Acrobat

by Mary Calmes

  “My boyfriend, Dreo,” I told her, and I couldn’t help beaming because the sound of it, my boyfriend, was really nice.

  “Oh,” she whimpered. “I can’t wait to meet him.”

  And she really couldn’t. Both she and Greg walked me over to the event coordinator. It was nice, Kate sitting beside me, Greg leaning, hand on my shoulder the whole time. Who knew he really liked me that much?

  As I was leaving, after an amazing lunch with Greg and Kate and Daniel Kramer, whom I had met that day in the dean’s office, and Sophia Petrovich, Greg’s event coordinator, Greg actually wanted to hug me. Kate found it enough to tear up over, and I hugged her too. I told them all that I had no doubt that this year the Medieval Feast would be something no one at the College of the Humanities had ever dreamed it would be. They were all happy to hear it. Before I could make a clean getaway afterward, though, Sanderson called my name.

  “God, what?” I grumbled, looking, I was certain, as pained as I felt.

  “Must you be such a colossal prick all the time?”

  “Yes, I must,” I assured him, “especially to you.”

  He growled. “Are you going to e-mail Ms. Petrovich with the list or—”

  “I already e-mailed Gwen, and she’ll take care of it when she gets into the office tomorrow,” I told him, turning to go.

  He stepped in front of me.

  I threw up my hands.

  “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be in that department with you?”

  I crossed my arms and waited.

  “Everybody loves you. The students think you walk on water. The faculty—I mean, those that don’t really know you—still respect your scholarly accomplishments. But what gets me the most is the women. I don’t get that at all.”

  I huffed. “I have no idea where you’re going with this.”

  “Oh, I know,” he said, so very annoyed. “Every woman that meets you is just smitten, and you’re gay, so what the hell.”

  “You shouldn’t care about women at the university,” I told him. “You shouldn’t shit where you eat, Sanderson.”

  He stared at me.

  “Bye,” I said, and I left him sputtering in front of the Four Seasons.

  As I walked toward the train station, I thought about what he had said. If he knew that every relationship I had with my colleagues, had been worked on and cultivated, his thinking about me would change. It looked easy to him because most of those friendships had been cemented years before he showed up. The difference was that he was a jerk. And not just to me. In his race for tenure, he came off like a brown-nosing prick, and he had alienated more than half his fellow professors with his one-upmanship. No one wanted to coauthor papers with him to help with his publishing credentials, no one wanted to go to conferences with him and present papers, and his teaching evaluations all stunk. I knew they did because the kids made sure to show them to me. Even if I said no, I still got them e-mailed to me, or stuffed under my office door, or slid between pages of my books. They knew it made me crazy, so they went out of their way to plague me with them. The affection was there in the harassment, and I was sure that Sanderson got none of that. He was so far from getting what he wanted, and he had no idea.

  He overloaded the few grad students who had made the mistake of working for him, and had overpromised and underdelivered almost from day one. It was not that I was so great; he was just so universally loathed by professors and students alike that to him it appeared that way. There was a small part of me that felt bad for him, but it got squashed down a little more each day by his negativity and hubris.

  Since I was thinking about Sanderson, I didn’t notice the man on my right until I turned the corner, heading for the raised platform. I had decided to take the L since I still had things to pick up for dinner. But I was stopped by a hand on my chest, and a stranger was there, in my face, so close. We could have kissed.

  I couldn’t catch my breath suddenly, and I had no idea why.

  “Dr. Qells,” he whispered as my knees went weak.

  I looked down my body and saw his hand on the hilt of the knife that had been buried in my abdomen.

  He had shoved it through my peacoat, thick cable-knit sweater, and T-shirt before it punctured my skin. I felt the heat as he twisted it and tore it free. I crumpled down hard onto the sidewalk, the sky a giant raincloud ready to burst above me.

  “Tell Dreo Fiore that Joey Romelli sends his regards.”

  I had no voice, and I barely heard him over my own heartbeat, suddenly so loud in my ears. I felt like I was drowning even before it started to drizzle. I was so hot, I wanted to tear off my peacoat, but everything, my whole body, was limp.

  He spit on me, on my chest, and then I watched him, as I lay on my side, get into a car before it was gone.

  “Jesus, Nate, what the fuck?”

  And of course it was Sanderson Vaughn who was there, which was just the cherry on the cake of my day.

  He pulled off his scarf, wadded it up, and pressed it to my diaphragm as he had his cell phone to his ear. I watched him, never having realized before that he had a dimple in his chin, that his nose was small and upturned, or even that his eyes were a pale China blue.

  “Not,” I gasped, “going to be nice to you.”

  “I know.” He nodded even as he talked on his phone, barked out the address, and yelled at whoever was on the other end to hurry the hell up.

  “Charming.” I smiled up at him, noticing that it was getting harder to see him. “You have to start being nicer, gentler. Not such a prick. Sugar… not vinegar.”

  “Okay,” he agreed, placating me, his phone hitting my chest as it fell from his ear, both hands now on the scarf on my abdomen.

  “Stop pushing,” I ordered him. “It hurts.”

  “I’m sure it does.”

  “Your eyes are kind of pretty.”

  “I will remind you that you said that.” He took a breath and bit his lower lip.

  And I thought that for a guy who hated me, he looked sort of concerned. When he yelled my name, I wanted to tell him to stop, but nothing worked, not even my eyes.

  THE whispering woke me. It took a minute of focusing, but finally the room took shape, and then the lovely face looking down at me solidified so I could see who it was.

  “Nate,” she gasped, and I smiled up at Melissa.

  “Oh, thank God.” Her eyes welled fast, and there were tears running down her cheeks seconds later.

  “Hey,” I managed to get out, my voice a gravelly whisper. “What’s going on?”

  She was shaking, and I felt her squeezing my hand then, so tight in hers.

  “Mel?”

  She cleared her throat. “Somebody stabbed you.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So you know, since I’m the emergency contact on the back of your license, they called me.”

  “Oh shit, I’m sorry.”

  “No!” she snapped. “Thank God you never changed it, and don’t ever do it in the future. I always want to be first.”

  “That’s not even reasonable.” I chuckled, but there was suddenly so much pressure that I froze, having to suck in my breath.

  “Yeah, don’t do that, don’t laugh. Just lie there, okay?”

  “It doesn’t hurt exactly,” I told her, looking down but only seeing blanket. “Can you lift this up so I can see?”

  “No.” She scowled. “There’s nothing to see. There’s a bandage over a stitched-up wound. You’re going to have one hell of a scar.”

  “Awesome.” I grinned.

  “I’m going to beat you when you’re well,” she gasped before her voice cracked and she started to sob, facedown on my forearm.

  Oh crap. I had scared her. “Honey,” I soothed her, trying to pull my hand away so I could touch her head.

  “Just lay there!” she roared, sitting up straight.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said softly.

  She cried, and I was still and quiet, and when I finally told her I wa
s thirsty, she got me some ice water to sip.

  “What happened?” I asked her.

  “You know what happened.”

  “I mean after.”

  She sniffled, letting my hand go so she could blow her nose, brush her hair back from her face, and wipe at her wet cheeks with a tissue. She was adorable with her red nose and puffy eyes, her breathing finally under control. “The man who did it, he just left you in the street, and I know you hate that guy Sanderson, but I’m sending him a fruit basket and flowers and whatever else he wants for a week. He wants to get laid, the escort is on me.”

  “Gross,” I grumbled, squirming to sit up.

  “Don’t move or you’ll tear your stitches!”

  I grunted. “So when can I go home?”

  “Tomorrow or the next day. They have to make sure there’s no infection and make sure the antibiotics work and that your insides are okay.”

  “The guy who did this,” I told her, “he wasn’t trying to scare me. He was trying to scare Dreo.”

  She nodded. “I know. You were saying that when they brought you in. You were talking about Dreo.”

  “Where is he? Is he here?”

  “He was here earlier, but he left.”

  “Oh.” I was disappointed.

  “He stayed until we all knew you were going to be fine. He promised to be back later.”

  I squinted at her. “What?”

  She sighed deeply. “He left, and right after that, Duncan did.”

  “Duncan was here?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “Mel?”

  She stood up and started pacing. “Jesus, Nate, it was a mess. I got here and the police were here, and it looked like Duncan and Dreo went at it and beat the shit out of each other. Dreo was bleeding, Duncan broke his own wrist when he hit Dreo… I mean, do they both know what’s going on with you?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, who do you love?”

  Jesus, what kind of question was that? “I just woke up from being stabbed!” I rasped.

  “Nathan James Qells! Who do you love?”

  “Mel—”

  “Just answer the—”

  “I’m hurt and—”

  “Nate! Who do you love?”

  “I—Dreo!”

  Silence.

  I looked at her.

  She stared back with huge eyes.

  “Shit.”

  Her smile spilt her face. “Really?”

  “I… shit.”

  Her laughter was warm and rich and bubbling with happiness. “Ohmygod, Nate!”

  Leave it to her to extract the truth.

  “Oh honey, finally. You’re finally in love.”

  How in the world it had happened so fast I had no idea, but I was just… blindsided.

  “I’m going to call him and tell him to get his ass back here right now.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, tell him that,” I said as a monitor started to sound.

  “Nate?”

  She was blurring suddenly. “Call the OB, Mel, and the Realtor. Don’t forget, Jare needs a status update, okay? Tomorrow. You have to make those calls.”

  “Nate!”

  Her face, the way it contorted, I knew she was screaming, I just couldn’t hear it. And then everything faded to nothing.

  I ROLLED my head, and there was a stunning woman sitting at my bedside. I knew who she was, it just made no sense. Maybe I was still asleep.

  She smiled.

  I decided to speak to my hallucination. “Mrs. Fiore.”

  Her smile was really something. It changed her face from cold, hard matriarch to gorgeous Hollywood icon. I understood that her son had inherited the transformative power of a simple smile from his mother. Her eyes were just absolutely pools of warm chocolate and… oh man, I was stoned.

  “Hi.” I smiled at her.

  “Buonasera,” she greeted me.

  “Oh, I love that song,” I told her, laughing softly, unable not to.

  Her brows lifted. “I do too.”

  I cleared my throat. “Where is everyone?”

  “They had to eat. My son, my grandson, his girlfriend Danielle, that woman—yours—she is… bellissima.” She smiled.

  “Yes, she is,” I agreed, knowing we were talking about Melissa.

  “Her husband is very handsome as well. They are lovely together.”

  I nodded.

  “But they have to eat. My husband, he took them, he knows a place close to here.”

  “And you stayed with me?”

  “Sì.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, Nathan—may I call you Nathan?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She leaned forward. “You see, Nathan, I have lost one of my daughters already. Michael’s mother. You know about this.”

  “Yes.”

  “So I will not lose my son.”

  I just stared at her and waited.

  “My son,” she told me, “is stubborn. He has always been this way. He makes his mind up and acts. I said, I know your sister wants you to be the one to raise Michael, but she never meant for you to do it alone, ragazzo. Move home, I said.”

  Her hair, her eyes: really, really beautiful woman.

  “But no, Dreo, he goes to see his friend Sal instead and takes a job working for the worst kind of man, a man my father would have forbade him from even speaking to.”

  “Is your father still alive?”

  “No, he died shortly after I moved here from Palermo.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  I smiled as she lifted a cup of water off the table for me, angling the straw to my lips so I could drink.

  “It was beautiful there, in Palermo. I still miss it.”

  “When did you move here to Chicago?”

  “I met Mr. Fiore on holiday in Rome. My father, he didn’t like Anthony, but me, I liked him.” She grinned wickedly, her eyes shining.

  “It was a love affair.”

  “Sì,” she agreed, sighing deeply. “Still is, so I came with him to America.”

  I was enjoying listening to her talk even though I did need to find out things. Like the date, for starters.

  “I have been in Chicago many years, and Dreo’s father and I have raised a family, and I was always very happy, but… when my daughter died, I would have followed her into the grave if not for the others, my daughters—I have three—and Dreo, and especially for Michael, her son.”

  “He’s a great kid.”

  “Sì, but you know this more than I, as you are the one Michael loves. You are the parent he chose after his mother passed.”

  “Dreo’s his parent.”

  “Dreo is more like a big brother than a parent. I can see this for myself.”

  “What happened to his father?” I said to try to change the subject.

  “His father is from a rich family. He left Mona as soon as he knew she was pregnant.”

  “What a dick,” I said without thinking, because the stop block between think it and say it was not working at present. Whatever was dripping into my veins from the IV hanging above me was fabulous.

  “I agree.” She laughed. “And you are qualified to say, Nathan, as I have recently learned that when you got a woman pregnant you married her even though you are gay.”

  I grunted.

  “You are a good man to put your own needs behind those of your child. One cannot help but be impressed with you.”

  “Oh yeah?” I beamed up at her.

  Her hand slid over my cheek as she looked down at me. “Sì.”

  “So you, uhm, like me?”

  The soft laughter was even better than the smile. “I do, and though I do not understand my son loving a man, I cannot fault his choice.”

  Loving?

  I coughed and hacked, and as she patted my knee and gave me more water, I heard the lilting words but didn’t understand.

  “Caro,” she
soothed, “rest. You love him, my son. I know you do.”

  “How do you know?” I asked when I could breathe, sipping the water, breathing hard.

  “Because you were the one who figured out that Joey Romelli was trying to hurt Dreo by killing you. It makes sense to me. You don’t hurt the man; you make him suffer by taking away that which he lives for. This is how a vendetta begins. But it doesn’t end with you dead, because Dreo would make sure that it didn’t. And then what? Then Joey comes after my Michael next? No no no, it’s good that you are so smart and you figured it out. Dreo is lucky to have you.”

  I was so lost.

  “Go back to sleep, rest. You need your strength.”

  “Will you tell them all I was awake?”

  “Sì.”

  It was so weird. I should have asked a million questions, but I could not for the life of me. I could only close my eyes again.

  “Are you going to let Dreo come over for Thanksgiving?” I asked, even as my eyes dipped closed.

  “Yes, and you too, Nathan Qells.”

  God, how long had I been out?

  IT WAS dark when I opened my eyes, but enough light was coming in around the drawn curtain for me to see the room. Enough so that I could see Dreo Fiore asleep in a very uncomfortable-looking chair beside my bed. He was in jeans and a sweat jacket under a black leather motorcycle jacket. The beanie on his head was very cute; the stubble on his cheeks, above his lip, was hot. There were curls sticking out from under the cap, and his socked feet were on the edge of my bed. The man was a vision of exhaustion and hunky male animal. My heart hurt just looking at him.

  “Baby,” I said instead of his name, and I caught my breath and prayed he hadn’t heard it. I needed to let him sleep.

  He nearly fell out of his chair.

  “Nate,” he gasped, feet sliding off the bed, his body jerking forward as he stood suddenly, eyes wide and blinking and no more awake than he had been seconds ago.

  “Hey.” I offered a small smile.

  “Oh.” His voice broke, and his hands were on my face as he bent and gave me a kiss.

  It slammed through me, that simple, amazing, hot kiss that made my entire body clench and twitch all at the same time. He made love to me with his mouth, his tongue rubbing over mine, letting me taste chocolate and clove and him. I felt him tremble, and my cock jerked under the blanket. The roll of desire as I shivered made him smile as he leaned back, our lips parting slowly, with great effort.