There's This Guy

by Rhys Ford

  “God, I can almost see through you,” Jake whispered. His voice sounded loud slamming against the silence death held over his father’s head. He no longer heard the beeping and shush-shush of the machines dragging his father’s life along.

  The hands that once were massive and hard were nothing more than bones and skin. It was difficult for Jake to see them curled in solid and tight, pounding into his ribs while his father’s weight pressed his face into the filthy carpet. He’d been choked along the crook of that elbow, trapped in the man’s then massive arms, the back of his head slapped when he’d burbled up snot and spit out of his nose and mouth.

  Those hands slapped him hard enough to ring his ears, and those arms swung leather belts with enough strength to break the skin on Jake’s back. The whisper of a man pinned down by bleached sheets and a thin blanket could never have kicked Jake down a flight of stairs or punched him with enough force to break his eye socket.

  He couldn’t see that man in the fleshy ghost lying in front of him, but Jake knew he lived somewhere inside, raging and spitting at the world and at the son he’d never wanted to see the light of day.

  Touching his father was something Jake’d never done. Not on purpose and never for anything other than moving him from one spot to the next. He could never remember hugging the man or even touching his arm, but staring at his father’s age-spotted, skeletal hand with its translucent skin and thick blue veins, something in Jake broke.

  And he reached for his father’s hand, gripped the man’s cold, clammy fingers.

  “I hate you with everything in me,” he murmured, loathing the tears threatening to fall from his fatigue-stung eyes. “But God, I can’t let you die alone. I won’t let you die without you knowing someone’s here for you. Because there is no one. We have no one, no family. Hell, I don’t even know if you have brothers or sisters because… you never said. When you’re gone, there’ll be just me, and I can’t… I can’t keep living just to hate you. I need to be more than that, Dad.”

  His father’s chest slowly rose, filled by forced air and electricity. Jake’s thumb kept track of the sluggish push of blood through his father’s veins, a weak flutter he lost every few seconds, and he caught himself steadying his breathing to match his father’s.

  “I should have flat-out told you I was gay a long time ago, before you killed Maman, before you tried to kill everything about me.” A chuckle slid from Jake when he realized he’d been holding his breath, waiting for his father to explode even as the man hadn’t moved in hours, hadn’t spoken in days, and couldn’t even think. But Jake tensed anyway, poised to flee a storm of fists and words. Shaking his head, he looked up through his lashes at his father’s waxen, sunken face and tightened his hold on the man’s hand. “God, I am everything you hated in life, and now I’m the only one to see you off.

  “I was never strong enough to ask for help. Neither was Maman. You made us prisoners in our own lives. I get that now. I understand how isolated you made us. How you moved us around and kept us off-balance.” Jake sniffed, refusing to cry for the man he sat next to. He’d keep his father company until death came for him, but he’d be damned if he cried for him. “What did she say to you that night? When she told me never to come home again? Did you fight with her, or did my leaving get you so angry you—”

  Jake bit back on his words, refusing to go down the dark path his thoughts were leading him to. The pulse stuttered again, another chorus of beeps and whooshes, and then a shuddered sigh bled from Ron Moore’s slightly parted mouth.

  “There’s this guy. His name’s Dallas. Dallas Yates.” Jake smiled despite the cold eating away his warmth. He hadn’t brought a jacket. Hadn’t thought to. Who brought a jacket to watch their father die? “You’d hate him. Okay, that’s not saying much because you hate everything. I never realized that before now.”

  His father, naturally, said nothing.

  “You were never happy about anything. If you made a dollar, you were angry because another man made two. Maman wasn’t ever pretty enough, skinny enough, so you had to go out and fuck other men’s wives. She used to cry about it. About the nights you would not come home because you were with another woman, but God, I used to pray for you to find someone else. Anyone else. Because it meant you left us alone.” He watched another pace of lights jump across a screen, blue and red lines reassuring him life gripped his father still. “I get scared, you know? Of another man being next to me because it meant pain. Because the only time you touched me was to hurt me. I went out that night because I was tired of being afraid, tired of being hurt. I wanted to feel something good for a change, but everything went wrong anyway.

  “But now there’s Dallas, and… even if I fuck that up, if he decides I’m too much to deal with….” Jake’s bitter laugh speckled his father’s sheets with a bit of spit. Wiping at the damp spot, he shook his head. “Sorry, I just… I’m scared again, Dad. I’m always scared. I’m bigger than I was when you… well, back then… but inside, I’m still that little kid, and I’m scared shitless about everything.”

  A couple of people walked by, their indistinct conversation leaking into the room for a moment, a muddle of words and soft laughter. Jake couldn’t hear the machines over a man’s boisterous chuckle. Then the beeping reemerged with a woman’s amused shush. It was funny to hear amusement in a sound, but there it was, evocative and poignant, a bit of shared joy in the dank, morbid anticipation filling the room.

  “Dallas is….” Jake searched for the words to explain the swell of emotion even the idea of Dallas Yates brought him. “He’s funny and cute. Okay, he’s hot, which probably isn’t what you want to hear, but he makes me feel, Dad. I’ve wanted to cut out every part of me that felt anything before, because it was all… so fucking horrible. Dallas makes me feel like there’s something in life besides the sour shit you fed me. I feel like I could be happy. And yeah, that’s what’s really hard. There’s a lot of ‘suppose this happens’ in that. But you’ve got to understand something. I can’t become you. I can’t be your legacy of hate. The first thing I need to do is stop hating myself, and Dallas… he’s promised to help me learn how to do just that. So, Dad, I’m not sorry to tell you this, but after you die, you’re not taking me with you.”

  “DAMNED THING,” Dallas growled, tapping at the vending machine’s lit-up front. “I just want a couple of coffees. How fucking hard is that?”

  “Get out of the way, Dal.” Celeste bumped his shoulder, edging him aside. Her curves strained the seams of her dress, and the orderly passing behind them eyed her appreciatively, then straightened his face when he noticed Dallas’s glare. Celeste was, as usual, oblivious. “Move, move. Let Mama take care of it.”

  “Yeah, good fucking luck. I should go across the street to the café. I just don’t want to….” He glanced down the hall to where Jake sat in a heavy silence over his father. “I don’t want him to be alone, but he… he doesn’t want anyone with him right now.”

  “Sometimes a man’s got to face his demons all by himself,” she replied, jiggling at the coin return on the machine’s front, then tapping its side. The coffee cup remained stuck in the chute, and Celeste frowned. “God knows I do. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I have—” Dallas started, and Celeste cut him a fierce, telling look.

  “You shut those lips, sugar,” she cautioned. “You don’t have any demons. For God’s sake, you were born gorgeous and happy into a family that’s weird enough to be cute and just the right amount of loving not to be sicko-pervy. You don’t get to talk.”

  “Sorry, didn’t know being normal meant I don’t get to have an opinion,” Dallas teased, then winced when Celeste kicked the coffee machine’s side. “Don’t break it. I can go downstairs. I just didn’t want to leave him alone… in case he needs me.”

  “I’ll go downstairs,” she offered, then nodded over to four armchairs arranged in a square near a wall of windows. “Sit down with me for a bit, and then I’ll grab the coffee. And maybe so
mething for you guys to eat. When was the last time you had something in that stomach of yours?”

  “This morning. I shoved a Pop-Tart at him and ate the other one,” he confessed softly, the sweet sting of the frosted blueberry pastry a memory on his teeth. “I just… fine. Let’s go sit down, but I’m going to be honest. There’s not a lot of good mood in me right now. I need that coffee.”

  The seats seemed like they were a mile away, and Dallas kept glancing over his shoulder, looking for a peek of Jake in case he came to the door. Celeste’s arrival complicated things. Or maybe they were less complications and more jealousy and aggravation. As much as he loved his best friend, Dallas wasn’t in the mood to share. Or be coddled. He was angry, and something dark and nasty inside of him whispered to unplug every machine in Ron Moore’s room to release not only the hateful old man but also his son.

  Celeste showing up in a perky leopard-print baby-doll dress and fuck-me black heels did nothing to soothe away his ruffled, sharp emotions. Neither did the assessing look she gave him as they walked toward the sitting area.

  “You’re grumpy and probably hungry,” she said primly, arranging herself on one of the chairs, tugging the hem of her dress over her exposed knee. Patting at the black bob she’d tugged over her own hair that morning, Celeste smiled at him, slightly flaring her nostrils in an imperious sniff. “So I’m going to forgive you your trespasses.”

  “I don’t have any trespasses.” Dallas made a face. “I don’t even know what that means. I thought it was sins.”

  “Don’t ask me. I’m Jewish.” Celeste sniffed again. “Or was. I haven’t been to temple since before I grew my mini-boobs. I always thought it meant someone being an asshole, and I’m going to stick with that, because right now, Dallas Vulcan Yates, you are on the edge of being an asshole.”

  “God, I wish I’d never told you my middle name.” Dallas sighed, and he hit the wall, fatigue settling in. His face slipped down, the weight of his tired pulling at his skin, and he leaned over, resting his elbows on the chair’s padded arms. “It’s been four days since they brought Jake’s dad in here, sugar. And I’m starting to feel like shit asking God to take that man so we can all get on with our lives. A man’s dying, and I’m cheerleading him on so Jake can… I don’t know what I think Jake’s going to do or be after that bastard dies, but I’m ready to find out.”

  “You said he woke up once?” She inched forward, bringing herself in until their knees touched. Her stockings scratched at his skin through the hole in his jeans. “Do they think he’s getting better?”

  “No, they don’t know why he woke up. He shouldn’t have. That was….” Dallas struggled to remember when he’d pulled Jake back from his father’s bed, as if distance could shield them from the man’s bitter spewing. “The doctor said he wasn’t really awake, and he was… something was going on in his brain, like a dump of nonsense, but sweetie, you didn’t hear the shit that came out of that man’s mouth.

  “I’d never heard anything so damned… foul. And I’ve lived in some not-so-nice areas, but this…. God.” He wanted to throw up after hearing what flowed out of the old man’s mouth, a diatribe filthier than he’d ever imagined. “And all I could think was, that’s what Jake grew up around, how he was treated. No wonder he’s as fucked-up as he is. I want to drag Jake out of there so badly I can taste it. I want to shove him on a plane and we go home to my mom, where she can make us grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup until we’re sick of eating them.”

  “Well, having been on the receiving end of the grilled-cheese-tomato-soup tour, I’m all for it, but….” She looked at him expectantly, and Dallas harrumphed with pure disgust. “You and I both know he’s not going anywhere. And as much as I’d want him to head to your parents’ place so he can live under a soft quilt, that’s not going to happen as long as that man has his hooks in Jake… and death doesn’t always unhook evil from a man’s soul.”

  “And that man would give the Devil a run for his money,” Dallas agreed softly. “I just want to fix things. For Jake.”

  “That’s your mom coming out in you.” Celeste angled her head, studying him. “And now I’m going to ask something that is probably going to piss you off, but what do you think is going to happen after that nasty man dies? Where do you see all of this going?”

  It was a fair question, one Dallas had asked himself ever since he’d dragged Jake out of the nursing home’s excuse for a bedroom so the attendants could work on resuscitating the old man. It seemed like a lifetime ago since he’d spoken to Austin and a century since he and Jake discovered the body in the upstairs loft. Jake’s whole world revolved around the man dying a few yards away, and for the life of him, Dallas hadn’t given himself permission to think beyond getting through another day. He couldn’t risk the what-ifs, especially if it meant Jake slipping away.

  “I have no fucking idea,” he finally answered. “It’s all a damned mess, honey. Perfect world? Jake and I go riding off into the sunset and—”

  “Now I’m going to stop you right there, and I’m asking you this as your best friend.” Celeste’s voice dropped, and a sliver of Simon emerged from the rough huskiness. “Are you sure you’re not just… wanting him because you need to be the guy who wears the white hat? You said it yourself. You just want to fix things. Have you thought that maybe—and I love Jake—but just maybe you’ve got this whole fantasy of how it’s going to be afterwards because he’s fucked-up and you need to unfuck things?”

  “It crossed my mind.” She’d pulled the first real smile Dallas had in him since they’d hit the hospital’s front doors. “I’ve looked at it. Looked at me. Looked at him. Hell, I’ve even talked to Austin about Jake, and you know how shitty he is at giving advice. It’s more than fixing things, Celeste. I promise. Yeah, I want to wash away the filth that dick father of his smeared on him. I want to scrape off the stink and guilt he’d been raised in, but not because I need to but because he and I….

  “It isn’t just for me. Yeah, I want him. I want to hold him and share a sunset without him tensing up with fear. I want him not to flinch when I touch him, and I want him to touch me without having to analyze it or look to see who is around.” Dallas paused, searching for the words he needed to describe the delicate furls of emotion Jake brought out in him. “God, you need to see his smile when he doesn’t care who is looking and how he scowls when he’s working because he’s beating the world into submission. There’s a beauty inside of Jake I want the world to see. That’s what I love, C. I love that beauty and those dimples and the rough of his hands on my shoulders when he feels safe enough to put them there.”

  “But he’s broken, Dallas,” Celeste murmured, reaching to hold his hands. “He might never ever get there. I don’t want to…. I don’t want to see you lose yourself.”

  “That’s how I know I love him, babe.” He turned Celeste’s hands over, running his fingers over her palms. He’d first held them when she’d been Simon, and now after the long, hard battle to become Celeste, her hands never truly changed. They were a constant, a slightly bent pinky finger and a left ring finger knuckle a bit larger than the rest. “Jake’s going to heal. He’s committed to that, to be who he should have been. I think of the man he is now, and yeah, I’m fucking pissed off he wasn’t raised by a couple of people who cherished what they had. That man in there doesn’t deserve Jake sitting with him. He raised Jake to believe he’s not worth anyone’s love. So yeah, I’m going to love the fuck out of him—broken or not—and maybe one day Jake will believe me—”

  “Dallas?” Jake’s honey-rough voice tumbled down the hall, amber chips sharp with grief and confusion.

  He’d not been watching the door or he’d have seen Jake come out of the room, his dark hair wild around his temples and the color stolen from his cheeks. His shoulders were bowed and his lush mouth tightened into a firm line, his jaw clenched too tight for Dallas’s liking. Behind his tear-matted black lashes, Jake’s eyes burned emerald, stark and hollow in hi
s fatigue-bruised face.

  “Hey.” Dallas was across the hall and to Jake before he could say another word. Jake was cold, shivering and wound tight, but he let Dallas draw him into a hug. A moment skipped over them, and then Jake returned the embrace, his sinewy arms closing into an iron lock around Dallas’s body. “I’m here, love. Whatever you need—”

  “He’s gone, Dal,” Jake stammered out, burying his face into the curve of Dallas’s neck. “And I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do.”

  Thirteen

  “I STILL can’t believe there wasn’t a funeral. I would have come! He shouldn’t have been alone. Or at least had someone besides you. So you all just… did what?” Celeste’s mouth dropped open, and she turned to stare at Dallas, caught halfway into putting her purse away before tackling the loft space upstairs. Shoving the sleek black-and-red sling tote into the metal desk they were using in the office, she shook her head. “You just chucked him in there and walked away?”

  “Chuck’s a bit harsh,” Dallas protested, hitching himself up on the edge of the ugly green metal monster desk he was sadly growing fond of. “He was lowered down. Sedately while some guy in a long black dress said nice things about him and in a coffin way too good for him, but there you have it. The ground is now salted and bitter and nothing shall ever grow there again.”

  He’d had visions of a glorious wood piece with lions’ feet until Celeste reminded him the place was more dinner and drag than gentlemen’s club, and he should save all the geegaws for where they’d do the most good, out with the paying customers. The metal desk probably would stay once it was stripped of its Army heritage, and the long rooms in the back would be for employees and talent to change their clothes and stash their things while on shift.

  “You should feel horrible for saying that.” Celeste leaned toward an old mirror they hadn’t taken down, wiping at her mouth to remove a bit of lipstick, then met Dallas’s gaze in its mottled glass. “I mean, the man’s dead, and we should have some respect.”