by Max Walker
One page of evidence jumped out at me. It was an interview done with a nearby bodega owner. The man said he’d witnessed two individuals, both men, running past his store late at night, and they appeared to be holding black ski masks in their hands. There were no other interviews or witnesses found, which was difficult for me to believe. I wondered how hard the police had worked on finding Derrick’s killer, because judging by these documents, they’d worked a total of three hours before calling it quits on the case.
I jotted down the bodega’s name and address and looked up the other stores surrounding it. The cops had asked the bodega owner if he had any cameras and the answer was no, but they’d never bothered to ask any of the neighboring businesses. I knew the chance of finding footage from six years back was slim to none, but that wouldn’t stop me from trying.
Next on the agenda was to dig into this Greg character. From what Oliver had said, he seemed to be a prime suspect. Funny enough, though, there were zero interviews recorded between him and the police. It started to make my blood boil. If they had only followed the trail before it had gotten cold, then maybe Oliver wouldn’t have been in the position he was now.
Another thought hit me with an equal amount of force: if the cops had solved this, he wouldn’t have been in my office.
I looked down at the notes I’d taken. Greg’s name was circled in red. On my computer, I typed his name in and hit Search. It took me some time and a lot of clicking, but I was finally able to find a Greg Williamson who lived in Florida and matched Oliver’s description. His social media was on lockdown mode, giving me only his name and the fact that he enjoyed watching The Great British Bake Off.
Wonderful. Just wonderful.
I sighed and clicked the log-in button on the corner. Before I could type in my information, a knock on the door drew my attention.
“Come in.”
The door creaked open and in walked Andrew Barker, the always jolly manager of this Stonewall branch. He and I had developed a quick friendship, and seeing his face always put a smile on mine. Not to mention, he had a flair for clothes, and his shirts were always a blast of color and design that grabbed attention wherever he went.
Today he was wearing a white shirt with a colorful bouquet of different flowers printed across his chest and shoulders. His hair had been cut fresh, too, with the sides short and the top long so that it curled into a small wave in the front. His pants were a bright blue and fit snug around his legs, drawing attention down to his eye-catching white-and-red trainers.
“Hey there, Beck,” Andrew said.
“You all right?”
He nodded, coming into the office. “I always get so thrown off by that question. Like… do you know something I don’t? Should I not be all right?”
I laughed. “It’s better than ‘hey, whatsssuuup, duuude?’” I tried to mimic the tone of a surfer boy the best I could. Even threw up a little hand wave the way I’d seen them do in films.
“Hmm.” Andrew cocked his head and hooked a finger on his chin. “Yeah, you’re right. But also, I don’t think anyone’s said that since Baywatch was on TV.”
“Way to date me there.”
“I’m not dating anyone, Beck. I’m happily taken, thank you very much.”
“Mhmm. Nice save, mate.” More laughter.
“Hey, listen, I don’t want to take up too much of your time. Clearly you’ve got a lot on your plate.” Andrew motioned at the disaster that was my desk. “Just wanted to tell you that the police are going to be coming in on Friday to take a statement from everyone. I talked with the sheriff and she said that the Miami Beach PD was going to throw a lot of resources into finding out who wants us out of the neighborhood.”
Ah great. A chat with the police. Exactly how I wanted to end my week.
“Good,” I said, biting back my frustration. “Do you believe her?”
Andrew shrugged. “I guess we’ll see. I don’t like being outright pessimistic, and she did seem genuine when we spoke.”
“The statements are a good sign, but I’ll still keep my eyes wide open in the meantime. We’re a building full of talented detectives; we should be able to figure this out.”
“Yeah, you’d think that. The other day it took four of us, including Shiro’s new boo, to figure out how the new coffee machine works, so…”
I laughed, imagining the four of them pressing all kinds of buttons.
“I just want this done, you know?” Andrew looked out the window over my shoulder. “It’s just giving me flashbacks. Bad ones.” He dropped his head. A shiver passed through him. “Real bad ones.”
“The Unicorn?”
Andrew took in a sharp breath. Even saying that name out loud drew a chill through the air. I had heard about the tragedy that had haunted the Stonewall detectives back in New York. They had been hunted by a serial killer, not knowing how close the killer actually was to all of them.
“I know it’s not the same. This was just graffiti on the door, and it’s probably going to be some dumb kids by the end of the day, but… still. I don’t know.” He shook his shoulders, as if trying to get the bad energy off him.
He was right, though. Of course it was upsetting to find the words “You aren’t welcome here” with an angel painted underneath it on our front door, but it was leagues away from the terrible things Andrew and the others had experienced with the Unicorn.
“It’ll be okay,” I said, wanting to reassure Andrew. He was too smiley of a guy to be frowning. “It was probably a onetime thing and that’s it. Once they see that none of us are leaving, then they’ll leave us alone.”
“You’re right.” He straightened his shoulders, the smile returning. “I hope so at least.” He clapped his hands. “All right, I need to start closing up shop. Deck’s got a date planned for us tonight. Something about a helicopter ride and a candlelit dinner.”
My brows rose. “Oh, that sounds like he’s either about to propose to you or about to apologize for something.”
Andrew shrugged, the smile not disappearing. “Guess we’ll find out tonight!” We both laughed, the dark fog from mention of the Unicorn quickly pushed away. “Knowing him, though, the helicopter ride is probably a virtual reality thing. He just bought that new headset. He also hates heights. Loves horses, hates heights. Two Deck facts in case you needed them tonight.”
I laughed again, a common occurrence when Andrew was in the room.
“Have fun tonight,” I said, wondering for a second if Andrew really did have a proposal in his near future. I had chatted with Declan and Andrew together a few times now, and every time was like hanging out with old friends, the kind that are so comfortable with each other that they make you instantly comfortable with them.
He said goodbye and walked out of the room, his steps having an excited bounce to them.
I went back to work, honing in on Greg and spending the rest of the evening trying to dig up anything on him.
Sleep was difficult to find that night. My mind tossed about with all kinds of different theories and imaginary scenarios, all in search of who were under those masks the night Oliver and Derrick were attacked. It felt like finding two needles in a truckload of haystacks, but I was determined. I already managed to track down a current address for Greg. He had his social media accounts on lockdown, so I couldn’t dig too deep until he accepted the friend request from “Lisa Henry,” the Facebook account I used to sneak past some people’s privacy settings.
Curiously, when I went digging through Greg’s social accounts, I noticed that most of his posts seem to have been deleted. He had a pattern of posting a ton, and a lot of dumb stuff, too. But for some reason, if I went back to two years ago, the posts turned into one every few months or so. And they weren’t the best posts either. There was anger in the status updates that were left.
My LIFE is shit. I can’t fix things and I can’t be honest.
I’m logging off for a few days, i can’t stay on here. Too much going on in my head. I’ll
be ok though.
That American Idols result was BS!
I clicked into his friend list and dug around some more. He didn’t have a long list, so it didn’t take long for me to land on someone suspicious.
Mario Reyes. He set off warning bells just by glancing at his profile picture. Oliver hadn’t mentioned him, but I clicked the profile photo and magnified it on my screen. The one and only photo on the account looked at least six years old, but it was enough to write his name down as a suspect. It wasn’t necessarily anything homophobic or misogynistic that did it; it was the colors he was wearing and the hand sign he was making at the side of his hip. His shirt was black, his pants black, but off his hip hung a bright yellow bandana. His fingers were twisted at his side, discreet enough to seem like he was just caught moving in the photo, but only if you didn’t know how to read the gang signs.
Mario was a member of the Avispas, the Spanish word for wasps. That’s exactly what those tossers were. They went around, stinging left and right and fucking up everyone’s day.
If this man was a member of the Avispas, then he would have no qualms about stabbing an innocent boy just for fighting back. Could Greg have gotten together with Mario and planned this attack? They were connected online for a reason; they had to have known each other in some capacity. Greg lived next to Oliver; he could have devoted time to studying Oliver’s schedule, to figuring out when and where he would be the most vulnerable. The police may have thought the assailants didn’t know Oliver and Derrick, but I believed Oliver when he said the opposite.
Those questions kept me up close to midnight.
And then other thoughts began keeping me up.
Images of Oliver, fresh in my mind, pictures of him back on my lap, smiling and kissing and groping and moaning. It was a shock, seeing him again. It felt like a bloody miracle, even if we were linked through Jonah. I had no idea, and neither did Oliver, which made it all the more bizarre. Jonah had mentioned his brother before, but his name had slipped my mind, especially after the day I had been through when I met Oliver. My brain was a sieve, and all the contents had left the moment he and I locked eyes for the first time.
My phone buzzed, the screen lighting up my room. I rolled over and grabbed it, expecting some kind of spam text.
It wasn’t a text about free car insurance. It was Oliver, his number already saved in my phone.
OLIVER: Ok this probably looks like a ‘you up?’ text but I swear it isn’t.
Barely a minute later.
OLIVER: You up?
My smile came out of nowhere.
BECKHAM: Yup. Can’t sleep tonight.
OLIVER: Same.
OLIVER: I even tried playing jungle sounds but I got scared when it sounded like two tigers were fighting it out next to my head.
My laughter filled the empty room.
BECKHAM: Well you are the tiger whisperer, Mr. Jamison. I woulda thought those sounds relaxed you.
OLIVER: Hahaa. Let’s not bring that up again, kk?
OLIVER: OK?
His text bubble ended up slamming onto my screen, making the ones before it in the chain shake. I’d never seen that happen before.
BECKHAM: Whoa. What kind of voodoo is that.
OLIVER: You mean this?
His text bubble started off small and grew on my screen. Another effect I hadn’t seen before.
OLIVER: Or this?
The blue bubble was highlighted by a spotlight. I cracked a smile.
OLIVER: And for the grand finale. How bout this:
And the next text message was an emoji of a big eggplant, except it wasn’t just one eggplant. Somehow there were hundreds of the eggplant text bubbles floating around my screen, all settling down into just one.
I snorted. We chatted for the rest of the night, texting about all kinds of bullshit, until at some point, and I’m not exactly sure when, I fell asleep with the phone still in my hand, a smile on my face.
10 Oliver Brightly
Seeing Beckham walking down the street toward me, smiling wide and—holy mother of sweet gay pearl—a bouquet of bright flowers in his hand, well, my heart pretty much melted on the spot. My knees were shaky, and my stomach was doing an impressive set of gymnastic-level flips.
Sticking all the landings, of course.
“You look great,” he said, his voice and accent washing over me.
“So do you.” We hugged. His big arms wrapped around me. My hug landed lower, closer to his hips. We held each other for a split second longer than what a normal hug would entail.
“These are for you.” He held the flowers out. They were an arrangement of light pink roses and peonies.
“Thank you so much, Beckham. You really didn’t have to.”
I took them and brought them up to my nose, taking in the fresh flower scent that I loved.
“No one’s ever given me flowers before.”
“I wasn’t sure if it was a dated thing to do or not.”
“It’s not,” I assured him. “It’s a special thing is what it is.”
I looked into those blue eyes and found myself falling headfirst. I had to look away, back down at the gorgeous and fragrant flowers in my hand.
“Let’s go put them in your car so you don’t have to hold them. You parked in the same car park as me, right?” Beckham asked, pointing a finger toward the garage building. I nodded and led him to where I’d parked, chatting about our day the entire way. It was hot out, but my car was parked underneath cover, so I wasn’t worried that the flowers would start a bonfire by the time we got back.
I delicately set the flowers on the front seat. Beckham was standing close behind me. When I turned, there were only a few inches separating us. I took a breath, frozen, feeling his body so close to mine. I could almost feel our legs becoming tangled, our hard bodies pressing together.
“Ready for some art?” Beckham said, taking a step back. I wanted to say “no, fuck the art, come over here and let’s fog up my windows,” but instead, what I actually said was “Yesssss, let’s go!”.
The Wynwood Walls was a relatively new area in Miami that was beginning to attract people from all around the world. It used to be an area known less for its beautiful art and more for its high crime rate and lack of things to do. No one really went to Wynwood until 2009, when an urban developer saw potential in the area and bought out almost two dozen properties so he could revitalize them and create a walkable and entertaining neighborhood. The cluster of run-down buildings and warehouses had evolved into delicious restaurants and bars, along with cool tattoo shops and art galleries. Then, of course, there were the actual Wynwood Walls, which was a walk through larger-than-life art murals painted on red-bricked walls that seemed to try and reach up into the cloud-filled sky.
Things really took off when the annual Art Basel festival named Wynwood its home, drawing celebrities of all kinds. From basketball players to movie stars to the majestic and ephemeral Queen Bey herself, a lot of people enjoyed walking through the Wynwood Walls.
Today, there was no Beyoncé sighting, but there were plenty of other people walking around, admiring the stunning murals and walking through the museum. Beckham and I joined the moving crowd, walking through the gardens and pointing out pieces we each liked. Most of the walls were covered from bottom to top in blasts of color.
“Check that one out,” I said, pointing at one wall that had a row of elephant butts pointed at us, each elephant a different color of the rainbow. “Elephants are one of my favorite animals, but I’m not sure I’m too fond of this angle.”
Beckham took a step back and put a finger to his lips, as if he were a renowned art enthusiast examining a rare piece. “Hmm. Yes… I do feel like we’re about to be shat on. But in an artistic way, at least.”
“At least,” I echoed, laughing along as we continued walking down the path.
“So what does Oliver Jamison Brightly do on his spare time, besides stare at elephant arses.”
“Excuse me,” I said,
putting a hand to my chest, “That’s actually all I do, thank you very much.”
Beckham laughed as we continued walking down the path. The Miami sun wasn’t as harsh in the early evening, so the heat was bearable as we walked. “Seriously, though, I haven’t had all that much time to do anything. Not until recently. All of my undergrad was spent studying and trying to get into vet school. Then vet school comes around and all of my time is spent studying and trying to stay in vet school.”
“You’re at the finish line, though, right?”
I nod. “Yup, thank gawd. I’m so excited to just get out into the real world and leave all this school stuff behind. I don’t want to spend the entirety of my youth buried in books and debt.”
“It’s better than how I spent my younger years.”
“And how was that?” We stopped in front of a sculpture of a dolphin made out of bobby pins and paper clips.
“Boozing, drugs, running away from crap I should have faced head on. You know, that kind of stuff.”
I tore my eyes from the shiny dolphin seemingly hanging in thin air. Beckham was looking at the sculpture, but he turned when he felt my eyes on him.
“What were you running from?” I wanted to know. It felt like Beckham was holding on to a book I’d been dying to read for my entire life. I wanted to know everything, from the beginning to the middle to the very end.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Annnnd the book snapped shut.
“Are you still running?” I asked, not wanting to drop the topic. I felt pushy.
“You can say that, yeah.”
“Say that? I asked a question!”
We both laughed, even though Beckham still didn’t supply me an answer. He was shielding himself from the world for some reason, and that meant the shield was blocking me, too. I looked back at the sculpture although my thoughts were painting all kinds of scenarios Beckham could be running from.
“When did you move to America?”
“I was twenty-three. I’d been working at some pubs back in London and banked enough coins to make the jump. I started working under the table at a bar on South Beach. It was a difficult time, but it taught me everything I needed to know to make it in the States.”