Daddy Ink

by Ali Lyda

  I could really use that kind of neighbor and friend, someone I could depend on. Which meant I had to stop screwing it up. Twice now I’d come on to him without thinking, and twice it had blown up in my face—not to mention all the times I’d inadvertently insulted him. If that wasn’t fate telling me something, I didn’t know what it was.

  Javi deserved someone who had his shit together, which I most certainly did not.

  10

  Javi

  “R-real t-talk,” I said to the director, “h-how much money d-do we need t-to raise?”

  The relay race was the next day, and I’d been so caught up in the emotional roller coaster that was Gordo that I’d put the race on the backburner. Now it was here, and I was feeling overwhelmed and heavy with guilt for my absence in the lead-up.

  “Real talk? Javi, I don’t know if the race will be enough. It isn’t just keeping up with rent and utilities. We don’t have enough volunteers, and we can’t afford to hire staff.”

  The words were like lead, weighing me down. “What are you s-saying?”

  Mike put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m saying I’m not sure I can get more help for kids like Andrew. Hell, help in general. We’ve been working at a deficit for so long and I kept hoping our luck would turn around, but it hasn’t. I can keep hoping, but if we’re lucky, hope and this race might buy us the rest of the year operating as we are already. No improvements, no new hires, and no promise we’ll still be open twelve months from now.”

  It was a blow that sent shock waves through me. I was just a volunteer, but the center… it was like a second home for me. I’d lost so many homes, moved from place to place, that this shouldn’t have been such a blow. But I loved the center, and losing it would leave a hole I didn’t think I could recover from.

  We ended our conversation on a low note, with Mike trying to keep positive and failing. As I drove to work after, I looked again at my knuckles. They spelled out half full—as in, the glass is always. I’d gotten it to remind myself that no matter how hard life kicked me (and it had kicked me pretty fucking hard), there was always some good. To remind myself that I could be good and not succumb to the nastiness of life like I had in my youth.

  Half full. What did I have to offer, besides running in the race? Where did my talents lie? In childcare, but nobody wanted a young, tattooed Hispanic man taking care of their kid. Also, childcare couldn’t raise the kind of money the center needed. And the only other thing I was good at was tattooing.

  Actually, that might just…

  By the time I rolled into Get Ink’d, I had a plan. Too excited to talk, I signed to Reagan that I needed to chat. When we went into his office, his face was a mask of fear, still concerned for my mental wellbeing after the client had assaulted me the other night. As soon as I started signing, though, my smile large enough that I felt cheek muscles tire with the effort, Reagan’s whole demeanor changed, becoming almost as pumped up as I was.

  It took no time to draft the idea: We’d run a day-long special on palm-sized tattoos with all of the proceeds going to the center. Any shop member could donate their time and chair, but no one would be obligated to. Knowing the staff like I did—the family I’d chosen instead of the one I’d been born into—everyone would chip in.

  “Thank you s-so much, Boss,” I said. “This is going to make a huge difference for those kids.”

  “It’ll take some time to get the event together, but that way it won’t conflict with the relay race. This is a kick-ass idea.” Reagan paused and looked at me. “You’re family, Javi, you know that, right? We’ll always have your back.”

  The sun was shining and I was bouncing on my toes. This race would have been somber if it hadn’t been for my talk with Reagan, but now that we had something in the works for the center, the future didn’t weigh quite so heavily on me. Of course, it relied on my plan working out, but with Reagan and the crew behind me… well, I was allowed to feel a little optimistic.

  I was warming up for running in the relay when I heard Trinity, who’d come to support Dane and me as we ran, joke about a stroller and a familiar face. “Think he’s here to run or to tell us to shush?”

  I glanced up and saw Gordo. My pulse, which had been calm and ready to run, began to beat as quick as a rabbit’s. Gordo was dressed in sweats—clean and not wrinkled—and was pushing a sleeping Giuliana in a stroller. He was wearing a runner’s tag on his back and stopped to stretch out his legs.

  It hurt to see him, because just the nearness of him filled me with a flurry of emotions. After I’d basically had an emotional breakdown on his couch, I’d run out of his house the minute I thought he was actually going to kiss me. Like a fucking scaredy-cat, I’d dodged letting something happen that I wanted because I was too afraid I’d taint it.

  But each time I saw Gordo, there was no denying how warm he made me feel, how at home underneath the burst of nerves. Even with all our misunderstandings, when we stopped and actually listened to each other, got to know each other, it was easy. Like we just fit together.

  “Suck it up, Buttercup,” Dane whispered in my ear, making me jump. I’d been staring. A blush crept its way up my cheeks, and I looked at my laces, hoping they needed to be tied. They didn’t.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I signed, though Dane’s look proved he knew it for the lie it was.

  “If you aren’t going to chase after Hot Dad, then I just might,” Dane threatened, but I knew he was only joking.

  Well, I hoped he was only joking.

  “You’re a bully,” I complained, and then I flipped him the bird—a universal sign—before shoring up all my courage walking over to Gordo.

  As I waved, I had to fight the flinch that wanted to follow. With the way I’d left things the week before, I was worried that he’d be pissed. Or at the very least confused. But Gordo smiled when he saw me, and it was pure sunshine.

  He pushed the stroller over to me. “Hey, Javi! I hoped I’d see you here.”

  It took tremendous effort not to blurt out a hopeful, You did?

  “I’m glad t-to s...s-see you,” I mumbled instead, knowing my cheeks were red. Bending down and peeking into the stroller, I took a moment to find peace in the face of the sleeping baby. Giuliana was perfection, all rosy cheeks and blue eyelids, her tiny rosebud mouth open as she dozed.

  “Are you?” Gordo asked.

  Before I could stand and address the tension now bubbling between us, Dane trotted over. Because of course he would feel the need to interject himself into my business.

  He held out his hand. “Nice to meet you officially, Gordo. I’m Dane.”

  They shook, and Gordo’s rich brown eyes danced with amusement. “Have we met before?”

  “The last time we met, you had just barfed all over Javi’s shoes.”

  My stomach dropped, and I glared at Dane as Gordo blanched. To make the situation worse, another man chose that moment to approach us. When he smiled, I recognized him from the bar—he’d been with Gordo and his brother and had helped usher my drunk neighbor out.

  “Ah, this is my best friend, Christian.” Gordo was still pale as he introduced us. “Apparently all of us met on that fateful night I learned dads can’t party.”

  A smirk tugged at the corner of my mouth, and my cock twitched as I remembered what had happened in the moments before the incident. My hands on Gordo’s hips. The press of our bodies. The almost-kiss.

  I shook Christian’s hand before I could let my thoughts carry me to a place that would be embarrassing for everyone. “Nice t-to meet you.”

  Dane, always coming to my rescue, grabbed Christian’s hand to shake next. Only I couldn’t help but notice how he held it a fraction too long, and I narrowed my eyes. Don’t, Dane—as much as I loved my friend for all of his free-loving ways, I didn’t need any more connections to Gordo running sour, as most of Dane’s trysts tended to end.

  Christian flared a cute shade of red, and I bit down on a groan. Well, it was apparently t
oo late. Another one had succumbed to Dane’s charms. Not that I had been much better than Dane in the past. Hell, I’d had more than my fair share of one-night stands and hookups until recently. Substantially more than my fair share, truthfully. It’s just that meaningless sex seemed less appealing now.

  My eyes drifted to Gordo.

  Dane smirked and stared, pinning poor Christian with his eyes like a butterfly on a board.

  Christian looked to Gordo and said in a shaky voice, “We should get to our places for the race.”

  I didn’t want Gordo and Giuliana to go. All of us jogging together would be nice, but Dane would rib me to no end if I tried to stick by Gordo, and I wasn’t quite ready to admit that the spark I felt around my neighbor was becoming too bright to ignore. The back of my hand tingled with the memory of his touch from the night he’d listened to me talk about my client. No, not talk. Stutter. I’d barely been able to get the story out.

  And not once did he give me the look. The one of impatience, or pity. He’d just...listened. And when I thought back to all of our past conversation, I realized that not once had he reacted to my stutter. This epiphany came with a rush of...well, something too much like hope for me to process. Especially not right next to him and his precious daughter.

  I went with Dane to finish checking in while Gordo and Christian took Giuliana to the starting line. Mike smiled and gave me a thumbs-up from down the registration table, but he was far too busy signing people in to come over.

  We got our numbers and went to our spot in line; all the while, Dane was up my ass with questions about Christian. “How do you know him?”

  My hands signed, movements sharp with irritation. “I don’t. He was with Gordo the night you and I went to the bar.”

  “How did I not see him?” Dane was clearly not looking for an answer from me—his eyes were distant, as if he could pick Christian out from the crowd in his memory.

  “You were probably busy dry-humping some dude on the dance floor.”

  “Well now, Javi, that’s just rude,” he replied in a sarcastic, haughty tone. “As if I would do such a thing. But seriously, is he single?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He seemed interested in me, right? Like, I felt there was a kind of vibe going on there. Did you feel anything, Javi? Like he was digging me?”

  Absolutely, but I wasn’t going to encourage Dane’s newest obsession. If only because his puppy-crush-like peppering of questions were getting under my skin. I had more important things to anxiously mull over, like Gordo and all the growing emotions he made me feel.

  “What kind of work does Christian do?”

  “I. Don’t. Know. Christian,” I signed with finality. “Let it g-go,” I added out loud, with more gentleness.

  “Nah, man. I need to know him.” Dane said it like he needed to possess Christian, an intensity in his voice I hadn’t heard before, not about a man. But there wasn’t time to pursue it: The race began.

  Dane and I were well matched for pacing, our feet striking the pavement almost simultaneously. But whereas I was methodical in my approach, matching breaths with steps, Dane was talking like he wouldn’t need his breath later. And, I couldn’t help but notice, scanning the crowd like a hunter on the prowl.

  I wanted to shake my head. Dane always thought with his cock and then joked it up later. It sucked, because I sometimes got the impression it was all show for Dane. That beneath his constant laughs and jabs and the casual way he picked up men, he was actually desperate for something more. Yet here he was again, eyes set on some poor soul who’d just be discarded at the end.

  Suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dane go down.

  “Fuck!” Dane cursed as he hit the ground, hard enough for me to hear the crack of kneecap on pavement. Dodging some other runners, I helped him scoot off of the main road and out of the way of the racers.

  “What happened?” I asked as I struggled to control my breathing now that we were no longer running.

  “Twisted my damned ankle,” Dane said through gritted teeth. He had his knee, bloody from where it had hit the pavement, tucked near his chin, his foot in the air. He stared at the sky and cursed up a blue streak while I looked around for a medical tent.

  But I needn’t have looked. To my surprise—and, I was sure, Dane’s delight—the first person to reach us was Christian. Gordo followed, weaving Giuliana’s stroller to try and stay out of other racers’ ways.

  “I’m a doctor,” Christian stated as he dropped beside Dane’s sprawled-out form. “What happened?”

  Dane managed to look both in pain and in thrall simultaneously. He turned puppy dog eyes on Christian, and it was all I could do to keep a straight face. “I twisted my ankle,” he said.

  When he told me, he’d sounded angry. Now he sounded like butter.

  Christian pulled the leg toward himself, using a gentle, probing touch to test Dane’s ankle. “How does this feel?”

  “It… it hurts.” Now Dane was laying it on thick, and I began to wonder if he truly hurt himself at all, or if he’d been hoping for this. The coincidence of Christian being close enough to notice his fall was becoming suspect.

  “Let’s get you to the medical tent,” Christian said, not noticing Dane’s overkill performance. “Gordo,” he called over his shoulder, “Go ahead and finish the race. I’ll help out here.”

  “Do you want me to come with?” I signed to Dane when he looked at me. He shot me a look that had hell no written all over it.

  Gordo elbowed me in the ribs, light and teasing, but it was enough of a touch to make my breath catch anyway. “Care to finish with me, neighbor?”

  I knew he meant the race. But my mind played an image of finishing in a very different, very naked way with him, and I was forced to shut my eyes to keep from moaning. Take it easy, Javi. “Yeah...okay.”

  We merged into the race together. We were pretty far behind the quicker racers, and instead of trying to catch up, Gordo set a slower pace than I was used to. Looking at Giuliana, I imagined pushing her wasn’t conducive to fast runs. “If you want, I c-can push her s-s-some.”

  Gordo’s smile almost sent me stumbling over my own feet, but I managed to keep it together as we traded places. As soon as the stroller was in my control, my heart squeezed, overfull with the responsibility of having an infant’s safety in my hands—literally—while running. And also with Gordo’s trust in me to push his baby girl.

  And damned if it didn’t feel good to do it for me, too. Bittersweet. Another taste of something I’d wanted for so long.

  “I think your friend just suckered mine into helping him,” Gordo said in a casual way. Perhaps he was fishing for information on Dane.

  My stutter was a fickle fucker, appearing often and at random, but most reliably when I felt stressed or tense. But because I had grown up hyper-aware of it, mocked for it, occasionally beaten for it, I was almost always tense. Between my need to focus and excel at work, and the doubt that always niggled at me about, well, me, stress was a constant companion.

  It went without saying that around Gordo, smack-in-the-face good-looking, smart, successful Gordo, I should have been wound tighter than a spring.

  But the sun was warming my skin and beads of sweat were trickling between my shoulder blades. I had a baby sleeping in a stroller in front of me and the calming thwack of my sneakers on the pavement. I felt… good. Great, even.

  So when I answered, the stutter wasn’t there. My tongue was my own. “Dane is an enormous flirt.”

  Gordo laughed. “Good. Christian could use some flirting with. Maybe if he had someone to focus on, he’d get off my case to find a new guy.”

  I almost missed a step. I wanted to ask. God, I wanted to ask so much. We’d talked about work over dinner that one time, and he’d said I was too sexy to collaborate with, though what was said while plastered should be taken with a grain of salt. But that was the crux of it: despite how much I liked and admired Gordo, there was so much I didn’t k
now about him still.

  How had Gordo become a single father? And was he really interested in me? What the fuck did he see in me, if so? And what was I supposed to do about that?

  “I wouldn’t count on him to keep Christian’s focus for long,” I said, too cowardly to ask any of the questions burning a hole right through my heart. “He’s a bit of a man-whore—and ‘a bit’ is being generous.”

  “Ah, I see. What, then, does that say about you?”

  I almost bit my tongue. “What d-do you mean?”

  “Well, you are the company you keep and all that.” He winked at me as he said it, and my ears heard the joke even as my brain flashed red with warning.

  Because instead of feeling like it was flirting, it felt like a criticism. And why wouldn’t it be? Gordo might have his hands full with Giuliana, but he had a family and a respectable job. I had a fuck-ton of tattoos, and baggage so heavy I could barely carry it most days. A stutter and a juvie record and God, I had nothing to offer him except flirtations that wouldn’t go anywhere. I was sexy enough to be too dangerous to work with, but too much of a mess to date. To be a partner.

  “I s..s...sh-sh-sh I sh-sho...fuck! I’m going to check on Dane,” I said, the stutter monkey heavy on my back, as I moved to let him take over pushing the stroller.

  I looked to my feet, waiting for Gordo to grab a hold of the stroller, but he didn’t. Instead, his hand fell on mine. It was warm and our bodies were moving, keeping pace and eating up road, yet I felt frozen to the spot where he touched me. His touch was a cool breeze, dampening the twisting burn of shame in me.

  Gordo made me feel so many fucking things. I hated him, in a way, for making me want things I’d not allowed myself to consider before. Things like running a race with a family, supporting a cause I adored, and thinking there might, might be something more for me at the finish line.