Acrobat

by Mary Calmes

  The muscles in his jaw corded. “So, you have a date?”

  “I do.” I chuckled. “And you? Are you see—”

  “It’s the same as it was before you.”

  I understood. It meant that spotting him outside the bathhouse on Halstead had not been a fluke; he was back to old habits, one-night stands with a parade of nameless guys. It made sense. Duncan Stiel was gorgeous—any guy would want him. It was keeping him, living with him inside the insulated bubble he insisted on, that was the trick.

  “Nate?”

  My eyes flicked back to his.

  He smiled. “Don’t know what to say?”

  His eyes were hooded, his smile barely there, and I knew by the sound he made under his breath that he wanted to lean in and take hold of me. I remembered it—his looks, his breathing, his smell—and how much I had wanted it to work so desperately. The man could be addictively sweet, and when I had been there some nights, at his loft, when he got home from work, the joy on his face at finding me had been worth all the secrecy. When he crossed the floor to wrap strong arms around me, just needing everything to stop, just wanting me to hold him as tight as I could… I knew that was real, and those moments had sustained me through the rest. It had been physically painful when I took his house key off my ring because I knew those quiet, tender encounters were over.

  “There’s nothing to say,” I assured him.

  He nodded and took a breath. “There is. You look great.”

  “You too.” I smiled, relieved, giving him the sincere compliment before I turned to go.

  “Nate.”

  My head swiveled back.

  “If you ever find yourself in need of police protection….” He smiled ruefully.

  “First call I make,” I promised.

  He shoved his hands down in the pockets of his dress pants, and I turned again and walked away. At the end of the hall, I looked back. He was still there, watching me.

  “Hey, you know I only wish you the best, right?”

  “Yeah, I know,” he assured me.

  I pushed the panic bar on the door and walked outside into the brisk fall air. I felt good. The cathartic talk was done, and it had not been how I thought it would be, instead lighter. But as I took a deep breath, the roll of memory leveled me and I remembered, like you do in the morning when you first wake up after a breakup before everything comes roaring back, that I needed to talk to Dreo. As I began walking in the opposite direction of my faculty meeting, I pulled out my cell phone and called Michael. I needed to find out where his uncle was.

  THE dean let me out of the staff meeting after I explained that I had a family emergency and promised to have someone fill me in on what I missed. After catching a cab, I headed downtown to an Italian restaurant off LaSalle that was a huge place that looked more like a warehouse than a high-end dining experience. Supposedly, though, it was a very trendy new place where all the foodies gathered nightly. As I was there after lunch and well before dinner, it was mostly deserted. At the bar, though, situated in the middle of a vast concrete floor, was where I saw Dreo Fiore, just like Michael had told me when I called to ask if he knew his uncle’s whereabouts.

  Normally, the younger Fiore didn’t get an itinerary from his uncle, but I figured with the unfortunate turn of events that Dreo might have been a little more forthcoming. I was right. Michael told me he had given Dreo an ultimatum: he could either tell him where he would be at certain points during the day or turn the GPS on his phone on. Dreo had given Michael a rundown of where he anticipated being as the idea of being tracked around town was not appealing. At the restaurant, he was with five or six other men, and another was behind the bar, dressed, I thought, much too nicely to be serving drinks.

  “Sorry,” a young guy, probably the host, said as he stepped in front of me. “We’re not serving dinner yet, and I think tonight we’re all booked with reser—”

  “Oh no.” I stopped him, pointing over his shoulder. “I just need to talk to that gentleman there.”

  “Tommy, what’s the problem?” someone called over.

  I turned, he turned, both of us toward the voice. It was the man behind the bar, but before I could open my mouth, Dreo called my name.

  “Hey.” I lifted my hand as I looked back at the guy in front of me. “Can I—is it okay? May I go talk to him?”

  “Of course.” He stepped back, and it was hard to tell what I was looking at. Concern? Worry? Both? He seemed shaken.

  I smiled, trying to reassure him that whatever he was worried about with me was fine before I started across the floor. Dreo slid off his barstool, and I noticed he looked bigger than he did at home, broader, more menacing, the all-black suit with the black dress shirt on underneath adding to the image. I had not thought of him as being as muscular as Duncan, and he wasn’t. He was somewhat slighter, leaner, but he was also, I realized, just as tall.

  “What’s going on? How did you know where I was?” he asked as I closed in.

  “I called Michael, and I’m so sorry to bother you,” I apologized as I reached him, tipping my head back slightly to meet his gaze, “but have you talked to him today?”

  “Michael?”

  I nodded.

  “Not since early this morning, why?” he wanted to know, putting a hand on the side of my neck.

  “Dreo, who’s your friend?”

  I turned and saw faces I had never seen before.

  “Nate Qells. He lives in my building,” he told the bartender as his hand slid from my neck to my shoulder. “He’s the professor I told you about yesterday… you remember.”

  There was a nod. “Bring him over here.”

  “Come on,” he told me, turning so I could walk forward, his hand sliding down to the small of my back to propel me forward.

  “Professor of what?” the man asked me as we closed in on the bar.

  “English lit,” I replied. “Beowulf to Milton, Renaissance literature, mainly.”

  He nodded. “Where at?”

  “University of Chicago.”

  Second nod. “Do you know Alla Strada?”

  I smiled. “I do know Alla; she’s an excellent professor. Is she your daughter?”

  “She’s my niece, my brother’s daughter.” He wiped his hand on the bar towel before leaning forward to offer me his hand. “I’m her uncle, Tony Strada.”

  I moved forward to take the hand, leaning into the polished wood to shake it. “Nate Qells.”

  “So,” he said, releasing my hand, “you’re not by chance one of the professors who sat on the board that hired her, are you?”

  “I did have that privilege.”

  His dark whiskey-colored eyes heated. “She told us that it was between her and another guy who was older and had a lot more experience.”

  “Yes, but she had fire,” I told him. “Still does. She isn’t doing it for a paycheck. She wants to teach. Did she tell you about her dream?”

  He made a noise in the back of his throat. “Don’t get me started. Goin’ to Iraq. Teaching there because she can speak Arabic and Kurdish—do you have kids, Professor?”

  “One, a son, so your brother has my sympathy.”

  He nodded. “She just needs to get knocked up.”

  I laughed.

  “No?”

  I shrugged.

  “Because you know she has a girlfriend.”

  “I do.” I patted his arm. “And her girlfriend wants to save the world too.”

  “Aww, fuck,” he grumbled, pointing at a barstool. “Siddown, Professor, I’ll get you some food. What’re you drinkin’?”

  “I actually have a date,” I said. “But I appre—”

  “Sit, Professor.” He smiled and nodded.

  I didn’t want to drink or eat, but every glance, even Dreo’s, carried the same look of wide-eyed, thundering panic, like hurry up and freakin’ give the man an answer!

  I gave up. “Sam Adams, if you have it.”

  “It’s comin’ now.”

 
“Ma guarda chi c’è!”

  I looked up, and there was Sal walking into the room, and he was really trying to smile and put it on, his happy face, but I saw it in his eyes, the sorrow.

  When he crossed to me, I turned on the barstool and put my hand on his cheek. Normally, I was not a big touchy-feely guy, but it seemed like it would be okay. When he leaned in, his face into my shoulder, I felt the tremble just for a second. How both he and Dreo were not sedated in a dark room I had no idea.

  I rubbed the nape of his neck, asked how he was, and was greeted with silence before he took a breath and stepped away, smile back, plastered there.

  “We’re both gonna be fine, aren’t we, D?”

  Dreo grunted in agreement.

  I turned back to him and found Dreo’s deep eyes locked on me. They were really something, those eyes of his, so dark that you couldn’t ever see his pupils. The brown was so close to black, only the way the light caught them sometimes, making them glint and fire, let you know you were looking at a color and not the absence of it. Being fringed in long, thick black lashes only added to their allure.

  “So what are you doing here?” Dreo finally got to ask me.

  “I came to tell you that the police were at my apartment this morning after you left.”

  He leaned close, lowering his voice, though with Sal behind him being loud and entertaining, no one was listening to us anyway. “Tell me from the beginning.”

  So I went over it: the hit man, Alfred Mangino, who had died after he slipped and fell into the dumpster, how interested the police had been in Dreo, and the fact that Detective O’Meara as well as my ex were worried about him and me.

  “I told everyone that you’re a good guy, but they’re all worried about—”

  “What did you say?” he asked, cutting me off, leaning even closer, only inches separating us.

  “About what?” My voice lowered as it did whenever my pulse sped up. No longer did my fluster ever show outwardly; I had mastered that with age.

  “About me being a good guy.”

  “Just that you are and you’re trying to take care of Michael and that he’s the most important thing to you.”

  He nodded, still crowding me. “Your ex is a cop?”

  “That needs to stay between us, all right? It was a secret at the time, and it’s still a secret now.”

  “How long did you date him?”

  “Couple of years.”

  “When?”

  “We ended it a little over a year and a half ago now.”

  He squinted at me. “I never saw anyone; Michael didn’t mention anything to me.”

  “That’s because my ex never came to my place, so Michael never met him.”

  “Why didn’t he come to your apartment?”

  “Because it was a secret, like I said,” I explained. “He was in the closet—still is. It’s because of his job.”

  The way he was looking at me was almost sad. “So he never stepped up and said you guys were together?”

  “He couldn’t.”

  “Or wouldn’t.”

  “Don’t pass judgment; it doesn’t become you.”

  He tipped his head like maybe not and then leaned back, letting me breathe, giving me space.

  “How are you today?”

  “Who cares?”

  “I care.”

  He shrugged. “Non importa.”

  “Dreo?”

  “You came to find me because you thought that hit man was after me and you wanted to warn me, yes?”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “And now I have, so… I should go.”

  “You need to sit and drink your beer and eat whatever he makes,” he told me. “Tony is cooking for you, and he don’t cook for nobody.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, lifting the strap of my messenger bag, which had been slung across my chest, over my head and gently putting it down beside me on the empty stool on my left.

  He gave his attention to the others, looking away from me, and as he did, as he stood there between me and Sal and the other guys, I had a nearly overwhelming urge to touch him, to soothe the hurt that was right there on the surface.

  “Did you sleep at all?” I asked instead.

  No answer.

  “Dreo.”

  He turned his head slowly back to me, eyes narrowed, so I noticed again how long and thick his lashes were, the shiny black striking against his pale cheek as he closed them for just a second.

  “You’re exhausted.”

  “It’s been a long day—we all just got back from going to the funeral home.”

  “Will there be separate funerals?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is Mr. Romelli’s still on Saturday?”

  He nodded. “I need you and Michael there with me. There will be a lot of out of town people, and they need to see my family.”

  I didn’t get the chance to ask him what he meant before a bowl that smelled heavenly was put down in front of me.

  “Here you are, Professor.”

  I looked up as Tony Strada put a tall bar glass down in front of me beside the bowl of linguini and clams. It smelled amazing.

  “Thank you,” I said with a smile. “I can’t tell you the last time I had this.”

  He nodded, clearly pleased, and passed me a spoon, fork, and a napkin.

  “Nate, let me introduce you to the others.”

  So I met guys I could tell Dreo didn’t know well. He wasn’t warm with them, not like he had been with the men that both he and Sal, from what he said, had grown up with. I asked Sal, when he was done with the introductions, if he and Dreo would be taking some time off.

  “What for?” he asked me.

  It wasn’t my place to tell him that he and Dreo and Tony all needed some group therapy and a vacation to Fiji.

  I scarfed down my food, leaving nothing, and drained my beer. I gushed over my meal, and how fast I had eaten it gave honest testament to how great it was. When Tony wanted to give me more, I told him I had a date later and would be expected to eat something. He agreed, smiled, and told me to get the hell out. I liked him a lot.

  “I’ll see you all Saturday at the funeral,” I said as I got up, thanking Tony again.

  “A presto,” Tony said softly.

  I gave Dreo’s arm a gentle squeeze and headed for the door.

  “Wait.”

  Turning, I watched Dreo jog over to me and stop close.

  “Thank you for coming here to talk to me. I’m going to tell them all once you leave so they’ll know.”

  “Why does it matter that they know?”

  “It matters.”

  “Okay.” I smiled. “I’m glad you’re okay; I was worried.”

  He nodded before he turned and left me.

  Outside, I realized how full I was and told myself that it was okay. Wherever I was going with Sean, there had to be salad on the menu.

  Chapter 7

  SUSHI was even better than salad. You could order big or small and whatever you ate would be enough. I ordered small, and Sean was worried that it wouldn’t fill me up.

  “I had a big lunch.” I smiled across the table at him.

  He took a breath. “You look great. Did I tell you that already?”

  “Yes.” I chuckled. “But you can keep saying it.”

  When I had opened the door, the man had caught his breath, and I had been completely charmed. And Dockers and a dress shirt and sweater vest didn’t seem like much to me, but he thought I looked good, and that was what was important.

  “I—”

  His phone buzzed, cutting him off, and he apologized as he pulled it from the breast pocket of his suit jacket, not even looking at it.

  “You should check, huh, Doctor?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not on call tonight.” His eyes zeroed in on my mouth. “You’re all mine.”

  “What?”

  “I mean,” he said with a flash of smile, “I’m all yours.”

  I pointed at the phone. “Better check
.”

  Heavy sigh before he looked down at the phone to check the display. The way his face contorted, I was so glad I had done the right thing.

  “Jesus,” he gasped, head snapping up to me. “Shit, Nate, I’m so sorry, but one of my patients, he…. I have to go.”

  “Go, go. I’ll take care of this.”

  He didn’t argue because he didn’t have time; he just got up, turned, and left. When the server returned, she was surprised but understanding.

  On my way home in the cab, my phone rang, and it was Sean on the other end.

  “Hey.” I smiled because it was him.

  “God, don’t be nice to me. I screwed up for the second time in the same week.”

  “You’re a doctor. I get it.”

  “But it’s not—I want you to get that you’re important.”

  “I appreciate the fact that you’re calling just to tell me.”

  “You do?”

  “Very much.”

  “Okay, so tomorrow for sure, let’s—”

  “Just call me and we can meet somewhere and take it from there, all right? Or tonight when you’re done, call me and maybe we could go get dessert, or I could make you some.”

  Silence.

  “Sean?”

  “Are you serious? Is that all you think this is?”

  So. Lost.

  “You think all I’m looking for is some hookup after work?”

  “You did say that you wanted us to go to bed,” I reminded him. “But no, I—”

  “I also said I wanted to be the one who got to take you out. How did ‘I want to date’ turn into ‘I just want to fuck’?”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “I don’t take one-night stands out to dinner, Nate.” The condescending tone was annoying.

  “This is more than just a hookup for me. I’d like to—”

  “Listen.” I was suddenly irritable. “I thought maybe you could come over after work, and if you were hungry, I would make you some dinner, and if you just wanted dessert, then I could make that too. It was honestly a nice offer with no sex attached that you turned into something else. So, yes, call me tomorrow and we’ll talk.”