Out of Nowhere (16 page)

I get myself cleaned up enough that my skin isn’t crawling, but I have no idea where to go from here. A door slamming outside makes me startle and drop the wad of damp paper towels. I swipe at them but miss, leaning on my knees and trying to get a deep breath. Fuck. Every good feeling rushes out of me. The weight on my chest is back and it doesn’t leave room for anything so warm or delicate as the things Rafe makes me feel.

“I didn’t say that about Javi to make you feel sorry for me,” Rafe says. He’s regarding me uncertainly in the mirror when I stand up.

“I don’t feel sorry for you, man. I mean, of course I’m sorry you lost your friend. But you’ve got a job you love, lots of friends, shit to care about, your family. Those kids worship you.” I shake my head. “From where I’m standing, you’ve got everything.”

He drops his hands from my shoulders and looks at the tile floor.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I’m lucky. Luckier than I have any right to be.”

SINCE MONDAY,
Rafe and I have talked a lot, and it’s been easy. He doesn’t pretend that he’s into the same things as me. He doesn’t like horror movies, doesn’t know anything about cars, and doesn’t follow sports except for the World Cup and the occasional hockey game. He did give me shit when he found out I played football in high school, though. Said he was surprised I turned into a runner because didn’t most football players try their damnedest not to run more than a few yards at a time. So I guess he does have a sense of humor.

Well. Not really. And he doesn’t want me to entertain him the way I would with someone in a bar. In fact, when I try to joke around to fill the silence or make light of something, he doesn’t seem amused. He’s not rude or anything. He just takes things seriously, I guess.

It’s a strange feeling. I’ve spent so many years shooting the shit that I kind of forgot that I had things to say.

I’ve been remembering it lately, though. Remembering people I used to talk to. There was this kid I knew in seventh and eighth grade. Charlie Lancaster. He was kind of strange, always talking about morbid stuff like death and skeletons and plagues. But I liked listening to him. I liked how he didn’t care that people thought he was weird. And after Mom died, all the things he was talking about kind of made sense to me.

His parents had been killed in a car crash when he was ten, and he managed to sit with me and talk and not spout a bunch of shit about how sorry he was for me. Useless comments that made me want to scream and punch people right in their weepy, sympathetic mouths. But Charlie and I talked about what it meant for someone to suddenly cease to exist. About the space someone can leave behind. About where you go after you die—we never agreed on that one: he thought you just disappeared as if you’d never existed, lingering only in the memories of the ones who knew you; I thought there had to be… something. Now, though, I think Charlie might’ve been right.

But the thing I haven’t thought about since freshman year, when I joined football and started hanging out with Xavier and the other guys on the team instead of Charlie, is how I felt when I was near him. How we’d sit, side by side, against the half wall separating the school from the service entrance off the street when it was warm, or against the lockers in the southeast corner of the third floor in winter, talking. How sometimes our shoulders would press together and neither of us would move away. How I was aware that Charlie always smelled like clean laundry, mint, and sweat. How I’d look forward to lunch because it meant seeing Charlie and hearing about whatever he’d been thinking about lately.

And how, sometimes, on really bad days after Mom died, I’d feel a strange compulsion to let my head drop down on Charlie’s shoulder, like maybe touching him could leach off some of the poison I felt snaking through my veins.

After Rafe and I, um… well, after Monday, I expected to feel some kind of seismic shift. But it didn’t happen. If anything, it’s more as if a mess that seemed really jumbled has shaken out into a pattern I can recognize.

“Hey,” I say to Rafe, ignoring the terrible movie we’ve been not really watching. “Did you—when did you realize you were…?”

“Gay? When I was ten or eleven, there was this group of guys in my neighborhood. They were—” He shakes his head. “—trouble. But there was something about them that appealed to me. The way they carried themselves. Their style. They looked tough. Like they could look out for themselves. They were probably only fourteen or fifteen, but I thought of them as being grown. I wanted to be like them. Look like them, dress like them, have a group of people to watch my back like them.

“My dad was a mean fucker. I think, partly, I had this idea that if I had friends like that, they could teach me how to be someone he wouldn’t mess with so much. So, I watched them. For years. And I really believed that’s what it was—that I wanted to be
like
them. It wasn’t until I was thirteen, maybe fourteen, that I realized I just wanted them. By that time, I did have people to watch my back. But it wasn’t anything like I imagined. And, well, you know how that turned out.”

I nod. The guys who pulled Rafe into their group were affiliated with a gang in his neighborhood. He told me about it haltingly on the phone last night. How he didn’t realize what their friendship meant until it was too late. Until he was so deep into taking and selling drugs with them that there was no way he could step away from it without a hell of a lot of fallout.

“They all talked a lot of shit about how many girls they’d been with, even at thirteen or fourteen. Some of it was true. I don’t know how much. But I went along with it. Until high school, when it was really clear who was… you know, screwing, because it’d happen at parties, in the backseats of cars, or in bathrooms.” He winces. “I kind of… had to.”

“With girls.”

He nods. “It was a shitty thing to do. Anyway, it’s not like it was terrible or anything. It just felt wrong. And then, when I first slept with a boy. Fuck. I knew for sure then. I mean, we were sixteen, so it was clumsy and fumbling, but, damn. It was like all the things I’d been feeling and questioning about myself finally made sense.”

“Who was he?”

“Mm, Benny. Benito. He went to a different school, but his cousin went to school with us, so he was always around. He had this really light coloring—almost blond, with grayish-bluish eyes—and everyone joked that he was secretly white. He was… sweet. Which didn’t really go over well in my neighborhood. But somehow, people left him alone. Like they could tell he was good.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what ever happened to him. But one night at some party, I was standing in a corner, watching everything. I was blitzed. Benny came over to me. He took my hand and led me to this tiny bedroom that had probably been a pantry originally.

“He was smaller than me, but he pushed me up against the door and looked right at me. Didn’t say anything. Finally, he leaned up really slow and kissed me. It was like he’d read my mind. I was so shocked that I pushed him away at first. But he kept standing there, looking at me. He knew. He was totally sure of me. And I was so relieved because he proved something to me that I probably would’ve sat with for a long time, never knowing.”

Rafe’s smiling. And I’m fucking jealous. Not of this kid Benny, but that Rafe got his questions answered at sixteen, by someone sweet. Rafe likes sweet.

“Do you remember the first time you were attracted to a guy?” Rafe asks.

“I wasn’t—I didn’t realize that’s what it was until just now, I think. This guy Charlie. I dunno what happened to him either. When we went to high school, I kind of lost track of him.”

No. That’s not true. More like I started ignoring him and didn’t step in when I saw people messing with him

A familiar sinking feeling begins, like I’m slipping beneath the surface of something unfathomable, every moment I sit here pressing me farther into a blackness that I want to pull around myself and wrap up in until I can’t see or hear anything.

I bite my lip. I can’t let myself go to the place where I hate myself. I never know how to come back.

Then Rafe pulls me close and starts rubbing my scalp, kind of the way he pets Shelby. My skin prickles and my breath comes short. I squeeze my eyes shut so tight the room feels like it’s spinning.

“God, what are you
doing
?” I groan.

Rafe’s hand stills on my hair. “I’m sorry. I was just—”

“No! I mean, what the fuck are you doing here? What are you doing with me? Why do you even give a shit? Fuck!”

I curl in on myself, trying to contain the churning hurricane of fury, shame, and fear in my stomach, but I can’t. Liquor will melt me further into it, a razor snap me out of it—for a few minutes, anyway.

Rafe makes a choked sound and turns, going up on his knees and dragging me tight against him.

“You don’t feel this?” He presses his palm to my spine, my chest to his. The hurricane in my stomach settles a little as my heartbeat slows down to match the steady, calming thump of Rafe’s.

“I feel—I don’t know….”

“We… respond to each other, Colin. There’s a connection.” He presses his face into my neck and I shudder, my body wanting to move closer even as my itchy mind shies away. He breathes me in and his exhalation is warm on my neck.

I feel it. I do. But I don’t know what it means. I shake my head.

“I’m fucked up,” I mutter, turning away from him. “You’ll see.”

He chokes out a laugh. “I knew you were fucked up the moment I saw you.”

“Shit,” I mutter, sliding my arm over Rafe’s side and pressing closer to him. “What the hell are we doing?” My voice shakes and he squeezes me tight.

I want to go for the whiskey in the kitchen. Instead, I kiss the corner of Rafe’s mouth even though I don’t deserve it. Even though all I ever do is hurt people. He snakes his arm around my back and turns his head to chase my mouth. Kissing him feels as warm and intoxicating as the whiskey would.

“Come here, doll,” he says breathlessly, shifting me so I’m straddling his lap.

I choke. “God, don’t call me that.” That’s… what the fuck is that? Then I shiver. Rafe’s eyes are intense, but soft just for me.

“I can feel how much you like it,” he murmurs, pulling me closer. I shake my head. It’s… filthy. Embarrassing. “No?”

One palm skates up my spine under my shirt and I shudder hard. I shake my head again, but Rafe’s smile is knowing.

“Mmhmm,” he says, like he knows better. Which is irritating as hell, but also kind of hot. Damn it. I stop thinking about it when he presses his mouth to mine.

We kiss so slow it’s like melting together. My face and neck are hot, and my whole body is buzzing. Rafe strokes up and down my back, and I slide a hand down the back of his shirt, his skin warm under my fingers and slightly rough. He tips my head back and kisses my throat, and I press my hips into him.

“Fuck, Colin, I’m so hot for you, you don’t even know.”

I choke trying to get a breath in. I don’t know what kind of pheromones are coming off Rafe right now, but he’s got me tied up in knots with one sentence.

He lays kisses along my throat and sucks at my neck. I shiver every time he touches the place where my neck meets my shoulder.

“You like it here?” Rafe licks the spot he kissed and scrapes his teeth across my skin. My hips jerk forward and I nod frantically, grabbing at him.

“Where else?” he asks, tightening his hand on my throat. “What else do you like?”

All the breath leaves me, and I look away from him. I don’t want to stop to think about it because if I do, I’ll have to think about how I have no fucking clue what I like, really. Only what I don’t. And then I’ll have to think about how wrong everything went the last time I messed around with anyone like this. And I really, really don’t want to think about that.

“Tell me,” he says, voice intense. “I want to make you feel good.”

I shake my head, trying to banish the thoughts, and Rafe’s hand softens slightly in my hair. I kiss him again, but I can’t get back that mindless intoxication from a few minutes before. The one I could lose myself in.

“I want you to tell me what you like and what you don’t, okay?” Rafe’s expression is serious and I feel ridiculous. I shake my head and kiss him again in an attempt to shut him up.

“So you like kissing. Noted,” he says.

“Asshole.” I roll my eyes, but he just looks amused.

“Okay, so it’s hard for you to tell me what you like in bed.”

God, I just want him to stop fucking talking about it and
do
something. I can feel my face heat.

“All right,” he says. “I have some ideas. I just need to make sure that I’m not misinterpreting.”

“Misinterpreting what?”

Rafe looks almost uncertain for a moment.

“Come here,” he says, his voice low and commanding. “Put your hands on my shoulders and kiss me.”

I do, and I squeeze his shoulders, loving the strength of his muscles, the solidity of his frame.

“Closer,” Rafe says, and I press my chest to his, getting as close as I can while still kissing him. “Put your arms around my neck,” he murmurs against my lips, and I do, running my fingers through the hair at his nape. Rafe leaves one hand on my neck when he leans back against the couch, and when he looks at me this time, he’s nothing but confidence and certainty.

“I just had to make sure,” he murmurs. He looks me up and down. “Damn, that’s beautiful.”

“Uh, what?” I’m lost. And turned on. Why’d he stop?

“You like it when I tell you what to do.”

My head snaps up. “What?” I sure as hell do not like anyone telling me what to do.

“Not ordinarily. I mean in bed.” His hand is soothing on my back.

“Uh….”

He leans in and kisses me deep. I melt against him, winding my arms back around his neck.

“Which is incredibly hot,” he says against my lips, “since I like telling you what to do in bed.”

“I—but—um.”

“Lie back,” Rafe says, easing me off his lap and onto my back on the couch. He looks almost amused as he leans down to me. “What do you want me to do, Colin? I’ll do anything you want. Anything.” He kisses me, then pulls away. “Well?”