From the Ashes (20 page)

After pulling open the door, Jesse slid into the seat. He worried things would be awkward between them, so he gave Tomas a big smile. “Thanks for picking me up.”

Tomas’s eyes were bloodshot, with dark circles hanging underneath, but he reached over and scrubbed Jesse’s hair out of his face. He touched Jesse’s cheek with the pad of his thumb, and it felt like a kiss. “Missed you.”

Jesse swallowed. “You too.” He tried to chuckle, but he was too nervous. “You look worse than me. Sure you didn’t just go to a different club after?”

“Nah.” Tomas turned a corner and slowed to a stop in front of yet another line of traffic. “But it’s a good thing Carl owed me a favor. I don’t think I could have made it through a whole shift.”

“Oh.” He hoped Tomas hadn’t lost sleep worrying about their fight. In the dim light of morning, Jesse wasn’t sure it had been worth it to push Tomas so hard. “Henri’s couch is comfortable, but his boyfriend is a total asshole,” he said to put Tomas at ease.

“You had fun though, right?” Tomas sounded so tired and sad.

“Yeah.” Jesse hoped it didn’t make him a bad person, but he’d had a pretty good time after Tomas left. “The club got kind of crazy by the end. You should have seen some of the people who showed up.” He smiled, remembering. “And man, this one group of guys looked like they were on something. I thought they were all gonna have sex with each other right on the dance floor.”

With a wan smile, Tomas pulled onto I-5 South. “That’s great, Jess. I’m happy you had fun.”

Jesse licked his lips, steeling himself for what he knew he had to ask. “You weren’t… I mean, you aren’t mad I didn’t come back to SeaTac with you?”

“No.” Tomas barked out a mirthless laugh. “No, that would have sucked. You were better off where you were, believe me.”

“Either way, I’ll make it up to you.” He rubbed Tomas’s arm under his jacket.

“You don’t have to do anything.” Tomas’s voice was harsh, but then he shook his head and looked away from the road for long enough to sling Jesse a reassuring smile. “I just mean… Well, I told Diego.”

“Oh, wow. Was that—?”

Tomas held up a hand. “Shit went down, and it wasn’t all about you. Or even me.” He sighed, closing his eyes for a second before setting his stare straight ahead. “Chester died.”

“Oh no.” Jesse touched his chest. He hadn’t known Chester all that well, but he’d seemed like a good family pet. “I’m sorry.”

“He was an old dog.” Tomas sagged as he drove. It made Jesse want to get him on the couch and rub his feet. “Diego was there.” His grip tightening on the steering wheel, Tomas’s knuckles went white.

“Oh.” Jesse folded one knee under him. “Not good?”

Tomas rumbled a sarcastic laugh. “Really not good.”

Jesse waited. He knew Tomas would say more when he was ready. As time crept forward, Jesse squirmed from guilt. Maybe he’d been wrong to demand Tomas tell Diego the truth. Or had Jesse asked, not demanded? Maybe it was the cocktails, but the night was a bit of a blur.

“He was baiting me anyway.” Tomas scoffed. “He just kept pushing and pushing. I’d never noticed before how he did that.”

“Yeah, my parents never did that.” Jesse didn’t know why he was bringing his parents up. They had nothing to do with Tomas’s relationship with Diego. Still, Jesse had always held back with Tomas, not really sharing his story. If he was going to come clean, now was the time. “They just criticized me constantly. Like I should play football instead of doing drama. I should have been working at a gas station instead of delivering pizzas. Coded shit, but I knew what they were saying.”

He folded his arms. He’d said too much too fast and wished he could take half of it back.

“How’d they act when you told them?” Tomas asked with a steady voice.

“I didn’t. My dad walked in on me with my first boyfriend.”

Tomas winced. “That sucks, man.”

“Yeah.” Jesse rolled his eyes. He could laugh about it now, when he was feeling adequately sardonic. Sometimes if he was tired, he still couldn’t think about it because it would make him cry. “He went apeshit. Told me to get out of his house, that I was disgusting.” He shrugged. “Y’know, I would have thought he’d have been…I dunno, more shocked maybe.” Jesse had never really analyzed his dad’s behavior from that night. He’d been so hurt and miserable for so long that he hadn’t considered why his dad would have acted like he had. “He went right into battle mode. I swear he was throwing my shit into the hallway in under a minute.”

Tomas took his hand, pulling it into his lap. “Everyone reacts differently when faced with grief.” He spoke in slow, calm tones, as if they were in bed and trying to fall asleep with their limbs bunched together. “Usually they go through a phase of denial, but it sounds like your parents had been doing that for a long time already.”

Jesse lolled his head on the headrest and closed his eyes. Tomas was rubbing circles on his palm, and Jesse was suddenly so tired he could have fallen asleep. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Then comes bargaining. When they think, ‘If I do this thing or that thing, maybe I can head off the inevitable.’”

“Yeah, like, ‘If Jesse plays football instead of doing drama club, he might turn out straight’?”

Tomas lifted Jesse’s hand and kissed his fingers. “Good example.”

Smiling, Jesse watched the city pass by. He’d had fun at the club, but he was happy to be going back to Tomas’s house. Or, at least, he was happy to be with Tomas.

“Did they kick you out right then?”

“Well, not exactly.” Jesse shook his head. “Crap, it’s embarrassing.” His skin heated under his clothes, and that old, familiar misery crept through his belly. “I begged him not to.”

Jesse had to get this part out because Tomas was the only person he’d ever told. He was the only person Jesse was going to tell, because if someone like Michael ever found out what Jesse’d done, he’d die of shame. “I told him I wouldn’t do it anymore. I could stop. I begged him to let me stay.”

“Oh, Jess—” Tomas tried to move Jesse’s hand over his heart, but Jesse pulled it away.

“So now you know.” Jesse pinched his lips together, hating himself. “I threw myself at his feet. Broke up with Bobby. Worked my ass off to get out. But I lied for a whole year…”

“Hey.” Tomas’s voice was sharp. When he grabbed Jesse’s hand again, he didn’t let go. “You did what you had to.”

“But—”

“I see kids who took the other way.” Tomas darted him a stern look as best he could while keeping his eyes on the road. “Every week we get a call on some homeless kid who got raped or overdosed. That’s not even mentioning all the kids out on The Ave or Broadway.”

“Maybe I should have…” When he’d been deep in the thick of it, trying to save up to move, he hadn’t stopped to consider the other option. Jesse had always been a planner, a counter. He’d decided exactly how much he needed for a bus ticket, first and last month’s rent. He’d had the papers for UW sent to his school mailbox and calculated the costs down to the penny.

He just hadn’t planned on his house catching fire.

“No. You shouldn’t have.” Tomas shook his head, his face tired, his eyes angry. “You were smart. You did the right thing.”

“Yeah, but then I went and asked you to come out.”

Tomas stroked his arm, then up to his shoulders. “Diego… I was going to have to deal with that one way or the other.” His words were so grim Jesse worried Tomas had killed the guy. “He didn’t treat you with respect.”

Jesse traced the window’s edge with his finger, wiping off the droplets. He’d been a fucking hypocrite telling Tomas to talk to Diego. After all, Michael treated Tomas like crap, and Jesse should have been firmer that he wouldn’t stand for it. “You were right about Michael. I need to talk to him.”

Tomas’s lip twitched in the corner. Not a smile, but something like it. “No kidding. You should keep that bitch in line.”

“Oh God.” Jesse snickered. He wished he could be a fly on the wall when Tomas said that to Michael’s face. “Shit, now I’m going to be thinking that every time he pulls one of his tizzy fits.”

“Fuck, so am I.” Tomas laughed—for real this time. His whole body shook with it. “That guy really needs to get laid.”

Jesse nodded. “No shit.” He bit his lip, suddenly aware of Tomas sitting so close and all their unfinished business about the sex thing. Jesse didn’t want to deal with that, though. For all the shit he’d given Tomas over blowjobs and the rest of it, he just wanted them to go home, have dinner and jerk off while watching some stupid television show.

“Baby, I’m so glad to be going home.” Jesse sighed. He didn’t even care if he was being silly calling Tomas baby. Tomas was his baby, and he was Tomas’s.

Tomas wove through SeaTac and rounded the corner to his street. “What movie do you want to watch tonight?”

In the distance, Jesse spotted Tomas’s house and the dark-haired figure standing in front of it. He squinted, a cold sense of dread filling his gut. Diego stood in the driveway with his arms crossed.

“Shit.” Tomas slowed and pulled into the driveway. “This is the last thing I want to deal with.”

“You want to go somewhere else?” Jesse asked, tensing at the glare on Diego’s face.

Tomas shook his head. Clenching his jaw, he reached across Jesse to lock Jesse’s door. “Stay in the car,” he murmured.

Diego rounded to Jesse’s side. He scowled at Jesse through the glass and said, “Get out of the car,” right before he slapped the window.

Jesse jumped, getting his body as far as possible from the door. His heart pounded in his ears, and he would have shouted for Tomas to drive the fuck away except Tomas got out of the car.

“I’ll deal with this,” Tomas shouted—he had to because Diego was screaming at Jesse’s window.

Shaking, Jesse crossed his arms. He closed his eyes and tried not to shit himself as Tomas and Diego yelled at one another. Diego didn’t seem in his right mind.

Outside, Tomas touched Diego’s arm, trying to calm him down, but then Diego threw him off. He rushed back up to Jesse’s window and shouted through the glass, his face screwed up like a madman. “Get the fuck out of our house, fag. You’re not welcome here. Go back to wherever you came from.”

Tomas grabbed Diego and dragged him back, but Diego’s words hung in the air. They echoed in Jesse’s skull, making him crazy and angry and so miserable he wanted to die.

But they didn’t surprise him. Jesse guessed he’d already gone through denial. That was the first part of this stupid-ass plan of living in SeaTac. His forearm across his eyes, Jesse lifted his knees up to his chest. The sobs came, wracking his body, skewering him from the inside.

He wanted to get out of the car and fly at Diego, rip and tear and bite until he got some kind of satisfaction. He didn’t even care if he got hurt.

Outside, Tomas’s parents and Maria burst from their house to add their shouts. Thankfully, they spoke Spanish, so Jesse didn’t have to understand.

He floated, ignoring the ruckus outside. Ignoring everything. This would end at some point, and when it did, Jesse would find a way to the bus stop and then to the light rail. He’d do what he was good at and find a new place to live.

What seemed like hours later, Tomas’s family settled into angry mutters, huddled on the front lawn. A few neighbors poked their heads out of their houses to watch. Others cracked open their windows to listen.

Now the whole block would know he was a
maricon
. He didn’t know much Spanish, but he’d picked up that much from Diego’s raving. The neighbors would know Jesse had pulled Tomas, a good boy and a firefighter, into his cursed life.

With shaking fingers, Jesse pinched the plastic lock and lifted. The mechanism clicked open. Fear and depression stiffened his muscles, but Jesse opened the door.

One foot in front of the other. His backpack had never felt heavier. He’d need to get his clothes from Tomas tomorrow, and he’d smell unless he could get to a Laundromat. He’d need to find a place where he could keep Char.

Or Tomas might want to keep Chardonnay, leaving Jesse all alone again. Blinking, he swiped his hand across his wet eyes. No. Somehow, he’d find a way to keep the dog.

Jesse walked down the block, the pavement hard under his beaten-up Vans. He hoped the neighbors would keep watching Tomas’s family and not watch him leave.

Chapter Seventeen

Tomas spotted Jesse halfway down the block, and his heart dropped. Cupping his hands to amplify his voice, he called, “Jess!”

Jesse must not have heard because he kept walking.

“Let him go.” Diego dragged on Tomas’s arm. He only let go when Tomas’s father cuffed him on the head.

As usual, his mom shouted at his dad, and Maria shouted at her. Another round of arguing broke out, but Tomas ignored them and ran down the street. “Jess. Wait.” He ran the two blocks to catch up.

At the corner, Tomas slowed to a walk. “Hey.” He huffed, catching his breath. “Man, Diego’s an asshole.” He tried for a chuckle, but it came out dry. “Just ignore him.”

“Yeah, right.” Jesse’s cheeks were red and covered with tears.

Tomas thought frantically—trying to figure out what to say to make things better. “I… Listen… I’m sorry he did that. Maybe I should have warned you how pissed off he was last night. I didn’t think he’d come around until he’d cooled off.”