, and with most of my coffee gone, I set the mug aside and picked up my phone.
I called Angel because one, I wanted him to have my number, and two, I wanted to hear his voice. While he had been sad, and while he had been disappointed, he had this way about him that didn’t make me feel like he was disappointed in me. It was like he was disappointed, but he was disappointed in everyone and everything else that had led up to me feeling like death was the only option left to me to stop the pain.
I was uncomfortable with that because in a lot of ways, that still felt like a true sentiment. I still hurt. I didn’t hurt any less, I just had someone and something to hold on for at the moment.
I wasn’t one to pray, but I was beginning to pray that things would get better somehow, some way, soon. I wanted my staying here to be more than just a short reprieve. I wanted desperately to begin feeling like I was normal again, like I was worth something again.
“Mi alma, are you okay?” was how he answered the phone.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I said with a smile, thinking If fine meant fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional.
“You sure?” he asked carefully, and it was like he knew.
“Struggling a little, but I’m okay. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
I could hear him smile on the other end of the line. “I’m here if you need to talk about it. At least for the time being, can’t promise we won’t get a call.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Really, I wanted to say thank you for the coffee and for everything this morning.”
“You’re welcome, baby.”
“I have a feeling I’ll be getting back before you, any ideas you want for dinner?”
“No, not particularly. Just whatever you feel like cooking. What’s your favorite thing to cook? Let’s do that.”
“To be honest, I don’t do that much cooking. Not that I don’t like to, it’s just not something I get to do a whole lot of when I’m with the Night Circus.”
“That’s fair,” he said.
“I’ll think about it,” I promised.
“Okay. I miss you,” he said simply, and I smiled and shifted in the bath.
“I miss you, too,” I whispered, and I heard him laugh.
“Taking advantage of that tub and the view, huh?”
“Yeah, I think this could be my new favorite thing. Although depending on how hard I push today, I might need an ice bath when I get home.”
“Don’t push too hard, stay hydrated, and call me if I need to bring home some ice.”
“You’re kind of amazing, you know that?”
“Back at you, Claire.”
The radio crackled to life behind him. I couldn’t make out what it said but after a short pause, Angel said, “I gotta go.”
“Okay, be careful.”
“Should have told that to the guy we’re going to go rescue.”
I laughed a little, and the call ended as the siren kicked up on the other end. I set my phone aside and rolled my head on my neck and shoulders. I didn’t have a lot of time if I were going to make it to the big top that had been erected in Ridgeview Park, so I reluctantly finished the dregs of my coffee, let the water out of the tub, and got moving.
“Don’t you ever answer your phone?” Giada demanded, her rich Italian accent making every word that fell from her full lips sound like they’d been dipped in pure sex.
Aleksi raised an eyebrow, and I chewed my bottom lip and said, “I was in the hospital. I only got out yesterday and they wouldn’t let me have my phone. I wanted to tell you in person.”
All activity on the stage stopped and you could hear a pin drop. Giada and Aleksi looked horrified and I felt my eyes well with tears. I looked around at every one of the performers gathered on the round center stage and sniffled.
“What happened?” Thierry, one of our French acrobats asked. He was frowning and I sniffled again and wiped at the first tear as it spilled free.
“You guys, please don’t be mad at me. I don’t think I could take it if you were mad at me.”
Aleksi and Giada moved in and wrapped me into a group hug. The rest of the troupe filtered across the stage drawing closer, realizing something was really wrong.
“Why would we be mad at you, Kotyonok?” Alexsi asked, calling me by his pet name for me, ‘Kitten’, because he’d told me that I reminded him of one when I started to climb my silks.
“I tried to kill myself. My heart stopped and everything,” I sobbed.
The entire troupe looked stricken, everyone shuffling across the stage until I was enveloped in so many bodies, arms and hands going around me, that the guilt was overwhelming for a moment before it was crushed under a veritable wave of love.
“What’s going on here!” I jumped and the troupe held me tighter, filled with silent support as Milo came out from backstage. I swallowed hard and Giada swore in Italian, rattling off an impressive angry spiel.
“Why does everyone act as if someone has died?” Milo demanded.
Oksana, Alexsi’s partner in the contortionist act spoke in her thickly accented English.
“Because Claire has, we are lucky she is home.”
I closed my eyes as Milo scowled at me. I shrank inside, but stood a little taller, wiping my face.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded and I shook my head.
“Nothing,” I lied and the rest of the troupe stood with me, unease sweeping through them.
“Then get to work,” he demanded, and tapped that damn cane that he always carried but never needed against the stage. The sound boomed like a cannon in the quiet space.
We all broke apart, and drifted to our respective positions in line.
Let the fun begin, I thought unhappily, and I went through the motions, my heart sinking, while I clung to thoughts of Angel, and just how much I wanted to see him when I went home that night.
7
Angel�
�
I’d texted Golden and told him I needed to talk to him as soon as was convenient. He’d asked what was up, but I told him this was an in-person kind of talk. He’d said sure, he’d see me when he dropped off Manolo the next night.
I made it through a pretty busy shift and thought about getting take-out from the 10-13, but Claire had messaged just as soon as I clocked out to let me know she was home. I texted back and said I would be right there and she had texted back a simple ‘okay.’ I could almost feel her exhaustion through the letters on the screen. I was right there with her.
I messaged asking if I needed to stop and get ice and she messaged back, ‘No, just come home.’
I just went home.
She was in the small kitchen washing vegetables in the sink when I came in. It smelled fantastic in the houseboat and I set down my shit inside the door. I went to her immediately and pulled her into my arms. She tilted her face up to mine and our lips met in a kiss full of fire and need.
“I missed you,” she said against my mouth, her hands pulling my shirt out of my waistband, ducking under the hem to get skin-on-skin.
“I missed you, too,” I breathed and let my eyes roam her face. It was pale, pinched, and etched with tired lines under her eyes. I frowned slightly and said, “You look exhausted.”
“I am.”
“Dinner almost done?” I asked.
“Mm-hmm, just fixing a salad. It comes out of the oven in about ten more minutes.”
“Let me take over; go sit down and tell me about your day.”
She nodded and let me go, drifting over to the dining room table. I fixed her something cold to drink and took it to her first, then shrugged out of my jacket and cut and hung it on the back of one of my dining room chairs.
She eyed it and said, “I thought I saw something on your back this morning as you went down the stairs. I meant to ask what it was.”
I smiled and went to work, cutting up salad into a bowl to toss it. I told her, “Yeah, I belong to an MC. A bunch of cops and first-responder types.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, there’s about a dozen of us. My brother Golden is one of us. Then there’s Youngblood, he’s a homicide detective. Poe is another beat cop. Backdraft is a firefighter; he works out of the same house I do, and then Blaze is another. Reflash is retired, and is the head cook at The 10-13, the bar we all hang out at. Reflash is our DC and runs the 10-13 with our chief, Skids. Skids is a retired cop, too. There’s Narcos and Driller, they were undercover out of ICPD’s Narcotics division but are looking at reassignment, and there’s Yale, he’s one of Indigo City’s ADA’s. Last but not least, we’ve got one of the jailer’s, a guy we call Oz, you know, like the TV show about the prison. Not like the Wizard of Oz.”
“Wow, will I get to meet them?” she asked.
I smiled at how unfazed she was and nodded, “As soon as I can arrange it. I’d like you to meet Golden, first. He’ll be by tomorrow night with Manolo. I planned on talking to him then about us.”
She nodded carefully and said, “Okay.” I could tell she was nervous about the prospect of meeting my family, and with family like her brother, I couldn’t say I blamed her.
“I should tell you, Angel is just my road name, not my real name. My given name is Ramiro Martinez.”
She smiled again and she just looked so damn tired, still, gracious as always, she said to me, “I never would have guessed, but thank you for telling me. You’ll still always be my Angel, though.”
My Angel, I like the sound of that.
I used the salad set and tossed the greens and veggies in the wooden salad bowl that’d belonged to my mama. I turned things off of me and back onto her.
“How did it go today?”
She let out a breath and gave a bit of a broken laugh that told me just how overwhelming the day had been.
“Well, I came clean to the troupe about why I wasn’t answering their calls all week. They took it pretty well. I think they ran interference with Milo for most of the day, but he’ll be back at me again, soon.”
I frowned. “‘Ran interference’? How do you mean, and why would they have to?”
She took a sip out of her glass and sighed.
“Oksana and Aleksi made stupid mistakes, things that I know they wouldn’t ordinarily do, to draw Milo’s ire onto them. Giada gave him a little hell, too.” She shook her head. “It’s only temporary.”
“You make it sound like this guy has a hard-on for you,” I said, bringing the salad over to the table.
“He sort of does. I refused to date him in Russia. He’s been getting steadily worse ever since.”
“How old is this guy?”
“Forty-three, I think?”
“Huh, I don’t know why, but with a name like ‘Milo’ I pictured some sixty-year-old dud. Like some kind of Anthony Hopkins dude. All accented and super-proper.”
“Well, the attitude is pretty spot on when he’s pandering to the board or investors or whatever it is he does when he isn’t lording it over the performers.”
“Small-man Syndrome?”
“Yep.”
“You complain about him?” I asked, and before she could answer, remembering that fierce, in-control woman from that night three years ago, I said, “What am I talking about? Of course you did. What happened with that, though?”
“I was basically told that personality conflicts happened all of the time and that he was doing his job as the director of the show and I needed to get over myself.” She rolled her eyes. “At least, that’s the way I interpreted it, anyway.”
“Let me guess, the treatment got worse shortly thereafter?” The timer on the oven went off and I shut it off and got whatever she had going in there out. It smelled divine and looked to be some sort of chicken with rice and wild mushrooms.
“Not right away. It was little criticisms at first, things that he had a point, but I didn’t think they were that serious. It got progressively worse. Instead of one-off lectures, they became more regular, then it turned to shouting, then it turned to embarrassing me in front of the rest of the troupe, then it turned to actively trying to turn the rest of the troupe’s attitude towards me, to the point that they were invited to take it out on me, too.”
She got really quiet and I could tell that the systematic abuse had been going on for a while. I pulled down plates and dished up food, trying to figure out what I could do, and I finally settled on asking her what she wanted.
“What do you want me to do, mi alma? Just name it.”
She smiled and it glowed with love and sadness. I sank into the seat beside hers and set plates in front of both of us. She took my hand in hers and ran her thumb lightly over the back of my fingers in a light caress and I felt my dick start to stir.
“Nothing,” she said quietly. “I don’t want anyone to fix this for me, I want to fix it myself. I just don’t know how. If you want to help, you can tell me what gym you go to and take me with you. This level of fitness doesn’t maintain itself and I need to be at the top of my game, in peak performance all of the time. That means cardio and strength training.”
I nodded slowly and told her, “I go where the cops go. I get in as Golden all the time unless he’s with me, then he guests me in. I can guest you in under his name.”
She smiled and said, “I didn’t know you and your brother looked so much alike.”
I laughed and said, “We constantly forget to mention that part. We’re identical twins.”
“Oh, wow. That’s unexpected,” she laughed. “I guess I just assumed that you were a year or so apart like me and Carter.”
“Ah, nah, more like seven-and-a-half minutes.”
“So who is the oldest?” she asked, putting air-quotes around ‘oldest’ with her fingers.
“That would be Golden and he never lets me forget it, either.”
She laughed and speared some salad with her fork. The more we talked, the more she relaxed, and I was glad for it. Her job should have brough
t her joy as something she loved to do. It wasn’t like mine, it shouldn’t be like mine, at all. The stress was killing her, literally, and I could see her self-worth had dwindled in our time apart. I wasn’t sure how to build her back up, but I was here for it. I was all the way here for her.
We cleaned up together, put the leftovers away, and went up to bed. She put some of her things away in the dresser while I went down and took a quick bath. When I came back up, she was in one of my tee shirts, and I couldn’t tell you the swell of pride and lust that overtook me when I saw it.
“I probably could have dug deeper and found one of my nightgowns. It probably would have been sexier, too, but –”
“Hey, no, mi alma. I don’t think you could be any sexier to me if you tried right now.”
She gave me a twist of lips and tried to suppress her smile but couldn’t. I went to her and pulled her into my arms. She lay her head on my chest and I felt the tension drain out of her.
“I like sleeping with you,” she murmured.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, it feels safe.”
I chuckled a bit and said, “It is safe. I would never let anything happen to you.”
She looked up at me and touched the side of my face. I kissed her gently and pulled back before we could get too involved. I smiled and said, “You get me started, I may not be able to stop.”
“Mm, that would be a shame.” She rolled her eyes and I laughed. She fitted herself to the front of my body and I felt myself rise to attention for what must have been the fifth or sixth time since I’d come home. I was like a horny teenage boy around her, in a constant state of arousal and I couldn’t say I held a single regret when it came to it.
I certainly didn’t stop her when her mouth went from mine, to my chin, to my chest, as she lowered herself to her knees in front of me.
