J-SQUARED: Wish there was something I could do.
DUTCH: Wish there was something I could do for you too.
J-SQUARED: Thx, but I’ll be fine.
DUTCH: Like I told you last time, businessmen sometimes have to go on extended business trips. Just because the trip came at a really low point doesn’t mean anything.
Justin rolled his eyes. Dutch didn’t understand Justin’s reaction to Spencer’s trip. When Justin told him about London, Dutch had assumed Spencer was a businessman. He never corrected him since their lives outside Cyber were to remain private.
J-SQUARED: It doesn’t matter. Maybe the separation will be good.
He lied. The separation wasn’t good. Dutch even told him to ask S not to go, but he told Dutch he shouldn’t have had to.
DUTCH: Do you really think so?
J-SQUARED: No. But it wasn’t my decision to make.
Dutch didn’t agree with that statement, a fact he voiced the last time they’d chatted. He’d called Justin out on the real reason he didn’t ask Spencer to stay: he was simply too proud to beg.
J-SQUARED: Let’s talk about something else. I really can’t talk about it anymore.
DUTCH: Okay. You pick the topic.
J-SQUARED: Let’s talk about your new profile pic. WOOF!
DUTCH: What? You didn’t like Yosemite Sam?
Justin laughed out loud. He knew Dutch’s reason for swapping his previous profile pic with Yosemite Sam. Dutch had grown tired of the many messages he received on Cyber. Most were looking for a hookup, or they sent him a cock shot. Dutch wasn’t a prude, but to arbitrarily receive someone’s genitals as an initial message wasn’t a good first impression, according to him, no matter how spectacular the package might have been.
So he changed his profile picture to his favorite cartoon character from childhood. Dutch related to Yosemite Sam. No matter what obstacles Bugs Bunny placed in front of Yosemite Sam, he did his best to overcome them. It was how Dutch approached life—with both barrels cocked and ready to fire.
Once Yosemite Sam’s bright red hair and angry eyes took up residence on Dutch’s Cyber profile, the shameless messages, along with pictures of erect cocks and bare asses, all but stopped.
J-SQUARED: You’re MUCH hotter!
DUTCH: LOL! And not quite as hairy.
The overwhelming sense of isolation he’d felt prior to logging onto Cyber slowly wafted away on the refreshing breeze of his electronic chat with Dutch.
It was bizarre, when he thought about it. They had never met. They never spoke on the phone, and they didn’t have a way to contact each other besides on Cyber. They didn’t even know each other’s real names. He was “J-squared,” and he assumed the screen name “Dutch” pointed to his Germanic lineage instead of his real name.
Their anonymity fostered a level of honesty he hadn’t known existed in the digital world. Stripped of all the encumbrances of the real world, he found something surprisingly real in an environment with a reputation for being superficial and fraudulent.
J-SQUARED: Take the pic with your new camera?
DUTCH: Yup. Was playing around with lighting and angles. Went for something artsy yet provocative.
J-SQUARED: I don’t know about artsy, but it sure made me want to crawl into that bed with you.
After he hit the send button, he regretted the message. While they had been flirtatious over the past few weeks, there had been a line they hadn’t crossed. A line he had just crossed.
He was in a committed long-term relationship, even if it was on tenuous ground. He had no right to be so provocative and inappropriate with another man, especially since Spencer had just left.
Now he might have just alienated the one confidant he had been relying on.
DUTCH: You’re always welcome in my bed.
Justin held his breath after reading Dutch’s reply. He logged off Cyber and turned off his phone. They had both crossed the line now, and Justin was nervous about what it meant.
CHAPTER 19
2010
DUTCH breathed easy. Nurse Ratched’s shift had ended and her replacement, Nurse Stacy, had a cheerful bedside manner. She tenderly removed the bandages that Nurse Ratched would have simply ripped off and even shaved the areas around the bandages to prevent any further hair from being unceremoniously yanked free.
Her relaxed demeanor made him feel safe, and he thanked her for her efforts before she departed.
Now he was alone in his new room having been transferred out of ICU a few hours ago. Nurse Stacy wouldn’t return for a while, and he’d finally gotten his sister to agree to leave his side to get something to eat. All he had to occupy him were the television, which he wasn’t really interested in, and his thoughts.
Even though Nurse Ratched scared him, her parting words still haunted him. I hope you learn from this, Mr. Keller.
It was past time for learning to begin.
As a result of his destructive streak, he was paralyzed from the waist down. Still, he remained positive. Outside the hospital window, the clear azure of the sky filled him with renewal; life was limitless now that he had faced death and survived. Even though he didn’t deserve it, he’d received a second chance to make a better life, to make better decisions, and to forge something out of the ashes of his old life like his father’s Phoenix.
The car crash was his wake-up call. It was fate telling him his previous life needed to perish. He needed to be born anew, into something better than he was before. As tough as it was for Dutch to admit, the car crash might have saved his life.
He had been on a path of self-destruction for the past year. He'd cared little about others and even less about himself. Late-night binge drinking at the clubs had led to anonymous, unsafe sex with countless partners. Even though he knew he should get himself tested, he didn’t. Instead, he jumped in bed with the next piggy bottom he found.
While he fucked those guys, he hated himself. He despised what he had become, what he had let himself turn into.
But he couldn’t stop.
The pain he felt when he wasn’t drinking or hooking up was excruciating. The alcohol and the sex forced the pain into the pit of his stomach. When he drank, he became numb. When he came inside one of the slutty bottom boys, he felt alive again. At least until the pain reared its ugly head one more time.
When it did, it was time to go back to drinking. After that, it was time to fuck.
It had become an endless cycle.
His work at St. Mary’s suffered as a result, and his chances of full-time employment were most likely destroyed. His department chair had called him in last week about his spotty attendance and his declining student evaluations. His part-time job was in jeopardy, so naturally, he drank and fucked the rest of the week away.
To make matters worse, a few months after Justin left him he went to the Bonham, the place where Justin and Spencer fell in love. He thought if he faced their love on its home turf, he could overcome it, get past the darkness that devoured him from within. Originally, he’d planned to return to where he and Justin first met, their special place on the River Walk, but he couldn’t. Those weren’t the memories he needed to defeat. It was the loss of Justin to Spencer he had to combat.
When he entered the doors and first stepped upon the wooden floors of the Bonham’s entrance, he realized going there was a mistake. Justin and Spencer were there, laughing with friends at the bar to the entrance’s left. Justin had his arm around Spencer, and they looked happy.
He wanted to run, to escape this torture. He meant to face the ghost of their love, not the actual physical manifestation of it. Instead of leaving, he hurried down the hallway and proceeded to the back bar, where he started to drink heavily.
After that, the events remained fuzzy. He remembered getting upset at someone, but he couldn’t remember who. Then there was a dark-skinned twink, who was ready to party. They drank together, excessively, and made out on the dance floor before making plans to head back to the twink’s ap
artment.
He vaguely remembered leaving the Bonham, shitfaced and in no shape to drive. Still, he got in his car and followed his latest conquest to his place.
He never made it.
He plowed through a stoplight a few intersections away from the club and crashed into a Cadillac. He’d failed to fasten his seatbelt when he entered the car, so the force of the collision ejected him from his vehicle and onto the pavement.
After that, he couldn’t recall.
From what his sister told him, he fell into a coma a few days after the accident and was still in it when she arrived from Boston. The doctors were unsure if he would wake up, which had terrified Heidi.
He had no memory of a coma, but he did recall a black sea. Adrift, he felt lost and helpless, ready to drown, when his father descended from the heavens to save him.
Now that he had been rescued, he needed to prove worthy of being saved.
The previous year of his life had been a disaster, which he blamed on Justin. But while Justin was an easy scapegoat, his broken heart wasn’t Justin’s fault. Dutch entered into doomed relationships far too easily—Trevor, Manny, Carlo, Todd, and Justin. In his four decades on this planet, he’d managed to make more disastrous decisions in his romantic life than most people, including Britney Spears and Liza Minnelli combined.
That was going to end. His heart would still be his sail but his mind would take over the wheel. Working together, they would charter a safer path for his life.
His positive attitude and outlook made him feel like a new person, like someone he hadn’t been in a long time.
According to the doctors, it also contributed to his remarkable recovery. He had many internal injuries and a busted spleen, but his body was healing itself, as if it had found a new energy source to spur it toward recovery. This morning he sat up and ate breakfast, and he could even wheel himself to the bathroom instead of relieving himself in a bedpan, which pleased both him and the nurses.
What he needed to work on now was walking. With a compression fracture of the vertebrae, lengthy bed rest, when he wasn’t in physical therapy, was required, especially if he wished to walk again.
Apparently, when he was ejected from the car, his ass hit the asphalt first, causing some of the vertebra to break. Once the swelling subsided, which would only happen with bed rest and no physical exertion, the swelling would decrease and the pressure against the spinal cord would lessen. With strengthening and stretching exercises and some physical therapy, Dutch could walk again.
No, he would walk again.
This was a new beginning after all. The old Dutch had died in the car accident. When he took his first steps, it would be as a new man, a different Dutch Keller, who had never walked this planet before.
“I’ve seen you look better.”
Startled, Dutch turned toward the open door to his hospital room. There stood Justin Jimenez, a man he never expected to see again and the man who indirectly led him down the path of destruction.
The refreshing breeze of his new beginning died. In its place, the familiar darkness reformed. The sight of Justin paralyzed his entire body, until he felt just as heavy and useless as his legs.
Justin walked into his hospital room and crossed to the chair under the television, across from his bed. Dutch hadn’t seen Justin in a year, but that didn’t feel right. It seemed like only yesterday when he last gazed upon his face, which had changed a bit since they were together.
Justin’s hair was now shorter. When they first met, his hair came to just below his ears, and long strands constantly fell in front of his eyes. Now, cut clean, not clipped, the style better suited a high school principal.
The soul patch he’d once sported under his lower lip had grown into a Van Dyke.
If it was possible, Dutch found him even more attractive now.
You’ve got to be kidding me, he thought. After everything that’s happened, after everything you’ve been through, you still want to take him in your arms? He stopped talking to you. He cut all ties with you! He told you he loved you and then cut you off like an infected limb.
The darkness within him hissed.
Justin’s callous abandonment had caused him to spiral out of control. The cavalier way Dutch led his life afterward was a testament to his dreadful mistreatment. He no longer felt worthy of being loved, of being happy. He felt tainted, as if the love they’d shared was an aberration, something that never should have been born into the world.
As such, he’d lived his life like a ticking time bomb, slowly counting down to his inevitable death.
He refused to remain in that place any longer. The accident propelled the negativity out of his body the moment he slammed into the asphalt. He was paralyzed but stronger than he had been in a year.
Justin would not reignite the self-destructive spark.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.
Justin’s eyes widened in surprise to his acerbic tone. He, too, was shocked at the anger, but he didn’t let the surprise show. His anger not only felt good, it was healing.
Justin rose from the chair in front of the bed. He looked uncertain, but even more than that, he looked shattered, as if someone had broken him to pieces and then hastily adhered all the pieces back together.
At first, Dutch hadn’t noticed how awful Justin looked. His sudden entrance had caught him off guard. Now, though, Justin’s distress was impossible to miss. His hair was disheveled, his clothes were wrinkled, and his eyes were swollen. Something bad had recently happened.
“I apologize,” Justin finally stammered. “I thought you wanted me to come.”
Justin’s comment infuriated him. His concern for Justin’s appearance washed away in a tsunami of resentment. “You thought I wanted you to come?” he asked, his anger swelling to violent proportions. “A year ago I wanted you to come. Six months ago, I wanted you to come. Hell, even last week I wanted you to come.” He closed his eyes, willing Justin out of his room. “Today, I want you to get the fuck out of here.”
“I’m sorry,” Justin said while tripping over the leg of the hospital chair. “I’ll just leave.”
He exhaled sharply. “Good.”
“You made it!” Dutch heard his sister exclaim. “I’m so glad you came.”
When he opened his eyes, his sister was hugging Justin as if he were a long-lost relative. She looked at Dutch, and her eyes sparkled with the satisfaction of a job well done.
“You did this?” he asked her. “You asked him to come?”
“Of course not,” she responded. “I was only the messenger.”
He had no clue what was happening. He didn’t understand why his sister was happy to see Justin, when she knew everything about their relationship and their breakup. She was the one who had wanted Dutch to end things with Justin. Now she was standing with her arm around Justin and kissing his cheek as if they were the best of friends. As if Justin wasn’t the reason her brother had self-destructed.
She was also not sensing Justin’s discomfort. His sister obviously hadn’t overheard her brother’s angry words toward Justin, and she couldn’t see that Justin looked like a cornered squirrel, unsure whether to dash out the door or jump out the window.
As usual, his sister was more clueless than Alicia Silverstone. He thought she would grow out of it when she turned forty. Apparently, he was wrong.
“Heidi, what message are you talking about?”
“You know the message,” she told him. Heidi finally untangled herself from Justin and plopped herself at the foot of his bed. She absently rubbed his leg. “Please, Justin, sit down. After all, you’ve come all this way.”
“He lives in San Antonio,” he practically yelled at her. “You make it sound like he just flew in from Tokyo.”
“Lukas, what’s the matter with you?” she asked him. “Why are you so sour?”
“It’s me,” Justin finally said. “I’m sorry for upsetting you,” he told Dutch. Justin walked over to Heidi and shook
her hand. “It was nice seeing you again. I wish it was under better circumstances.”
“You’re leaving?” she asked, still completely oblivious to the tension quickly filling the room. “You just got here.”
“I know,” Justin said. “But I have things to take care of.”
“Tell Spencer I said hi,” he said.
Justin flinched as if he had been slapped.
“Lukas!” his sister scolded.
“Don’t worry about it,” Justin told Heidi. “I’m fine.” His eyes once again met Dutch’s. “I’m glad to see you’re recuperating nicely. I wish you nothing but a full recovery.”
He stared blankly at Justin. He had no idea why Justin was here, but he wanted Justin to go. Justin’s presence wasn’t helping. It only depressed him, reminded him of what he lost and how he’d been treated. He didn’t need that reminder. The memories he carried with him like an albatross were reminder enough.
Besides, Justin had made his choice, and it was Spencer. He didn’t need Justin to check up on him, to see if he was okay. Doing so was like teasing an alcoholic with a shot of whisky. Justin didn’t care, and his reentrance was merely a prelude to his imminent exit. It was time for him to walk out the door and stay gone for good.
On cue, Justin turned around and walked toward the open hospital door.
“Oh my fucking God!” Heidi shouted. “You gay guys are worse than straight men, if that’s even possible!”
Justin stopped in his tracks. He turned around to face Heidi. “Excuse me?”
“What he said,” Dutch told his sister. Her outburst was both uncharacteristic and alarming. He rarely saw her this way. “What are you talking about?”
“The two of you obviously have more unresolved conflict than an obsessive compulsive woman with daddy issues, but instead of hashing it out, you’re ignoring it. I thought gay men were supposed to be in touch with their feelings.”
“I’m in perfect touch with my feelings,” he told his sister. He could see Justin squirming uncomfortably through his peripheral vision. “I know down to the very last detail what happened to me after I was left on the side of the road like a piece of trash. Forgive me if I don’t want to travel down that road again.”
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