Worth Searching For

by Wendy Qualls

  Lito bit his lip, making a show of thinking it over, but then he nodded and returned Jake’s smile. “You’re on.”

  Oh, this was going to be a slaughter. The other guys would never know what hit them when Lito really opened up at the mic. And some deep, primal part of Dave was already crowing at being able to show off his partner. He wasn’t particularly looking forward to trying to ham up “Damn, I Feel Like a Woman” in front of Lito, or whatever else Jake and Chad were going to throw at him tonight, but any potential embarrassment was going to be so worth it.

  * * * *

  Lito and Dave got a table all to themselves, on the far side of the room from where everyone else was socializing. Lito had assumed Dave would want to chat with his friends, but Dave just shook his head and winked in response to Lito’s questioning look.

  It was all made clear once they actually started eating—Lito barely stopped himself from moaning aloud at the first bite of his dinner. Dave was watching his face intently, waiting for his reaction—God only knows what he saw, but if it made him smile like that it had to have been near pornographic. The catfish really was amazing, though. Fresh and hot from the deep-fryer, just the right amount of crispy, salted and spiced perfectly. He wanted to attack the rest of his plate, to wolf down the home fries and the onion rings as well, but eating those would have meant he wasn’t eating the fish.

  “Told you,” Dave teased. “I wanted to keep that reaction all for myself.” He took a much more leisurely bite of own and closed his eyes in pleasure. “Damn. I’ve tried to do these at home sometimes, when I’ve caught something worth eating, but it never comes out the way they do it here.”

  “I forgot you fish.”

  “Do you?”

  “Seriously?” Lito pointedly looked down at himself—burnt-sienna corduroy pants, a navy button-down, and his favorite silver Salvatore Ferragamo sneakers with a lighter gray around the eyelets—and raised an eyebrow. “City boy, remember? No, I don’t fish.”

  “Could try sometime.” Dave raised one eyebrow back, then winked. “I’ve got the pond out back—you’ve seen it. Has a little dock and everything. Granted, if I’m out there Lumpy and Woozy like to splash around and scare away any fish, but occasionally I leave them in their run and head out to have a beer and maybe catch some dinner. It’s…calming, I guess. Quiet. I’d love to take you out there once it gets warmer.”

  Lito could picture that. Dave was shirtless in his imagination, for some reason, but Lito had no trouble envisioning him relaxing in the sun in just his jeans and work boots, fishing pole loosely resting in one hand and a cold drink in the other. Which might possibly lead to the two of them naked, lazily frotting against each other on the dock with nobody but the dogs to see or hear it. Dave having to help him put the worm on the hook and throw out the fishing line and rewarding him with little kisses and touches whenever he does something right. Watching the sunset with Dave’s arm around him and Dave’s body heat as the evening cooled back down.

  Damn. That got really domestic, really fast. Lito cleared his throat and quickly tried one of the fries. Good, but not as amazing as the fish. “That would be fun,” he said evenly. Surrounded by Dave’s friends in the middle of the VFW was not the best place to get a hard-on, and definitely not if he was going to have to stand up in front of everyone and sing. “Tell me about your military service? Or is it something you don’t talk about?”

  Dave kept it light, but Lito still got a pretty decent picture of Dave’s life in the Army. Intense work stateside with his assigned dog, a six-month-old German Shepherd named Ranger. Then to one of the larger US bases in Afghanistan, where they underwent more intense training. Then to somewhere—Dave didn’t say where, but Lito got the impression he wasn’t supposed to tell—and he and Ranger did sweeps for IEDs.

  “How long did you work together?” Lito asked.

  “Four years.” Dave flashed him a sad half-smile. “Rick and I met in Basic, then bumped into each other again over in the sandbox. Got to be good friends in the last six months or so—we were talking about re-enlisting together, actually.”

  “What happened?”

  Dave’s shoulders drooped, even though he was still talking in the same factual tone as when they’d first walked in. “IED, unsurprisingly,” he said. “On a totally routine patrol through what should have been already-cleared territory. Ranger alerted on it and I was trying to narrow down where in the area it was when it went off.”

  “Damn.”

  “Pretty much.” Dave looked away, down toward what must have been a particularly interesting square of tile on the floor. “Ranger was between me and the IED, so he took the brunt of it. Bled out in less than a minute. He”—he took a shaky breath—“he kept his eyes on me the whole time he was dying. Not accusing, just…fuck.”

  “Dave, I’m sorry.” Lito wanted to grab his hand over the table and give it a squeeze, but he settled for trapping Dave’s foot between his own and squeezing that instead. “You don’t have to tell me, and I shouldn’t have asked.” He looked up at the dozen or so people already in the room—none of them close enough to hear the conversation, thank God. “I definitely shouldn’t have asked you about it here.”

  “No, it’s okay.” Dave sat up straighter, pulled his shoulders back. “It was ten years ago; I’m over Ranger by now.” He didn’t look it, but Lito wasn’t about to call him out. “It was that same explosion that sent Rick to the VA, though,” he continued. “They were able to save most of his legs but not his feet. He’s not a good candidate for prosthetics either, hence the wheelchair.”

  “He’s alluded to something like that in the past, but I figured he’s probably got rude people asking him all the time about it and I didn’t want to be one of them.” It was obvious Rick was otherwise healthy, except for the chair thing, so Lito had assumed some sort of accident. “Did you come back at the same time?”

  “I got to shuffle paperwork for the last few months until my four-year enlistment ended. Rick was in rehab and therapy for a lot longer than that. When he did get out, though, he didn’t really have anywhere to go. No family he was close to, no friends stateside who would be waiting on him, no girlfriend. I came back here to be nearer to my parents because why not, so I talked him into coming too.”

  “And then he met Sharon in Black Lake,” Lito surmised.

  Dave’s lips quirked up in his first true smile since they’d sat down. “When she and her ex split, she got the kennel in the divorce. The whole small business thing had been his big thing, but he was terrible with money so Sharon was already doing most of the managing anyway. The kennel was a lot smaller back then and they really only did baths and boarding. Then she and Rick started dating and he was able to start up some obedience classes, one-on-one work for dogs with behavioral problems, things like that. They extended the kennel a few years back and now have space for two dozen dogs. Plus Scratch and Sniff, of course. They’ve got the run of the place.”

  God, it was good to be back on a less fraught topic. “Do they get to play mascot?” Lito asked. “You know, advertise how well dogs can behave?”

  Dave snorted. “Scratch spends most of his days sacked out next to wherever Sharon is. Sniff hangs out in the office and lets them know whenever a car comes up the driveway.”

  A blast of feedback from the speakers interrupted their conversation. The DJ fixed it almost immediately, but everyone at the bar seemed to have taken it as a “we’re starting” signal—the tables filled up quickly. Jake plopped down next to Dave and another burly man slid into the chair beside Lito.

  This one Dave did remember. “Chad, Lito. Lito, my friend Chad.”

  Lito and Chad exchanged nods.

  “So,” Jake said, leaning in to talk over the short test clips of karaoke songs the DJ was playing. He plopped a thick black binder onto the table between their two plates. “Who’s up first? You’re still gonna let my boy her
e drag you into our musical death match, Lito?”

  He really had nothing to lose, except his dignity. And possibly his hearing, if Dave turned out to be a horrible singer. “It won’t be the first time Dave’s talked me into doing something dangerous or stupid,” Lito said. “That’s pretty much how I joined NALSAR.”

  Jake laughed. “Dave’s up first, then. Here—you pick out something for him. Doesn’t matter what it is, or if he knows it. Close your eyes and point, if you want to. If the song is by a chick, even better.”

  Lito scanned a few random pages of the list. It had obviously been well-used—there were grease spots here and there on the paper, and some of the songs were circled or underlined. They were alphabetical by artist, which would have been more helpful if he knew half of who these singers were. Lady Gaga, he knew. Teegarden & Van Winkle, not so much. He could feel Dave watching him as he browsed.

  “This is my chance to hear you impress me,” Lito murmured, turning his head so only Dave could see his lips moving. Probably couldn’t hear him over the terrible acoustics of the room, but that was okay. His eye caught on a one-hit wonder country hit he vaguely remembered hearing when he was a teenager. “This one,” he said louder. “‘Saturday Mornin’ Drinkin’’ by Rodger Williams. Nineteen eighty-four. You know it?”

  “Think so,” Dave drawled. “Reckon I can summon up some good ol’ redneck singin’ for ya.”

  God, the country twang was practically dripping from him. The accent shouldn’t have been sexy, but it was. Even more so than Dave’s regular Southern disregard for proper vowels.

  Jake and Chad were both already grinning. Dave shook his head at them, but he was smiling too. He took out one of the loose slips of paper from the front pocket of the binder, wrote his name and the song number on them, and walked them over to the DJ. Someone had gotten there first, a gray-bearded man with some impressive ink on his arms, but Dave secured the second slot. He wiggled an eyebrow at Lito on his way back to the table.

  The guy who went first wasn’t all that terrible, Lito decided. He sang an over-the-top patriotic but well-known tune. Several of the audience members joined him on the choruses—part and parcel of being ex-military, probably. God, I’d be a crap soldier, wouldn’t I? Nothing like being five foot five and a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet and then sitting next to three brawny Army types who could all bench-press him twice over to put everything in perspective. Hell, even the old guy on stage could probably take him apart in a fight.

  Dave bounded up to the stage next, with a cocky little smirk and a general wave to the rest of the room. He glanced over at the DJ and nodded. Damn, he was sexy.

  I’m left sittin’ here thinkin’

  ’Bout you, ’bout me, ’bout how it could be

  But it’s just me and my beeeeer

  And I’m Saturday mornin’ drinkin’

  Yeah, so round that up to really fucking sexy. Dave obviously knew the chorus a lot better than the verses, but he sang the whole song with a confidence Lito couldn’t help but respond to. Neither could the rest of the room, apparently—Dave exited the stage accompanied by substantially louder applause than the first guy had gotten. He flashed Lito a private little smug smile as he sat back down. Guess my ogling wasn’t exactly subtle.

  “That one was a softball,” Jake complained, but there wasn’t any actual malice in his tone. “Let me guess—you want Chad to go next?”

  “Eenie meenie miny moe.” Dave pointed to Jake, Chad, and Lito in turn, but immediately swung his finger back to pointing at Jake. “Let’s see what you can do with some Madonna, tough guy.”

  The answer, as it turned out, was “parade around on stage and try to vogue, not even remotely succeeding.” Lito wasn’t a music snob by any stretch of the imagination—anything except NPR would do—but seeing Jake butcher the Queen of Pop was both painful and humorous. There were a few more singers, of varying quality, then Chad did a passable rendition of “Billie Jean.” He had a mediocre voice and none of the theatricality of the original, but he had a good range and he got almost as much applause as Dave did. He sauntered back to their table and slapped an already-filled-out paper slip in front of Lito. “You’re up, kid.”

  Lito looked down at it—and had to stifle a laugh. “Ana Maria? Really?” The Puerto Rican twenty-year-old was currently on all the top forty stations after winning some sort of reality TV contest, but she’d had a decent following before that in Atlanta’s Hispanic community. That included Lito, who could have sung “All My Sistas (Mi Gente)” with his eyes closed.

  Dave reached over the table and slugged Chad none-too-gently on the arm. “Jackass. You’ve never managed to get all the way through that one. Lito, you don’t have to—someone pulls that ‘Sistas’ song out every time we do this, and every time it’s a train wreck. Everyone knows the chorus and then has to resort to making funny faces during the rap parts.”

  Chad grinned. “Think of it as a trial by fire, then. Although maybe you’ll manage rapping in Spanish better than we do.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. The comment had to be because he was a brown-skinned Latino. The guy wasn’t being malicious about it, but it didn’t take a huge mental leap to figure out why he assumed Lito would be bilingual. And okay, he was, but that wasn’t something Chad would have been able to tell just by looking at him. Lito knew damn well he didn’t have a telltale accent. Maybe “American,” but that was it. In the grand scheme of things it was no big deal, but it made him suddenly conscious of how he was the only non-white person there. Dave had introduced him to an African-American woman earlier, but she wasn’t in the room so she must have left already. Like Lito needed one more reminder of how much he didn’t fit in.

  Now wasn’t the time to get all pissy about assumptions, though, especially since Chad probably hadn’t meant anything by it. “I think I can manage,” Lito said. “As long as your expectations aren’t too high.”

  “I dunno—can you do that hip thing like she does?” Chad raised his hands and shimmied in his chair, to Jake’s loud laughter. “I mean, no homo, but that shit is hot.”

  “Hey.” Dave had scooted his chair over, close enough he could lean in and speak quietly into Lito’s ear. “Chad’s a nice guy, but you may have noticed he’s kind of an ass. Want me to say something to him later? Or to pick you a different song? I know you do speak Spanish because I’ve heard you grumble under your breath when you don’t think anyone’s listening, but that doesn’t mean you should have to perform for anyone.”

  Lito took a deep breath and tried to let the irritation drain out of him. “I’ll be fine,” he murmured back. Hell, he’d jumped into this with both feet—might as well ride it out. Plus it was kind of sweet that Dave was paying attention to him that closely. “I happen to know the song pretty well, so it wasn’t as bad a choice as it could have been.”

  Dave snorted softly. “If Jake makes me sing ‘I Feel Like a Woman’ one more time I’m gonna go all-out Barry White on him. See if I can do the whole thing an octave lower. I probably can’t, but I’ll try.”

  Oh, that sounded hilarious. “I’d pay to hear that.”

  “Private performance later, maybe.” Dave winked at him and nudged Lito’s leg with his knee. “Once we’re recovered from our all-fried dinner.”

  Neither of the other guys seemed to notice, or care, that Dave and Lito were sitting so close together. Lito took the chance to surreptitiously nudge Dave back. “I think you’d be just as sexy no matter what you sang,” he murmured.

  Dave let out a smug little contented hmmm. “Ditto.”

  Lito’s turn came up three songs later. Despite the modest size of the room and the “stage” being what looked like a shipping pallet with some carpeting tacked over it at one end of the room, it really did feel like stepping into the spotlight. The one flood lamp in the room, anyway. The DJ looked to him for confirmation and started the song.

 
All my sistas, all my sistas

  We gonna dance tonight

  Lito didn’t actually need to watch the little TV screen scrolling the lyrics, so he was free to look around the room from his new, slightly taller vantage point. Nineteen people, including the DJ and the guy now shutting down the fryer. One middle-aged woman and the rest men of varying ages. There were two up near the front who looked close to Lito’s own twenty-five, all the way up to a white-haired man with osteoporosis and a walker in the very back who could well have been a World War Two veteran.

  Let’s rock this club, mi gente

  Show ’em how we do it when we really wanna move it

  Lito hadn’t particularly been intending to dance, but the hip motions and the modified salsa steps were entirely involuntary. He’d probably watched the music video too many times. There were a few “woo!”s from around the room, so Lito let himself close his eyes and move with the music. Even the rapid-fire rap section in the middle of the song deserved some acknowledgment with more than just words. He looked at Dave just once, but once was enough—Dave was sitting up in his chair, back perfectly straight, and practically panting. In the best of ways. All the more reason to show off a bit. Yes, Lito could carry a tune, but more than that he knew how to dance. This wasn’t really the place for club moves, but salsa was more about the feeling and the motion of the music than the overt sexiness of club dancing anyway. The end of the song came sooner than he’d have liked. He was greeted with a standing ovation and more than a few cheers and whistles when he stepped down from the stage.

  “Damn,” Jake breathed, shaking his head. “That was amazing. I vote for Lito having won tonight, by a landslide.”

  “Oh, definitely.” The heat in Dave’s eyes was pure promise: I’m going to fuck you through the mattress. It was one of Lito’s favorite looks. He managed to summon a pleased smile to his face, but inside he was already begging Dave for more. Of everything. Dave was welcome to absolutely fucking take him apart as soon as they got home and Lito was going to be right there every step of the way. Fuck.