Touch the Sky (Free Fall Book 1) (3 page)

S
hit
, my lip throbs and I taste the copper in my mouth from his fist. But somehow it centers me. Centers all that fucking pain inside me.

He probably could’ve hit me harder, coldcocked me even, and I would’ve welcomed it. Because physical pain makes you forget about emotional pain. Momentarily, at least.

It wasn’t like my father’s fist. His rage was different and rarely filled with remorse. Dad was ashamed of me, so he lashed out. Lucas’s anger is already dripping with regret and has everything to do with missing me. Being disappointed in me. Grieving over our lost connection. And even though it’s resentment directed toward me, at least it’s an emotion. It’s better than indifference. Because that’s the worst.

And looking at Lucas with his hands mashed against his forehead all raw energy and beautiful fury makes me ache to my core. Like my insides have turned to pulp from his words and his fist. Because I miss him too. I didn’t realize how damn much until just this moment.

Even though he’s pacing like a caged animal and I should keep my distance, somehow I can’t. Now that he’s finally in front of me, I have this visceral need to be near him.

We shared so much as kids. He doesn’t know that I had been locked away in treatment for a manic episode caused by bipolar disorder. He doesn’t know the ups and downs I’d gone through leading up to the incident.

But he knows all the other things, like how my dad was scary as fuck. How he once punched me so hard in the chest that I couldn’t breathe and I thought I was going to die. And how the fear of his fists after that turned me into a complete chickenshit.

Lucas knew how my parents were so fucking hot and cold all the damn time, telling me what to do, how to act, what kinds of grades to get, but never getting to know the real me. It tore me up so much that I wanted to run away. That’s when we began making plans to meet each other, here in the city. He had a shitty life too, and though the dynamics were different, I felt like he could relate.

I step toward Lucas as his arms brace the brick wall, his head bowed, his beanie covering his gorgeous head of hair. Hair that I always longed to run my fingers through.

When I make the motion to reach for him, my hand to his shoulder, he stiffens. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

Something that sounds like a whimper rises in my throat and all I want to do is break down and fucking cry. Cry for the scared kids we once were and the tainted adults we’ve become.

“Please,” I say, my voice hoarse as I try again to place my fingers on his back. This time, he doesn’t shrug me away. No way he’ll clock me again. I don’t feel that vibe. Unless I don’t know him at all anymore. “I just…please, Lucas. I’m sorry. You don’t know…you don’t—”

“Don’t know what?” he spits out. “How we made a deal and you didn’t follow through? How you were practically my only lifeline back then and you dropped me…you dropped me like….”

He shudders out a breath and I step even closer. Now I can feel the heat radiating off of him like a damn furnace.

“It wasn’t like that.” My voice is soft, cautious. “I didn’t drop you. I wasn’t allowed to contact you anymore after…I was…
fuck
.” I mash my teeth together. “Everything got so screwed up. I’m so goddamn sorry.”

I hear him panting as he listens to me, taking in every word. His shoulders are trembling, and I can’t help myself as I throw my arms around him from behind. He grunts as my fingers encircle his waist and I pull him in. A gasp escapes his lips as I draw him further into my chest, my lips at the neckline of his shirt.

He’s so warm, so damn warm. I can smell him now. Like smoke and whiskey and musk and earth. Like a storm brewing just below the surface of the clouds. But it doesn’t scare me like it does with my dad. No, that kind of storm is unpredictable and dangerous. Lucas’s inner turmoil is more like a warning, something to swear you off so you don’t see the very center of him—where there’s raw insecurity and defenselessness.

If I could, I’d wrap us up in some private hideaway where we would feel safe enough to face each other and talk. About everything.

“I don’t buy it,” Lucas says suddenly, and his back bows as if to put space between us. He’s not facing me so I can’t see his expression or his eyes. But maybe it’s better this way. Safer. “I don’t buy your excuse. There’s no reason you couldn’t get a hold of me. You could’ve told me what was going on.”

He pushes from my grasp and I stumble, nearly toppling to the ground. I catch myself on my hands and knees, and the rocks scrape against my palms. There’s that pain again. Centering me. Helping me focus on anything other than his searing words, his hurtful gaze.

“I don’t want this.” He motions back and forth between us. His eyes are narrowed but it’s as if he’s staring straight through me. “I don’t need you to come waltzing back into my life after everyone else has left. You’ll just leave again too.”

“No, Lucas.” The words rush from my mouth. “I wouldn’t—”

“I don’t trust you,” he says through clenched teeth. “Get that through your fucking skull. And then leave me the hell alone.” He turns as though he’s going to walk away, mutters a quiet,
“fuck,”
and then reaches his hand out. At first I’m not sure what to do, how to react, but then I take it and Lucas pulls me to my feet.

Then he’s gone, tearing through the alleyway to get the hell away from me.

L
ucas
,

Thanks for sharing about your mom. Fuck, I get it. My mom locks herself in her room and cries her damn eyes out. She thinks nobody can hear her but I do and it shreds my stomach. I wish she’d talk to someone. Talk to me. Get to know me. Instead, she blows her nose, wipes her eyes, and steps out like nothing at all happened. Then she pushes me, hard. To please my dad. To do everything perfect.

And I am far from perfect. I struggle in school too, even though I get decent grades. But I’m a loner, just keep to myself. Except for these guys I party with sometimes. I think they just use me to buy the weed and booze, but I don’t care because it feels good to escape sometimes.

I’d send you money too, if I could to help keep your Internet connection, but I know you wouldn’t accept that from me.

Just keep talking to me and try to make it in school because if we both graduate then we can do whatever the hell we want when we move to Hollywood.

It really helps to share things with you and maybe it is because it’s all behind a computer screen. But I like to think that you’re real. A true friend.

I’m having these strange thoughts, like my brain is going crazy this week, like I’m crawling out of my skin. I keep thinking about all the things I want to do when I can finally be on my own. Something to look forward to, I guess.

Oh, and to answer your question, I knew I was gay as soon as the hot new gym teacher, Mr. Kepler, smiled at me and I got half a chub.

We got this.

Gabriel

I
t’s been
a week since I saw Gabriel and all I can think about is the fact that I hit him. I know his past with his dad and what he lived with sometimes and still I chose to fucking hit him. What’s wrong with me?

Sure, I’d thought about it before seeing him, dreamed about it even, but I don’t think I ever planned to really do it. I’m not afraid to use my fists. It could be said that I’ve used them too much in that past, because when I was a kid, it was the only way to show I couldn’t be fucked with—whether from asshole kids in the neighborhood or the time or two mom ended up with a dickhead guy who thought he could push me around. I’m trying to be better than that. Trying not to be the person my mom didn’t want me to be.

I never should have hit Gabriel.

My hand still stings from where my fist met his face. The burn is all in my head; I know that. It’s made up of guilt that’s always nagging at me. The fucked-up part is that I still feel his arms around me. It threw me, having someone reach out and touch me like that, having someone try to hold me the way he did.
Is he like that with everyone?
I wonder.
One of those touchy-feely people who don’t understand personal space?
Those are the things I don’t know about him, the kind of things you learn about someone when you’ve met them in person, and since we’ve only done that once, I have no way of knowing.

I roll over in my bed, and my head bumps my sketchbook. My apartment is tiny, a shithole little studio on the edge of Hollywood where apartments are the cheapest, and I still struggle to afford it. The front door opens to the couch across from it. The TV is beside the door and my bed next to the couch. In the same room, but toward the back of it is a small kitchen, the bathroom is to the left of the kitchen, and that’s about it.

The place works for me. I don’t need anything more than this. That’s the thing about living so close to West Hollywood. It’s not cheap, but when I left the Inland Empire, I didn’t know where else to go. I think I used to dream about going to WeHo because maybe I did hold on to the illusion Mom had about California—that it was magic and anything could happen here. Thinking about that leads me right back to Gabriel because he’s the one I used to talk to about coming here with.

I pick up my pencil and draw one long line, but just as the banging starts above, it fumbles between my fingers and I drop it. There’s a huge family that lives above me, in a tiny-ass apartment. They’re always yelling and fighting with each other in Russian. It’s like a herd of elephants up there, blended in with what I assume are a shit-ton of curses.

I hit him. I can’t believe I hit him.

Thoughts of Gabriel won’t leave my head. I struggle to turn them off, until I’m so fucking tired of trying, I shove to my feet and grab my cell and keys, before walking out the door. I need to do something, anything to get my mind off of what went down. That’ll just make me think about my past and Mom and…what would he say if he knew what happened?

It won’t work, but I try to shake the thoughts from my head. Swiping my finger across the screen of my phone, I open the Driver app to see there’s a car a minute and a half away. It takes them a little longer to get to me before I’m climbing into a Honda and telling them, “The Male Box, on Robertson in WeHo.”

Traffic is a bitch, but it always is in LA. It takes longer than it should to get to the club. I should have just walked. It would have done me some good to cool down, but I didn’t so now I’m sitting here drumming my thumbs on my thighs while the driver talks about the weather, hiking Runyon Canyon, and
Oh, I once saw that famous gay Youtube couple hiking there
. Not quite sure why he had to tell me they were gay, but I just nod and mumble a “Cool,” before we finally get to The Male Box.

He drops me off out front, and a few minutes later I’m inside the club, music making my pulse pound. There are two ten-foot long stages about halfway into the room. Three men and a woman dance on them. A guy with long hair jumps up and grabs one of the metal beams above them, pulling himself up and flipping around so his ass is on display for everyone below him. He’s wearing black speedos with a bright green trim. They make his tight ass look irresistible.

This is exactly what I need, the perfect distraction to get all the heavy shit out of my head.

It doesn’t take me long to find someone who’s interested—a sexy, Hispanic man with dark hair and darker eyes. After I make sure he’s not drunk (I don’t fuck around with people who’ve been drinking) we make our way to the bathroom together.

It’s quick from there—no kissing, just rubbing and grabbing for each other’s dicks through our pants.

Fuck Gabriel and our past. None of it matters. I don’t need him or anyone else.

My hook-up unbuttons my pants. “Mmm…Gonna suck this fat cock of yours.”

I nod in response, but then it’s Gabriel’s voice in my head.
Everything got so screwed up. I’m so goddamn sorry.

“Do you want that? Want me to blow you?” He kisses my neck. Grabs my dick, but I don’t respond. I’m not sure how to. The words are trapped in my throat.

I just… please, Lucas. I’m sorry. You don’t know… you don’t.

I close my eyes as though that will somehow block out Gabriel’s voice. He says
I
don’t know?
He
doesn’t fucking know. How can anything that happened to him be even close to what I lived through when he disappeared? It couldn’t be. Not a fucking chance.

I didn’t drop you. I wasn’t allowed to contact you anymore after… I was… fuck
.

“Holy shit, you’re big.” He’s on his knees now, unzipping my pants, and all I can think about is the raw pain in Gabriel’s voice. The anguish, wrapped in nerves.
I know what his voice sounds like now.
Maybe it’s weird that I’m obsessing about him this much after so long, but I’d built him up in my head. He was my best friend, the other person who knew me. We were going to have this amazing fucking life together, supporting each other and just being real…and then he was gone, and everything went to shit.

A part of me was gone after that, too. “No, don’t. Stop. I can’t.” I pull away and start zipping and buttoning my pants. The pretty boy on his knees looks at me like I’m fucking crazy and maybe I am. Who passes up a blowjob because of memories about some kid they don’t even know?

Only it doesn’t feel like I don’t know him. It feels like I’ve always known him.

“I’m sorry,” I say to the guy before walking out of the stall. I have no plan for where I’m going, until I’m in a new car and telling him to head to Pete’s, where I work. I have no idea if I’m going because I think he could be there again. Of course he wouldn’t. What would be the odds? Honestly, I don’t think I’m going there for him either. I just don’t know. My brains feel scrambled right now.

Conner’s behind the bar when I get there. He waves at me before he finishes making a drink. The customer walks away and I take his spot in front of Conner. He leans over the counter and says, “Some dude stopped by looking for you. You got a boyfriend I don’t know about, or what?”

My stomach rolls, twists and turns, and ties itself into a knot. It’s Gabriel. There’s no one else it could have been.

“You’re quiet. You do have some guy, don’t you?”

I roll my eyes at Conner but can’t help and crack a small smile. Trying to play it off as though nothing’s going on, I say, “You’re awfully interested in what I’m doing.” The knowledge that Gabriel came back feels like a bomb in my hand, as though it will detonate at any second and blow me away.

“You’re my friend. Friends are supposed to be interested in what their friends are doing.” He winks at me, just as someone tries to get his attention.

“I’m gonna go take a piss,” I tell him.

I take care of business and then leave Pete’s before Conner gets the chance to talk to me again. My brain is still running like crazy, now filled with even more questions. I want to know why he came back. I don’t want to give a shit about anything that has to do with him…but I do.

When I’m halfway home, I open my email, and that’s when I see it. Gabriel’s name. Hours later, locked in my apartment, I still don’t know what to think about the short email that I can’t stop staring at.

L
ucas
,

I deserved everything you did and said the other night.

Please let me explain what happened five years ago.

We got this, bro. Remember?

Gabriel