by Mel Bossa
“You’re late,” Starsky said, without looking up from the morning paper. She was standing behind the counter near a bouquet of fresh wildflowers haphazardly shoved into a blue glass jar. Her curly blond hair was pulled back away from her face and spilled down to the middle of her freckled back in a loose ponytail. As usual, she wore a shapeless sundress and black jazz shoes. I often wondered if she owned anything else.
“I overslept,” I explained. I put the paperback on the counter and reached for a white apron hanging from a wooden peg.
“Um, it’s one o’clock in the afternoon,” Starsky commented after consulting the peace symbol clock on the wall.
I moved around her to get to the espresso machine. “Had a lot of homework last night.”
She shot me a look. “What a boring excuse.”
I shrugged. “It’s the truth.”
“Well, I’m Irish and a recovering alcoholic,” she reminded me. “At least let me live vicariously through you. You’re twenty-two, Justin. Where are your wild stories about being up all night partying with some hot frat boy?”
I shook my head and tightened the strings on the apron, knotting them around my waist. “That’s not my life,” I said. “That’s a porno.”
The string of jingle bells hanging from the back of the front door chimed to announce a customer had entered the store. I looked up and felt my breath catch in my throat.
A young Latino guy approached the counter. He was slightly shorter than me and had a smaller frame. His dark hair was messy, wild, and streaked with thick strands of deep violet and vibrant blue. He wore sunglasses, faded jeans, a bomber jacket, and a T-shirt covered with skulls and crossbones. His black combat boots were scuffed and untied. His sweet face was unshaven, but his lips were full and begged to be kissed. His presence was commanding and enigmatic. He demanded attention without saying a word.
But then he spoke. And I was spellbound. “Hey,” he said. His warm-as-bathwater voice crept all over my skin, tickling the fine hairs on my arms. The guy had something in his hand, a sky-blue piece of paper with black bold letters on it. It was a flyer for a show—a concert being held that night at a dive bar a few blocks away from Navy Pier. The mysterious young man placed it on the counter as if it were an offering of some sort, something sacred. “I was wondering if you’d hang this up for me?”
I knew Starsky was watching our interaction. I could sense her anticipation as if it were tiptoeing down my back. I felt pressured to prove to her—and to the beautiful stranger—that I wasn’t the boring, predictable guy I was perceived to be. I cleared my throat and said, “Are you a musician?”
The guy grinned. His smile was slightly crooked in an Elvis Presley way, but this flaw only made him sexier. “Lead guitarist of Broken Corners. You ever heard of us?”
I felt myself blush. “No,” I answered.
The musician raised his sunglasses and revealed his soft hazel eyes. They reminded me of the cinnamon I sprinkled over the tops of vanilla lattes. “I’m Diego Delgado.” He offered his hand. I shook it tentatively, careful not to gouge myself with the spiked silver skull ring Diego wore on one of his knuckles.
“Wow,” I said without thinking, “your hands are soft for a guitarist.”
Diego seemed surprised. He looked down at his hand, studying his palm. “Oh yeah? You shake hands with a lot of guitarists?”
I shook my head. “No…just you.”
An expression flickered across Diego’s baby face. It was a hot mixture of intrigue and subtle desire. He moved closer to the counter and leaned in a little. “What’s your name?” he asked.
I had to swallow before I spoke, as I was certain my voice would crack with nerves. “Justin Holt.”
Diego flashed his imperfect smile again. “Justin,” he repeated. “I like that.”
A few seconds of silence ensued. The quiet moment made me uncomfortably aware of how awkward I felt in my own skin. I reached to the tall tower of paper cups next to the cash register. I almost knocked them over. I steadied them and asked, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
Diego’s smile almost slid into a small laugh. “Yeah.” He nodded. “Actually, I would.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a chain wallet with the word Hellraiser stenciled across it in vibrant white.
I filled the cup and presented it to Diego. “Don’t worry about it,” I said with a gentle shoo of my hand. “It’s on the house.”
Diego grinned again. “Really?”
I wanted to avoid Diego’s eyes because each time I looked into them, a sudden heat crept into my face. Yet I couldn’t help myself. Our eyes locked and mirrored lust back at each other. Finally, I spoke again and said, “The least I can do is buy you a cup of coffee.”
Diego took the cup and moved to the sugar station—a waist-high counter facing a window offering an obstructed view of an alley and the brick exterior of the florist shop next door. I watched him, studying his movements and memorizing them.
Two sugars. A splash of cream. Marry me, you hot fucker.
Diego stirred his coffee and reached for a plastic lid to cover the cup. “Thanks,” he said. He returned to where I stood at the counter. “So…will I see you at the show tonight?”
I felt my hands betray my nerves. They trembled as I reached beneath the counter for a roll of transparent tape and picked up the blue poster with BROKEN CORNERS written across it in block letters. My words felt stuck to the insides of my cheeks. “I don’t know…I have…homework…I’m in college…and I read,” I stammered.
That’s when Starsky stepped in. She suddenly appeared next to me and placed a reassuring hand on the middle of my back. She looked at Diego and said with firmness, “He’ll be there.”
“Great,” Diego replied to her. He returned his attention to me. “Maybe we’ll even sing a song for you, Justin Holt.” He held my gaze for another second and before he turned away, he added, “To thank you for the coffee.”
Diego Delgado walked out of the store. The bells jingled behind him, echoing after his exit. Although the musician was gone, his energy still permeated the coffee shop. It hung in the air like an unspoken double dare.
I moved to the front window with the roll of tape and the poster in my hands. I stared out the window to the sidewalk. I turned my head slightly so I could watch Diego disappear into the jagged edges of the cityscape.
Chapter Three
The air inside the bar was smoky and electric. A crowd of thirty or so strangers mingled around the elevated platform stage. They looked bored out of their minds and buzzed on cheap beer. The audience consisted of skaters and wannabe punkers decked out in what I assumed were secondhand clothes. The black walls were lined with flyers announcing previous shows with band names like Velvet Vultures and Tammy Hates Joe. The grimy concrete floor was stained with cigarette burns and shoe skids.
I stood near the back of the room, sipping on an overpriced amaretto sour. For the last nine hours, I’d been preoccupied with thoughts of Diego Delgado. My fantasies about the hot Latin guitar god were bordering on the verge of obsession. I kept imagining what it would feel like to have Diego’s body pressed up against mine, the sensation of feeling him inside me. I craved Diego with an intensity I’d never known.
The lights dimmed in the tiny bar. A stocky butch woman with a jet black crew cut took a seat behind the drums. A rail-thin girl with bone-straight platinum hair stepped onto the stage with a bubblegum pink bass guitar in her hands. She took her position at a microphone off to the left, teetering in a pair of glittery silver high heels.
A moment passed before Diego made his entrance. I felt my breath catch in my throat at the sight of the wild-haired musician. He was wearing all black. Diego moved to the center of the stage and strapped an electric red guitar over his shoulder.
Then it happened.
A striking woman strutted onto the stage, and the room felt as if it flipped upside down. She was wearing thigh-high leather boots, a pleated skirt barely covering her ass, a
nd a leather studded bolero jacket that did little to conceal a virgin-white bustier. Her hair was a long, thick mass of auburn and platinum-streaked curls. Her lips were painted candy apple red and her cheeks sparkled. Her pale skin glittered beneath the blue lights sweeping across the stage like a desperate searchlight trying to locate a drowning victim.
She faced the crowd, grabbed the microphone, and shouted over their screams of instant adoration, “I hope you’re ready, mothafuckas!”
The room exploded into a fury of deafening sound. The walls shook from the violent frenzy of the drums and the earsplitting riffs of Diego’s guitar. They launched into a fast and furious cover version of Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation.” The crowd surged closer to the stage to show their appreciation. They moved in synch with the angry beat, jumping up and down in a wave of throttled movement.
I watched in sheer amazement. Diego played his guitar as if it were an extension of his soul. The female drummer pounded away with a frightening ferocity. The blond pixie-faced bass player looked dazed and high, ready to nod off at any moment despite the adrenaline-inducing music. She never missed a note.
The lead singer oozed charisma all over the stage, knowing very well she held the audience in the palm of her outstretched hand. Her voice was powerful and haunting—sometimes soft and little-girl sweet and then on the next note, ripping into an angry roar.
When Diego joined in on the vocals, his voice wrapped around me and soaked into my bones, flooding my veins with stark desire.
As much as I was infatuated with the hot guitarist on stage, I couldn’t resist the allure of the lead singer. From the back of the bar, I hung on her every word as she sang her heart out about unrequited love, the fear of failure, the art of seduction. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. And neither could anyone else.
Seconds before the band tore into their final song of the night, Diego looked out into the crowd and scanned the room. He lifted his hand and placed it above his eyes in a half salute, shielding his vision from the unfiltered pink and blue stage lights. The minute Diego saw me—discovered me standing in the back—I felt a jolt beneath my ribs. Our eyes locked and my body trembled on the inside with anticipation.
“We’ve got one more song for you tonight,” Diego said into the microphone. “And some of you might not like us for this, but we don’t give a fuck. We’re singing this one for you, Justin Holt.” With that, the band ripped into a revved-up punk version of the Yardbirds’ classic hit “For Your Love.”
As Diego’s voice filled the room and his declarations of desperate love boomed in my ears, I almost lost my grip on the cocktail in my hand.
Chapter Four
Diego flipped open a Zippo and the flame illuminated the alley behind the bar. He lit the cigarette he held between his lips and breathed in. I stepped into the flickering orange-hot glow. Diego smiled, snapped the metal lighter shut, and exhaled.
“I was hoping I might see you,” he said.
I returned his grin and nervously slid my hands into the front pockets of my jeans. “I’m not sure what to say,” I offered.
“Say you like our music.” Diego leaned against the graffiti-smeared wall and braced himself with one raised leg. The bottom of his black combat boot pressed against the bricks. He stood, posed like a modern-day dark-haired James Dean—the hot Latino version.
Intrigued, I moved closer with the impulse to touch Diego’s face, to run my fingertips around the smudged black circles of eyeliner and down to his lips, his neck, to the silver chained dog tags he wore like tin badges of honor. I wanted to slip my fingers through that chain and gently drag him away to a place where the two of us could be alone and spend endless hours pleasing one another.
“I loved the music,” I said, but my words were whispered, heartfelt, and not flirtatious.
Diego tapped his cigarette with his thumb and ashes fell from the tip. They were absorbed into a reflective puddle on the asphalt. He glanced away. I wondered if I was making the oh-so-confident guitar player nervous. “Say that you like me,” he said. The hope in his voice filled the short distance of space between us.
I reached out a hand. My fingers shook slightly as I placed a palm against Diego’s chest, over his heart. “I like you…a lot.”
Diego looked down at my hand and then into my eyes. He tossed the cigarette. It ricocheted off the opposite wall and sparked before dying.
“Where is everyone?” I asked. “Your band?”
“They’re still inside,” Diego answered. “Free drinks. Cheap groupies. Shit like that. A lot of people are into our music all of a sudden and we can’t figure out why. We’ve been getting a lot of buzz lately. I think we’re gonna get signed soon. It’s about fucking time, if you ask me.”
I swallowed. “So…we’re alone?”
In response to my question, Diego reached out and grabbed a handful of my T-shirt and pulled me toward him. Our mouths met almost violently as we kissed with a detonated passion. An electric white energy transferred between our bodies, transmitted by the wicked hunger in our tongues. Our movements were primal, savage. We groped, fondled, and pressed. Soon, we found ourselves breathless, panting bursts of rapid air onto each other’s mouths.
Diego shifted, turned, and pinned me up against the wall, trapping me with the urgency in his body, the weight of his heavy lust crushing against my frame. He grinded against my hips until our cocks found each other and throbbed through our jeans.
Suddenly, Diego pulled away. He held my face in his hands as if terrified to be separated from my mouth. “I want you,” he breathed.
I fell forward toward Diego and the guitarist immediately embraced me. I felt weak, light-headed, overwhelmed. Emotionally my mind was racing with a thousand possible scenarios: what the two of us could become to each other. Physically, I was surrendering to the unknown, to the almost hypnotic power Diego already had over me.
A throaty, liquor-soaked female voice sliced our moment in half, destroying our deep dive into hot lust. “For fuck’s sake, go get a room.”
I tried to pull away from Diego, but he tightened his grip around my waist and pulled me toward him. “What’s it to you, Brenda?” he said to the lead singer with the bloodshot blue eyes.
“Gimme a smoke,” she said, “and I’ll tell you how the two of you can be alone together.”
Diego reached to the inside pocket of his jacket and fished out the pack and the Zippo. She snatched both from him with a quick flash of a greedy hand. She lit her borrowed cigarette, took a deep drag, tilted her head back, and let a thin line of smoke seep out between her glossy lips. She flicked ashes and they drifted in the alley toward me. She turned and narrowed her eyes, her false lashes blinking slowly like tiny wings. “Who in the hell are you, lover boy?”
“He’s Justin,” Diego said, sounding protective. “He’s with me.”
“I’m Brenda Stone,” she explained. “You the one we sang that corny song for?”
“Guilty as charged,” I answered, hoping I didn’t sound as giddy as my voice did in my head.
“Is he the coffee-shop kid?” she asked Diego, who nodded in reply. She had gall calling me a kid. She couldn’t be more than a couple of years older than me. But I knew if I challenged her, she’d probably kick my ass in the alley and embarrass the hell out of me in front of Diego. I kept my mouth shut. I decided to focus my attention on Diego and ignore the Amazonian singer.
That proved to be impossible to do.
“Where you from, loverboy?” Brenda wanted to know.
“He lives here,” Diego answered before I could open my mouth.
“How sweet.” Her voice was thick with sarcasm and a dirty layer of disgust. “You found a hookup in your hometown, Diego. Too bad this romance will be short-lived.”
I turned to Diego and asked, “What’s she talking about?”
He let out a soft sigh, defeated. “We’re leaving soon,” he explained. I felt my heart sink to the asphalt, where Brenda stubbed her cigarette out, grinding it w
ith the back of her boot heel. “We just launched another tour,” he continued. “Tonight was our first show.”
“For how long?” I asked.
Diego swallowed, looked away. “For five weeks.”
“Then you’ll be back?”
He nodded, attempted to offer me a small smile. “Yes…well…at least for a while. It depends on what happens. Our new manager says we’re on the verge.”
Brenda stepped between us, forcing us to separate. She smelled tropical, like coconuts. She handed Diego his cigarettes and silver lighter. “I can cover for you for an hour,” she told him. “That’s all I can give you, amigo. So make the best of it.”
“An hour?” he repeated. “We only have an hour together?”
“Take it or leave it,” she said.
I slipped my hand in Diego’s and announced, “I’ll take it.”
Chapter Five
Diego didn’t say a word to me until we reached the water’s edge. Once we were standing on the shore of Lake Michigan, in the shadow of Navy Pier and away from the late-night throng of inebriated tourists, he placed a gentle hand under my chin and lifted my face to meet his eyes. “I don’t want to sleep with you,” he said. I searched for his expression in the moonlight and offered him a look of confusion in return. “I mean, I do…Of course, I do.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Just not tonight. Not like this. Not with me getting back on the road in less than an hour.”
The Chicago night air was chilly. It drifted off the surface of the lake, weaving around us like an invisible tease. I shivered a little. “What do you want?” I asked. “I mean, what is this, Diego? This connection between us? I know you feel it, too.”
Diego shrugged, tucked his fingers into the pockets of his bomber jacket. “I don’t know,” he answered, “but I think I already miss you and I haven’t even left yet.”
