by J L Aarne
Jack sat up. “Steve?”
“Yeah, Jack?”
“What’re you doing?”
“Sitting here. What’s it look like?”
“Okay.”
A little disturbed by it, Jack got up and went into the bathroom to drink some water and pee. Sometimes Steve kind of tuned out like that, so maybe he hadn’t been watching Jack sleep after all, that was just the way he was facing. After he had a girl, he thought about it and played it over in his mind for a few days. Until he got the itch again and needed another one.
It bothered Jack more to think that had been what Steve was doing than that Steve had been staring at him while he was sleeping and thinking about something else. It shouldn’t have, but it did.
“You go fuck that Zane asshole for dope again?”
Jack paused on his way out of the bathroom and rolled that over in his mind. Steve wasn’t jealous, he just disapproved. He was possessive and if he didn’t like Jack whoring, that was probably the only reason why.
“No,” Jack said, walking back into the room. Then because sometimes he resented Steve a lot more than he would admit, he added, “I fucked someone else for money and bought drugs. I was tired. Zane took a suck job.”
Steve stared at him without expression. In the dark it was hard to tell, but Jack had known him a while, he recognized the way the shadows fell on his face to mean it was blank. Then he turned his head and looked away from him at the wall; disgusted and dismissive.
You can’t get it up for no one but dead girls, Steve. Who the hell are you to judge me? Jack thought with a rare spark of anger at him. He almost said it. Then he sighed and climbed back into bed without saying anything.
He lay there staring up at the ceiling, listening to the rattling A/C, watching the pale blue of Steve’s cigarette smoke curl in the dark above him. After a while he said, “You always knew what I was.”
Steve grunted in a way that conveyed both acknowledgement and irritation.
“We need the money.”
“Don’t do any good if you’re shooting the shit up your fucking arm,” Steve said. “You ain’t doing that ‘cause we need the money.”
Jack shrugged. It didn’t bother him, he’d been a whore a long time. It was what it was.
“You gonna go and get yourself killed by some sick fuck closet case faggot one of these nights, Jack, and where’s that leave me?” Steve asked. “You ever think about that?”
“I guess not,” Jack said. It wasn’t an apology though. “Guess I always figured you’d be fine. We both know you don’t need me around, Steve.”
Jack could feel Steve’s eyes on him again, but he didn’t take his gaze from the shadows of the ceiling to look at him. Eventually Steve made another of those dismissive sounds in his throat and stamped his cigarette out in the heavy marble ashtray on the nightstand between their beds.
Jack closed his eyes and was soon asleep again.
He dreamed about Shane. He dreamed about being little again and Hal taking his clothes off. He dreamed about Shane walking in and how he had flown at Hal with a plastic hockey stick like it was a sword, trying to defend Jack, his baby brother. He’d always defended Jack. He dreamed about sitting huddled over his knees and crying in the corner by the laundry hamper while Hal raped Shane and made him scream instead. Phineas was there across the room watching it all, his little teeth like pearls, his eyes like foxfire.
Jack’s real shame about hearing and seeing his fifteen year old brother naked and crying and sweaty while Hal tore into him was that he’d been glad; glad that it wasn’t him for once.
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To read a sample/purchase a copy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FP1ALBG
About the Author
J.L. Aarne currently lives in the Northwest United States. Aarne studied English at the University of New Orleans, but like so many people these days, could not afford to finish. Someday, perhaps. This book and others by J.L. Aarne are also available in paperback.
Aarne blogs from time to time at http://jlaarne.tumblr.com/
J.L. Aarne can be reached by email at jlaarne [@] outlook [dot] com
Art by Lucy D. Sherman
To view and/or purchase original artwork by Lucy D. Sherman, the wonderful artist who does such good things for my book covers, you can follow these links to her DeviantArt and Redbubble pages.
On DeviantArt: http://ldsherman.deviantart.com/
On Redbubble: http://www.redbubble.com/people/ldsherman