There's This Guy

by Rhys Ford

  “We don’t live together, you dork.” Dallas watched his best friend sashay out the front door, then sighed. “She didn’t have a drop of paint on her. Want to bet when I go in there, the walls are going to look exactly the way they did when I walked in this morning?”

  “Sucker bet. Not taking it,” Jake replied. “And what’s wrong with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?”

  “Nothing. If you’re five.” Dallas dusted off his jeans, then tossed Jake a towel. “Clean your face off, Moore, and bring your shit inside. We’re going to go have some ribs.”

  “EVANCHO’S GOING to kick my ass,” Jake muttered from the passenger seat. “I get an hour for lunch and you’re driving us to La Brea?”

  “I already told him I was grabbing you for a long lunch. You know what he said?” Dallas shot Jake a quick look, amused at the slightly grumpy frown on his friend’s face. “Go on, guess.”

  “I’m guessing he said he didn’t give a shit what I did because you were paying me by the job and not by the hour.” Jake peeked at his phone, then slid it back into his pocket. “Evancho must love the hell out of you because if it was anyone else, he’d lose his shit.”

  The squat, barrel-chested Ukrainian Jake worked for was a pushover where his hazel-eyed, dimpled craftsman was concerned. One mention of taking a long lunch to get actual food inside of Jake and Evancho was practically shoving them both into the car and waving them off as if they were going on a honeymoon cruise. The effect was ruined when the older man rubbed at his silver crew cut in frustration and began to swear at one of his workers about handling the shop equipment properly, so Dallas beat a hasty retreat while he could.

  It felt kind of like asking a man if it was okay to date his son.

  Not that he was going to mention that to Jake, but still, exactly that.

  “Here we are. I’ll go grab the food and sit out back. There’s trees and shit. Okay, so it’s a park but better than inside. Damned place is like an oven during lunchtime. See if you can snag us a table.” Dallas pulled into a spot in front of the tiny restaurant. Jake’s soft chuckle brought Dallas up short. “What?”

  “Celeste said you were bossy,” he replied, unlatching his seat belt. “She’s not wrong.”

  “You have a mission. Go forth and conquer.” Dallas trotted around the end of the Tesla, then thrust a fist into the air, shouting after Jake as he headed to the back of the building. “Don’t let the moms back there give you any shit. It’s good for kids to eat on the lawn. Builds character. Kick them into the dirt where they belong!”

  “You know….” The older woman sitting at the walk-up window shook her head when Dallas approached her, the dark locs piled up on her head glistening silver near her scalp. “There is something seriously wrong with you, boy. Yelling at your man like that.”

  “Not my guy, Lana.” Dallas leaned on the short steel counter in front of the window, thankful for the cooler weather. “How are you doing, sugar?”

  “I’m fine. Got your order right here.” She looked at him, a lifetime of handling messes and managing her children shining through her steady gaze. “And if that ain’t your boy, you’d best be pulling back some of that smile of yours. From the look of those teeth, I’d think you were measuring your fingers for rings or something.”

  “Never going to happen.” Dallas dug out his wallet. “He’s… complicated.”

  “Not so complicated I didn’t see those dimples of his when he looked back at you.” Lana pursed her lips into a disapproving line. “Don’t know what it is with kids these days. Back in my day, if you liked someone, you hooked in and made your life. Weren’t no complicated anything. Telling you, son, the way you two look at each other? Better if you just accepted your shit and got on with it. Make life easier all around. Now, how about you give me a couple of twenties for all of this food and I’ll be grabbing you a couple of slices of cake. Maybe a bit of sweet will help things along for you.”

  “Can’t hurt, love. God knows I need all the help I can get in life.” Dallas passed over the cash, then stared off toward the end of the building where he’d seen Jake last. “So, really? You think he’s got something for me?”

  “Honey, I look at cake the way he looks at you,” Lana remarked, shoving a load of bags across the counter at him. “Just do me a favor. Invite me to the wedding when you two boys get around to it. I’ll even give you a deal on the food.”

  “OKAY, THAT cake is blue.” Jake eyed the pair of two-layer monstrosities sitting on the table, their electric berry bodies trapped in a Styrofoam and cling wrap prison. “Why is it… blue?”

  “Because it’s not red.” Dallas opened a lunch plate container, and the smell of BBQ sauce slapped Jake across the face. “Just shut up and try this. I got you a combo plate. Some ribs, some brisket, side of greens, and some mac and cheese.”

  “And blue cake.” Jake sniffed at the dessert but couldn’t smell anything beyond the smokiness of the cooked meat.

  “Just… eat.” A bunch of napkins and a plastic fork were shoved at Jake next, and Dallas shook them under Jake’s nose until he took them. “Swear to God, sometimes it’s like eating with a five-year-old kid.”

  “That another crack at my PB and J?”

  “Yep,” Dallas shot back. “And tell me this isn’t better?”

  At the first mouthful of sauce-slathered brisket, Jake had to agree. He made it halfway through the sliced meat, gnawed one bone clean, then contemplated trying one of the chunks of bread tucked away in a folded-over white paper bag. Dallas chatted through most of his lunch, giving slightly sarcastic commentary about the other people in the park, mostly judging parenting techniques and oddly enough, sneakers.

  Half-full of food and sitting across of Dallas at a park table under the cool shade of a thickly leafed tree wasn’t a bad way to spend a Friday lunch. If he was lucky, they’d get back before two and he’d be able to work on removing the stalls someone’d welded together in the men’s bathroom, something Dallas talked about getting done before he took out any more grates so the walls could be readied for painting.

  The park was a stretch of rolling green hillocks amid the gray and glass buildings. A small playground provided a muted rumble of shrieking childish laughter with the occasional burst of shouting, mostly about some kid named Andy who wouldn’t share the slide.

  “We should kick those kids off the swings and see which one of us can go higher,” Dallas said around a mouthful of food and grabbed Jake’s wrist, shaking it once before letting go. “Betcha I’d kick your ass.”

  Dallas smirked. It was something Jake had learned about him. A full smile was rare, precious in its unguarded glee, but he mostly smirked and said outrageous things to tease. Being with Dallas—spending time with him—was a barrage of half smiles, snide remarks, and generous effusive comments. He touched constantly, giving small taps with his fingers on a forearm to draw attention to something or a glide of a hand along a shoulder blade to commiserate over a crappy turn in the day. There was nothing sexual in his brushes. He touched everyone, playing an unconscious game of tag with everyone he met along the way, anchoring himself in his world.

  Jake tried not to see more in Dallas’s light caresses than what was there, a deepening friendship with a playful, laughing man who made his soul boil with a want he couldn’t quench.

  “You’ve got something against kids?” Jake laughed at Dallas’s confused double take. “First you want them eating off the lawn, and now we’re kicking them off the swings?”

  “Little bastards need to be taught how life really is.” A fork full of macaroni and cheese made a precarious pointer as Dallas waved it around, gesturing toward the playground. “You want to swing, you’ve got to claim your territory. Defend it against all takers. And for God’s sake, quit playing with the bag and just eat some of the bread. There’s butter in that other one. Real butter. None of that good-for-you shit. If it doesn’t harden your arteries, Lana won’t want to serve it. Now eat some bread so I can go back to hec
kling kids.”

  The inside of the bag was foil lined, keeping the bread warm. Its fragrance hit Jake, digging into childhood echoes of his mother pulling loaves out of the oven and admonishing him to stand back from the door so he wouldn’t get burned. The slices were thick with a thin, crisp crust and airy white center. Jake spread pats of butter on the two slices he chose and moaned when he took his first bite. The creamy, salty smear of melting butter on the fresh yeasty bread was something he hadn’t known he missed, not until Dallas shoved a bag at him and Jake discovered a memory he’d nearly forgotten.

  “Okay, I haven’t had sex good enough to make me do that face you’re doing right now.” Dallas broke into Jake’s reverie. “What the hell is in that bread?”

  “My mom used to make bread like this. Same kind. It’s… hell… been so damned long since I’ve thought about that.” He didn’t know why he’d forgotten her working over flour-dusted boards in the early hours of a Saturday morning. Her small hands would work the dough, pale sticky dots speckling her tanned arms. “Hell, I think we were still in Montreal? I don’t know. I was a little kid. It was way before… Dad got hurt… and she’d take me down to the food bank with her because they gave out stuff like flour and sugar. Baking things.

  “She’d say people didn’t cook anymore, so no one took that stuff. They’d load up a huge bin, and we’d go home. Then she’d make bread. Tons of it. She used to sell it. I don’t know if they knew she was coming or what, but she’d be walking down the street and people would come outside to get bread.” He chuckled, remembering the long walks up and down a narrow street, struggling to carry a small basket of wrapped loaves while keeping up with his mother. “I must have been four or five. I probably bugged the hell out of her while she worked, because she’d give me a little bit of dough to mess with and tell me I was helping. Best part was she’d always save back some for us and cut off one end while it was hot, cover it with butter, and give it to me.”

  Shaking the piece of half-eaten bread at Dallas, he murmured softly, “That’s what this tastes like right now. Like Maman’s bread. Like a piece of love she’s sent me from wherever she is right now.”

  Dallas’s hands were hot on his arm, a tight clench around his forearm, and Jake blinked away the wetness stinging his eyes. He couldn’t lose his shit in the middle of a park, not in front of Dallas. Not again. His emotions were sticky, clinging to him and muddling his senses. A hard swell expanded inside of him, a bubble of crackling anger blended with hot sorrow and something else he couldn’t identify. Dallas’s hands moved, his words a soft string of nonsense and comfort against Jake’s raw, bleeding memories.

  “So fucking stupid, you know?” Jake shook his head, wanting to climb over the table so Dallas could hug him, fold him into a tight embrace, holding him until the poisonous storm raging inside of him died down. “I’m getting worked up over a damned piece of bread.”

  “Not stupid at all, man.” Dallas’s smooth voice poured into him, a honey salve over the roughened edges of Jake’s abraded emotions. “Hell, my mom can’t toast a Pop-Tart without burning it, so now that’s the only way I can eat them. It’s stuff like that… that kind of crazy, happy stuff that keeps us going sometimes.”

  Dallas’s hands felt good on him, awakening a tide of confusing, conflicting wants Jake desperately longed to let free. His fingers stroked along Jake’s forearm, probably an absent caress, but it left a trail of fire behind, scorching the edges of Jake’s control.

  “Have you talked to someone about this kind of stuff?” Dallas canted his head, forcing Jake to look into his cerulean eyes. “Maybe a therapist can help you work this out, J. Because there’s some unhappy inside of you, and it’s okay to get some help to get it out.”

  “No therapists. Not again. Not after that one they sent me to because I was gay—”

  Jake threw up the bread.

  It came in a sour rush of bile and fear out of his belly and seared his throat. He couldn’t see past the swirling gray panic flooding him, and just when he hitched in a breath to cleanse away the gut-wrenching fear ripping through him, his stomach rebelled again.

  Clutching the edge of the table, Jake panted, frozen to the long seat he’d somehow straddled in his anxiety. He needed to run, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere he could tuck himself into where those words wouldn’t come back to haunt him. A tight mewling whispered out of his burning throat, the strangled thread of air carrying along his horror in a reedy dirge.

  “Hey, J, it’s okay.” Dallas was next to him, behind him really, his long hands rubbing at his back. He leaned against Jake, pressing into his side and shoulders, wrapping around him just enough for Jake to feel… safe. “Dude, I know… I know, man. But it’s okay.”

  “I shouldn’t have….” Jake gasped. “Fuck. I can’t—no one at the shop. My dad… just no one—can know. Not… shit.”

  “Right now, that’s just between us.” More honey, more salve on the hot terror gushing through Jake’s mind. “You tell me what you want me to do. Whatever you want, Jake. We leave it all here, and nothing… changes. Or if you need someone to be your friend while you figure shit out, we can do that too. Whatever you need, okay? No one is going to make you do or be anything you don’t want to be, okay, Jake? Least of all me. I’m your friend, despite the PB and J habit you’ve got. Whatever you need.”

  “I just can’t… I’m tired.” The shock was still there, simmering and burbling, a cauldron of wicked shame and guilt waiting to be sipped at, but its scorch eased back, its toxic splash soothed away by Dallas’s weight on his back. “I’m just tired, Dal. I just want to… be. I’m tired of… running, but there’s so much crap I can’t fucking deal with. Not now. I want to… fuck… I can’t… but I want to. With you. I just need someone to know. Someone I know won’t hurt me with it.”

  “Then that’s how it’ll be, then. You’ve got me, Jake. However long you need me with you.” Dallas leaned in, tightening one arm around Jake’s shoulders. His breath was warm on Jake’s cheek, scented sweet from BBQ sauce and iced tea. “No one’s going to hurt you. I’ll fucking kill anyone who tries.”

  Eight

  THE ICY bottles of craft beer clinked against one another, a chiming counter beat to Dallas’s footsteps across the moist, lush lawn. The grass gave beneath his feet, its fresh scent an odd brightness framing the cloying patches of heavy floral aromas interspersed in the muggy afternoon air. The city kept its distance, its bustle and clamor held back by a surround of chain-link fence and sparse evergreens, but tiny trickles of sound penetrated the quiet, bits of a world blunted by an expanse of lawn and trees.

  He was always thankful for the wide-canopied tree and bench placed on the curve of the lawn. It made things… easier, calmer, and Dallas sank down onto the shadowed, cold stone seat and sighed, feeling every ache and stretch in his work-abused body. Bending over was nearly a mistake, because at some point since his last visit, the bench lost a mooring, and it rocked forward, not enough to do any damage but enough of a shift to make Dallas panic.

  “Jesus. That’d be fantastic, me having to explain why I broke….” He paused, reading the name inscribed on the brass plaque mounted to the bench. “Joyce Whitamarker’s bench. Hell, all this time and I haven’t even thanked Joyce once.” Popping open one of the cold bottles, Dallas smiled at the long hiss of air escaping out from under the dented cap, then saluted a passing cloud. “Thank you, Joyce. You’ve made my time here much more comfortable.”

  He risked another bend, lodging two of the bottles into the sprinkler-softened grass and dirt near his feet. There were leaves—there were always leaves—crisped from the hot sun and damp from the long-reaching spray heads used to water the grass.

  Brushing bits of leaves and dots of moist soil aside, Dallas patted the engraved black stone in front of him and murmured, “Hello, Kevin.”

  They’d been casual but exclusive lovers for over a year, drifting toward something more serious when one Valentine’s Day Kevin admitted
to being married. An hour later, he’d bared his soul, revealing not only a perky blonde wife named Renee but also four little Kevins of varying sizes. Dallas spent the rest of the night numb, then drunk, once he’d gotten enough tequila in him to stand hearing Kevin’s 3:00 a.m. voice mail apologizing for hurting Dallas… for leading him on… for needing to go back to his wife and try just one more time to be normal.

  Seven months later, he’d gotten a call from a soft-spoken woman going through all of Kevin’s phone numbers, reaching out to people he’d known to tell them he’d never woken up after a handful of pills with a fifth of bourbon chaser.

  “Hey, looks like Andrew’s mastered his Ns.” Dallas studied the arrangement of sheet protectors taped to the headstone, looking over a spelling test, an essay on batteries, and a crayon drawing of either a Pikachu or a duck with a serious case of shitting yellow feathers. “And I know you probably love your kid and all, but man, I’ve got to tell you, Stevie’s got shit for artistic talent.”

  The carnations in the white vase permanently mounted to the base of the headstone were faded and a bit brown along the edges, but Dallas supposed that was more from the rolling heat waves striking the city rather than neglect. From what he could figure out, Renee came fairly often or timed her visits to hit right before Dallas’s infrequent wanderings. He was pretty certain the beer he left every time he visited was picked up by the lawn crew and gone way before Kevin’s wife could wonder who was leaving booze at her dead husband’s grave, but it’d become a ritual of sorts, a remembrance of times they’d spent arguing about stouts versus IPAs.

  Taking a swig of his beer, Dallas choked on the foamy liquid coating his throat. “God, I don’t even really like pale ales. Why am I drinking this shit? Oh, and I’d tell you Celeste said hi, but see, I’ve never told her you did… this. And now it’s like if I did, she’d feel like crap, and… fucking hell, how the hell do I get past one small not-truth? I’ll tell her. I promise.”