by Chris Scully
“No. No, I’m fine.” He sighed deeply and opened the door. “Thanks for the ride,” he murmured.
Louie watched from the car as Peter wove his way down the driveway, around his dad’s car, to the door beside the garage. Mounted over the door was a dimly burning porch lamp. He stumbled once, but didn’t go down. At the door he fumbled in his pocket for a long time, and then he bent over. After that, he didn’t get back up.
With a sigh, Louie turned the engine off and got out to help.
He found Peter seated on the ground in front of the door, half his face hidden by shadows and the other half looking dejected under the glow of the lamp. “Wow, you’re really in bad shape, aren’t you?”
“Can’t find the keys,” he said, sliding his hands uselessly over the dark pavement. Louie used the glow from his cell phone to promptly locate the missing key chain amid a scattering of old leaves. After a couple of tries, he found the one that unlocked the door.
Peter didn’t budge from the ground. Instead, he held out his hand expectantly, and Louie hauled him to his feet, stumbling a bit under the weight. “Demetra so owes me for this,” he muttered. But as he draped Peter’s heavy arm over his shoulder and hooked him around the waist, he was smiling. He’d be lying to himself if he said he didn’t enjoy the grappling just a little bit. It wasn’t every day he got to feel up his teenage crush. Peter felt nice and solid in his arms. Even his cologne, which had seemed so overpowering in the car, smelled just right now. At this rate, he wouldn’t need the porn at all when he got home.
With a little maneuvering and absolutely no help from the dead weight in his arms, he managed to get them safely inside. He smothered a nervous laugh as Peter’s hand fell from his shoulder to skate down his back and graze his ass. “Jeez, Peter, you move pretty fast for a straight guy.”
The hand quickly vanished.
Louie felt along the wall until he located a light switch. When he flicked it on, light flooded a basement. A well-appointed basement. The space had been converted into a fully contained apartment with a kitchen and everything. He gave a low whistle. “This is a sweet setup. No wonder you’re in no hurry to leave.”
“Yeah?” Peter’s hot breath blew against his ear. “I’ll trade you.”
“Careful. I’m homeless at the moment, and I might take you up on that. Where’s your bedroom, big guy?”
Peter’s body suddenly stiffened. He took an unsteady step away to stand on his own. “I think I can take it from here.”
“Are you sure?” Louie reached out instinctively when Peter wobbled—saw the way Peter flinched and drew back from his touch in a panic. His face burned as though he’d been slapped.
“I’m good.” Peter wouldn’t meet Louie’s eyes. “I don’t need your help.”
Anger, hot and heavy flooded his veins at the telling reaction. Peter was nothing but a fucking hypocrite—surrounded himself with gay friends but got all freaked out when another man touched him.
“Suit yourself.”
Calmly, far more calmly than he was feeling, Louie set the keys down on the nearby coffee table and let himself out.
THREE
PETER WOKE up horny—not an unusual condition for him, especially when he’d been drinking, but this morning he was dreaming about strong arms and hard, muscled bodies. An exotic scent he couldn’t quite place—like sandalwood and oranges—teased his senses. A small part of his foggy brain knew where this was going, and for a second he considered forcing himself awake, but his dick had other ideas.
Still half-asleep, he rolled onto his stomach and ground his hips in slow circles against the mattress. Somehow he’d managed to undress himself the night before, and now he hummed at the pleasurable friction against his naked skin. He reached down and wrapped his fingers around his length….
“Panagiotis?” His mother’s strident voice cut through Peter’s hangover haze like a chainsaw cutting through a rotten tree branch. “Panagiotis? Are you awake?”
He stopped his thrusting but didn’t release his grip. “It’s Peter, Ma,” he mumbled in English, turning his face into the pillow. It didn’t matter if she heard it or not. For as long as he could remember, he’d been repeating the same thing, and she never listened; both his parents persisted in calling him by his Greek name.
“It was good enough for my father,” his dad would say. “It’s good enough for you.”
“You’ll be late for church,” she hollered, now outside his bedroom door, still speaking Greek. Thirty years in this country and she stubbornly refused to speak English unless dealing with customers at the restaurant. How much was an act and how much was real, he never quite knew. Most of the time she seemed to understand him just fine when he spoke English—unless of course she didn’t want to understand him, and then she feigned ignorance.
“I’m not going?” Peter muttered.
“I did not hear you.”
“I said I’m not going. I’m not feeling well.”
The door to his bedroom flew open. “Ay,” she said, seeing how he’d dropped last night’s clothes on the floor. “What a mess.”
“Ma,” he cried in horror, flipping over and jerking the covers up to his chin. He cupped himself for added protection. His morning wood wilted. “You can’t just come in here.”
“Pfft,” she said, ignoring him. She carried his freshly laundered clothes, which she hung in the closet before bending to pick up yesterday’s pants, clucking her tongue as she neatly folded them over her arm. “Who do you think changed your diapers?”
“It’s not the same,” he insisted to the back of her blonde head. “I’m an adult now. What about privacy?”
“Why do you need privacy?” Tina Georgiou swiveled her head to squint at him. “When you have a wife and a house of your own, you can have privacy. Are you sick?”
“I have a headache.” That much was true.
“Your father always gets those too after a night at the social club. Too many late nights, Panagiotis,” she scolded.
“I was with Demetra.” It was a lie, but he’d learned that he could get away with almost anything if he blamed it on Demetra.
His mother’s harsh face transformed with a smile. “Good, good. Things are going well? She’s a good girl. Don’t let her get away like the others.”
“I won’t, Ma.”
“Soon, I will be too old to take care of your babies.”
“You’re not old.” He squirmed into a sitting position, still holding the blankets to his chin and covering his bare chest. This was a familiar conversation. He wasn’t even sure he wanted kids. But he didn’t dare bring that up.
Peter’s father, Konstantinos, or Kosta to his friends, yelled down the basement stairs, “Hurry it up. We’ll be late.”
“He says he’s not going,” his mother hollered back.
“Well, tell him not to forget he opens today.”
“I won’t, Pop,” Peter shouted tiredly, wincing at the pain in his head. In three years he’d never been late opening the restaurant. He turned to his mother who was filling the laundry basket with clothes from his hamper. “See, I can’t go to church. I have to open at eleven.”
“You could come for Matins,” she suggested.
Working at the restaurant usually got him out of the full three-hour service on Sundays, but he didn’t feel up to even the first half today. The hammering in Peter’s head worsened. His mouth felt fuzzy. “I can’t, Ma,” he moaned, falling back against the pillows and making a show of it.
She laid the back of her hand against his forehead. “Fine,” she sighed. “Shall I make tiganites? I have extra batter from breakfast.” The fried pancakes were his favorite, but this morning the last thing he wanted was food.
“I’m not hungry. And Ma, you know Pop is supposed to avoid fried foods.”
“Bah, a little won’t hurt. Some yogurt, then? With honey?”
“You’re going to be late for church,” he reminded her.
“But you need to eat something.”
He sighed. “Fine. I’ll grab a koulouri. Do we have any?” Her homemade round bread rings covered with sesame seeds made a quick, delicious treat.
She smiled, pleased to have won the battle. “I baked some yesterday. They are upstairs in the kitchen.”
“Thanks, Ma.”
The minute she left the room, he pulled the covers over his head and groaned. Jesus, he had to get out of here before it was too late.
He stayed like that, cocooned beneath the covers, breathing in his own stink until he heard their muffled footsteps overhead, then the sound of the front door closing. A few minutes later, his dad’s Cadillac fired up. How that thing still ran, he’d never know. It was just like his dad: old but too damn stubborn to quit.
Peter flipped back the sheet and took a deep breath. He stared up at the ceiling. How had he ended up here? Thirty-two and still living in his parents’ basement. What a loser. Even he wouldn’t date him.
He’d almost escaped once. He had a letter of acceptance from an out-of-town college and everything. And then Ma had broken down in front of him, begged him not to go. Said that he was killing her. That she couldn’t bear to live with her only child so far away. In the end he’d relented and chosen the local college instead. They had refurbished the basement just for him, and he had settled in without a word of protest.
He got his bachelor’s degree in business and then went on to his master’s. He found a great job. He met Elena and got engaged. When it fell apart after a couple of years, he went back to dating the women his mother set him up with.
He tried again; lined up an apartment nearby as a compromise. Then came Pop’s heart attack. It was a big one and took him nearly a year to fully recover. Peter had been five years into a job he loved in the city’s Economic Development Office when it happened. He knew what was expected of him; they didn’t even need to say it this time. Ma just gave him a look, and the plans to move out were gone. The restaurant was his family’s pride and joy—open 362 days a year since 1985. Peter quit his job and took over running the restaurant. He’d been there ever since.
With a heavy sigh, Peter rolled out of bed and stumbled down the hall to the bathroom. He grabbed two Tylenol out of the medicine cabinet, swallowing them with a chaser of Pepto-Bismol, and crawled into the shower where he turned the shower head on pulse in an effort to sober up.
“Are you happy?”
The question made his shoulders tight.
He vaguely remembered Demetra’s brother bringing him home last night and groaned. He hoped he hadn’t made a fool of himself. He didn’t need Demetra thinking he was any more of a loser.
Under the warm spray, his muscles relaxed. He soaped himself slowly, lathering up his penis and coaxing it back to hardness. He usually had to be quick and quiet, but knowing he had the house to himself, he lingered, stroking his chest, playing with his nipples until they were hard. With his eyes closed, he worked his cock, lightly pinching his foreskin together over the head for added stimulation the way he liked. A familiar fantasy took root in the back of his mind; his fingers slid over his ass, slipped into his crack, brushed his hole with featherlight touches. Peter held his breath as he pressed one finger inside, not penetrating very deep—just enough to make his erection jump in his hand and his toes curl against the plastic shower pan. He left it there, gently moving in and out, while he stroked himself harder, faster. His balls drew up tight; his cock pulsed in his hand as he came hard. So hard he had to lean against the tiled wall until his head stopped swimming and he could catch his breath.
By the time he stepped out of the shower, his headache had abated, and he felt almost human again. With a towel knotted around his waist, he wandered into the basement kitchen to brew a single cup of coffee.
As he waited for the water to run through, he had a vague recollection of Demetra’s brother standing right there. And if he wasn’t mistaken, looking pissed off too. No wonder. What an ass he’d been. Why hadn’t Demetra told him they’d gone to school together?
He couldn’t say what prompted it, but coffee in hand, he began hunting for his high school yearbook from senior year. He found it on the bottom bookshelf in his bedroom and sat down on the bed with it splayed across his lap as he leafed through the pages. Louie would have been two years behind him, so first he went to the class photo section. He found Louie Papadakis straightaway, looking like every other geeky, pimply faced kid back then. He wore a white dress shirt, buttoned tight at the neck. His hair was cut short on the sides with spiky, frosted tips on top.
Peter avoided his own class picture—no need to walk down that memory lane—and moved on to the team and club section. Sure enough, there was Louie in the pep squad, surrounded by five girls and a stack of pompoms. While the girls wore the ubiquitous short skirts, Louie’s uniform consisted of shorts—the photo was black and white, but Peter remembered them as being blue and gold—and a sleeveless shirt with “Eastdale” emblazed across the chest. His skinny legs made Peter chuckle.
Below that image was one of the senior football team, with Peter front and center down on one knee and the rest of the guys around him. His eyes were drawn to it. Fuck, he looked so young. They all did. Some friend whose signature he couldn’t decipher had written below it in god-awful handwriting: “Goliaths 0. The Future TBD.”
He quickly snapped the book shut and tossed it onto his unmade bed.
Peter finished dressing, donning the black slacks and button-down shirt he was beginning to feel he lived in. Even though the restaurant was a casual place, Pop still insisted everyone look presentable. Peter thought they all looked as though they were going to a funeral.
He paused on his way out the door. He should probably check on Demetra and see how she was doing. He felt a flicker of guilt for not thinking of it before.
But shit. His phone. It wasn’t beside the bed where he usually left it. Or on the dresser, or under the bed. In a panic, Peter rifled through the laundry basket and searched the pockets of the jeans he’d worn last night. He threw them back when he found them empty. Think, dammit. Where could it be?
He remembered calling Demetra to pick him up. That was the last time he’d used it. Had he left it at Adam’s? He hoped so. It was two operating systems out of date and there was a big crack across the screen, but he couldn’t afford to replace it right now.
He had some money put away, but working at the family business, he didn’t even draw a regular salary like the other employees. Every quarter when they did the books, he got a sort of allowance—which never amounted to very much. His day-to-day spending money came from what he earned in tips. And this month he was a little short.
But he would have to deal with the phone situation later or risk giving his pop something to yell about by being late. Peter locked the door and, since the weather was good, slid his sunglasses on and walked the short distance to the diner.
Balmy summer Sunday afternoons were always busy at the restaurant, with an influx of pedestrians looking for a place to grab a quick bite. To no one’s great surprise, Mike had called in sick again—the third Sunday this month—and Peter was hustled off his feet, filling in wherever needed while Stavros worked the grill and Annie waited tables. If it had been up to him, he would have fired Mike’s slacker ass long ago; even Annie, who was only twenty-two and a part-time college student, was more reliable. But Mike was a distant cousin and therefore subject to Pop’s “family is everything” policy.
His dad had opened the place in 1985, long before the strip, now known as GreekTown, had become hip and popular. He’d bought the whole building a few years later, and now the rent from the apartment above kept them afloat during the leaner winter months. Today the area boasted an impressive array of restaurants—most of them Greek—almost a dozen crammed into one short mile, and Kosta’s Greek Grill struggled to compete in a saturated market. Just one more worry riding on his shoulders these days.
The atmosphere was casual, family oriented, with an open kitchen along one w
all and booths along the other. Although they had seats for forty, the majority of the business was takeout. A large flat-screen television was broadcasting a steady stream of European football above a small bar. While the restaurant next door catered to the upscale crowd with high-priced Mediterranean cuisine, Kosta’s had no such aspirations. Just like the décor, the menu hadn’t changed since Peter had been born: souvlaki and gyros.
Sometimes he fancied if they cut him open that’s all they’d find inside.
The weather today was beautiful, so Peter had folded back the floor-to-ceiling front windows to make the most of it. He’d been after Pop to set up extra tables on the sidewalk like all the other places on the block, but that idea, along with many of his others, had been vetoed.
By 2:00 p.m. the worst of the lunch rush was winding down, and Peter was behind the small bar restocking, when Annie leaned across the counter and startled him. “So, I caught Kosta out back smoking again last night,” she said with a wicked grin.
Peter ground his teeth. Honestly it was like taking care of a child sometimes. His pop seemed determined to flout every rule laid down by his doctors. “And?”
“He told me to mind my own business. And not to tell you, of course.”
“Well, thanks anyway. I’ll have a talk with him. Not that it will do much good. I’m the last person he listens to.”
Annie dropped her tray on the bartop with a clatter. “Whoa. Hello, handsome,” she murmured.
Peter spun around to see who had inspired her comment and found Demetra’s brother standing just inside the front door. At least he thought it was Demetra’s brother, because he hadn’t really taken much of a look before, and last night… last night was a bit of a blur. Whoa, indeed. The cheerleader with the stick legs had definitely filled out in all the right places—tanned, broad shoulders revealed by a sleeveless shirt; hairy, muscular calves beneath the knee-length shorts.
That explained his dreams this morning.
Louie slid his sunglasses up to perch in his short, wavy brown hair, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the interior. He appeared to be searching for something. Or someone. Peter had the strange feeling it was him.
