by Ali Lyda
“I w-wanted...to...say…,” he paused. He was speaking so slowly I felt my own nerves jangle for him. Was I making him that nervous? Because he definitely had me feeling shaky with things I couldn’t allow myself to feel. “S-sorry.”
The stutter barely registered, but something inside of me lurched with the need to reassure him, which seemed a little ridiculous. I wanted to reassure a tall, tattooed, sexy man while wearing a wrinkled tee that smelled like baby barf? But when he didn’t say anything else, I knew I had to jump in.
“About the parties?” I ventured a guess.
He nodded vigorously.
“You turned the music down when I asked, which is all I could hope for. Thanks for that. I’m sorry if I came off as a psycho. Too many days with basically no sleep will do that.”
Javi’s brief smile was like a ray of sun parting storm clouds. “S...s-sure.” As soon as he spoke, the smile turned into a frown that spoke of frustration. “I d...d-didn’t know. Ab-bout her.”
He looked pointedly at Giuliana, who was learning to chew on her fist.
“I stayed with my brother and his wife for the first few weeks after my daughter was born. I’m a first-time dad and needed all the help I could get.” It felt as if I was offering too much, but the chronic fatigue of the past few weeks had caught up with me. There wasn’t a fully functioning filter between my brain and my mouth. “We’ve been home for about a week, if that. The days kind of blend together right now.”
Javi’s thick brows knitted together, and I wondered if he was putting two and two together. Except my equation was three minus one, leaving me and my daughter.
“No more parties, then,” he said. “S-sorry.”
I wanted to cry from relief. That was one worry I could scratch off an ever-increasing list. “Thank you. That means a lot, Javi.”
I said his name as though we were friends, just to taste it on my tongue. I did it without thinking, but now it was too late. I liked saying his name and how it flowed in my mouth like honey. For that matter, I liked looking at him.
He was standing so straight, coiled tight, that I wondered if he ever relaxed. Which led to an immediate and improper vision of all the things I could do to him to make him relax. It made all of me tense, from my shoulders to my balls, heat zinging through me.
Jesus, what was wrong with me? How could my brain even make these types of connections when it was so frazzled and short-circuiting due to sleeplessness? My daughter was a work of art and already a hot mess. Giuliana had managed to poop out of her diaper the minute after I’d gotten her ready for her check-up. Instead of being able to clean myself up and try to appear like I had it together, I’d rushed to get her washed and changed again, and had barely made it out the door in time.
Parenting was supposed to be hard. But I didn’t think it was supposed to feel so… fucking impossible. At least Javi had promised no more parties. He was respectful, trying to be a good neighbor, and I needed to focus on that and carve out any other thoughts about him.
But there was a silence stretching between us that threatened to turn into something else. It could be weird, but instead it felt elastic, as if Javi and I were a rubber band, stretching apart as far as we could and threatening to either break or snap back at any minute.
I resisted both endings, not wanting to lose the fragile new peace between us—but I couldn’t let it become anything more, either. Not that it was guaranteed, really. I was a total mess and the feelings of attraction could totally be one-sided, because it didn’t seem possible that he could find me as attractive as I found him. The idea had probably never even crossed his mind, while I’d be worrying at it for hours. Fuck. What had I gotten myself into?
Javi still hadn’t said anything more, either. He just stared, running a hand through his short black curls and mussing them in a tantalizing way.
I chewed on my lip, unsure. He opened his mouth. Then closed it.
He frowned, his breath hitched like he wanted to say something else, to break the hold that we both were in, but he didn’t. Instead, he launched himself down the front steps of my home and hurried across our yards to his house.
As I watched him go, I couldn’t help but admire his ass, which filled his tight jeans, looking taut and perfectly grabbable. Bitable, even. The tangle of desire that had formed in me cranked up at the sight, my cock semi-hard as my dark and handsome neighbor disappeared into his house. It had been so long since I’d reacted this way to a man. What a complete fucking disaster.
On the one hand, it felt nice to want. I felt reminded of the way I’d been before the divorce and becoming a single father, someone with cravings and desires and the courage to quench them. Javi wasn’t my usual type—I generally preferred more clean-cut, someone with tailored suits and a refined style. But that didn’t make him any less sexy, with tattoos that begged for fingers and tongue to trace them and a reluctant smile someone like me would become desperate to earn.
On the other hand...well, Giuliana was on the other hand. Quite literally at the moment, as her wiggling grabbed my attention. She was my world, and whether I wanted to feel desire or be desired was irrelevant. I’d made my choice to stick with her and be the best dad I could be after Kyle took off. Nowhere in the job description I’d created for myself was there a place for dating.
Speaking of, Giuliana’s catnap was clearly over, and I knew she’d be working up her best banshee scream. It was past time for a bottle, anyway. It wasn’t as exciting as talking to a sexy neighbor, but her small, angry face completed me in a way I’d never imagined possible.
Besides, between taking care of her and the burn from the divorce that still made my heart ache on occasion, I wouldn’t be dating anytime soon. As much as Javi’s quiet, mysterious ways and lean body appeal to me, there was too much on my plate to add a helping of hunk on the side.
Hell, I was hardly keeping up with Giuliana’s needs now. I wasn’t supposed to be doing this alone, but that didn’t mean I shouldn’t be able to rise to the occasion. I would prove to her that I could be a good father—not just despite Kyle’s abandoning us, but because of it.
And because I knew what having a father who didn’t care felt like. I hadn’t spoken to my dad since I’d come out, not even after Giuliana had been born. When I looked at my daughter, I wondered how any father could turn their back on their child, no matter what the reason was.
Kyle and my father had a lot in common, and none of it was good.
“Let’s get you a bottle, baby,” I crooned to Giuliana as I made my way into the house.
The kitchen counter was filled with bottles I still needed to wash, but I still had one bottle with the formula waiting to be mixed in it. I turned the faucet on warm, waited until it heated, and then flipped my water filter on. Warm filtered water helped speed up the process, and thank God, because my baby girl was amping up again.
As we sat on the couch and she ate, a thousand thoughts battled in my head. Next week I’d have to go back to work. Just the thought made my whole body feel like it was sinking. I loved being a graphic designer, but the thought of losing any time with my daughter killed me.
Hell, she’d gained a pound in the past month, and grown two and a half inches already! If I got tied up at the office like before, what milestones would I miss? First words? Steps? It was too heartbreaking to consider.
Kyle had always nagged that I let work consume me. With Giuliana depending on me now, I refused to let it happen again. Before she’d been born, I’d been sending out feelers to clients and building a portfolio. It would take busting my ass, but I knew that I could make a business work. So long as I let nothing distract me, I could be at home more, working for myself, making our lives as uncomplicated as possible.
And that meant that thoughts of Javi’s firm ass and sexy smirk needed to be put on hold. Just say no to the hot neighbor, Gordo. There will be time for relationships later. Way, way later. And not with someone next door.
It took some time for my
mind to settle, but settle it did. I was good at focusing when I needed to. Giuliana, finished with her bottle, stared up at me with eyes so blue I thought of sapphires. She seemed to be calming down with me, a reminder that we’d be fine on our own.
It was the way it needed to be—even if I couldn’t shake the niggling feeling that the easiest solution of avoiding Javi wasn’t going to be so easy at all.
4
Javi
Andrew sat at a table in the art room at the center with a storm cloud over his head. I’d felt its anger and violence as soon as I walked into the room to find him. Another fight, then. If he kept this up, he’d lose his spot in the center, which was something I wouldn’t tolerate. Kids like him—kids like me, back in my teen years—needed the grounding found in youth centers. They needed a place to feel welcome and safe.
And they needed resources to help them, something I knew the center occasionally fell short on. It wasn’t their fault. The kind of funding needed to support special needs kids, like Andrew, who was deaf, was higher than normal. The center was already operating on a shoestring budget, and I was the only ASL-fluent volunteer. It sucked that such a valuable community resource was frequently overlooked. Especially when it did so, so much good.
At least there was a relay race fundraiser coming up—it would be the largest single fundraiser of the year. In the past years, it had been enough to keep the center going. But with the way Mike, the director of the center, had been talking…
I couldn’t think about that right now, though. I still found so much joy in the youth center, and the thought of it shutting its doors wasn’t something I could entertain for long. As much as I loved the shop and the guys there, I was most at home when I volunteered at the center.
It didn’t take Freud to know why. When I was hopping in and out of foster homes and digging my way into trouble, the centers that had reached out to me were my rocks. They kept me tethered when my anger and rebellion threatened to unmoor me. Even after some scrapes with the law, they’d welcomed me with open arms. I hadn’t deserved it, of course, but they hadn’t let that stop them from providing me with the support I needed. And that meant everything to me.
As an adult, the joy was even more profound, the kind of deep and lasting pleasure than can only come from being where I was supposed to be and helping in a way only I could. I tapped Andrew on the shoulder as I approached, and Andrew’s hands and fingers flew as he signed his hello to me, our conversation moving with ease and a fluidity that was gorgeous.
Andrew had been lashing out in patterns that followed my own from his age. When speaking was an obstacle, making friends was hard as hell, and Andrew was having no luck at his new school. There wasn’t the kind of support a deaf student needed in his classes, either, and it meant he stuck out even more than normal.
“Another fight?” I signed as I threw him a knowing look.
“I hate when they make fun of how I talk. How am I supposed to know what to sound like when I don’t hear any fucking sounds?” His signs were sharp, the anger lashing out in slices and punctuated jerks.
I shrugged to disarm him. “You aren’t supposed to know what you should sound like. You’re supposed to know that some people are assholes and some are good guys, and you should save your energy for the good ones instead of wasting it on the shitheads.”
It was a familiar conversation and he wasn’t having it today, deciding to change the subject instead of admitting I was right. I couldn’t blame him. Sometimes it was easier to ignore your problems as much as possible, at least for a little while.
Even after trying to come to terms with my speech impediment, I’d still rather sign than talk. My stutter was present when I was calm and straight-up debilitating when I was upset. It could get to the point that no amount of backtracking or trying to find word alternatives made a difference—my tongue, lips, and brain refused to connect. And I knew I sounded like an idiot.
There was a look people got when they heard it, this kind of immediate pity that made my self-awareness and self-consciousness fester. Sometimes they’d speak slowly to me, like just because I couldn’t say words, I must not be able to understand them either. And that’s if people were trying to be nice.
When they were mean? Fuck, I’d spent my whole life being ruthlessly mocked and tormented by other kids, foster parents… even my own parents, during my short time with them. So yeah, signing was a gift and one I was grateful to have.
“Your tattoos are so badass,” Andrew signed to me, his gaze taking in my arms, neck, and chest. I was wearing a shirt with a deep V-neck that showed off the intricate design on my chest, ravens circling a shield over my sternum. It had hurt like a bitch to get, and I didn’t regret a second of it.
“Thanks,” I signed back, relaxed in the ability to ‘speak’ freely without worrying my stutter would hold me back, and happy that Andrew seemed to be loosening up a bit. “They make me feel badass.”
“When will you tattoo me?” His black eyes twinkled with thirteen-year-old mirth.
I raised an eyebrow. “When you’re eighteen.”
Andrew threw his hands in the air and pretended to be irritated. “Not cool, man,” he signed. “I thought we were friends. That’s going to take forever!”
“We’re totally friends. See these here?” I pointed to my knuckles. Across them was written the letters H-A-L-F F-U-L-L. “We call these job stoppers. Tattoos are like any other action—there are consequences you have to be able to be man enough to accept. And you aren’t a man until you’re eighteen.”
But I waggled my eyebrows as I signed it, softening any blow Andrew might perceive.
“They didn’t stop you from getting a job.”
“I’m kind of a one-trick pony now, though. I thought all I wanted to do was tattoo, so I fell head first into the job. Literally.”
I pulled my close-cropped hair above my ear tight. I knew that Andrew could see the winks of blue and black from my first ever tattoo. Reagan had drawn a hand flashing a middle finger on the side of my head. It had been a stupid tattoo, a young me trying to shout “fuck you” to the world. Reagan had known and convinced me to put it in a place I could hide it if I needed to. Now my black hair covered it, the curls softening the anger I’d let drive me all those years ago.
“Damn!” Andrew said it out loud, a gift just for me. His smile was infectious.
Soon, Andrew and I were laughing hard enough my ribs ached. He would pause between fits of laughter to sign some truly awful tattoo ideas. The kind that would land a person in internet infamy for “best of the worst.”
After a while, I dragged over some blank paper and markers and encouraged Andrew to start drawing some of his ideas, as I settled in to do the same. I liked working on drawing with the kids in the center. Being able to articulate emotions into lines, into colors, into something tangible and real? That was my outlet. It kept my frustration at my stagnation at bay.
Sure, I’d managed to make a name for myself as a go-to tattooer. My art even popped up in frequent Instagram feeds where the comments were universally good. It meant I never hurt for clients and I could easily support myself. But was that all there was to me? Being a reformed juvenile offender and a good artist? Was that enough for me? Because whenever I looked around the youth center as just a volunteer, it stung.
I didn’t want to just volunteer a few days a week for these kids. When I saw the ones with disabilities, like Andrew, I felt like I should be doing so much more.
I knew from experience that a tall, tattooed man had difficulty convincing people to donate money. My being Latino didn’t help, either, because like I told Andrew, some people were assholes. But if I could create a fundraiser that would force people to look beyond my image and into their hearts, I was certain that we could raise enough money to fund resources to help kids like Andrew. Give him the kind of help that had saved me from ending up as a permanent resident in the county jail.
Fond memories of my mentor, Jack, rushed over me.
He’d worked in a center like this one and had been the one to teach me how to sign. My foster family at the time had been on their last leg with me, ready to kick me out despite the money the state gave them to keep me.
Jack had realized I wasn’t going to get the speech therapy I needed. I was too old for it to be easy, and I didn’t have the kind of insurance that would pay for it. So he’d taught me how to sign himself. His lessons kept me out of trouble, and they gave me the gift of communication, freeing me from the constant humiliation I experienced with my stutter.
But Jack had been a paid social worker, able to put in consistent, long-term time with me.
This center didn’t have that. It had me, and there was only so much time I could afford to put in. What they needed was funding and paid, experienced full-time staff.
After Andrew showed me a truly ridiculous but completed drawing, I grabbed a blue marker from the jar on our table and waved it at Andrew as a reward. I pointed to his arm, and he placed it on the table, palm side up, knowing the game.
For months I’d been giving him temporary tattoos, a compromise to help encourage him not to rush into the real thing and get some Bic pen stick-and-poke disaster rather than a piece of art. Wielding the marker with flair, I popped the cap off and started mapping a design in my head. Andrew was going to want something cocky, cool but unusual. Like him.
Smiling to myself, I settled in to work, creating the outline first. Andrew sat still as a statue, allowing me to move quickly, building the lines that would provide the foundation for his “tattoo.”
Slowly, a rooster began to come to life on Andrew’s skin, all puffed feathers and swagger. I was so invested in my drawing that I missed the door to the art room opening. What I didn’t miss was the sound of a familiar voice. I looked up abruptly and sure as shit, there was my neighbor, talking to Mike.
If my world had been rocked when I’d tried to apologize to him last week, it was threatening to topple completely now. Gordo was not in his typical old t-shirt and messy hair. Instead, he was rocking tailored pants that were fitted enough to leave my mouth dry. The button-down shirt he had on was hugging his muscles like a car hugs curves, promising danger and exhilaration.