Bad Things (28 page)

When he’d calmed down enough to think halfway straight, he looked through online want ads. Fuck, he was getting too old for the bartending gig. It had been fun in his early twenties, and fine in his mid-twenties. But the last two years it had gone from tedious to depressing, smiling through a whole shift of chitchat with people who were tipsy and vapid at best, drunk and belligerent at worst. Depressed by his prospects, he ended up spending most of the day editing the photographs from that morning, riding a warm current of joy that he’d managed to capture the electric charge that arced between Dario and Aidan.

And every five minutes, all day, all evening, Xavier kept creeping into his mind. Bad memories, confusing memories. And a weird anxiousness for Xavier’s safety. Carson really did have some warped mutation of Stockholm syndrome.

Usually photo editing absorbed him completely. Almost as totally as roaming streets or halls with his camera. But by the time the sun was trying to hide itself behind the surrounding buildings, he’d lost all his focus, and his waking thoughts were as cruel and inescapable as a bad nightmare.

Worried he was really crossing a line, this time, he took his camera back upstairs, and stood in the doorway of the studio.

Aidan looked up from his guitar, and gave Carson a smile. Shy. Not like Dario’s smiles that always felt like he was pulling aside a curtain and giving you free access to his soul.

“I’m interrupting.”

“
No,” Aidan hurried to reassure him, “don’t worry. I stopped being productive an hour ago. I’m just messing around, at this point.” Suddenly he looked embarrassed. “I really abandoned you, didn’t I? It’s already dark. Are you starving? Should we make something to eat?”

It bugged him that Adrian was fretting about his meals, like he was a toddler in day care. He already felt useless and in the way.

“Actually, I thought it might be cool to take some pictures of you working. You know, maybe Dario would like to have one.”

“
Really?” Aidan’s face lit up. Like this, not self-conscious and worrying about what to say, he was incredibly attractive. The man Carson had seen in footage of Aidan performing. And his humble little, ’Really?’ was too charming to believe.

“
Maybe you should just play something you’re working on, and try to ignore me and my camera circling you like a vulture.”

If he hurried, he’d beat the sun’s descent, and get Aidan in that delicious warm glow of tangerine afternoon light. Up close like this, working over the words of a song Carson had never heard before, fingers hunting notes on the quivering strings of his guitar, Aidan looked nothing like the guarded man who closed in on himself every time there was a silence he seemed to feel it was his responsibility to fill. This man was at ease in his wiry body, ardent, pouring his usually shielded soul forth. Photographing him when he was like this felt like reaching into his chest and touching his naked, beating heart.

Carson managed to choose and do a preliminary edit on three from that set, too, before Dario got home. When they went through that day’s images together after dinner, to Carson, Dario looked so moved by what he saw in those images, some of the two of them, and the three of just Aidan, that he was making a serious effort to keep the shimmer in his eyes from gathering into real tears.

Every time Carson checked his phone—which he did every hour or two—he went on the same ridiculous roller coaster of anxiety bordering on fear that Xavier would take him hostage there in that tranquil haven, wielding no weapon but a few words sent in a text or voice message, and pathetic disappointment and anger that he hadn’t at least sent a perfunctory message saying he was safe, and asking Carson if he was okay.

Elena never mentioned Xavier, either, in her daily updates, which seemed to be more about letting Carson know he wasn’t forgotten, than to pass any real information on to him. He wondered if that was her job, if she was always so conscientious about checking in on witnesses, or whether she was doing it because she felt a vague personal connection to him, after their encounter in Xavier’s basement. Sometimes Carson told himself that Xavier had asked her to do it.

The sun felt wonderful on his skin. Surreal to be lying there drinking beer that Aidan Novak had bought for him because he was “in hiding,” surreal to be wearing Aidan Novak’s boyfriend’s boxers, because he’d been too afraid to go home and pack a bag. But in that moment, he felt like he could stay there forever, in that lounge chair on that rooftop. Eyes closed. No sound but the L.A. traffic and the low thrumming buzz of helicopters tracking traffic, the eyes in the sky for the daily manhunts.

The door to the stairwell squeaked open, and Dario planted himself in the chair to Carson’s left. A fresh, cold beer. Fucking heaven, this place. He and Dario clinked their bottles together. The contrast of the dregs from the last beer made this one, crisp and icy and bubbly, taste like nectar of the gods.

He caught Dario’s gaze sweeping over him. Suddenly he realized. Remembered.

“Sorry. Is it completely rude that I’m sprawled out in nothing but your underwear?”

Fuck. Was Aidan used to that grin? Had he built up some kind of resistance? Because when Dario looked at Carson like that, and gave him that grin, he felt hypnotized, or drugged. Not quite under his own control.

“Rude?” Dario laughed. “No. Actually, seeing you lying there like that, I’m going to talk to Aidan about making this the new roof-top dress code.”

He was pretty sure Dario wasn’t hitting on him, but it kind of felt like he was flirting.

“Have you heard from Xavier?” Carson was nervous and didn’t know what else to talk about.

“
We talked this morning. No news, really.”

“
Is he going to come by?”

“
The loft? No.”

“
Because it’s dangerous? For you and Aidan?”

Dario gazed at him. It was like going through the looking glass of Xavier’s gaze. Xavier’s look drilled into you. Exposed you. When Dario looked at you, you felt like he was giving himself to you.

“No. Not because of anything to do with the trouble you and he are in.”

“
But there’s a reason?” He sensed he was being led down a path, but that was fine. He wanted to go.

“
Xavier thinks he’s hurt you. And he doesn’t want to hurt you more than he already has.”

Carson knew he was blushing, but somehow, with Dario looking at him that way, it didn’t matter.

“What did Xavier tell you?”

“
Nothing about what happened between you.”

“
But he told you something happened between us?”

“
No. Not in so many words.”

For a second, everything felt like it went still. Everything suspended, like that moment after the flash goes off and leaves you blind in the dark.

Then Dario asked, “Did something happen between you and Xavier?”

What the fuck could he say to that? It wasn’t like they’d hooked up after too many drinks at the end of a shift. Nothing he could say would make sense of what had gone on. He couldn’t even make sense of it for himself.

Dario’s patient gaze. As if they had until the end of time to choose how that question should be answered.

“
Yes. Something happened.”

“
Something good? Or something bad?”

Fuck. Fuck. He was not going to start crying up there on that fucking roof with this guy he’d met two days earlier, this impossibly beautiful man who’d given him a stack of neatly folded clothes to wear. This guy that Xavier had brought him to.

“Do you know Xavier’s sister?” Carson asked. Was he deflecting? Fishing?

Dario didn’t seem the least perplexed by the sudden shift of topic. “Yes.”

“Have you ever seen her…afraid of him?”

For the first time, Dario looked thrown off his centered tranquility. “Elena’s not afraid of Xavier.”

“She was when I met her.”

The tranquility already softening his gaze again. “When did you meet her?”

“She saw something she wasn’t supposed to see.”

“
You and Xavier?”

Apparently Carson’s face answered Dario’s question, because suddenly he looked sad, and all the curiosity left his eyes.

“I don’t know what she saw, but I can guess.”

Fucking doubtful.

“Do you know what happened to her? In college?” Dario asked.

“
No.” But in that moment, suddenly, he could have guessed.

“
Xavi was twenty-three. Elena was eighteen. A freshman, her second semester at college. Her roommate was out of town, I think. Or maybe staying over at her boyfriend’s. Elena was alone for the weekend. Three men wearing masks got into her dorm room and raped her. They kept her there for something like six hours. No one was ever arrested. A few months later, she tried to kill herself. That’s why she does the work she does now, I guess.”

Carson sat there connecting the dots, feeling more confused than ever. “I won’t tell him you told me,” he said, then felt dumb because he probably wasn’t ever going to see Xavier again.

“It’s not a secret. She’s very open about it.”

“
He’s not.”

Dario didn’t quite smile, but there was something cautiously playful in his look. “He’s not?”

“I asked him three times why she seemed so fucking scared. He wouldn’t answer me.”

For a moment, Dario seemed to be thinking. “No. He wouldn’t tell you.”

“What? I’m not important enough?”

Dario laughed sadly. “He won’t tell you, because whatever went wrong between you, telling you about Elena would be like making an excuse. Xavi doesn’t make excuses.”

Afternoon light slanting golden through the windows, edging Dario’s dark tresses in copper, tinting the pages of his book a pale tangerine. Aidan’s fingers wandering absently through the waves of his love’s hair, while his mind drifted away on the music. Every photograph a proof of love. A love more tender and deep and saturated with desire than Carson had ever let himself hope for.