by Jake Biondi
BOYSTOWN
Season Five
Jake Biondi
BOYSTOWN Season Five
Jake Biondi
Copyright 2016 by Jake Biondi
Smashwords Edition
©2016 Jake Biondi
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Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
Start of Book
Episode #41
In spite of all that was occurring throughout the city, the night seemed unusually quiet. With stars sparkling around it, the moon smiled down on Chicago, providing a warm glow for the citizens below. A slight breeze whispered through the trees, which were just beginning to awaken after their long winter sleep, and soft waves massaged the shoreline of Lake Michigan.
On Lake Shore Drive, Adam Miranda stood silently in shock as he stared at the limp body of Dustin Alexander lying on the sidewalk in front of him. Dustin was the love of his life, despite Dustin dumping him to move to Chicago in pursuit of Derek Mancini. With a kind and forgiving heart, Adam would have taken Dustin back in an instant, despite the cruel things Dustin had said to him before leaving Seattle to make a life in Chicago.
As he stood looking down at Dustin, Adam recalled their past together. They had met at a bar in Seattle many years earlier, just after Adam had come out to his conservative family. His Asian parents were very traditional, “old world” in many respects, and had a very difficult time embracing their gay son. Consequently, Dustin quickly became Adam’s rock, the man upon whom he relied for love and support.
Then something changed. Dustin became aloof and disconnected. He withdrew from Adam, and the more Adam worked to keep their relationship moving forward, the more Dustin seemed to pull away. They stopped communicating, they stopped socializing together with friends, and they stopped having sex. It wasn’t until just before Dustin decided to move to Chicago that Adam realized Derek was the cause for his relationship’s demise. Dustin was consumed by fantasies about a life with Derek and seemed hell-bent on making those fantasies come true.
Life without Dustin had been difficult for Adam. His love for Dustin was real, true, and lasting. Without Dustin in Seattle, Adam’s life quickly lost focus and energy. While he tried to reconnect with his family, they still had difficulty with his sexual orientation. Trying to date other guys proved to be equally unfulfilling. Adam’s heart belonged to Dustin. And so he had decided to move to Chicago to begin a new life and make one final plea for Dustin to take him back.
Refocusing on Dustin’s limp body in front of him on the sidewalk, Adam stepped forward toward it. As blood from Dustin’s head slowly crept across the pavement, Adam knelt down to examine him more closely. He put his hand on Dustin’s shoulder and shook him gently. When Dustin didn’t respond, Adam tried again, more forcefully.
“Dustin! Dustin!” Adam continued his attempt to awaken Dustin without success. He dialed 911 on his phone and told the dispatcher that he needed an ambulance right away. He provided the address of Dustin’s apartment building and ended the call. Looking at the blood on the sidewalk, he pleaded, “Dustin, please wake up. Please.”
High above the sidewalk on Dustin’s balcony, Cole O’Brien jumped up from the floor and looked down to the sidewalk below. Putting his left hand over his right bicep, which was still bleeding from the stab wound inflicted by Dustin moments earlier, Cole leaned forward to get a better view of Dustin’s body.
“Oh, my God,” Cole gasped.
Rushing back inside Dustin’s apartment, Cole heard the voice of Michael Martinez still coming through his cell phone on the floor.
“Cole? Cole? What’s going on there?”
Leaving a trail of blood behind him, Cole grabbed the phone. “Michael, I’m here.”
“Are you okay? What the hell is going on there?”
“It’s Dustin. He’s gone over the balcony. I think he’s dead. You have to get an ambulance over here right away. Hurry.”
“What about you? Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine. Please, Michael. Just hurry.” Cole ended the call and looked around the room. He grabbed some cloth napkins from the table, rushed into the kitchen, soaked them with water from the sink, and pressed them to his bleeding arm. He tied a kitchen towel around his arm to hold the damp napkins in place. Then he ran out of the apartment toward the elevator.
While Cole headed down to the apartment lobby and Adam waited on the sidewalk for the ambulance to arrive, chaos broke out on Halsted Street in front of Rebound nightclub. Some people gathered on the sidewalk as others rushed into the street to help Keith Colgan and Jensen Stone whose bloody bodies rested on the pavement. Several people called 911 from their phones, others gathered around the two motionless men, and some even snapped photos on their cell phones.
Two blocks up the street, Hugo Martinez drove his rental car around the corner. He stopped quickly, pulled off his ski mask, and turned around to look back at the havoc he had caused. He nervously watched the people in the street surrounding Jensen and Keith.
“Fuck!” He yelled. “What have I done?” Without pausing any longer, Hugo turned his attention to the road in front of him and sped away.
For a brief moment, the flashing lights of a nearby ambulance bounced off Hugo’s car as he left the scene. The ambulance raced along Halsted Street toward Rebound in response to the 911 calls from spectators who witnessed Hugo’s car collide with Jensen as he pushed Keith out of the way.
Lying on the ground next to a parked car, Keith slowly regained consciousness. He opened his eyes and looked up at the faces of several strangers hovering over him. He squinted his eyes to bring the people around him into focus. Then he noticed the blood on his shirt and pants. Sitting up quickly, he let out a loud shriek in reaction to the sight of the blood covering him.
The lights and siren of the approaching ambulance only heightened Keith’s panic. He touched his hand to his head, running his fingers over the forehead cut that was causing blood to run down his face. Looking down at his shirt and pants, he realized that the blood he saw there was not his own, but the blood of Jensen who lay motionless a few feet away on the street.
“Oh, my God,” he repeated several times softly as he struggled to stand up and get closer to Jensen. Losing his balance, Keith fell back onto the pavement and people around him told him to sit still until the ambulance arrived.
From where he sat, Keith could see Jensen’s body. As the ambulance came to a stop, paramedics jumped out and rushed over to Jensen. They wasted little time tending to Jensen in a desperate attempt to save the life of the man who had sacrificed himself to save Keith.
At the same time, Jesse Morgan anxiously sat on the edge of his seat in the back of a taxicab waiting for the traffic light in front of the car to change from red to green. The cab driver failed to comprehend the urgency of the situation.
“I really need to get there,” Jesse reminded the driver.
“I can’t make the light change colors, buddy,” the taxi driver replied. “As soon as it changes, we’ll be on our way, I promise.”
Jesse didn’t reply; he just sat back in his seat and looked at his watch. For a moment, he recalled what Max Taylor had told him earlier aboard the Ciancio jet -- that Logan Pryce’s “goodbye” to him had seemed strange and somewhat desperate. Jesse immediately had felt that something was terribly wron
g and got off the jet, knowing he could always catch an early flight to California the next morning. When several phone calls to Logan went unanswered, Jesse had become more panicked, so he hailed a cab and headed directly from the airport to Logan’s apartment.
When the taxi finally arrived at Logan’s apartment, Jesse paid the driver by tossing some cash into the front seat and rushed out of the car to the front door of the building. He entered the building using his key and raced up the stairs to Logan’s unit. Upon reaching the door, Jesse used his key to unlock the lower door lock; however, when he turned the knob to open the door, he realized that the upper bolt lock was in place. He pushed on the door and it wouldn’t open. He tried his key in the upper lock, but it wouldn’t fit into the keyhole.
“Fuck,” he mumbled as he tried to force his key into the upper lock. When he failed again, he pounded forcefully on the door. “Logan! Logan, open up!”
When no response came after a few seconds, Jesse decided to break down the door. He stepped back and charged into the door, which made a noise, but didn’t open. He stepped back and again hurled himself at the door. His second attempt didn’t work, so he tried a third time. Stepping back further, he charged the door with all his strength.
The door burst open, sending pieces of the wood door trim in every direction. Jesse staggered into the apartment, putting his hands out and grabbing onto a nearby cabinet to keep from falling. Steadying himself for a moment, Jesse looked around the room. “Logan!”
Frantically scanning the living room, dining room, and hallway, Jesse saw no sign of Logan, so he raced toward the bedroom. Seeing the door closed, Jesse didn’t waste time trying the door knob. Instead, he burst through the door, flinging it open so forcefully that it slammed into the wall behind it, sending a vibration throughout the room.
Jesse immediately saw Logan’s body lying on the bed, his arms folded across his chest. Rushing toward the bed, Jesse quickly noticed the empty wine glass standing on the floor. Picking up the empty pill bottle lying beside the glass, Jesse looked at the label and then up at Logan, whose face remained expressionless.
“My God, Logan,” Jesse gasped. “What have you done?”
While Jesse called 911 on his cell phone, an ambulance carrying his mother Jacqueline Morgan raced toward a hospital in downtown St. Louis. With her hands on her abdomen, Jacqueline cried out in pain. A paramedic in the ambulance with Jacqueline tried to keep her calm as he monitored her vital signs.
“Please,” Jacqueline begged between her painful cramps, “don’t let my baby die.”
“You’ve got to try to stay calm,” the paramedic replied. “Take deep breaths. We’ll be at the hospital very soon.”
“Please,” Jacqueline said one more time before passing out.
The paramedic checked her pulse and then turned toward the ambulance driver. “You’d better pick up the pace or we may lose them both!”
As the ambulance sped toward the hospital in an effort to save Jacqueline and her baby, Joyelle Mancini sat on the sofa in Tyler Bennett’s apartment coping with the news of the paternity of her own baby.
She recalled the words of Mateo Martinez on the phone moments earlier: “I completed your special request and compared your sample to both Derek’s and Tyler’s. Joyelle, they both came back negative.”
Joyelle had prayed over and over that her baby was Tyler’s or even Derek’s, but her prayers apparently went unanswered. Mateo’s call forced her to face her reality -- that Marco Ciancio was her child’s father.
Joyelle wrapped her arms around her legs and pulled her knees toward her chest. Wrapped up in a ball on the sofa, Joyelle reflected back on her night with Marco. Tears streaming down her cheeks, Joyelle relived the evening from several months earlier.
She had just regained her memory from the New Year’s Eve explosion and had also just learned of Derek’s affair with Cole. Recognizing how distraught she was, some of her friends had taken her out for cocktails. As the night progressed, and the girls grew more and more intoxicated, some of them went home, until only Joyelle and one other friend remained.
Sitting at the bar, the two women nursed their drinks as they continued their conversation. Marco spotted Joyelle from across the bar and walked over to her.
“Good evening, ladies,” Marco said with a shrewd smile.
Joyelle slurred her words as she spoke. “I know you.”
“You’re a hottie,” the other girl said as she ran her hand over Marco’s shirt.
“That’s kind of you to say,” Marco replied. “How are you, Joyelle? Looks like you two are having quite an evening.”
“We’re discussing the asshole she is married to,” the other woman blurted out.
“Derek?” Marco asked. “What has he done now? I never thought he was a good enough match for you.”
Joyelle turned away from Marco to face the bartender. “I’ll have another.”
“Not sure that’s a great idea,” the bartender said, looking at Marco for affirmation.
“I agree,” Marco said. “Probably time to go home.”
“No,” Joyelle said, somewhat angrily. “I don’t want to go home.”
Her friend checked her phone. “Oh, my husband is here to take me home. Come on, Joyelle, we’ll give you a ride.”
“I don’t have any home to go to,” Joyelle said quietly.
“You can stay with me then,” the friend offered.
“No, no,” Marco told the friend. “I’ll take care of her. You go on ahead.”
“You sure?” the friend asked.
“Joyelle and I are old friends. I’ll see she gets home safely.”
“I told you, I don’t have a home anymore,” Joyelle repeated.
The friend stood up from her stool and kissed Joyelle on the cheek. “I’ll talk to you in the morning. Don’t worry, this will all work out.” She looked at Marco. “Thank you for getting her home.” The woman took a few steps and then turned around. “Oh, I almost forgot to pay.”
“I’ll get it,” Marco replied. “Go on.”
“Hot and generous,” the woman stated. “Maybe Joyelle should have married you instead of Derek.” The woman turned and walked away.
“Maybe,” Marco said with a smile. Then he turned his attention to Joyelle. “Okay, time to go.”
“Not yet...”
Marco reached into the breast pocket of his suit coat and pulled out three one hundred-dollar bills, which he handed to the bartender. “Will this cover her bill?”
The bartender laughed. “It’ll cover their bill two times over.”
“Good. It’s yours.”
“Thank you,” the bartender said. “Do you need anything else?”
“I think we’ll be just fine,” Marco remarked. “Thank you.”
The bartender held up the hundred-dollar bills and said, “Thanks again.” Then he walked away to take a drink order from another customer.
Marco returned his focus to Joyelle, who was struggling to put her coat on. Marco lifted it from the back of her seat and helped her get it on properly. Then he wrapped his arm around her and helped her stand up.
Clumsily, Joyelle took to her feet and, with his arm around her, they slowly made their way out of the bar and into the hotel lobby.
“I can’t go home,” Joyelle said desperately to Marco. “I can’t be around Derek.”
Marco put his index finger up to her lips. “Shh, you’re coming with me. I have a suite here at the hotel.”
“Oh, I don’t know about--”
Marco interrupted her. “Don’t worry; it’ll be okay.”
Marco escorted Joyelle to the elevator and then to his suite. When they entered the room, the entire city skyline could be seen through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Joyelle walked over to look at the city lights while Marco pulled off his suit coat and tie. Then he quietly stepped over to her and put his arm around her waist.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Marco asked. “Just like you.”
Joyelle turned to face him, their noses practically touching. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not? It’s true. I’ve always thought that.”
“Derek doesn’t think so anymore,” Joyelle whispered. “Apparently, now he’s into boys.”
Marco pulled Joyelle even closer to him. “I’m not Derek.” Marco kissed Joyelle, who momentarily resisted him, but then ran her hands over his chest. “You deserve a real man.”
Joyelle looked into Marco’s eyes. “And I suppose you think that’s you?”
“I know it’s me,” Marco said with a smile and then kissed her again, this time far more passionately. His mouth eventually found her neck as his fingers unzipped the back of her blouse.
Rather than refusing him, Joyelle encouraged Marco. Her fingers unbuttoned his dress shirt, revealing his hairy, muscular chest. Running her fingers over his firm nipples, Joyelle kissed him again, her tongue exploring his mouth.
He quickly opened her bra and let it and her blouse fall from her body to the floor. His hands groped her breasts while his tongue tangled around hers. He then ran his hands up her arms and over her shoulders to her neck. He pushed her hair out of his way and placed one hand on each side of her face, deepening his kisses as he kicked off his shoes.
Slowly, he slid his left hand down her back and under her skirt. He worked his way under her panties and then around to her front. When his fingers came in contact with her vagina, her entire body twitched.
She let out a moan and stepped back from him momentarily. Marco paused and she looked directly into his eyes. “Don’t stop,” she whispered as she unzipped her skirt and let it drop onto the floor near her blouse and bra. Her underwear quickly joined the other garments on the hotel room floor. Then she grabbed his large hand and pulled it back to her crotch.
Marco unclasped his belt and dropped his pants. The swollen head of his penis was already emerging from his underwear and Joyelle reached forward to pull his briefs off of him. Naked, Marco stepped forward and pulled her close.