3

by Jacob Z. Flores

  Brandon was in a cast for six weeks. And he didn’t bother Spencer again for a few months.

  Spencer opened his eyes to a far clearer world. The fog of numbing pain lifted, giving him clarity of vision. His father was right. There were no innocent victims, only those who allowed themselves to be continually victimized.

  When he retaliated against his brother, he’d found his voice, the strength he needed to meet any adversary eye to eye. It gave him direction and purpose. His fair and delicate skin transformed into armor, capable of deflecting any weapon hurled against him. It had served him well for years after that, keeping those who wished him harm—classmates, lovers, and family—at arm’s length.

  Until he met Justin.

  Justin pierced the armor and shattered his defenses far too easily. With a single kiss, he’d disarmed Spencer, making him powerless and weak.

  That was about to end.

  Throwing open the linen closet, he retrieved his Louis Vuitton suitcase and slammed it against the tub. The explosive clang reverberated through the plumbing, causing the entire house to tremble. He could only imagine what kind of effect the sound had on Justin, whose shadow he could see crouching in front of the bathroom door.

  “If you won’t come out, can I come in there?” Justin asked.

  Spencer scoffed in answer. The doorknob turned as Justin tested the lock.

  Does he really think I’m that easy? Spencer thought as he threw clothes inside the suitcase. Have I been that forgiving, that spineless for ten years?

  The fuse of Spencer’s anger relit, threatening to blow the entire house skyward. Fire surged through his veins, melting the paralyzing ice that had threatened him previously. Warning bells and klaxons wailed inside his mind as his body prepared for war.

  “How about this, then?” Justin asked, trying to break through his defenses once again. His tone was contrite and calm, but Spencer heard it for what it was. It was simply the silencer attached to the end of a pistol, cocked and ready to deliver another mortal blow. “How about I stay out here, but you open the door, so we can talk?”

  “How about you go fuck yourself?” Spencer replied. His voice boomed like a thunderclap. At first, the intensity of his words frightened him, not because he regretted them or the tone, but because he sounded just like his father. He hoped Justin cowered on the other side of the door like he used to as a child whenever his father spoke to him like that.

  “If it would make you feel better, why don’t you come out and hit me? I won’t put up a fight. You could hit me as hard as you want.”

  Spencer responded by violently slamming shut the closet door inside the bathroom. The pictures hanging on the opposite bedroom wall rattled. He resumed his packing, grabbing his black leather Dopp kit from under the sink and scooping his toiletries, lined neatly along his side of the bathroom counter, into its open mouth.

  “I’ll do anything you want, Spence. Anything at all. Just please open the door.”

  He hesitated. The self-hate and remorse he heard in Justin’s voice tugged on his heart, reaching through the newly erected armor as if it were paper thin. For reasons beyond comprehension, his heart begged him to open the door, to let down his defenses and go out there and work this out.

  You love him, his heart told him. Even now, even after knowing he cheated, you love him. You can’t deny that.

  “I can deny anything I want to,” Spencer whispered quietly.

  He caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror, and for the first time he noticed the body quakes had returned. He wrapped his arms around his body, hugging himself like he used to before he found his strength, before he knew he could stand on his own.

  The sight of him trembling, still naked, in the mirror disgusted Spencer. He looked more akin to a terrified kitten than a man capable of standing on his own two feet and marching out of this house and out of Justin’s life.

  Open the door, his heart insisted. Yell at him. Do what you must, but go to him. Remember, Justin’s not the only one with secrets.

  “Fuck you,” he told his reflection.

  “I love you, Spencer,” Justin said from outside the door. His words choked over a sob stuck in his throat. “I truly do.”

  He’s crying, his heart told him. Justin doesn’t cry; you know that. Can’t you see how much he loves you? How sorry he is for what he’s done?

  Spencer’s armor unfastened and dangled to one side. He could feel it slipping off, threatening to leave him vulnerable once again. Clawing after it, he tried to snap it back into place, but he felt it slip from his grasp.

  His heart was right. Spencer guarded his own secrets. Could he punish Justin for his trespass when he had yet to pay for his own? Cautiously, he approached the door. Should he give Justin another chance?

  You’ve done it before, his heart reminded him. You can do it again.

  Are you fucking kidding me? This time it was his father’s voice speaking to him, and his father wasn’t pleased. Are you really that much of a sissy that you would walk back into the arms of the person who has broken your heart not once, but twice? Do you lack that much self-respect? Did I teach you nothing?

  Spencer recoiled from the door.

  Don’t compare your sins to his, his father bellowed. He cheated on you. You never cheated on him.

  His father was right. What he had done didn’t come close to Justin’s betrayal. He retreated into the walk-in closet and pulled on a pair of underwear lying on the floor.

  That’s my boy, his father said.

  He shoved his head through a T-shirt and threw on a pair of jeans.

  Put that armor back on.

  He slid his feet into his white Puma sneakers, and picked up his suitcase and Dopp kit.

  For good this time.

  Spencer opened the bathroom door and found Justin on his knees in front of the door. At first, Justin smiled, relieved that he’d finally emerged from the bathroom. When he noticed the suitcase, the relief died in his eyes like a flickering candle in a hurricane.

  “Spence, I….”

  “I’m leaving,” he told Justin and walked past him.

  “Where are you going?”

  The question stopped Spencer in his tracks. He had no clue where he was going. His life stretched before him like a darkened country road with no headlights to illuminate his path. “I don’t know. Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you,” he said at last. “You’ve lost the right to know where I go or what I do.”

  “Please don’t leave me,” Justin pleaded. “I can’t live without you.”

  He turned his head slightly to the right, so he didn’t have to look at Justin directly. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “You obviously were the last time I left you.”

  He walked out of the bedroom and out the front door. As he got in his car, his father’s voice applauded him, telling him how proud he was. Your parting words were like a grenade. A good way to finish off the enemy.

  When Spencer pulled out of the driveway, he listened intently for his heart, but he couldn’t hear it over his father’s congratulatory laughter.

  CHAPTER 4

  2000

  SPENCER allowed Justin to lead him toward the patio behind the second level dance floor. When he agreed, he was surprised not only by his consent, since he rarely went off alone with a guy he just met at a bar, but that he tolerated Justin holding his hand as they wove through the many drunken revelers at the Bonham.

  Public displays of affection bothered Spencer, but not because he was embarrassed about being affectionate with another man. He had gotten over that in college. He simply felt that broadcasting your affinity for another person revealed insecurity, as if your hand-holding or tonsil-hockey session needed to be seen by others in order to validate the relationship.

  Yet, here he was, holding this guy’s hand for all to see. That wasn’t even the worst of it. He had actually kissed this guy for what seemed like an eternity in front of the entire bar. At midnight. On New Year’s Eve. He certainly
had never been that carefree before.

  All of which begged the question: Why had he allowed any of that to occur?

  Spencer had no answer, no matter how hard he racked his brain for one. He simply felt compelled, as if he had drunk some powerful drug that rendered his typically reserved nature powerless.

  When he noticed Justin approaching, he at first assumed he was coming over to talk to Alex. Everyone came to talk to Alex. Alex claimed it was his puka shell necklace, which Spencer abhorred. The necklace was a good-luck charm, according to Alex. As if he needed one.

  But Justin never once looked at Alex. His eyes had been fixed on him, as if the rest of the world spun away, leaving only the two of them standing. Typically, such an approach, with such singular and focused will, would have sent up warning flags. Yet Spencer felt nothing inherently predatory, a common sensation at a gay bar, where most guys scouted the crowd for the next score.

  Then what did it feel like?

  It just felt right.

  Right? That’s your answer? his rational mind told him. Right is hardly an acceptably quantifiable evaluation of this incident.

  Yeah, well, I’m not a scientist, he argued with his inner voice.

  You might as well be, his mind retorted. You may be a man of language, but your heart is cold and logical. You know that better than anyone else.

  “Watch your step,” Justin told him. His eyes were as refreshing as a coastal breeze on a scorching day, and their brown hue reminded him of the cool, packed sand that lay between the ocean’s edge and the sandy beach. When his family went on a summer vacation that involved a beach, that is where he stayed—at the water’s edge. While his brother and sister swam in the ocean and his parents lay out on their beach blankets, he sat in the cool, wet sand, thrusting his toes into the velvety folds.

  He felt safe, as if by sinking his toes into the sand the earth had somehow claimed him as its own, grounding him and giving him the companionship he lacked in his family or at school.

  When he gazed into Justin’s eyes, as he looked back to make sure Spencer didn’t trip over any one of the inebriated patrons in the small stairwell, he felt transported back to that beach, toes in the sand and connected to another life force much greater than his own.

  Going past the small series of stairs that led to a walkway, they skirted the packed dance floor where the gays were getting down to Cher’s “Believe.”

  Justin surprised Spencer by pulling him onto the dance floor, where they joined their gay brethren in their fevered adoration of the ultimate gay icon. Rarely, if ever, did Spencer dance at the clubs. He preferred observing the standard mating ritual as the dance partners gyrated on the floor with the express purpose of gauging each other’s sexual prowess through thrusting hips to the syncopated beat.

  He found the custom distasteful, yet here he was grinding in sync with Justin, whose hands rested on Spencer’s hips and whose crotch was currently scraping against his ass.

  What has gotten into you? his mind asked him. Since when do you engage in such immature and improper activities? You’re practically copulating on the dance floor?

  I know, Spencer returned. It feels great!

  He turned around in Justin’s embrace so that Justin’s crotch now ground against his own. The friction stirred their passions to life as their growing erections rubbed against each other.

  Spencer had never felt more alive in his life. He surrendered completely to the passion freely flowing between them. Screaming at him from the recesses of his brain, his rational side pleaded for him to stop, telling him he was making a spectacle of himself.

  He found that he didn’t care.

  His life had been lived behind armor, watching the world go by while he stayed safe and secure within his own carefully constructed ramparts. He envied the romances and casual dalliances of his friends, secretly wishing he too could partake in the ecstasy of romantic love and casual sex. Endless hope and unfettered optimism reflected in their eyes, whether it was warranted or not.

  For years, he’d thought them careless or just plain stupid for constantly blundering into the same trap time after time. Broken hearts and tear-stained faces often sought his solace, and he advised them all, trying to pass on the lessons he'd learned as a child. When they didn’t listen, when they threw themselves into the next romance without thought, like a suicide jumper leaping off a building, he averted his eyes.

  He had no intention of watching as they plummeted to the ground, victims of inevitable heartache, which was as definitive as gravity in Spencer’s mind.

  Living that way had been a necessity. It kept him safe from those who wanted to do him harm. Those enemies were everywhere in his life, in places both expected and unexpected. To keep himself safe, to be able to stand the strain without cracking under the pressure, he stayed safely within the armor that had protected him since his retaliatory strike against his own brother.

  Now, the armor fell from his body, piece by piece, and each section shed from his body corresponded to where Justin’s hands touched him.

  The first to fall were the gauntlets. As they danced, Justin’s fingers flitted gingerly across his hands and fingers, sending electrical impulses traveling through his arms, causing the vambrace to clang to the floor. His hands proceeded to Spencer’s face, stroking his cheek then his chin and effectively knocking the helmet from his head, which elicited a wail of fear from his rational brain. Justin ran his hands down Spencer’s back, releasing the cuirass with one sweep, and as his hands ran across Spencer’s upper thighs, the greaves collapsed onto the dance floor.

  When Justin’s hands stroked his chest, the breastplate slipped and slid askew, refusing to be unceremoniously cast off the area in need of the most protection. But Justin’s tender hands plucked this last section of defense from his body with little more than a flick of his index finger.

  Unburdened for the first time in his life, Spencer wrapped his arms around Justin’s neck and drew him into another kiss. His tongue found Justin’s and greedily wrapped around it, sucking it into his mouth. His basest instincts, free from the constraints of his rational mind and his armor, wondered what other body part of Justin’s might find its way into his mouth before the evening was over.

  He moaned softly as Justin cupped his ass, passionately massaging it in wanton lust. In response, he forced his engorged erection against Justin’s, savoring the feel of the hardness against his own. Their shafts pulsed in beat to the music as Cher’s raspy voice continued to sing about love.

  He ran his hands through the back of Justin’s shaggy hair and over his firm chest. Justin’s right hand rested at the nape of his neck, forcing their moist lips and hot tongues into a suction that could not be reversed. When Justin’s left hand squeezed the swollen mound inside Spencer’s jeans, Spencer’s knees almost buckled.

  His body could take no more, not without relieving his years of pent-up frustration in the middle of the dance floor.

  Justin pulled away from their kiss, his hands coming to rest on Spencer’s hips. “How about we go to the patio now?” Justin asked, straining to be heard over the music. “I could use some fresh air.”

  The blush in Justin’s cheeks revealed that Justin was also much too close to losing control. It pleased Spencer to know the condition was mutual.

  “Let’s go,” Spencer said, placing his hand in Justin’s of his own free will.

  Justin parted the dancers before them as they made their way to the patio door.

  Cher’s gravelly voice slowly gave way to Enrique Iglesias as he sang “Bailamos,” to the delightful screech of young men who were in lust with the Latin heartthrob. As they exited the dance floor and then the building to the patio beyond, Spencer looked back at the ecstatic crowd. They resembled an ocean as they flowed forward and backward, the rainbow disco ball spinning over them and casting its light downward, revealing in their faces the full emotional spectrum of life that, until this moment, had been foreign to Spencer’s soul.

&n
bsp; “It was pretty hot in there,” Justin said, leading Spencer to one of the benches on the far side of the patio. He sat on top of the table, his hand still holding Spencer’s.

  Spencer nodded in agreement, unable to speak for fear of igniting anew his now abating passion.

  “And I was talking about you. Not the club.” Justin pulled Spencer to him. Spencer rested his body between Justin’s open legs, and the proximity of their bodies and the slight whiff of Justin’s now musky body ignited another stirring in his pants.

  He had to turn his thoughts to something else. “What happened to your friend?”

  “Xavier?” Justin asked with a laugh. “The last time I saw him, he had his tongue down your friend’s throat.”

  Spencer laughed as well. “Alex is such a slut.”

  “So’s Xavier. They’re perfect for each other.”

  Spencer stared into Justin’s eyes, and he once again felt the comforting pull of his childhood beach tug at him the way the water pulled upon the sand, drawing grain upon grain within its aquatic arms. Their power over him was not only astonishing but unprecedented. Never before had simply staring into another pair of eyes caused him to feel as ensorcelled as he did now.

  Spencer wondered why they had such power. Was it the slight almond shape of the eyes? Did the exotic feature, never before seen by him on a Latin male, somehow entrap him with its intoxicating blend?

  “Just so you know, I’m not a slut.”

  Justin’s voice brought Spencer back to the conversation. “Good to know,” he said. “Neither am I, despite evidence to the contrary.”

  “I really don’t know what came over me. One minute Xavier is talking to me about your friend Alex, and the next thing I know I’m walking over to you and pulling you into a kiss.”

  “Pretty smooth move,” Spencer told him.

  Justin laughed again. His laugh was hearty and lacked guile. It told Spencer Justin was not only sincere but confident in both the positive and negative aspects of himself. “I’m also not smooth, either. When it comes to meeting guys.”