by John Inman
Dario watched me take a swallow of milk. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”
I felt my face flush. “Not really.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.
“Not anymore.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
My answer seemed to surprise him. He reached across the table and laid his hand over mine. When he spoke his voice was sad, and for the first time I thought I heard a hint of a rhythmic burr from his Hispanic bloodlines—a lilt of Barrio peppered over his vowels.
“Do you ever wonder if love is really worth all the misery it causes?”
I felt a pang to think this young man could already be asking himself that question.
“I’m not sure, Dario. Are you talking about love going in or love going out?”
“Both.”
I considered that and finally reached a conclusion. “I hope it is,” I said. “I’d like to think that love is a good thing.”
He turned to stare into the storm once again. “I’d like to think that too.”
A flash of lightning sparked across the room, taking us both by surprise. A second later thunder boomed, sounding like it was directly overhead. Dario and I both jumped like we’d been caught doing something we shouldn’t. Clutch stormed out of the room, stomping through the saucer and slopping milk halfway across the kitchen floor.
Dario smiled momentarily at the cat’s retreating rear end, then turned a guilty look in my direction. “I think we’re feeling sorry for ourselves.”
I grinned. “Not a pretty sight, is it?”
His luscious brown eyes—sorry, brown eye—squinted with silent laughter. “Uh-uh. Not pretty at all.”
I stared at our empty milk glasses. “Care for something stronger?”
He gave me a mischievous leer. “Think we should?”
Another boom of thunder rumbled overhead. A splash of rainwater sluiced across the kitchen window. I glanced at the wall clock above the stove. It wasn’t quite eleven. “I think the night is positively screaming for it.”
Without asking again, I fetched a couple of beers from the fridge. It was the only thing alcoholic I had in the house.
Before taking his first sip, he toasted me and we clinked our bottles together. “Thanks for helping me out tonight, Robert. I’m not sure what I would have done without you.”
“My pleasure,” I said and meant it. Aside from being smacked in the puss, nothing that had happened this evening had given me more pleasure in a long, long time. “Where do you think your friend is now?”
Dario studied the candle flame in contemplation. “I’d like to think he’s sitting outside my dorm building in a mud puddle waiting for me to come home and catching pneumonia because he’s getting a chill from all the rain, and pretty soon a cough will start racking through him, and the next thing he knows he’s running a fever and sweating bullets, and his lungs lock up from all the mucus that’s gathered there, and then before he knows it, he’s in intensive care with a tube up his dick. That too much to ask for?”
I bit back a laugh. Rubbing my jaw, which still didn’t feel quite up to par, I said, “Sounds like a reasonable request to me. So long as the tube has barbs on it.”
Dario’s lips spread wide in a grin, and once again he said, “Ow.”
“I wish you felt better,” I tsked.
“Actually,” he said, “now that I’ve pictured Lee in intensive care with a tube up his dick, I’m feeling pretty good.”
I studied the lines of his face in the flickering candlelight. Dario truly was incredibly handsome. Even with a shiner and a fat lip. Maybe I was prejudiced, but I thought I could see the goodness in him by nothing more than the gentle glint in his eye as he watched me back.
“Where were you born, Dario? Here in San Diego?”
“Mexico City. My parents immigrated here when I was six months old.”
“Do your parents still live here?”
He gazed down at the beer bottle in his hand. “They died in a car crash two years ago. Just before I started college, in fact.”
“That’s terrible.”
He nodded. “My brother lives in L.A. That’s where I grew up. That’s where I went to school. Rico’s an upholsterer. Has his own shop. I have a sister who married and moved to Arizona. I was the baby. How about you? Where you from?”
I could see he wanted to direct the conversation away from himself, so I let him. Perhaps the pain of his parents’ loss was still too new for him. “Indiana,” I said. “Farm boy, believe it or not. I got out about three seconds after I flipped my high school graduation tassel from the right side to the left. Joined the Navy and never looked back.”
“When did you start writing?” he asked.
The loss of his parents must have touched him deeply. Even the simple act of brushing across it in the midst of our conversation had left a dullness in his eyes that still lingered. I longed to reach out and touch his hand as it rested on the tabletop to let him know I was on his side. And for more selfish reasons too. I had felt his hands more than once tonight, and suddenly I craved to feel them again. With a healthy dose of willpower, I stifled the urge. “Maybe the more pertinent question would be, when did I stop writing?”
He leaned in to study my face in the wavering light. “You aren’t writing now?”
“Between books. Or that’s what I keep telling myself.”
“I’m sorry.” His one good eye appraised me so long I had to look away, but his words found me anyway. “It must be hard for someone like you not to do what they are meant to do. You’re a wonderful writer. You should never stop. Ever.”
Now it was my turn to be embarrassed. “I think maybe you’re a little prejudiced.”
He nodded. “I am. I’ve been prejudiced ever since I read your book. I’ve read all three of them, but it’s the first one that floored me. It still floors me.” He clapped his mouth shut, as if maybe he thought he had said too much. Then he apparently decided he hadn’t, because he tossed out a little more. “I never dreamed I would actually meet you. Or that you would end up being my protector.”
I let that last word settle around me like a warm cloak. “Is that what I am? Your protector?”
“In my eyes, yes.”
“Eye,” I said. “In your eye. You’ve only got one, you know. And I’m not much of a protector, I’m afraid. One bop on the chin and I was laid out flat on my ass in a mud puddle.”
He made a crooked grin. “I have to admit it wasn’t your best angle.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I merely chuckled. Rather than admit he was right, I groaned my way out of the chair and grabbed two more beers from the fridge.
“Thank you,” he said, when I handed him one. While I was at it, I grabbed the empties off the table and tossed them in the trash.
I reclaimed my chair, and suddenly we were both aware that a silence had settled over the condo that hadn’t been there before. We turned to the window in unison. The storm was letting up. Rain no longer sluiced down the glass. It had been several minutes since lightning streaked across the sky or thunder rumbled over our heads. Only the darkness of the blackout remained. And the compounded silence of the blackout too. No hum of background machinery. No distant rattle of the elevator carrying people up and down. No drone of voices from neighboring TVs, not that I ever really heard them anyway.
All I had to fill my head was the bottomless darkness, scarred by candles here and there, and my gentle companion sitting across from me with his puffed-up eye and swollen lip.
He caught me staring at him and cast a lazy smile. “Thank you,” he said again. And this time we both knew he wasn’t thanking me for the beer.
Dario gave a tiny jump. “Whoa!” he said, staring down at his lap.
I heard a purr, and Clutch lifted his head over the edge of the table. He bumped his head under Dario’s chin and was repaid with an ear rub.
“You’ve found a friend,” I said.
Dario tore his gaze from Clutch and blessed me with a look of wonder from his wounded face. “Two, I think,” he softly answered.
Chapter Five
WE STOOD on the balcony side by side, I in my sweats, Dario in my pj’s. Water dripped from the railings, and the cool breeze, still gusting from the storm, tossed our hair all over our heads. But for a scatter of headlights far below to give us a little perspective, and an occasional glimmer of candlelight burning from a window here and there in one of the other high-rises up and down the boulevard, we might have been standing on the precipice of a sunless universe. There were no lights above us at all. The moon and stars still lay cloaked in passing clouds. Soon they would shimmer back into existence and peek through, making the world alive again. I almost dreaded to see it happen. Something about the endless darkness and the tail end of the storm, cool and clean and fresh, made me want to simply breathe it in and let it carry me to whatever destination suited its needs.
Dario stood so close our shoulders touched.
“I should go home now,” he said softly, gazing out over the blackened city.
I turned to study his profile in what little light spilled through my balcony windows from the candles placed around the living room behind us.
“Don’t go. Not yet. Your friend might still be out there. Just stay here until morning. There’s no sense asking for trouble.”
Dario smiled, but it was a muted one. I suspected his lip was hurting again. He arched an eyebrow at me like a suspicious schoolmarm. “And staying here isn’t asking for trouble?”
I had to grin at that. He was absolutely right. “Not of the same caliber,” I said with a wink.
A practical thought crossed my mind. “Do you have classes in the morning?”
“Not until eleven.”
“That’s good, then. You can stay here and get some rest without worrying about getting bushwhacked on the way home. I’m sure the blackout won’t last much longer. By morning your clothes will be dry. I’ll even fix you some breakfast before you go. I think I have eggs. And I’m pretty sure there’s a skillet lying around somewhere.”
“I take it you don’t cook much.”
“What gave you that idea?”
He snorted. “Just a wild guess.” After a pause, he added, “Where would I sleep?”
“Well, as you can see it’s only a one-bedroom condo. My bed is big enough for us both, but maybe you’d rather be alone, in which case the sofa in the living room is more than comfy. Still, you would sleep better on the bed. You already have my word I’ll be a gentleman.”
Dario watched me out of his one operational eye. His mouth was turned up in the faintest of smiles. The scab that had formed on his upper lip lay black in the shadows, like someone had been at it with a Magic Marker. His swollen eye made me cringe just looking at it. Still, he appeared vaguely amused.
“I think I’m going to surprise you here,” he said.
“Uh-oh.”
“Yep.” He looked down, running his finger through the raindrops gleaming atop the railing. Then he gazed back at me. “I don’t want to be alone tonight. Even on your couch. I’d rather sleep with you in the bed.”
“I’m glad,” I said. “But I’ll still be a gentleman. You can trust me.”
He hesitated before answering. “If we ever see each other again, I might not hold you to that. I might not even want to. But tonight I think I’d better. I have some thinking to do. Plus I’m really tired. I’m more than willing to let you protect me a little longer.”
“I don’t know how much protecting I’ve done,” I said gently, “but I understand you’re tired, and probably emotionally drained. You’ve had a rough night. Mine wasn’t much better. We could both do with a good sleep. But….”
He stepped closer, laying his hand to the side of my arm. “But?”
I had to ask. I had to. “But did you say you might be willing to see me again. You know, as a friend?”
“I didn’t say as a friend.”
I blinked, studying the open way he stared back. When I spoke, my words were barely audible. He had quite effectively knocked the wind out of me. There was more promise of hope in his statement than I had heard from anyone in a long time. If I had misunderstood what he was trying to say, then I didn’t want to know. Not tonight.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
The words were no sooner out of my mouth than the world came alive around us. Lights blinked on everywhere. Streetlights blazed to life below. Lights in the windows of the neighboring buildings, and lights across the street and blocks away, stretching all the way across the city, blinked back into existence, one after another. The familiar hum of machinery that one never hears until it has gone missing for a while, rushed in to fill the empty corners with sound. Far below, Sombreros’ silly neon sign burst to life. The little Mexican boy waved his sombrero as he sat astride his neon burro.
Dario and I both gasped out a laugh at the sight of it.
“Pedro’s back,” he said with a grin. When he saw me watching him, he added, “That’s what everybody at the restaurant calls the kid on the sign. Pedro. He’s sort of our mascot.”
Pedro was waving his sombrero three blocks away. Even as we stared at him, someone flipped a switch, the sombrero froze in midair, the neon flickered out, and poor Pedro disappeared.
“Guess they didn’t realize the sign was still on when the power went off,” Dario said.
I smiled. “It’s his bedtime anyway. Just like it’s ours.” I brushed my hair back out of my eyes. “Come on, son. Let’s go to bed.”
But Dario didn’t move. “Please don’t call me son.”
I twisted in surprise. “I’m sorry.”
Dario seemed uncomfortable for one of the first times that evening. “No, it’s just that I don’t want you to think of me that way. I’m not that much younger than you. Plus, it reminds me of—”
His parents. Of course. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess—well, I guess I’m still feeling protective, although I didn’t really do anything except give your crazyass boyfriend an alternate target to pound on besides you.”
“You did more than that,” Dario said, his face solemn. “You’re still doing more than that.”
I reached out and laid the gentlest touch to the side of his face—after first studying the terrain to find a spot that wasn’t injured. “You look beat,” I said softly.
Once again, he stared out across the lights of the city. Those lights shimmered in the crystal darkness at either side of us, reaching as far as the eye could see. Straight ahead, we could see the curving lights of the Coronado Bridge twinkling in the night, and farther out a single line of golden lights from the Island of Coronado, bordering the bay. Beyond the island lights lay only the blackness of an invisible, storm-tossed sea, stretching all the way to the horizon. Blackouts meant little to the grand Pacific Ocean. It relied on the moon and stars alone to find its path. Our wee attempts at illuminating the world meant nothing to it at all.
“Golly, this view is beautiful,” Dario said, and turning to me, he took my hand and led me from the balcony. I switched on a couple of lights while Dario went around blowing out candles. I stabbed a button on the clothes dryer in the hall, and our rain-soaked clothes began tumbling around inside. I stood there for a moment staring down at Dario’s sneakers sitting in a puddle on the floor. They were the most beat-up sneakers I had ever seen. The kid needed new shoes. I picked them up and tossed them in the dryer with the clothes.
I returned to the living room to find Dario studying a painting over the fireplace.
He turned when I came up behind him.
“Now that I can actually see it, your condo is really nice.”
“Thanks. It’s only a one-bedroom, but the rooms are spacious, and like you said before, the view’s terrific. I love living downtown.” I cleared my throat and made a conscious effort not to shuffle my feet. “Without getting all awkward about it, are
you almost ready for bed?”
He nodded, and I thought I saw the faintest blush rise to his cheeks. “Okay. I-I wish I could brush my teeth.”
“I have a new brush still in the package in the right-hand bathroom drawer. Think of it as a gift from one friend to another.”
He watched me for the longest time after I said that. Slowly his face softened, as if he was beginning to like what my words might imply. Or maybe I was once again seeing what I wanted to see.
“Go on now,” I said. “Go brush your teeth. I’ll go after you.”
He nodded and, gathering up the yards of my oversized pj’s around him, took off for the bathroom, padding across the carpet on bare feet.
I switched off the lights in the living room and went to turn down the bed. When I was finished, I simply stood there at the side of it, not knowing what to do.
I didn’t have to worry about it long. Soon the bathroom door creaked open down the hall, and a moment later Dario poked his head through the bedroom door. “This must be the place,” he said.
“Make yourself at home,” I answered. “I’ll be right back.”
He nodded and watched me leave the room. Before I stepped through the bathroom door and closed it behind me, I heard the squeak of bedsprings as Dario crawled into my bed.
I had to stop what I was doing and hold my breath for a second to absorb the moment. Holy cow. What a night. I finally gave myself a shake and continued doing what I was about to do. I brushed my teeth, gargled, stared at my reflection in the mirror for a minute to build up my courage, then finally switched off the bathroom light and stepped from the room.
Dario had turned the bedroom light off. While I had been in the bathroom, the moon had burst through the clouds, illuminating the world below. In its blue-gray reflection, I saw an unfamiliar lump on the side of my bed. Then I heard the homey sound of a hand slapping the mattress, beckoning for me to join him.
“Come to bed,” he said, as if he had said it every night of his life.
I usually sleep nude, but not tonight. Tonight I left my sweats in place. The same as, I quickly realized as I slipped under the covers, Dario had left my borrowed pajamas in place.