by Peter Styles
He threw all that out the window, knocked it all aside as his fist slammed into the fat man’s jaw. Something cracked, and pain seared up his forearm and into his shoulder. The other man’s head whipped around, and then slowly turned back towards him. Hate filled that piggish gaze, and a snarl curled on flabby lips. Then, the fat man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he toppled to the side like a biblical giant struck down by an act from a vengeful God.
“Hey!” someone shouted. Angel looked up to see several men in manager vests rushing towards him. “Stop that! I’ve already called the cops!”
And just like that, Angel was calm. He nodded and sat down at the table behind him. “That’s fine.”
The managers looked baffled, and Angel focused on their expressions because out of the corner of his eye he could see Chance.
And he did not want to look at Chance. He knew what he would see. Disappointment, regret, humiliation. All his boyfriend wanted was a simple trip to relax without worries, and here he’d only gone and invited in something even worse.
“Uh…” The oldest of the managers looked around awkwardly and spoke to the others. “James, Henry, can you go restore order, please? One of you take workers, the other takes customers.” As the other two men obeyed, the remaining manager placed himself firmly between Angel and the fat man. “I appreciate you being so cooperative,” he said to Angel.
Angel just shrugged. What else was there to fight for when he’d just ruined everything?
Chapter 17
“Chance?”
Angel’s voice filtered through the wall between them, plaintive as a kitten crying out for its mother.
Chance kept his head in his hands, staring down at his ugly socks. They had taken his shoes, probably to prevent him from deciding to hang himself. He wouldn’t have, although he knew that was a thing that people did in order to escape the consequences of their actions.
But I didn’t even do anything. I shouldn’t be in here. All I wanted to do was see a geyser. And now I’m here.
For a moment, he wondered if he should be here. If he really ever should have gone anywhere with Angel. They had made so much progress and grown so close, and yet…now this. If only Angel hadn’t fought back, if only he had been able to say no to the adrenaline coursing through his veins. Maybe all that resisting he’d done had built up pressure, and now it all had come out in the absolute worst way.
He couldn’t be mad for that. He really couldn’t be mad about any of this. Just…disappointed. Disappointed in himself, and disappointed in Angel for doing this to them.
His boyfriend gave up on reaching him after a few more times, and silence descended upon the three holding cells in the police station. The doors were vibrant blue on the outside and fitted with glass on the interior so as to keep the detained in sight at all times, and the floor and walls were white. A pale green, thin mattress sat on a bench built into the wall. And that was it. Nothing else.
Chance kept his head in his hands as footsteps clomped down the hallway. He didn’t want to know what was going to happen or who that was. Besides, he was between Angel and the fat man. He wouldn’t be the first one the police spoke to.
Except, the footsteps didn’t stop when they reached Angel’s cell. They kept going another few feet first, and Chance became aware of a sharp gaze on him.
Reluctantly, he looked up.
A female police officer stood in front of his door with a bland expression on her face. “Chance Rutherford?”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“We need to speak to you. Don’t try anything.”
Clearly, they knew he was anything but a threat. They had cuffed the other two upon arrival, red and blue lights flashing outside the IHOP, but all they did to Chance was clamp a hand on his shoulder and guide him along.
Chance stood and shuffled forward in his socks while the officer unlocked the door and pulled it open. Her badge said Jessie.
Jessie stepped out of the way so that he could stand in the hallway, and she shut the door again behind him. “Okay,” she said, not touching him. “We’re just going to go back out the way you came in.”
Chance nodded and turned in the direction of the door, but was stopped by an indignant roar coming from one of the other cells.
“Are you kidding me? You’re going to talk to that fairy first?”
“Please be quiet and cooperative, sir,” was all Jessie said. She gestured with one hand for Chance to get a move on, and he did.
From one hallway to the next, and a sharp right turn directly into what was obviously an office. Chance blinked as he saw another cop sitting down at the desk, tapping away with two fingers on the desktop keyboard. “This isn’t an interrogation room.”
From behind him, Jessie made a sound that might have been amusement. “I didn’t say we needed to interrogate you. I said we needed to talk. Please, have a seat.”
Chance sat while Jessie strolled around to the other side and sat down beside the typing man. “This is Pat. Don’t mind him, he’s not part of this. This is just the least busy office we have at the moment.”
“Okay…” Chance drew out the word, shuffling his feet under the desk.
Jessie leaned forward, piercing him through with a calculating look. “We got statements from the managers, your waitress, other customers, that man’s wife…We know that you are not at fault for any of this. You aren’t in trouble, Mr. Rutherford.”
At any other time, he would have winced at the honorific. His shoulders sagged and he slumped slightly. “I’m not being arrested?”
“Nope.” Jessie picked up a single sheet of paper from the desk and slid it over to him. “This is all the information we have on you.”
Chance looked down. Besides his name and his address, his sex and height and weight, the rest of the paper was blank.
“You don’t have any prior offenses. Not even so much as a parking ticket or jaywalking. By all accounts, you’re a good, honest kid.” Jessie took the paper back and handed it over to Pat, who took it without looking and tucked it away into a file before resuming his own work. “So, you aren’t in trouble. But we need your side of the story. For our reports.”
Looking at her, Chance thought he could believe her. So, he recounted what happened as best as he could recall it. Jessie watched him, nodding occasionally while she jotted down what he said. And then it was over, and she put her pen down a few seconds later.
“That’s exactly how everyone says it went down. So, your story stands.” Jessie gave him a small smile that went nowhere but her mouth. “What can you tell us about Angel Frost?”
“Angel is my boyfriend,” Chance said. His heart pounded a little faster, as it did whenever he said those words. “We haven’t been together for very long. Long enough for me to know that I…”
That I love him?
“…that it’s real,” he said instead. “He’s a musician. Plays guitar. He travels around a lot. I took vacation from work so we could maybe travel together.”
“Is he typically violent?”
“No!” Chance said immediately. “Never. This guy pushed him over the edge.”
“Be that as it may, that man strikes me as the type who will press charges anyway and take this to court.”
Damn.
“He won’t win,” Jessie continued, “mostly because every single witness will state that he started this confrontation. What Angel did will be spoken of in terms of self-defense. However, he might keep trying to prolong the case until he gets his way. Angel might be facing a minor charge for disrupting peace, or provoked assault. There’s jail time for that, but it’s short and he can make it even shorter with good behavior.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
Jessie looked at Chance very seriously. “I want you to be prepared for what can happen in the future. You’re probably going to have to go home from your vacation without him.”
Without…
All at once, the weight of the world came
crashing in on him. Pressure settled on his chest, crushing the breath from his lungs. All this had been for nothing. Everything was going to go back to normal, like nothing ever happened. He couldn’t even imagine it, and yet he could also picture it so vividly that it was terrifying.
I don’t want to go back to the way I was.
But Chance knew he didn’t have a choice. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and turned his face up towards the ceiling. Tremors ran down his arms.
Softness pressed lightly against his elbow. He moved one hand aside to peek down at the bundle of tissues Jessie held out towards him. He took them, only now becoming aware that he was crying.
“I’m sorry to have to do this, but we’ll need you to stay in the station until we’re done speaking with everyone else. You don’t have to go back in the cell, though. You can stay right here with Pat while he does his report.”
“Yep,” Pat grunted.
Chance wasn’t sure which option was worse at this point: being away from Angel or being near but incapable of reaching him.
Jessie stood and patted Chance on the shoulder. “You’re a good kid. Shit happens to the best of us, especially when shitty people are involved. I’ll get you your belongings that we took. And I know you didn’t get to eat. I’ll get you something from the vending machine. Are you a chips or a candy man?”
I should be thankful that they’re doing this for me.
“Uh…candy. Thank you.”
And then he was alone in the room with nothing to do but sit and listen to the ticking of the clock, accompanied by sporadic bursts of bad typing and occasional mutters from Pat as he made mistakes. It might as well have been the holding cell. With a soft sigh, Chance leaned over and put his face in his hands again.
For the first time in his life, he knew what hate felt like. Oh, he thought he’d known it after his father died and his mother did everything she could to force him away, but now he knew he was wrong. Real hate didn’t burn hot. Real hate wasn’t throwing a punch or a grim need for revenge over a slight.
No. Hate was cold. Impassive. And hate was hell, because there wasn’t a damn thing he could do against that monster of a man who saw two guys enjoying themselves and decided to ruin their time because of it. And not just their time, but everything else.
“You’re probably going to have to go home from your vacation without him.”
Chapter 18
I’ve been down this road before.
Angel shuffled off after the cop who fetched him from his holding cell, blatantly ignoring the cries of the fat man that were even more indignant than before. He felt numb and weary and empty, in body and soul. What were they doing to Chance? Was he scared?
His hands clenched into fists, muscles bulging uncomfortably against the silver cuffs clamped around his wrists. Behind him, the cop named Jessie steered him down the hallways with a hand firmly on his shoulder. Most of the doors they passed were shut or only ajar, voices and the sound of typing filtering from the rooms beyond. However, they passed one which stood wide open. Angel glanced into it, more out of curiosity than anything else, and then he stopped so quickly that Jessie ran into him from behind.
Chance!
He opened his mouth to cry out his boyfriend’s name, but before he could Jessie stepped around between them and stared hard into his face. She was a tall woman and actually might have been even taller than he was. Her lips parted, moving so slowly that the sound came as the barest of whispers. “Move on.”
But…Chance…
Jessie’s hand pushed at his shoulder. His heart tearing in two, he let himself be shoved along even further down the hall. And where before Chance and Angel would have known each other’s presence anywhere, now Chance didn’t even seem aware of anything.
I’m your Ghostie. I haunt you. How can you ignore me?
They ended up in a secluded corner of the police station, although Angel knew exactly what it was. The big one-way window gave it away. The interrogation room. That dull, blank room with a featureless desk and nothing on the walls, not even a clock.
Jessie guided him over to the door and headed in after him, shutting it again. There came a soft click as someone locked it from the outside. “Take a seat, please.”
Angel sat. The chair was deliberately an uncomfortable wooden death trap. It squealed when he placed his weight upon it, making him wince.
Jessie sat down across from him. “Angel Frost is not your real name.”
“You cops are pretty smart after all,” Angel said sarcastically. “Real name is Davis McCoy but I haven’t gone by that in over a decade. Only thing you’ll find on me using that name is stuff too old to be of any importance.”
“We’ll have to get that information anyway,” Jessie snapped back at him. “Mr. Frost…Mr. McCoy…It would be in your best interest to be as cooperative as possible.”
“Just call me Angel. Please. I’ve been Angel almost as long as I was Davis.”
“Fine. Do you want to tell me why you had a name change?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t.” Just as the cop was about to snap at him, he held up one hand. Her eyes snapped around at the gesture, although she relaxed when it became clear that he wasn’t about to attack. “Hold on. You want my sob story? Fine. I left home. I have no home. I am homeless. No license, no other form of ID. I know my social but that’s about it. You can’t get a name change if you don’t have anything to back up your current name. I mostly changed the name because it seemed a better stage name. I was young. I had dumb ideas about what would fit me for the rest of my life. But it’s become who I am.”
“And who you are has been in quite a bit of trouble in the past,” Jessie said, her eyes narrowing. “Let’s talk about that, shall we?”
His heart didn’t sink. It couldn’t go any lower than the current position. “That’s fine. We can talk about that. Or we can talk about what happened tonight. I know you’re going to ask for my side of the story.”
“You can talk about whatever you want. Just remember, anything you say can and will be used against you.”
“I know.” And he did. This wasn’t his first rodeo. “I didn’t do anything to that man, whatever his name is. Not at first. All I wanted was to have a sugary dinner with my boyfriend. I wouldn’t probably have done anything at all if he hadn’t called me that name. That damn word.”
“What word?”
“You know the one,” he spat. “The one that all high-and-mighty homophobes use when talking about guys like me and Chance. That one. Sure, I shoved him, but all I wanted was for him to go away and get away from Chance. Chance is special. He means the world to me. I never, ever want any harm coming to him. So I shoved that asshole. And I wouldn’t have done anything else then if he hadn’t shoved Chance.”
The words poured from his lips in a rush, the way his songs sometimes did when he was caught up in them. Only when they ended did he realize he probably should have said a lot less than that, but then the cop might not have been looking at him like she believed him. Her eyes, while not friendly, were at least sympathetic.
“Angel?”
“Yeah?” he said, hoarsely.
“You might want to think about saying all that a little more eloquently when you go into court.” Jessie’s lips pressed together. “I hate to do it, but you shoved him first. Even if it was technically self-defense, if he was harassing you, you still made the first move. The judge and jury might be sympathetic with you…but the law comes first. I’m sure you know that.”
His throat tightened. “I do.”
“Then, you know what’s going to happen.”
Chapter 19
“Chance!” Angel said, pleadingly, as he hurried over to the doorway where he knew Chance was waiting. Jessie trailed behind him, a pair of handcuffs dangling from one hand. He was still only wearing his socks, a hole in the tip of the left alone allowing for his toe to poke through, but he didn’t care about that. He needed to see Chance.
His heart was in his throat, thinking that he might be ignored again by the one he loved, but when he came to stand in the doorway, he was rewarded with a hard thump and strong arms tossed around his neck. “Oof!”
Chance buried his face in Angel’s neck, breath hot on his skin. Angel clutched at him tightly, rubbing one hand up and down the tightly-corded muscles in his back. “You’re such an idiot, Ghostie,” Chance whispered.
Angel sighed. His heart ached. Eyes stinging, he raised one hand to bury in Chance’s hair. “I know I am. I just wanted to protect you.”
“I know.”
Words failed, and they just clutched at each other in silence for a very long moment. Then Chance pulled back slightly and looked around past Angel’s shoulder.
Angel tensed. He knew what was coming.
“Officer Jessie?” Chance spoke to the cop with his head pressed against Angel’s. “Can we go now?”
The cop didn’t speak for a very long moment. Angel’s hopes rose, hoping against hope that she might have changed her mind, that fate had aligned just right. But he heard hair swishing and knew she was shaking her head.
“I’m afraid not,” she said. “Actually, this right here is completely against protocol but I’m a romantic girl and I thought you deserved a chance to say goodbye.”
Chance stiffened. Angel closed his eyes, bracing.
“Say goodbye?” Chance demanded. “I know you said that before but I didn’t…I didn’t think…”
“You didn’t want to think,” Jessie interrupted. Chance tore away from Angel, and now they both turned around to face the cop. Her nostrils flared with frustration. “You’re too smart to think that you both could just walk away from this. You can, Chance, but Angel can’t. That’s why I’m breaking protocol. You boys have five minutes, supervised by Pat in there, to say goodbye to each other.”
“What?” Chance yelped. Angel couldn’t bear to look at him.