There's This Guy

by Rhys Ford

  “Could have left,” Jake replied without thinking, and his father’s hateful snort splattered potato chunks across the blanket. “Didn’t she have family she—”

  “Her family was shit. Mostly drunks.”

  The irony of his father condemning his mother’s family for drinking heavily while he died slowly of cancers he’d brought on himself didn’t escape Jake.

  “Would have dumped her if I’d known. I was up in Montreal doing shipyard work. Walking off would have meant me losing the work. They take care of their own there, those Frenchies. The yard boss came after me the first time she tried to pop one out, but he couldn’t prove I did anything, and I made sure she didn’t say nothing.” He slapped at the next forkful, sending a long green bean to the floor, then continued on as if nothing had happened. “So then, I was thinking, maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe she’ll give me a kid who’ll make something of himself, and instead she gives me a faggot for a son. Nothing but grief.”

  It would have been so easy to stab the metal fork into his eye. Every single cell in his body begged Jake to sink his fingers into the soft meat of his father’s face and pop out whatever bits of flesh he could peel from the man’s bones. He tasted blood, startled at the metallic hit in his mouth, then realized he’d bitten his tongue, a sharp dig of teeth through the spongy flesh.

  “Sure, your wife did her best,” he finally choked out. “Your son too.”

  Jake had to stare up at the ceiling. His chest hurt too much to look at the man he’d promised his mother he’d care for. Rage consumed him, flaring into a maelstrom of pain, and Jake strained to pull his mother’s face out of his memories, shuddering with each long, tortured breath. His father rambled on, swearing about long forgotten imagined slights and running a tight house. Blinking, he tightened his hold on the fork, determined to force another few mouthfuls into the man.

  “Boy was a disappointment from the first day he drew breath. Knew he was wrong from the first moment I laid eyes on him, but she wanted him something bad. Put the kid ahead of me in fucking everything, and that’s not right. Man should come first with his wife, with everyone in the whole damned house.” The man squinted again, frowning across the bed at Jake. “What I should have done was take that cast iron skillet to his head instead of hers, right from the very fucking beginning. That’s what I should have done. Life would have been a hell of a lot better without that damned kid.”

  HOME WAS a welcome relief of stale air and cold beer. Jake stripped off his shirt nearly as soon as he got through the front door and tossed the balled-up fabric into a laundry basket, then stretched his arms out, feeling every second of the long day sweating out of his skin. Cranking open the windows helped a little bit, but the gaps let the street in, a chatter of Korean and the smell of grilling meat from the restaurant behind the building.

  “God, what a shitty, shitty day.” The whiskey on one of the shelves lining the long wall called to him, promising to numb the prickle of emotions eating at his insides. Rubbing at his face, Jake gave the half-empty bottle a long look, then headed to the bathroom. “Weekday, Jakey boy. And you’re talking to yourself again. Great.”

  His shower was a cold one once he let the water run through. The heat of the day kept the water warm, and he had to flush the pipes out before climbing in to stand under the tepid stream. A handful of citrus-ginger liquid soap on a pouf frothed up enough for Jake to scrub himself clean. Ten minutes into the shower and the water finally turned cold, sluicing the heat from Jake’s body. He stood under the pounding showerhead, thankful for the old building’s powerful water pressure, and let the water’s cold prick phantom needles into his skin.

  “Fuck, I’m going to have to fix… that thing with Celeste. Jumped down her damned throat, and for what?” The yellowed bathtub enclosure was cool against his skull when he rested his head back against the sidewall. “Shit.”

  Mingled in with the flush of shame about Celeste was a heavier, thicker longing for Dallas. He’d spent most of the day trying to ignore the emotions Dallas brought out in him. His body ached with echoes of the beating he’d gotten from his father the last time he’d acted on his desires for another man, and he rubbed at his chest, wishing the burning in his heart would go away. He’d lost too much giving in to his needs—his dignity, his sense of self, his mother—and Jake wondered if the pain of that night would ever stop slicing through him. One damned wrong turn and he’d lost fucking everything… except his father.

  His damned sick-in-the-head father.

  “No. Done with him right now.” Slamming his fist against the stall wall, he swore, biting out a bit of French he’d learned from his mother. He got out, dried himself off, and padded back out to the main room.

  He wasn’t going to think about his father. He couldn’t. Ron Moore belonged in a box on a shelf Jake only took out when it rattled for attention, and the guilt of putting him back there every day was getting too heavy to carry. Tomorrow was going to be another day of hot metal and cold rage, choked down with a mouthful of beer and a sandwich. His stomach growled, reminding Jake he’d forgotten his lunch at the shop. It was nine o’clock, and ordering a pizza was a luxury he couldn’t afford, not until he took a good hard look at his bills.

  “Should have grabbed one of those five dollar pepperonis,” he grumbled at his open fridge, tugging on a pair of shorts while trying to keep the door open with his shoulder. The half-eaten box of pad thai was probably still good. He thought back to when he’d brought it home from the shop’s month-end lunch. “Yeah, only two days old. It’s fine. Hot sauce. That’s what it needs. Just some… juice.”

  Since the beer came from the same luncheon, the selection was odd, the bottles and food hastily packed into a box and shoved at him by Evancho before Jake’d left for the day. He wasn’t convinced about the pumpkin-spiced ale, so it stayed in the back for the day when he was ready to brave its taste. Evancho liked the idea of beer, always bringing in microbrews from places around Los Angeles, but the man drank anything, including fruity concoctions packaged in brown bottles and sold as the next best thing.

  “Raspberry Moonrise IPA.” Jake studied the label. “Brewed and bottled in Glendale. Huh. Okay, how bad can it be?”

  It wasn’t the worst he’d ever had, but it definitely was raspberry, a splash of Otter Pop in a fairly decent beer. Armed with a fork, the beer, and the box of pad thai, Jake flopped down onto the couch with every intention on eating, then crashing immediately afterward.

  But if the whiskey bottle whispered his name, the curls of metal and arc welder dominating the far side of the long room screamed it.

  The shapes called to him, begged to be molded into a waterfall of beaten silver and russet. His mind crawled with the need to create the spaces between the forms. It was different at home. Work was… work. He had to follow form there, rigid lines of design dictated by other people’s imaginations. Sure, there were times when Evancho told him to go wild with a project or, like that morning, nodded to a bunch of scrap and told Jake to make something out of it. But those things were… not his. Never would be his. There was nothing in those pieces but a craftsmanship he was proud of, but still, not enough of Jacques Moore poured into them.

  At home he was the only thing the sculpture knew. His hands, his mind, his soul set fire and hammer to the metal and turned it, forging something beautiful from the discarded chunks left to rot in forgotten places. The stupid thing was he understood his father’s drive to shape something, to mold something and dominate it. That obsession burned in Jake, a need he couldn’t slake any other way than forcing his vision onto scraps of metal.

  His father. No, that had to be shoved away. Buried for the rest of the day at least. And if Jake was lucky, the old man wouldn’t come riding in on his nightmares….

  Jake almost got up from the couch, abandoning both the food and the beer on the coffee table, drawn along the threads connecting him to the unfinished piece. Almost. Halfway through leaning forward, his phone burbled and sang, vib
rating on the arm in a happy dance to catch his attention. The number was local, at least in the same area code, but unfamiliar. His heart flickered and pulsed with worry. Hardly anyone called him. Evancho a few times and mainly the nursing home and doctors. Unfamiliar meant something bad on the horizon, something he hadn’t prepared for.

  “Or it’s someone trying to sell you something. Get your shit together.” Tucking the phone against his ear, he growled, “Hello?”

  “Hey, Jake.” Lightning poured across the phone and into Jake’s ear, curving down through his spine and straight into his belly. “It’s—”

  “Dallas,” Jake choked out. He was going to lose the job; Jake was sure of it. He should have kept his mouth shut… hell, probably shouldn’t have even taken the damned water from Celeste and just walked away because he couldn’t talk to people. Sadly, his brain couldn’t stop his tongue and mouth from blurting out, “Hey… um. Hi.”

  “Sorry, I know it’s late. I just dropped Celeste off and—”

  “Yeah, about Celeste,” he cut in. “I was a shit to her today. I should have—”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it. We found a dead guy under a pile of stuff. We’re going to be a little bit off,” Dallas reassured him. “She gets it. I just wanted to see how you were doing. Okay, I was pretty much calling to see if you were coming back and working on the place tomorrow, because well… dead man under a pile of stuff.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Um… just got in and having some leftover Thai food.” Relief at not having to tell Evancho he’d screwed up eased the twisted pangs in Jake’s chest, and he tamped down the tickling beginning in the back of his brain when the thought of spending three weeks around Dallas began to sink in. He caught a quick whiff of the open box, a sour, malignant odor wafting up from the now room temperature noodles. “Or not. I think it went bad.”

  “Yeah? You said you were in K-town, right?” Dallas rolled on, not giving Jake a chance to reply. “I’m right on Oakwood and Western. Wanna grab something to eat? I split some fries with Celeste—which means I got like two fries—so I’m starving. My treat.”

  “Sure. Okay. And I can get dinner—”

  “You kidding? Did you miss the dead guy under a pile of stuff thing? I owe you, man.” His laugh was a soft, rolling pour of gold through the phone. “Tofu House sound good, or something else? I can come grab you or we can meet.”

  “I can walk to the one across the church on Wilshire. If that’s good.” It would take him about two minutes to put on actual clothes and find clean socks, then another few minutes to sprint down a block. Eating with Dallas was insane. The thought of sharing a table with the man, being up close, was probably the dumbest thing Jake would ever agree to, but the insane part of his brain appeared to be in full-steam-ahead mode. Swallowing his last objection, he offered, “Five? Ten minutes?”

  “Ten’s great. I’ll see you there.” A siren cut through the line, drowning out Dallas’s voice.

  “Sorry, what?” Jake rubbed at his ear, soothing his ruffled eardrum. “I couldn’t hear you.”

  “I said it’ll be great to see you, Jake.” Dallas’s voice dropped, growing husky. “Ten minutes, man. Or I’m coming to hunt you down.”

  Five

  IF THERE was one thing Dallas loved more than grilled meat, cold beer, and great music, it was men.

  He loved everything about them. How they felt against him, the slick of smooth skin or the soft prickle of a lightly furred belly. He adored how they smelled, a musk of soap and masculine aroma with the occasional hit of a sweet-pungent clean sweat from a hot day and a bit of exertion. He enjoyed the taste of a man, the savory hints he found on their bodies, loving the range, from the powdery whispers along a muscled inner thigh to the slick coolness of a taut throat.

  But what he adored the most about men was the way they moved.

  And no one moved like Jake Moore.

  There was an innocent gracefulness to Jake’s walk, a silken prowl tempered by a velvet politeness. He wove through spaces, focused on the people around him, at times stopping to let someone get by him first. His strides didn’t eat up the distance so much as pull through it, his expressive face flowing through a range of apologetic embarrassment for nudging someone’s head with his shoulder to a bashful, sweet shyness when the restaurant’s older Korean hostess beamed up at him.

  And when Jake spotted Dallas sitting in the far corner of the Tofu House, the gentle, tentative smile he let slide over his face nearly broke Dallas’s heart with its uncertain beauty.

  At some point in Jake Moore’s life, someone made him… less. The broad-shouldered, beautiful man he watched cross the room should have been a bit more cocky, more sure of himself. As little as Dallas knew of the man, he suspected Jake held back nearly everything of himself. Jake was a bit too tucked in, too folded over into himself, and a part of Dallas ached for him. Dallas recognized the look Jake’d given him. He’d seen it in countless faces, a slap of something brightly sharp against the flat of someone’s tender soul. Someone broke Jake, convincing him he was smaller, worthless. It stood out in the way he spoke of his craft, of his talents, and it wasn’t Evancho. The older Ukrainian couldn’t heap enough praise on the man, assuring Dallas no one could do the work like his Jake.

  A craftsman, Evancho called Jake, an artist who could do things to metal that would make God weep.

  “Who fucked you up, Jake?” Dallas wondered softly. “Who reached into that pretty soul of yours and tore it apart?”

  Despite the hesitant interest flickering in Jake’s smoldering hazel eyes, Dallas resigned himself to the possibility of never knowing the taste of Jake’s mouth or the glide of his hands over Dallas’s body. There was too much pain hidden in those burnished amber-and-peridot-flecked eyes, and there was no certainty Jake would ever work past the walls he’d bricked himself behind.

  “Kinda need to try here, Yates,” he muttered to himself, standing when Jake drew nearer. “At the very least, be a damned good friend to the man. Looks like he needs one, but fucking hell…. God, save me from hot men in old Levi’s and thin T-shirts.”

  It was a difficult journey through the long, crowded restaurant for Jake. Open around the clock, the Korean eatery was hopping at eleven at night, with a small line forming at the hostess stand and a promise of a wait for those in the back. Most of the crowd was young, mainly women clustered tightly around food-laden tables, chattering away. Dallas watched with a smirking bemusement at the ripple of reactions to Jake weaving between the tables, turning more than a few conversations into a wave of ducked-down heads, hooded eyes, and whispering giggles.

  The man was liquid sex and vulnerability, a dangerous combination for Dallas. Jake threatened a lot of Dallas’s boundaries, flowing over lines in the sand he’d drawn a long time ago. If he were gay—something Dallas now wondered about—he didn’t so much as set off a tingle of desire in Dallas’s direction. He didn’t know what would be more devastating, Jake Moore being straight or the man just not being interested.

  Dallas chanced another peek at Jake’s progress through the restaurant, and his stomach clenched at the nearness of the man. A few feet away and blocked by a trio of servers with trays of food, Jake quirked a what-can-you-do look at Dallas while he towered over the short women hustling to unloaded close to twenty bowls and plates of food.

  “Hey, sorry I’m late.” Jake slid into the chair across of Dallas, jostling the table. The chili oil, shoyu, and vinegar bottles clattered together, and he grabbed at them to stop the glass containers from rattling. “Sorry. Shit, I’m knocking everything over.”

  “I did the exact same thing when I sat down.” Dallas patted the napkin-wrapped bundles of spoons and metal chopsticks on the table. “This is our second set of utensils. I caught the water with my elbow and soaked everything. Surprised they didn’t put a trash bag under me like they do little kids in high chairs. Waitress said it’s going to be a bit before she comes back. Place is starting to get crazy.”

  “Yeah
, Friday nights are nuts around here,” Jake murmured into the menu, the LED lighting picking up the chestnut strands in his rich brown hair. The dimple in the man’s cheek was distracting, especially when he flashed Dallas a quick apologetic grin as he jostled the table again. “Crap. Sorry. Feels like this thing’s on wheels or something.”

  A few minutes later and a brief stop by the server to grab their order, and they were left chatting about the weather and the astonishing amount of panchan dishes being placed on the nearby tables. The conversation was awkward only for about a minute. Then Dallas decided to take the pink elephant standing between them by the trunk and shake it loose.

  “I’d like to promise you we’re all out of dead men in the loft space, but I can’t. Chances are good we’re clear, but you’ve seen that room,” Dallas began. “They’re going to send a hazmat company out tomorrow to help with the clutter. Since it’s a crime scene with dried bodily fluids, the police suggested we use someone who specializes in… well… dead people showing up in unexpected places.”

  “It was… interesting.” Jake topped off Dallas’s glass of iced barley water, then filled his own. “I um… left before the cops did. Any ideas who he was? How long he was there?”

  “Honest? I wish we knew. Shit, I hate to think the guy’s a John Doe or something.” He chewed on his lower lip and picked up his glass. “No one deserves to die without someone knowing they’re gone. It’s just not right. Cops said they’re going to have to see if they can fingerprint the guy.”

  “He was kind of….” Jake sucked in his face as if he’d tasted a sour lemon. “You know, a bit dry. That make it easier or harder?”

  “They have ways. Don’t get me going. I watch all that kind of shit on TV. My mom calls me a ghoul. I could talk your head off about crap like that.”