Rare (2 page)

Ash didn’t hear my question; he was too busy staring at one of the street vendors left over from the Saturday market. Spellbound, I watched him observe the old man carving a lump of wood into a wolf. We didn’t talk about art much, but I knew he loved street art. It was one of the reasons we often ended up in this part of town. He could watch the artists at work for hours, and I had almost as much fun watching him do it.

Not many photos existed of the chalk drawings he used to scrawl on the streets of Philadelphia. I’d only seen a few. His lifestyle back then hadn’t exactly accommodated photography, so I had to rely on people who’d known him to show me, and there were even less of them than there were photographs. He worked as a tattoo artist now, and his life had changed beyond belief, but seeing him so fascinated by the artists here in Chicago often made me wonder if he’d ever go back to his roots.

I nudged him in the ribs, inclining my head toward the finished carving. “Do you like that one?”

“Hmm?”

“The carving,” I repeated. “Do you like it?”

Ash turned away from the vendor with an absent shrug. “Yeah, I saw one like that in Philly, but the kid had different wood.”

I let the silence hang as we resumed our wandering. The purpose of his trip to back to Philadelphia was still a mystery to me. Once I’d gotten over my shock that he was willing to get on a plane, I’d worried that revisiting the city would dredge up unhappy memories for him, but it wasn’t until he was actually gone that my imagination had gotten the better of me. I was half expecting him to come home reverted to the mess he’d been a year ago. He hadn’t, but I knew there was something he hadn’t told me, and now he seemed so happily distracted by the wood carver, I didn’t have the heart to ask him.

In the end, it turned out I didn’t have to. As the frown creased my forehead, he stopped walking and pointed toward a Mexican canteen. “Buy me a burrito and I’ll tell you what else I saw in Philly.”

I
T
TOOK
him a while to get his story out. No matter how much time passed, talking about himself never got any easier. I listened as he explained how he’d ended up standing a few feet away from the girl named in his child services file as his sister. When he was done, I picked up my beer and took a long, slow pull, buying time to cover my shock. “Are you sure it was her?”

“Nope, but Ellie said it was her, and she….” He stopped for a moment as he figured out what he wanted to say. He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “It sounds messed up, but she didn’t seem real.”

It didn’t sound messed up to me. When I’d told him he had a sister, a part of him hadn’t seemed all that surprised, but there was something else too. Disbelief, and something… more. Had he known all along and buried it with everything else he’d been through? Hell, we’d probably never know. Back then, he wouldn’t even let me tell him her name, like he thought he didn’t deserve to know. I wondered if that had changed, but I sensed it wasn’t the time to ask him.

I shifted so my leg brushed his. “How did Ellie even know she existed?”

It was a fair question. Ellie was Ash’s best friend—his
only
friend when he’d been homeless on the streets of Philadelphia—but though they sometimes seemed like siblings, he didn’t confide in her about the bad shit: the kind of shit that pushed him into a psychotic breakdown. Ellie didn’t know the half of what Ash had been through since she’d persuaded him to follow her here to Chicago all those years ago.

Ash rolled his eyes. “She went snooping in her dad’s office and found a page of my file he hadn’t given to Dr. Gilbert.”

I knew which page he meant. It had to be the same one I’d handed back to Ellie’s father a few months back, asking him to safeguard it in case Ash ever changed his mind about wanting to know his sister. I was curious as to why David had left it lying around his office, but I didn’t have it in me to be pissed at him. Ash seemed at peace with what he’d seen, and we’d rebuilt enough trust between us for me to believe him.

My cell phone beeped. I pulled it out to open the message I knew was from Joe.

Lock the door if ur gettin nekkid. Be over in the morning. J

I grinned, handing the phone to Ash for him to reply. In his own way, Joe had been as worried about Ash’s trip as me, but the few hours I’d spent with him while Ash had been gone had done me the world of good. Joe had his own way of looking at things, and despite Ash’s worries that I didn’t like him, over the past year or so we’d become good friends.

Aside from doctors and therapists, Joe was the only person who knew the reasons behind the breakdown Ash had been through. When I’d had to go back to work in the days after we’d discovered the probability of sexual abuse in Ash’s past, I’d had little choice but to tell him. Given the mess Ash was in, there was no way he could be left alone. I needed help to care for him, and knowing he would never forgive me if I put that on Ellie, Joe was the only option I had.

I remembered the day I begged him for help with perfect clarity. His reaction had mirrored mine: horror, anger, and grief for the childhood Ash never had. I’d been taken aback by the raw emotion in him, but what stunned me most was the story he told me in return. It was something I’d never forget.

I’d always known there was something about Joe. He was an open and honest kind of guy, but underneath it all something lingered—a deep sadness he couldn’t quite hide. When he told me about his brother, Larry, I finally understood what it was, and his gentle, fraternal protection of Ash made sense.

Larry had been just fifteen when Joe left Seattle to go to college in Philadelphia. His parents had been against the move and pleaded with him to stay closer to home, but he’d ignored them and gone anyway. He was a free spirit at heart. His family could trace their roots back to the Romany Gypsies in Eastern Europe, and he’d inherited their itchy feet. He wanted to travel and see the world. He wanted to live outside the small community he’d grown up in.

Joe never made it through his first year sharing a dorm room with Charlie, Ellie’s gregarious older brother. Larry hanged himself from the light pole outside his bedroom window a few weeks before Christmas break. Poor kid had been gang-raped by half the football team, and Joe hadn’t had a clue until he read Larry’s suicide note. Hell, he hadn’t even known Larry was gay until he found his journal hidden in his mother’s closet and discovered months of abuse at the hands of his peers.

Joe completed the rest of his degree at home in Seattle. Against the odds, he graduated on time, but he never forgave his parents for being too pigheaded and traditional to save his brother, or himself for simply not being there. The dark winter day I’d gone to pieces in front of him, he’d looked me in the eye and told me there was no way he was making the same mistake twice. He told me Ash would be okay, because we wouldn’t let him be anything else. I believed him, because at the time his conviction was the only thing that stood between me and a complete breakdown of my own. For the longest time, the only faith I had was borrowed.

In the months that followed, Ash got really low—so low I nearly lost him. Without Joe propping him up… there was no doubt in my mind I would’ve come home one day to find he’d shared Larry’s fate. Watching him battle through that shit was hard, so hard there were times I couldn’t handle it. Joe had guarded my back, stepping in when I faltered, and for that I could never thank him enough. And he gave Ash something he’d never had before: a real male friend where the lines weren’t blurred by fear, or complicated by sex. Ash needed that, sometimes even more than he needed me.

Mind you, Joe and Charlie together drove me batshit crazy, and when Ash handed me my cell phone back with a smirk on his face, I knew something was up.

“Are you working on Saturday?”

I frowned, trying to remember my schedule, but my brain was foggy from not enough sleep and too much food. It took me a moment to remember that Ash’s birthday was coming up at the end of the week, so I had most of the weekend free.

“No,” I said around a yawn. “I’m off from the morning through till Sunday night. Why?”

Ash grinned some more. “Get your game face on. We’re going out.”

A
GAY
club? Was he kidding me?

Absolute silence met Charlie’s suggestion. I stole a glance at the faces around me. Ash seemed genuinely surprised, and Joe looked amused. Me? I was fucking horrified. It had been years since I’d subjected myself to the cattle market of a gay club, and with good reason. Those places scared the hell out of me.

Beside me, Joe laughed long and loud. “Jesus fucking Christ, Chas. We’ve been out since”—he looked at his watch—“yesterday sometime. Can’t we go home?”

Charlie took a swig from a brown-bagged bottle and then passed it to me. “Yesterday? Dude, you’re such a wimp. It’s barely midnight. Besides, I know this girl, right? Sarah… or Sally or some shit, and she says all the hot chicks party at Pink’s. You know it’s true. Chicks love the gays.”

I took a long pull of cheap liquor as Joe began to protest and chanced another glance at Ash. His twenty-fourth birthday had passed the day before without much fanfare, but tonight we’d given ourselves over to Charlie for a much needed night out. Much needed for Ash, at least. I could have done with a nap.

Ash wandered over and dropped to the ground by my head. He didn’t speak; he just grinned and looked out over the water. I smiled back and lazily ruffled his hair. We’d spent the evening drinking in the city bars, playing pool, and shooting the breeze, but when the hour got too late for some of us, we’d quit the town to come and eat burgers by the lake. I’d assumed the night was over, but it seemed Charlie had other plans, and Joe was running out of ideas to dissuade him.

Charlie’s gaze fell on Ash. “C’mon, dude, back me up here. Wouldn’t it be fun to go somewhere and mack on him in public?”

Lucky for me, I’d swallowed the drink in my mouth, but Ash wasn’t quite so fortunate. He choked out a laugh, spraying beer all over his feet.

“What? Why?”

I was relieved he saw the funny side. He’d been in therapy for a long time, but only recently Dr. Gilbert had suggested that perhaps the lack of affection we showed each other in the outside world had contributed to him feeling like he had something to be ashamed of. Trying to fix that was a work in progress. Neither of us got a kick out of being demonstrative in public, but we had begun to be more open around the people we trusted. Charlie and Joe came under that category for sure, but a nightclub full of crazy twinks? Fuck that.

“Aw, you guys are no fun,” Charlie said. “Joe, I know you want to go. Remember that night back in freshman year? That disco club with all the foam shit? You loved that.”

Joe snorted and let out another loud belly laugh. “Dude, I liked the disco club because of the chicks on roller skates. It’s not the same thing.”

And so the bickering went on. I closed my eyes and laid back on the bench while Ash remained on the ground and nursed his beer. Joe appeared to be edging ahead, so I was surprised when I felt myself being dragged upright.

I glared at Ash. “Quit yanking on me. What are you doing?”

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going to the gay club.”

“Are you kidding?”

He shrugged. “We could have been there and back in the time they’ve spent bitching about it. Let’s just go.”

I glanced at Joe. It had become a habit for the two of us to be a little overprotective. Ash caught the exchange and scowled. He didn’t like being coddled, and for once, I agreed with him. Who was I to tell him he shouldn’t go somewhere? I wasn’t his mother. If he wanted to go to the club, we’d go to the club. Joe looked like he wanted to say something, but when he saw me shrug, he grinned and bounded on ahead of us. The dude was cool like that; he knew when to keep quiet.

The club Charlie had in mind wasn’t far away, but the walk gave me enough time to warn Ash what he was letting himself in for. The club wasn’t an establishment I’d ever frequented, but I’d sure heard of it. If Charlie and Joe were expecting women, they were going to be sorely disappointed. The only chicks in that place had dicks.

Ash took my carefully worded warnings for what they were. Clubs like that were charged environments, full of heated stares and wandering hands. The last time I’d been in a bar like that, I’d come away needing my retinas bleached. Ash couldn’t deal with shit. For my sake as much as his, I had to make sure he was ready.

Turned out, I had my panties in a twist over nothing. The club was the campiest, most ridiculous place I’d ever set foot in. Ash started laughing the minute we walked through the door.

“Wow.” He looked around with wide eyes. “I thought you were kidding. Are we the only fuckers in here with shirts on?”

“We are now.”

He followed my gaze, catching the shirt Charlie tossed over his head. Joe’s shirt followed, and before we could blink, we’d lost them both to the spandex-packed dance floor. That shit was hilarious. The two of them didn’t give a damn about anything, especially when they’d had a belly full of beer. Watching them bump and grind in the sea of glitter-covered skin was about the funniest thing I’d ever seen.

I slipped an arm around Ash’s waist and tugged him in the direction of the bar. I kept a firm grip on him as we made our way through the club. He was usually okay in crowds—the noise in his own head caused him the most problems—but the place was packed. I didn’t want to lose track of him. And it didn’t take long for me to realize I wasn’t the only one with an eye on him. The caveman in me bristled. I’d lost count of the times he’d been hit on in front of me, but that was different. Those were chicks.

Oblivious, Ash gazed around the club’s flamboyant interior. He spotted some artwork buried amongst all the Day-Glo and feathers and dragged me over to one of the many fake stone pillars dotted around the club.

“This is really cool,” he said over the pounding music, tracing the ornate painted pattern with his fingertip. “Look, it goes all the way up.”