by Daryl Banner
His friend Duncan was already there, waiting. Duncan was a couple inches taller than James and looked older, yet they were the same age apparently. He had a nerdy-cute look about him, wearing designer glasses and a loose plaid button-up shirt with the sleeves messily rolled up to his elbows. When we approached, he stood from his stool and his eyes were on me right away. He squinted through the smoke of the room as he sized me up.
I put out a hand first. “Lucas,” I introduced myself. “You must be James’s friend Duncan.”
Duncan nodded stiffly, then shook my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He gave James a distracted nod, then returned all his attention to me. “So what’s your poison? First round’s on me.”
James and I shot a look at one another. “I’ll just take a Coke,” I told him. “I don’t drink.”
Duncan eyed the pair of us, then shrugged and sat on his stool. “Alright, then. That’s fine with me. Coke for Lucas. And two dirty-ass up-to-no-good martinis for us.”
“Actually, I’m driving,” James put in, “so I should also just—”
“Dude, I can’t drink alone,” Duncan complained. “C’mon. You gotta drink with your pal, damn it. Make Lucas drive y’all home. You trusted him with your house already. What’s it to you to trust him with your vehicle?” He shrugged, then flagged down a nearby server. “Two dirty-ass martinis and one clean-ass Coke, please.”
The server took off. I couldn’t help but smirk at this Duncan character’s brusqueness. He reminded me of a friend I’d made and lost on the beach last year. He was one of the first guys I met who taught me survival skills and was kind to me—kind in a very dry-humored, self-deprecating, awful sort of way. Maybe that was why I clicked with Duncan so quickly.
“So I’ll be honest,” Duncan started, “you aren’t anything like I expected. Not that James described you. At all. He didn’t.”
“What’d you expect, then?” I asked him.
“I really have no idea. Maybe that’s part of the reason I had to meet you. See for myself what would make my friend flip his life upside-down.” Duncan sneered teasingly at James, whose face was on its way to becoming a tomato. “I guess you’re basically the gay equivalent to a pair of double D’s, aren’t you, Lucas?”
“Hey, I’m just a guy like any other, nothing special about me at all.” I shrugged, then elbowed James. “We just hit it off.”
James met my eyes right then. I gave him a reassuring smile. This is going well, I thought to myself.
“So give me the story,” said Duncan, slapping the table. “I’m dying to hear it. Let’s go.”
It was James who spoke up. “Long and short of it is, Lucas and I met the last time all of us were at the Royal Flush. Two weekends ago. I couldn’t get him out of my mind that whole week, so I went back on my own that following weekend, which you already know about.” James flicked his gaze over at me. “We clicked really well. Lucas is between living arrangements right now. So I thought—”
“Let the total stranger move into your house,” Duncan finished for James with a smear of sarcasm sauce on his attitude burger. “I know the rest of the story. But …” Then he turned and studied me. “Don’t get me wrong, Lucas. I know we only just now met, but I’m actually getting zero bad vibes from you. I know a whacko when I see one. You, sir, are not a whacko.”
I narrowed my eyes uncertainly. “Uh, thanks.”
“But I’m still having trouble with the logic here. I mean, James here, my friend for years, I know what he’s like. He would hesitate to let Quinton stay in his guest room if he showed up wanting a place to crash because he’s a little wild, cries when he’s drunk, and showers twice a week. James is the kind of guy who locks the car doors when I stop for gas halfway to the casinos. James will check the deadbolt on the hotel room door—twice—before going to bed.”
“Duncan,” he muttered warningly.
“I’m just saying. It doesn’t make sense yet that you’d let Lucas here—no offense, seriously, just trying to wrap my brain around it—stay in your house. After knowing him for … how long?”
“A couple days. And the reason is simple,” James began.
I cut in, tired of the charade. “The reason is I’m homeless.”
James turned his head to me, wide-eyed.
Yeah, that wasn’t exactly what we had discussed in the car. I went off the script and dove straight into the truth.
The server brought our drinks at that convenient point. After the server left, Duncan, calm as ever, took a long, languid sip of his martini and set it down. “Between living arrangements … I believe that’s how James put it to me on the phone.” He shrugged. “Well, you didn’t exactly lie to me, to be fair.”
“No, I didn’t,” reasoned James a bit tersely.
“But hey, I’m not here to judge. The best of us fall on hard times.” Duncan gave me a reassuring nod. “If you saw the shoebox I had to live in my first few years after college … oh, man, nothing teaches you humility better than having twenty cockroaches for roommates. Maybe I should have taken one of James’s rooms. Of course, he didn’t have his grandpa’s house back then.”
“I know all about humility,” I confessed, then took a sip of my Coke, swallowed, and set it down softly, my eyes full of thoughts. “I don’t think I got a decent night’s sleep in a year. Not until this special guy took me in.” I looked over at James, who regarded me with a curious, touched expression. “Saved my life, really.”
James’s lips parted as he watched me. He couldn’t speak.
Duncan, dry as a bone, said, “Well, you saved James’s dick, too. He’s been single so long, I’m surprised it hasn’t fallen off yet.”
James smiled tightly. “Duncan’s such a good straight friend. Always looking out for the welfare of his gay buddy’s dick.”
I gave James a microscopic smile, then reached over and gave his thigh a squeeze. “I know all about that.”
James stiffened up, then swallowed hard.
“So tell me,” Duncan cut in, “where are you from? Like, your family, or where you lived last, or wherever.”
I let go of James and propped my elbows up on the table to face Duncan. “Just north of the beach a ways.”
“North? How far north?” he inquired. “Fairview? Briarthorn? Silver Meadows?”
I couldn’t quickly think of a reason not to tell him the truth, so I just let it out. “Northpoint.”
Duncan lifted a dubious eyebrow. “Northpoint. Really.”
“Yep.”
“Hmm.” Duncan eyed James as he took another generous sip of his martini, then looked back at me as he set down his glass. “I know a colleague who actually teaches in Northpoint. At a private school, like me. Ever heard of Wilfred Academy?”
My back stiffened. My dad had wanted to send me there, but I insisted on staying in public school with all my friends I knew. It was my mother who persuaded him not to enroll me.
“I think so,” I answered vaguely. “Heard of it, at least.”
“Nice area,” he murmured back, watching me coolly over the rim of his glass as he went for another sip.
James rose from his seat abruptly after that. “I gotta go take a leak. I’ll be right back.” He cut through the crowd and was gone.
I stared after him, concerned about the sudden departure.
Duncan leaned over the table, pulling my focus back to him. “You know I teach at a private high school for a living, right?”
I squinted. “What’s your point?”
“I know a rich kid when I see one.”
I felt my insides turn to ice. My elbows slipped off the table as I crossed my arms. My defenses went up instantly. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, but I’m no fuckin’ rich kid.”
“You’re not a homeless kid, either.”
“Not anymore.”
“How old are you, anyway? Eighteen? Nineteen? That’s why you’re not drinking, isn’t it?”
It was unsettling, how direct Duncan got when Ja
mes wasn’t around. “How could you know that?”
“Because I’m smart as fuck. But more importantly, unlike my buddy James, I’m able to think with the right head.”
I stared him down, my jaw tightening.
“Listen.” Duncan let out a sigh, then put his arms on the table. “I’m not here to crucify you. I’m just looking out for James. He’s a good man with a big lonely heart. He’s been hurt before. I care about him. You look out for your friends, too, don’t you?”
“I don’t have any friends,” I shot back.
He shifted in his seat, his eyes still on me. “If I’m being frank, Lucas, you don’t look like a guy with malicious intentions. I might even dare to say you look nice. Caring. Concerned. I don’t doubt you’re into my friend, and I don’t doubt you care about him. But you’re also young … and I know young minds. Do you have goals? Is there something you’re trying to do with your life?”
“Why are you getting into my business?”
“You look to me like a bright young guy with promise. I want to know my instinct isn’t off. Did you even graduate high school?”
I flicked my eyes away from Duncan, frustrated and uneasy. What was that guy trying to do? Push me out of James’s life? He didn’t even know me for more than a handful of minutes.
But he wasn’t exactly wrong about a certain suspicion of his. I still wasn’t completely transparent with James about the family I came from. It was less about me lying and more about me not revealing the whole truth. I ran away from a gold mine to bury myself in dirty sand, street smog, and dumpster stink.
James didn’t know that I came from a rich family. Was that going to change everything? Even if I’ve sworn away that life for good?
Just when I was about to give Duncan an answer, I spotted a man across the room. It was a balding, suited man with a deep red mustache and a ring of thinning hair from one temple around the back of his head to the other.
His eyes caught mine just as mine caught his.
I turned away at once and brought up a hand, shielding my face. I knew that guy. He was a business associate of my father’s. I knew I had seen him on several occasions at my father’s office and even once at a dinner at our house.
What the fuck is he doing out here in Little Water?
“Something wrong?” asked Duncan, concerned.
My stomach was too busy flipping over for me to answer him. I didn’t know what to say or do, anyway. I was paralyzed to my toes, my free hand clenched into a fist.
He leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “Lucas?”
“We gotta go,” I finally choked out, my chest tightened.
“Go? Like, right now?”
“Yes. Right now.”
“Are we in danger or something?”
“I don’t know.”
His face serious, Duncan glanced to the left, to the right, then nodded. “Alright, let’s disappear.”
Duncan tossed some cash at the table, flagged the server, then said, “When our friend returns, can you tell him we’re outside? Thanks.” Then, quickly, Duncan threw an arm over my back—the gesture surprising me—and guided me to the exit. I peered over my shoulder once and did not spot the man again.
We stood near James’s car after that, which was barely within view of the front door in case that man came out for some reason. If I had more balls that night, I would’ve stood by that door until he came out, then slammed him to the wall and demanded to know what the fuck he was doing there.
Why am I so convinced my dad gives a shit where I am, anyway?
Duncan lifted an eyebrow tentatively my way. “Level with me, Lucas. Do we have to call the police?”
“No. But he might if he gets near me.”
“Well, you’ve got me a bit worried. What is all this about? Did you see … an abusive ex-boyfriend in there or something?”
I shot him a smirk, straightening up. “Seriously? Do I look like a guy who gets abused?”
Duncan shrugged. “Well, to be fair, you can’t really tell.”
I kept staring at the front door to Ringers, as if expecting the man to pop out at any moment and approach me, interrogating me on behalf of my father. Truthfully, I didn’t know what the hell to expect. It was the first time I’d seen anyone I recognized from Northpoint since I had run away. I felt like my past had come to find me, like a stalker in the night, refusing to let me go my way.
Really, it just pissed me off more than anything.
I was so focused on the door, I didn’t notice Duncan texting on his phone, the light from the screen painting his face a bright, bluish white. “I told James to stop primping in the damned bathroom mirror,” he explained to me when I glanced his way. “He’s coming out in a second.”
“Alright.”
After another moment, Duncan let out a short sigh. “I know I have the reputation of being the dick among my circle of friends.” He glanced at me. “I … get a bit tired of myself from time to time. Really, my job has made me jaded about today’s youth. I only teach the privileged, these kids who have no idea what it’s like to fend for themselves from day to day, who have no idea what it’s like to work for every cent you’ve got. You …” He shook his head and crossed his arms. “You don’t deserve to have my biases taken out on you just because you’re not a student of mine and I can legally tell you to go fuck yourself with a golden banana without repercussions. That isn’t fair to you.”
I wrinkled my face and peered at him. “You actually want to tell your students that?”
“Some of them. Most of them. Ugh, all of them.” He eyed me. “The point is, you’re not them. I know that. I can tell. I just want to make sure you’re not gonna break my best friend’s heart.”
“We’re just friends,” I recited automatically. “No one’s gonna break anything.”
“Friends,” echoed Duncan dubiously. “You two look like a lot more’s going on than just ‘friends’.”
The door to Ringers swung open. My chest clenched up for a split second until James appeared. He looked around, then caught sight of us.
“You don’t have to protect James from me,” I told Duncan. “If anyone fucks with James—myself included—I’ll beat his ass to the damned concrete.”
With that, I pushed away from the car, approaching James as he came our way. James stopped in front of me, then shifted his eyes worriedly between me and Duncan. “He said something about you wanting to go suddenly. What happened?”
I glanced back at Duncan who stood by the car with a curious, appraising look on his face. I wondered if my last words hit him in the right place, quashing his doubts. “I saw a friend of my fuckwad dad’s in there.”
“Shit. You think he recognized you?”
“He did.” I was certain of it the longer I pictured his face. And the longer I pictured his face, the madder I got.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” James suggested. “There’s a pool hall we can hit up several blocks over.”
I nodded. “Let’s hit it.”
Soon after, the three of us were playing pool in the corner of a smoky billiard hall with James and Duncan chugging back beers. Before long, the pair of them were trashed, and I caught myself laughing at their expense more times than I could count.
After winning a game of cutthroat by pocketing Duncan’s last ball (I had been knocked out three turns ago), James tugged his watery, drunken eyes up to meet mine, and a flicker of hesitation went through them. For a second, it looked like he wanted to go in for a kiss, then realized we were in a public place and thought the better of it. Or maybe it was because Duncan was watching over the rim of his glass as he chugged some more beer.
Just kidding. He wasn’t watching shit. That guy was so wasted, he was looking around him in circles with a shit-eating grin on his face like someone was blowing him under the pool table.
That thought made me bite my lip. That’d be a hot thing to make James do to me next time we play at his house.
Yeah, even with my wo
rries, I couldn’t suppress my desire for James. It surged forth at the most inappropriate times, even when I was angry, even when I was toiling over some bullshit or battling persistent doubts of my own. Even as we started another game of cutthroat and that fucking man’s face kept flashing in my mind, I was already planning what I would do to James to drive him wild when we got home. Hell, I was planning what the hell I could do to him right there in the billiard hall. I didn’t care who saw.
But before I could manage anything, Duncan took note of the time, then kicked himself for losing track of it. “This is your fault, James,” he yelled at him in mock anger. “My body feels like it has to make up drunk-time with you because you weren’t there this weekend at the Foyal Rush. And it’s a school night!”
“Royal Flush,” James corrected blithely, belched, then added, “and a work night for me as well.” He glanced my way, squinting. “Hey, I don’t remember coming here with two guys named Lucky.”
“Lucky?” Duncan looked between us, his eyes glassy.
“It’s what I called him when we first met.” James held the pool table for balance. “Lucky. Because I’m lucky to have him.”
“You call him Lucky because you are?” Duncan snorted, then shook his head. “Alright. I’m in need of a bed right now. I’m gonna call myself an Uber. What’s the name of this shit place?”
The realization of Duncan’s words hit James hard as he lifted his gaze, straightened up, and glanced my way.
I shrugged and held out my palm. “Keys.”
“You sure?” James asked, though from the sound of his voice, I think James was the unsure one.
“Yep.” Not waiting for him, I reached right into his pocket and took the keys for myself. James stared at me, wide-eyed, lips parted, as I did so. Considering they were in his front pocket and I had to dig for a second, I think my hand might have come an inch too close to his easy excitable tool. Also, it wasn’t lost on me that we were approaching day ten of his self-imposed sexual torture. “I’m taking the wheel.”
