Cross Island

by Santino Hassell

  “Victor, he has something!”

  Clive’s voice sounded like a distant echo that came too late. The pocketknife flipped open and sliced across my sweatshirt, drawing a line of fire across my skin. I grunted and grabbed Travis’ wrist, slamming into against the ground again and again until his fingers went limp and he dropped the knife.

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Clive start for it.

  “Don’t touch it!”

  Clive froze, swearing. Beneath me, Travis began twisting and turning, and spitting incoherent curses in my face. I had no idea what the dude looked like beneath the mask of hate and fury that was currently aiming up at me, but I had no doubt that this guy would gut me if he could.

  “Stay still, motherfucker,” I shouted over his flailing and growling. “Clive, call the—”

  The whoop of a siren sounded in the dark night before the lights of the police car flashed on. I looked up to see a white and blue patrol car driving over the path. It pulled to a stop a few feet away from us.

  “Hands in the air,” a voice boomed through the loudspeaker. “Everyone.”

  I raised my hands, waiting for the police to start that bullshit since I had a frantic white man pinned to the ground, but Travis took the chance to grab his knife. His fingers closed around it, but I threw myself backwards just as he tried to slam it into my side.

  This time, it was my head bouncing off the concrete. I lay on the ground, stunned, as noise roared around me. Clive yelling, Travis screaming, the cops, and then two young voices shouting: “You dumbasses, he just tried to stab that guy!”

  The girls from the bench. They’d probably flagged down the cop car.

  If there wasn’t pain blinding me and radiating from my torso, I would have laughed. Leave it to two likely queer teenagers to save the shitshow of this day.

  ***

  Clive

  There was an invisible wall between me and Victor as I stood on the path with the police, giving them my statement, and watching him get patched up by the EMTs. Because he was Victor, he’d refused to go to the hospital. Through his potential concussion, he’d informed them that he wasn’t about to pay for an ambulance and ER bill over “a little scratch”.

  I was starting to wonder if he’d ever gone to a real doctor for any of the scars marring his face and body, or if he’d just handled it himself to spare his parents the bills.

  He had an absolutely ferocious look on his face as they patched up the shallow slash from Travis’ knife, and as they checked his head. I tried to catch his eye the entire time, and he stubbornly stared up at the lights of the expressway.

  My stomach twisted.

  I’d fucked all of this up.

  Silent fury emanated from him for the duration of our interrogation by the cops—because of course they had to make us retell the story over and over again until I snapped at them to google the recent QFindr case if they were so skeptical—and for the short ride in the patrol car back to my house. I tried to touch his hand in the backseat, and he yanked it away.

  I opened my mouth to speak, and he gave me a flat cold look that tied my vocal cords into a knot. It was only when the police dropped us off with cards, and advice to call that number to get in touch with an investigator, did he jerk his head in a nod to acknowledge someone had spoken to him.

  He didn’t ask what was going to happen to Travis, but I didn’t either. It was possible he’d get bail, but it was unlikely anyone would be there to get him out. Hopefully, he’d sit in jail until he was indicted for multiple accounts of aggravated assault, stalking, and maybe attempted murder since he’d tried to stab Victor in the goddamn stomach right in front of the cops.

  My chest tightened, and I fumbled with the keys to the front door as Victor loomed behind me. Once we were inside, I started to speak to him only to realize he was on the phone.

  “Chester, man, I need you here,” he rumbled, standing in the middle of the living room and facing the wall. “We were right—it was Travis, and he made his move. Attacked Clive in the park and tried to gut me.”

  I wondered if he’d purposefully omitted the part where I’d lured Travis there myself. I wondered if he’d tell Chester later.

  “No, he’s fine.” Victor rubbed his hand against his face. “I’m good, man. Yeah. They took him.”

  I shifted closer, standing so he was forced to see me in his peripheral vision.

  “Yeah, we have no idea if Travis was in this alone, but we need someone here for the time being. And it can’t be me.”

  My heart seized. “Victor—” The look he gave me once again caused the words to evaporate before I could form a sentence.

  “I just can’t be here,” he went on icily, still glaring at me. On the other end of the call, I could hear the warble of Chester responding. “Whatever you can do is fine,” Victor said in response. “I’ll get my shit together.”

  He hung up after a terse ‘thank you’, and tossed his phone down onto the couch. I half expected him to storm off without speaking, but Victor just stood and stared at me. The anger in his face, in his body language, would have probably warded off anyone else. I just wanted to pull him closer, inspect him myself, and make sure he was alright.

  “Are we going to talk?” I asked, voice scraping out low and rough. “Or is your plan to pack your shit and leave when Chester gets here, and that’s it?”

  Victor’s silence was more terrible, and foreboding, than him telling me to go to hell. It was more damning than him pushing me up against the wall again and reaming me the way he had after the wedding. It made me feel like I’d ruined things for good, and we were done.

  “Victor,” I said, putting more urgency in my voice. “Please try to understand what the hell I was trying to do. I know you’re pissed, and I know it was reckless, but I just wanted it to be fucking over. I was tired of being watched, tired of some piece of shit spying on us when we thought we’re alone. The idea of him seeing us together, of invading our privacy…” I clenched my jaw and looked away, shaking my head. “Look, maybe I overreacted, but seeing him outside my window at that moment, when I was watching you and feeling… happy and satisfied for the first time in forever? I snapped.”

  I glanced up again and saw something in Victor face had changed. He’d frowned, brows dipping, and had turned toward me.

  “You saw him out the window? In your room?”

  “Yes! I was fucking irate, Vic. It wasn’t just him maybe standing across the street, or sending me vague notes in my mailbox. He was looking up in our window, which meant he’d seen you in my window that first night we had sex. And who knows how close he’s been other times? I just can’t live like that. I couldn’t do it anymore.”

  Victor nodded slowly. “So, what, you decided to go for a jog and hoped he’d follow you?”

  “I messaged him first—”

  Victor’s eyes narrowed. “Messaged? What the hell are you talking about?”

  The brief bit of hope I’d had extinguished.

  “Clive,” he said, voice low and warning. “What message? What are you talking about?”

  This wasn’t going anywhere good. I knew it, and he knew it, and defeat sent me sinking down to the couch. I hunched forward with my elbows on my knees and looked up at him tiredly. My lies by omission of the past week were catching up with me, and I hated that I had to tell him now while he was pale-faced and in pain. That I was about to stomp all over what should have been the start of something good between us, something permanent, because I’d wanted to handle it all myself.

  “The other day I checked my spam folder, and I realized he’d been sending me emails,” I said quietly. “It had started during depositions, and grew more frantic when you moved in.”

  “That’s why you suggested it was Travis,” Victor said. “In the car on the way to Junior’s. That’s what you were looking at.”

  “Yes.” I swallowed thickly and rubbed my hands over my face. “He didn’t say who he was, and it was an anon account probably access
ed through TOR or another VPN, but… the signs were all there. The way he talked about QFindr and how he knew things about me… He was clearly fixated on me and on this idea that he and I should have been allies at first, but I think that was before he realized I was gay. Then the messages turned to ranting and vague threats towards you.”

  “Yet, you chose not to tell me.” Victor’s nostrils flared as he shook his head slowly, the epitome of disgust. “You saw those messages days ago,” he said, voice rising. “And you decided to keep it to yourself. Why?”

  “Because—” Lies popped up in my head like life boats, wanting to find a way to preserve this mess, but I pushed them away. No more lies. No more half-truths. “Because I knew you would tell me to not respond to him. I knew you’d want access to the account to plan something with Chester, and not let me handle it. And—”

  “And you wanted to control the situation yourself,” he said, tone scathing. “You want to be the big man who has it all in hand, because you still think you’re invincible, and you still think you don’t need any help from anyone. Because you got this. Right? You got this so well in hand that you nearly got choked out by that dumb motherfucker in the middle of the park, and I almost got sliced open trying to pin him down, and then the cops would have probably flipped the whole thing on us if Travis wasn’t such an idiot to attack me right in front of them. Was that part of your brilliant plan?”

  I flinched but didn’t drop my eyes. I could take this.

  I deserved this.

  Victor huffed out a low breath and threaded his fingers through his hair. He paced the room. “And the funny part is, you just stood here and acted like you snapped tonight and made a stupid choice, and I almost bought it. Because I get snapping and having enough. But I don’t believe you, dude. I believe you wanted to handle the Twitter situation yourself so you could go back and forth with the dude on your own. Maybe you were planning to handle this on your own, without telling me, even before tonight.”

  I closed my eyes briefly. “Victor—”

  “Just tell me if I’m right. You were planning to handle this whole thing yourself the whole time.”

  “Not the whole time, goddamn it, but yes. I wanted this to be over!” I jumped to my feet and approached him, hands up. “I know you’re enraged at me right now, and maybe you don’t want to hear this, but I care about you, Victor. I’m—I’m falling for you in a way I’ve never fallen for anyone.” I grabbed his shoulders and forced him to stop pacing, turning him towards me. His face was a mask, but his eyes were red-rimmed and his mouth was mashed into a tight line. “You knew I always hated you being put at risk for me, and I hated someone spying on you and what we did in privacy, because of me. I just wanted to figure out how to end it. And him reaching out to me seemed like a way to do that.”

  Victor’s jaw clenched, but his body didn’t relax. He was stone beneath my hands. As cold and hard as the ground outside.

  “How do I fix this, Victor?”

  “You can’t.”

  I reared back but didn’t let go of him. I wouldn’t until he pushed me away. “Do you mean you being my guard, or do you mean us being together?”

  He shrugged stiffly. “I don’t know.”

  “What—” Frustration took hold of me, causing me to dig my fingers into his flesh. “Are you serious? We’re going to throw away everything else just because—”

  “Just because you nearly got yourself fucking killed just because you don’t trust anyone to help you? Because you lied to me repeatedly to make sure you could risk yourself? Just because you didn’t ever stop to think about how terrified I’d be that you ran out and put yourself in danger again?” Victor speared me with an absolutely scornful look. “Yeah. I have to think on that one.”

  “So think now. Tell me now.” I leaned in closer to him, forcing him to hold my gaze. “Tell me this has overshadowed every other thing between us to the point of you deciding being with me isn’t worth it. Say it to me like you mean it, and I’ll let you go right now.”

  “Let go of me, anyway.”

  “Push me away then.” I wanted to pin my body to his, to remind him of how well we fit together and much heat we created as a pair, but I was too conscious of his injury no matter how minor. I was also too conscious of the very real possibility that he didn’t really want this anymore. Want me anymore. “Victor, just tell me,” I said, lowering my voice and laying bare the kind of desperation I’d never let Michael see. With him, I’d retreated. I’d never chased. Never tried to change things. With Victor? I felt the devastation Nunzio had described at the thought of losing Michael. I felt empty. “Did this mistake ruin us before we even got the chance to enjoy being an us?”

  Victor inhaled sharply. “Was it really a mistake? As in—do you actually regret it?”

  My mouth opened, but nothing came out. Did I regret it? After all, it was over. He was locked up. If things went right, he’d be locked up for a long time unless his family decided to save his ass at the last minute. Even if they did, we had a brief reprieve from the ghoul outside my window. The paranoia and fear would be off our backs.

  “Forget it,” he said. “I know you don’t.”

  “Victor, just listen to me.”

  “No—”

  I held on when he tried to pull away. “Please, don’t do this. I just wanted it to be over.”

  “And it’s over,” he gritted out. “You made it happen, baby. You took matters into your own hands and made that shit happen. But you can’t control me, and you can’t make me agree that this is all no big deal, so just let. Me. Go.”

  I dropped my hands, and he stepped away. After one agonized look, one full of anger and sadness, Victor left the room.

  Cross Island, ch 21

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Clive

  After living alone for twenty years, solitude should have come easily.

  It didn’t.

  The house was haunted by the ghost of Victor. When I went to sleep at night, I imagined I could still hear him rolling around in bed through the wall. Upon waking up in the morning, I pictured him coming out of the shower in nothing but a towel or already in the kitchen brewing coffee. On the commute into work, I thought of our car rides. The way they’d gone from stilted silence to comfortable conversations to me stroking his arm or his thigh as he navigated the congested streets.

  And now, sitting in my office, I kept looking through the glass and expecting to see him standing at his usual position by the door. He wasn’t there. According to Chester, he’d been reassigned.

  He was gone from my life as if he’d never been there at all.

  It had only been a couple of days, and I missed him so much it hurt.

  I’d texted him so many times since he’d walked out of the house that I’d forced myself to stop. It was bordering on obsessive, alarming, and desperate.

  The last thing I’d sent him had said: You don’t know how much I wish I’d done things differently.

  He’d replied only to say: Me too. Gimme time.

  A knock on my office door pulled me out of my new distraction—rereading the texts I’d sent Victor. Sometimes I scrolled farther up, past my pleading and apologies, to see the text messaged we’d exchanged over the past month. The teasing and flirting. The affection.

  Damn, I’d fallen for him fast and hard. I enjoyed him the way I’d never enjoyed anyone before. Not even Michael.

  It was both scary and thrilling at once. Like a rollercoaster.

  I’d never felt that way with Michael either.

  During the entire course of our relationship, there had been days and weeks at a time when Michael and me hadn’t so much as talked on the phone. When he was too busy with his life that was kept so separate from mine that I didn’t want to intrude. I’d grown so accustomed to that distance that this thing with Victor—me wanting to hear from him throughout the day and missing his touch like a physical pain—was foreign. It was like going through withdrawal.

  The person
knocked again.

  I closed the screen on my phone and called through the door, “Come in.”

  Nunzio Rodriguez walked into my office.

  I was convinced this had to be one of those lucid dreams people spoke about. Everything felt real, and I was semi-conscious, but the events were so outlandish that I knew it wasn’t real.

  It couldn’t be.

  Nunzio closed the door and leaned against it, looking casual and attractive in black jeans, scuffed boots, and a red flannel beneath a leather jacket. His wedding ring glinted beneath the light.

  “What is this?” I asked haltingly.

  Nunzio held up his hands. “I had a meeting with Aiden Fairbairn.”

  “A meeting,” I said. “With Aiden.”

  “Yeah. We’ve been talking about QFindr sponsoring some of the programs at the LGBT Youth center where I work.”

  I could only stare at him blankly and wait for the anger to swarm now that I knew this wasn’t a dream. In the past four years, there had been dozens of times when I’d pictured the moment I got to tell Nunzio exactly what I thought of him. I’d fantasized about bringing this man, who so many peopled treated like some perfect god, down to the level I thought he deserved.

  The problem was that now that he was here, shifting and looking awkward, I had no desire to verbally shred him. The rage didn’t come. The resentment. Even the heartbreak I’d felt a few weeks ago after seeing him at the wedding with Michael—it didn’t hit me the same. All I felt was a distant sense of irritation that he was barging into my life when all I wanted to do was stare at the words I’d exchanged with Victor.

  Nunzio ran a hand through his curly hair. “Listen, Clive, I know I’m the last person you want to see, but—”

  “Then why the hell would come into my office?” I regained my bearings and stood, pushing my chair back. “This is exactly like your husband at the wedding. Chasing me up the stairs and trying to corner me into a conversation just so he could get some closure. Well, I don’t owe him that. And I don’t owe you my time.”