The Distance (28 page)

“I love you so much, Kai,” I said quietly as I looked into his dark eyes. “I’ve been afraid to say that out loud. I don’t know why. ”

“I love you, too, Jessie. I didn’t know when or how to tell you that. It kind of felt like it needed fireworks, or a parade, or skywriting or something, so you’d know how much is behind those words.”

“I already know. You show me you love me all the time, in a million ways.”

He turned his head away from me as he admitted quietly, “I was always worried about being enough for you. You’re like this exotic tropical bird, bright and colorful and beautiful, and by comparison, I felt like a plain old crow that somehow found its way into your amazing, vibrant world.”

“You don’t still feel that way, do you?”

Kai turned toward me again and brushed my hair from my eyes. “I’ll always wonder how you fell for someone like me, especially given how closed off and defensive I was when you met me. But I don’t question that it’s real. I knew you loved me too, long before you said it. It’s always there, in every look you give me, and in the way you say my name, and the way you reach for me when you start to wake up at night.” He smiled at me and said, “I sound completely corny, but oh well. I just needed to say all of that to you, and now I have, so I’m going to shut up.”

We both shifted around and stretched out on the little bed. As I curled up against his right side with his arm around me, he said, “Just watch. Someday, when we have our own place and buy a king-size bed, we’ll still only use this much of it.” He held his hands a couple feet apart, encompassing the two of us. He was right. I’d always want to sleep just like that, wrapped up in the warmth and comfort of him.

I put my head on his bare chest and he kissed my hair. A few feet away, the drawing Izzy had made of the three of us sat among the family photos on Kai’s dresser. He’d found a nice frame for it and treated it like the treasure it was. My heart felt like it was filled to overflowing.

One month later

“If Ollie’s straight, explain his bachelor party to me,” Jed yelled over the pulsating techno music. He leaned in close, holding his coke aloft and trying not to spill it on his plaid button-down shirt as people crowded around us.

We were in a gay nightclub on the outer edges of the Mission District, two nights before Nana and Ollie’s wedding. Dante had booked the small club in its entirety for the private party. Some of the guests had gone home, given the late hour, but maybe seventy-five Dombrusos and friends of the family planned to party until dawn. Meanwhile, across town, Nana and sixty of her closest girlfriends and relatives were probably getting arrested at a gay strip club.

“Ollie just wanted someplace we could go and get drunk,” I told my brother. “He has no interest in ogling women, and a lot of Nana’s family members are gay, so he figured, why not a gay bar?”

“And he’s actually cool with all the half-naked go-go boys?”

“Of course. They’re all friends of the family,” I said, gesturing at the dozen buff, bronzed guys who’d stripped down to colorful briefs and were shaking it on the bar, tabletops, and on the tiny dance floor. “You missed Cockstock, when all those guys were working at Nana and Ollie’s house around the clock. I’ll tell you about it sometime when I don’t have to yell.”

“This is such a different world from the way you and I grew up. Ollie’s the same age as Grandpa Howard, but could you imagine Grandpa or any of the other church elders in a place like this, acting like it’s all as normal as breathing?”

I looked over at Ollie and smiled. He was wearing an old-fashioned 3-piece suit and a captain’s hat that one of the dancers had given him, and was on the dance floor teaching three go-go boys the right way to do the twist. When I turned back to Jed, he looked wistful, and I asked, “Do you miss Grandpa and the rest of the family?”

“Yeah. I mean, I try not to dwell on it too much, you know? Classes and my job on campus keep me really busy, and I’ve been applying to graduate school. Between all that, there’s not much time to mope. There’s not much time for anything at all, actually,” he said as he turned to watch Will, one of the Cockstock dancers, cross the room in a pair of tight, red briefs.

“Want me to introduce you to that guy? He’s so nice.”

“Oh man, no way. He’s totally out of my league.”

“He is not,” I insisted.

“Sure he is. I mean, what would I even talk about with a guy like that?”

I smiled at my brother and said, “Who says you have to talk at all?” By the way Jed colored at that, I got the impression my nerdy kid brother was pretty inexperienced.

Zachary appeared at my side and kissed my cheek, then said, “I’m out of here. Thanks for inviting me, this was surreal.”

My friend had only shown up half an hour earlier. I was surprised he’d come at all. He was still living with Chance and working at the restaurant part-time, but he’d been disappearing for days at a time, then insisting everything was fine and refusing to talk about where he’d been when he resurfaced. I still wondered if he’d gone back to prostitution, but he’d always spoken openly to me about that, so I didn’t know why he’d suddenly start keeping it a secret. “I’m so glad you stopped by, Zachary. I’ve missed you. I’ll come by the restaurant one day this week if you want, so we can catch up.”

“Sounds good.” He turned to my brother and took his hand, as if he was going to shake it, but he just held it instead. “I’m glad I got to meet you, Jedidiah. I hope I see you again sometime.”

“I hope so, too.” My brother hugged him awkwardly, and when he let go, Zachary gave him a shy smile before turning and disappearing into the crowd.

Jed watched him go, and I did too, for different reasons. Something was obviously wrong, and it killed me that I didn’t know what to do about it. When I told Jed I was worried about my friend, he said, “You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped, Jessie. All you can do is be his friend and make sure he knows he can always talk to you.”

“You’re right.”

Jed grinned at me and lowered his voice when a slower song started playing. “You’ve always been a caretaker, Jessie. That’s why being a second daddy to Kai’s little girl comes so naturally to you. It’s just like when we were kids, if Ruthie or I scraped our knee or needed help with something, we’d come to you, even though you weren’t much older than us. We always knew you’d fix it.” He sighed and said, “Shoot, I mean Rue. That’s going to take some getting used to. Maybe I should change my name too, it seems to be all the rage.” Our sister had visited us the weekend before and insisted that at twenty, she was far too old to be called Ruthie anymore.

“Well hey, I adopted my spy name, maybe you can start using yours too, Steele Skywalker.”

Jed chuckled and said, “Oh my God, never call me that again! Talk about embarrassing.”

“What is?” Skye asked as he came up to us with Dare, Haley, and Kai.

“My brother’s thinking about changing his name, since all the cool kids are doing it. He wants to be called Steele Skywalker.” I winked at Jed.

He grinned and turned red as he said, “I hate you so bad.”

Haley grabbed his hand. “Come on, Steele, dance with us. We’re going to go tell the DJ to pick it up a bit.”

“Oh no, I don’t dance,” my brother insisted, his blush deepening.

“Of course you do,” Skye said as he helped Dare and Haley herd him away. My brother looked to me for help, and when I smiled and waved, he shook his head and went with his new friends.

“Alone at last,” Kai said, which was kind of funny since we were surrounded by people we knew. He kissed me, then handed me a soda and the keys to his Impala. “I’ve had too much beer. Can you drive us home later?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’re the best,” he said, and draped his arms around my shoulders.

We were kissing deeply sometime later, when someone came up beside us and said, “Sorry to interrupt, but we wanted to say goodnight.”

I turned to Chance and Finn and exclaimed, “You’re leaving already? The night is young!”

Chance said, “It’s two a.m., party animal.”

“Exactly! It’s only two! We booked this place until five.”

“You’ll just have to carry on without us, and just so you know, it’s your fault we have to leave. I have a nine a.m. interview with a bigtime photography blogger to talk about my show at Christopher’s gallery, and I want to sound at least somewhat coherent. You just
had
to push me into my dream job.” He grinned and gathered me into a hug. “I love you, Jessie. Don’t forget that you, Kai and Izzy are coming for dinner next week.”

“Looking forward to it.”

We said goodbye to our friends, and Kai put his arms around me again after they took off and asked, “Where were we?”

“Right here.”

I kissed him deeply and he said, “Dance with me, Jessie.”

An up-tempo song was playing as we found a spot in the center of the dance floor. My brother was trying his best to rock out with Skye and company, and everyone was dancing with abandon all around us. But Kai and I put our arms around each other and slow-danced as if the most romantic song in the world was playing. After a few moments, we were joined by Trevor and Vincent, who grinned at us and started doing the same thing we were.

Kai and I kissed and slow-danced our way through three songs, and finally he whispered in my ear, “Would it be totally low class to sneak out to the back alley for a few minutes? I really need to give you a blowjob.”

I smiled at him as my cock twitched at the suggestion. “Well, if you insist.”

We joined hands and wove through the crowd, greeting people along the way. Dante and Ollie were doing a shot contest at a little table by the bar as a bunch of family and friends gathered around. Dante looked a bit tipsy, but Ollie was steady as a rock as Charlie leaned in and refilled their glasses. “Ollie’s totally got this,” I told Kai on the way past, then flashed Dante a big smile.

Kai and I ducked through a swinging door and cut through a disused industrial kitchen, a leftover from one of the many lives the old warehouse had lived. Apparently the kitchen was mostly used as a store room, since cardboard boxes were piled to the ceiling in the left half of the space. There was one door at the back of the kitchen, a service entrance leading to an alley used for deliveries, and I jiggled the handle before saying, “It’s locked.”

“There’s plenty of privacy back here, though,” Kai said as he led me into the dark kitchen.

I chuckled and said, “This looks exactly like the set of a horror movie. The two dumb kids sneak off to have sex in the creepy, abandoned kitchen, and then blammo! Ice pick to the cranium.”

Kai laughed at that as he picked me up and sat me on a stainless steel counter. “You should write romance novels,” he told me. “You’re so good at setting the mood. Make sure to watch over my shoulder while I’m sucking you to make sure nobody ice picks me.”

I grinned at him and said, “I’ll always keep you safe, Kai. I even finally got you to lock up your shop when you’re working at night, which I consider a major personal safety victory.”

Kai kissed me, then corrected, “
Our
shop.”

“What? No. Kit’s is your baby.”

“You’ve brought in so much business, even before you started working with me.”

“By sleeping with you outside and attracting the attention of Ash and his friends?” I gave him a teasing smile.

“I meant when you gave up a whole weekend to paint the building, then told me about the bulletin board at the community center and designed a flyer to put up. You’ve been a part of this business since we first got together, and the fact that it’s actually profitable for once is totally due to you.”

“You give me too much credit. I’m glad it’s turning a profit, though.”

“It is, and I really believe it’s just going to keep improving. It’s the snowball effect, we gain a new customer and do a good job for them, and in turn they refer a couple friends. At this rate, I think we can start construction on that upstairs apartment we’ve been talking about next month, assuming we can get some blueprints drawn up and obtain all the permits.”

“It’d be great if that could happen.”

“It really would. Just think, a bedroom where I can walk from wall to wall without hitting my head, what a luxury! And Izzy’s bedroom can be twice as big as the one she has now, so she can build an entire stuffed animal empire,” he said. “You and I will have room for a king-size bed, but I hope we only ever use two feet of it.” Even in the faint, blue light of the exit sign, I could tell his eyes were sparkling.

“You and I….”

“I’ll be building this as a home for all three of us, Jessie, you and me and Iz.”

“Living together is a big step. You sure we’re ready?”

“When was the last time you and I slept apart? I can’t even remember. The whole living together thing already happened automatically, no discussion required. You probably have as much stuff at Gran’s house as you do at Nana’s right now, don’t you?” I nodded, and he said, “We’re ready, Jessie.”

I thought about it for a few moments, and then I said, “Okay.”

“Really?”

“I want this too. God I want this. But if I’m moving in, then I plan to help pay for the construction of that second-story apartment.”

He pulled me close and kissed me, then said, “This is awesome. You and I can plan it out together. But we’ll do that later. For now, less talking, more sucking.” I chuckled and kissed him deeply as he massaged the bulge in my jeans.

After a moment, a faint rustling sound to my left caught my attention, and a few seconds after that I heard the door connecting the kitchen to the club swing on its hinges. “Okay, that’s creepy,” I said, turning my head to peer into the darkness. “I don’t think we were alone back here.”

“Figures. Some of the go-go dancers were getting pretty friendly with each other out on the dance floor. A couple of them probably snuck off to do exactly what we’re doing.” Kai kissed my neck, but then an odd, crackling sound made both of us pause. After a moment, as we both listened intently, he asked, “What do you suppose that was?”

“It almost sounded electrical.”

“It did, didn’t it?”

We stayed still for another moment, and I said, “Is it my imagination, or do you smell smoke?”

“Oh shit, I think you’re right.” I slid off the counter and Kai took my hand. “It’s faint, but I definitely smell it. We’d better get everyone outside.”

We hurried into the club and found that Nana and forty of her friends had arrived. She was sitting on Ollie’s lap, and waved when she saw us and called, “Hi boys! We’ve crashed the stag party! Did you two sneak out for a little nookie?”

I jogged to her and yelled over the music, “Come with me, Nana. You too, Ollie. Dante, start directing everyone to the door. Get Vincent to help. There’s smoke in the kitchen. It’s faint, but everyone needs to get outside.”

I took Nana’s hand and hurried to the exit with her, just to make sure she got out safely. But when I grabbed the door handle, it wouldn’t budge. I shook it, hard, then stepped aside and let Kai try to open it. “It’s locked,” he said after giving it his all for a minute. The smoke smell was more noticeable, and a murmur went through the crowd.