Shattered Glass, Page 3

  He let out an annoyed breath, blinked and grabbed another set of silverware from the tub to his left. “Go away, little boy,” he said as he rolled the utensils up into a paper napkin.

  Teenager calling me little boy. Ouch again. I pulled a napkin from the stack and fiddled with it. “I might need to kiss you.”

  He grabbed the napkin from my hand. “Because you assume I’m gay.” Once again, this conversation was not going where I thought it should, or where I needed it to go. I had just assumed he was gay. Or, well, I hadn’t actually thought about his side of things at all. I just wanted these new feelings and thoughts to coalesce into something that made sense.

  “I don’t think anything is wrong with being gay. I even have friends who are gay.” Now I did, anyway. Yesterday I had a friend who was gay, until I talked to Dave.

  “Why are you here then? You expecting me to fix it? Something you don't even think is wrong in the first place?”

  “Not fix it.” Yes, fix it. “Just, people don’t discover they’re gay at twenty-six.”

  “People have found out at fifty they were gay,” he pointed out, concentrating on his work. I wanted to take that tub of silverware and toss it through the plate-glass window, so he could give this crisis the attention it deserved.

  “Yeah, but those are repress—” Oh. I rubbed the bridge of my nose and then gave him what I thought was my most sincere smile. “I have no reason to repress it. I really, really don’t think there’s anything wrong with being gay. In fact, if I were gay, I’d probably take out an ad. It would piss my dad off. I live to do that. There’s even a motto to that effect tattooed on my ass.” Wanna see?

  “Listen, Alex—”

  “Austin.”

  “Austin, Alex, Idiot. Whatever. I don’t care. Not about your name, not about your gayness or not gayness, not about your parents or your friends. I don’t care about you perio—” I leaned across the table and parked my lips a hair’s breadth from his. Bunny Slippers took a shuddering breath mid-sentence as his eyes blinked to my mouth, and then his lips parted. I wanted to take advantage of that, but the fucking table was busy cock-blocking me.

  By the time I maneuvered close enough for our mouths to meet, he was glaring at me and pulling away.

  Then he flicked my nose hard enough to make my eyes water.

  “Ow! Shit.” I sat back down, rubbing the stinging skin and watched him slide out of the booth. He disappeared behind the kitchen doors without so much as a ‘fuck off.’ Not that I would have done anything even if he had stuck around. The fact that I had tried to kiss him at all had stunned me into a motionless blob. I had wanted that kiss. I had wanted to kiss a guy. Badly. Then another thought leapt into my head before I had the opportunity to weasel my way back into denial.

  Why had I gone directly to gay? Not bisexual. Not a passing interest in someone of the same sex. Straight—so to speak—to gay. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Gay.

  I wandered out into the parking lot in a daze, sat in my Jag, staring ahead. Cars zoomed past. I began counting them in order to avoid thinking. It didn’t work. I drove home thinking about it, thought about it while eating dinner, through another ESPN marathon, when ordering a truckload of baby stuff for Marta online. And when I climbed into bed, it was still the only thing I was thinking about.

  What Monday would be like at the station with this new found information? Would I suddenly start checking out guys? Would someone see something different about me?

  I still had no answers when I fell asleep, just one more question. What about Angelica?

  Booyah!

  My tie flapped behind me. My dress shirt soaked with sweat under my suit jacket. “Suspect heading north on Josephine, crossing 19th. Over,” I huffed into the radio. Blood pounded in my ears while I panted each breath. My shoes lifted off the sidewalk as I twisted, dodging pedestrians and hopping over parked cars.

  I was gaining ground, pushing myself to go faster when Prisc Alvarado stumbled into the intersection ahead of me. The toes of my shoes nearly collided with his sneakered heels before I leaped onto his back, both of us falling in a heap.

  Alvarado’s elbow smashed into my ribcage as he threw his head back. I jerked away just in time to stop him from smashing my nose into my brain. “Fucking,” I panted, “stay,” huff, “still, asshole.”

  Digging my knee into his ass, I scooted it up to the small of his back, fingers wedged into his neck. I pushed his face into the cement while reaching for my cuffs, trying to see what I was doing while sweat blurred my vision. My hundred and seventy pounds of muscle fought every inch of his two hundred plus pounds. Adrenalin at an all-time high, I laughed euphorically while slipping the steel over Alvarado’s wrists. Two patrolmen pulled up and rushed over to assist. I jumped off my suspect once he was cuffed and did a small victory dance, still panting merrily.

  “What was that, thirteen blocks?” I looked to both uniformed men for an answer.

  “Seventeen,” Fitzpatrick answered with a chuckle, lifting the suspect onto his feet.

  Officers Kelly Fitzpatrick and Jason Dillon were affectionately known as Mick and Dick. The names derived from some very serious racial stereotyping in Mick’s case. And Dick? Dick resembled a walking penis. Not that either of them complained. Dick, a tall, skinny, dark-skinned man with all of seven hairs on his head, clearly won in the nickname department, as far as I was concerned. Mick, by contrast, had a full head of salt and pepper hair and was built like a truck.

  “Booyah!” I pumped a fist to my hip, wearing my goofiest grin. This was a good collar, and I was going to milk it.

  Luis pulled our unmarked piece-of-shit (read: police issued car) to the curb beside the patrol car and got out shaking his head. The two patrolmen led our suspect to their vehicle. Then Luis smacked me upside the head.

  “Knock that shit off,” he said, nodding at my dance of triumph. My dance halted, but my grin didn’t fade.

  “Fucking cracker,” Alvarado hissed as he was shoved into the patrol car.

  “Aw, that’s discrimination, right there.” I feigned hurt. “See, I see you as scumbag first, Alvarado. Or dick-cheese. Scum-sucking pedophile. Asshole. The fact that you’re Hispanic doesn’t even factor into it.” I aimed my stupid grin at Luis.

  “Lawyer,” Alvarado spat as the door slammed shut.

  Well, shit.

  “Nice bust, kid.” Luis laughed. My grin widened at the compliment.

  Still high from my Superpowers of Awesomeness, I pushed off the sidewalk and slid across the hood of our car on my back, landing neatly on the other side. The heat from the car’s metal hood clung to my suit. “Let’s catch some more bad guys.” Throwing open the passenger door, I flopped in the seat, pulling the door shut.

  Luis stayed outside, talking to Fitzpatrick and waving happily at Alvarado, who was probably giving us the finger. I scrambled out of my suit jacket and prayed for air conditioning.

  “You kids today,” Luis commented as he slipped into the driver’s seat. Neither of us mentioned the way my hands shook as they drummed against my knee. “See what you did? Now we have to go and fill out goddamn paperwork for the rest of the afternoon.”

  We turned to each other and chuckled. After a six-hour stakeout and then a manic chase, we were both counting on some mind-numbing paperwork.

  At fifty-four, and two hundred and thirty pounds, there weren’t many foot pursuits that ended in arrests for Luis. Which was, I assumed, why they had paired us. Well, that, and the fact that he had the highest closure rate in Vice and Homicide combined, and I needed experience. But, while I was the rookie detective, I could hold my own—especially in situations like today, when one of our arrestees threw himself out the open patio doors and booked it down the street.

  In the world of dirtbags, Prisc Alvarado was aiming to be the king. Like most seasoned criminals, Alvarado’s arrest record began small with petty theft, dealing and pandering. It was as a pimp where he found his calling. His arrest, we hoped, would severely
slow the expansion of his growing human trafficking business. The case of a lifetime in a city not known for high profile organized crime. It was a good day for Luis and me. Hell, it was a good day for humanity.

  “We gotta go back to that dirtbag’s house and watch them complete the search,” Luis told me.

  “What’s it look like?”

  “It looks like one of Vice’s biggest busts in three years.” He laughed, lighting a cigarette and rolling down the window. I grimaced and rolled mine down, too. To reiterate, I hated smoking. And much as I liked Luis, I didn’t want to be his cigarette. With an extra thirty pounds around his middle, he was definitely no Bunny Slippers.

  And now, of course, I was thinking about him.

  Luis did a one-eighty, and we were both silent as we headed back to Alvarado’s house. I got lost in thoughts about freckles and hostile youths, while trying to hold my head out the window and avoid the smell of smoke. Luis, I presumed from the silence, was contemplating the mounds of paperwork we were going to be doing until late tonight.

  “You bringing Angelica by this Sunday?” Luis said.

  “Sunday?”

  “Yeah. The barbeque.”

  I regarded him blankly for a second and then remembered that he’d invited us to a cookout a few weeks ago. We always had a good time with Luis and his family. But I hadn’t seen my fiancée in two days, since the tux fitting, and I didn’t relish the thought of talking to her anytime soon. My stomach knotted just thinking about it. Better to not think about it. Always better to not think about it.

  “Can’t do, sorry. Parents having a fundraiser. Just found out the Chief’ll be there.” I waggled my brows.

  “Kissing some ass, then?”

  “Whatever it takes,” I replied. Luis knew about my FBI plans. Everyone in the division knew. “Kissing ass, sucking cock.” I blanched at the words as I said them. I had been trying to not to think about that very thing all day. My stare settled outside my window where rolling green lawns sparkled with sprinklers.

  Now I was thinking about jizz.

  “Hey, you don’t need to kiss ass, kid.” I didn’t mind the nickname, though it was condescending. He could’ve called me a lot worse than ‘kid’.

  Way back when I started the force, I got a lot of flak from the other officers. My family was rich—I was rich. A lot of the guys assumed, rightly or not, that being a cop was just some flakey rich kid’s rebellion. I was going to college at night back then. My days were spent on patrol. I joined the police force early so I could get the required experience before I applied with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Rich kid joining the police force for kicks? That was bad. Rich kid using the police force for his own ambitions? That, other cops could understand, even if they didn't approve of it. Ambition meant that I was going to work my ass off. And I did.

  “I gotta kiss ass, Luis. You know it, and I know it. My record’s good, but when the hiring freeze is over, applications are going to pile high. I want mine to rise to the top.” I batted my lashes at him, adding in an affected feminine voice, “Like lovely clotted cream.” This earned me another swat to the head.

  Whatever. I still felt on top of the world, even though I was going to spend the rest of my shift doing nothing but cataloging evidence and filing paperwork.

  We left the station around midnight, exhausted, but still on a high from our bust. Although Alvarado had lawyered up, we had good evidence: Mexican passports and I.D.s; pictures of men, women and children along with names and ages; paperwork on various warehouses in the city and a hefty sum of cash. I waved goodnight to Luis, fully intending to head home and sleep—or, more likely, blackout. But once out on the road my car seemed to steer on its own.

  Neutral Schmeutral

  Throughout my crazy day, I had failed to keep my mind off Bunny Slippers, but at least they were neutral thoughts. Was he a college student, working as a busboy to pay his tuition? Did he live at home, or in a dorm? What did he taste like?

  Maybe not so neutral.

  This obsession was terrifying. I couldn’t go one hour without thinking about him. I was sick of thinking about it. My sexuality shouldn’t be an issue at twenty-six. I had to do something. To prove…Prove what? I didn’t know. My answer was inside the diner; I had somehow convinced myself of that much.

  The thought of even possibly being gay terrified me. I worked hard to prove myself on the force, and soon I'd have enough experience as a detective to apply to the FBI. Law enforcement careers weren’t particularly conducive to being gay. And fuck it, I’m not gay. Goddammit.

  I’m bunny-slipper-sexual?

  Not gay, but there I was, sitting in my car, parked in the diner’s lot, watching the alley through my rearview mirror. My stomach twisted at the thought of seeing him. It was becoming more and more difficult to swallow with the knot in my throat. And I had barely thought about Angelica all day.

  “You’re an asshat, Austin,” I said to myself.

  Shit. Hell. Damn.

  Go home. Call Angelica. Or go to a shoe store and buy the boy some loafers.

  I switched the car on and prepared to pull out. The dashboard clock blinked at me. I had been sitting here three hours arguing with myself over whether to go in or go home.

  Three hours.

  Oh, Christ. This was getting creepy.

  Reaching for the stick shift, I got ready to pull out. The side door to the restaurant opened.

  I froze as the lighter illuminated his cheek and lips. He took a long drag, billowing smoke out into the night. My heart beat erratically. I sat there, same position as last time, same neck ache, same inability to leave. He was about fifteen feet from my Jag. Fifteen bunny-slippered feet.

  Even this late, the parking lot was full of battered cars, probably from club-goers getting a last meal before passing out. But mine was the only car idling. Which was why I wasn’t surprised when Bunny Slippers propped his shoulder against the wall, cocking his head slightly as he looked toward my car. My breath halted. I was sure he couldn’t see me through the darkened windows, but somehow, it felt like he was seeing right into my slipper-obsessed soul.

  The bunny slippers, a different pair—and how many did he have, for fuck’s sake?—appeared under the street lights as he walked toward my car, cigarette flicking from his fingers and bouncing across the pavement. I followed the trail of red sparks until they burned out. “Fuck,” I whispered.

  I stared in horrified fascination as he made his way to the passenger side door. My pulse jumped at each tap of his knuckles against the window. It took several seconds to decide whether to roll it down or just unlock the door. I chose the latter.

  Pulling his apron off over his head, Bunny slippers climbed in the passenger seat and shut the door. Scents—his scents—filled the car: tobacco, soap, and something herbal that reminded me of my college girlfriend’s incense. I detected cinnamon and sugar as well, and I wondered if he had been baking.

  “Hey,” I said lamely. I didn’t know what else to add. I just want to get to know you? Buy you loafers? The longer I sat, the faster my heart worked. Say something. Say something. Say some—“How was your day?”

  “Who gives a fuck?” His voice was as cold as his glare. Not that coldness detracted from his beauty; quite the opposite. It only complemented the sharp angles of his face.

  I didn’t know how to respond to his aggressive declaration, and apparently he wasn’t adding anything else to the conversation, so the two of us sat in silence.

  I guess I thought he’d give a fuck. He had, after all, climbed into my car. Though now he seemed to be debating whether to leave or talk or, well, judging by the way his fingers were opening and closing on the door handle, there was some debate about something. I was about to ask him to coffee—because I was the lamest guy ever—when he spoke up.

  “Fifty bucks for a blow, twenty for hand. You don’t touch me or kiss me. And I don’t fuck. Payment up front. Got it?” His head tilted, those dead eyes watching me like he could give
two shits whether I took the offer or left it.

  I should have expected it. Shit, I was a vice cop, I should have fucking expected it. But the thought hadn't even crossed my mind. And the clenching ache in my gut was ten times worse because of my ridiculous idealism. I blamed those damn slippers.

  Of course, I couldn’t take him up on it.

  But Jesus, I wanted to.

  Our eyes met as I heard myself ask, “How much to touch you?” Jesus Christ. What the hell am I doing? A giant sign in my head kept flashing: “Career ending! Career ending!” in bright neon red.

  I knew what I was doing, though, and I just had to take the risk. Him touching me could leave doubts. But if I willingly put my hands on another man, and I enjoyed it, then some of my questions would be answered. I needed this debate resolved to function normally again. And better with a whore than some random stranger who could get attached. Or with whom I could get attached.

  His shoulders dropped for a second and then tensed. He set his jaw and chewed his lower lip. He was calm. By contrast I was a mess. My nails dug into my thighs, my breathing heavy and clipped, and I couldn’t stop staring at him. Was he gauging my desperation? It had to be obvious just how desperate I was. The sad part was, it wasn’t even desperation to fuck him. Well, it was and it wasn’t. It was more than that.

  “Two hundred.” He turned to the scenery outside my window.

  “Do you want to wait here while I go to an ATM?” Did I actually just say that? I was oddly excited, vaguely nauseated and terrified. I didn’t even know how old he was.

  And…I kept staring at his feet. What would his reaction be if I offered to buy him sneakers? Big, ugly, pink-checkered sneakers. The kind of footwear that even I couldn’t find attractive.