Satisfied I was okay, Tito had given me a couple of bottles of iced water, several snack bags and moved on to help a breast-feeding mother handle her squalling baby.
I’d glimpsed his wedding ring. It made me feel good, for my brother’s sake that he wasn’t the kind of guy who took off his ring when he was a traveling man. I’d caught Tito’s gaze and we’d smiled at each other. He’d taken charge of the screaming baby, handing a bottle to one of our frazzled, original flight attendants.
“Can you warm this for me, please? Thirty seconds ought to do it.”
She’d looked as if she wanted to squeeze the contents all over his face. Instead, she snatched it and thundered her way back to the galley.
I had been able to hear her surly words. “Excuse me. Excuse me, please.”
The new JetBlue crew had made instant TV headlines as they’d escorted us from the plane to one of their waiting buses across the snow-dusted tarmac. Tito had acted like he was used to having cameras on him and I’d wondered just how bad I looked.
Once he’d been sure I was safely on the bus headed back to New York, he’d given me a quick hug. I’d detected very faint aftershave. Holy frickin’ heck. My dick had got hard. Was that bad when it was your brother’s husband?
“See you back in Austin,” he’d said. “I’ll be home tonight.”
I didn’t think there was a happy person on that bus once we’d survived the bumpy two-hour bus ride—the driver had got lost—and arrived at La Guardia, just as our original plane was landing.
Another long wait. I wondered if I’d grown chest hair in the interim. The constant flight changes had even worn out the flight attendants who’d left a basket of cookies and snacks up front saying we should help ourselves. I’d tried to focus on reading something on my new Kindle, a gift from my mom. Instead, I’d become obsessed with the choppy digital TV service on my personal screen on the back of the seat in front of me. I’d watched an alarming array of reality programming. Some loopy, scary-looking plastic surgery nightmare of a housewife in Orange County, wherever the hell that was, went off on her husband because they couldn’t afford their mortgage.
A guy in Atlanta had single-handedly killed his entire family on The First 48 and couldn’t explain why, beyond, “My brother looked at me funny.”
It bugged me that we’d landed right in the middle of an episode of Leave it to Beaver. It had been a good one, too.
“Kevin! Kevin Branigan!” My eyes adjusted to the bright lights and I spotted my brother, Jack, waving to me as I stumbled past half-empty seats at the gate.
“How’d you get in here?” I asked, giving him a hearty hug. I was a big guy, around six feet, four inches and I was, well, solid. A big, muscular piece of meat. I forgot my own strength sometimes, and my brother squeaked in protest.
Then I saw his staff ID dangling from his neck. “You work for the airline now?”
He nodded, looking excited. Jack, a good-looking guy by anybody’s standards, was thirty-five, two years older than me. He looked amazing. Love had done nothing to dent his Black Irish looks. He still had the same blue-eyed crinkly smile, the ready laugh, and I noticed his gold wedding band. He’d up and married Tito in Connecticut after a short, blistering romance, hurting everyone in our family by telling us after the fact. He realized I was staring at it.
“You’ll love him,” Jack said. “How are you doing, Kev?”
“I’m fine. Didn’t he tell you?”
“Did who tell me?”
“Tito. I met him in New York.”
The smile spread slowly across Jack’s face. “You did?”
I told him about the New Jersey fiasco.
“Oh, hon. My baby rescued you! What’d you think? Is he hot or what?”
“Very hot. Don’t you ever get jealous?”
My brother threw back his head and laughed. “I’m married to a Latin man. He’s much more jealous than I am.”
I nodded. I could believe that.
He touched my arm. “You had a tough flight. I’m so sorry.”
I nodded.
He grinned. “I was tracking your progress online until I had to get on a plane myself. I couldn’t believe you even flew to Cancún to get here.”
“Yeah,” I cracked. “My one chance for an exotic holiday and all I saw was the airport.”
We walked toward the baggage claim and he threw an arm around me.
“Oh, Kev, I’m so glad you’re here. Life just isn’t the same without you.”
I smiled at him. I’d missed him, too. I’d been living in Boston until a bad break-up with my ex lost me the only life I’d known for the last six years. I thought I would die when my lover, Larry, left me. At first it seemed as though I’d even lost my best friend when Jack had met Tito on a plane. His calls and texts had become rare. I’d pined for communication as I’d walked Boston’s Freedom Trail pondering a death plunge into the frigid waters near the SS Constitution.
Somehow, Kevin’s excitement caught up with me and his newly found love gave me hope. You never know when you’re going to meet someone, I kept telling myself. I encouraged him to visit Tito in Austin at least a few of times and bam! They were in love and living together. They’d bought a bar, fallen in love with Austin and had convinced me to come here and give it a try.
“Now that I’m working a couple of days a week for the airline, I’m gonna need you more than ever. Holy crap, Kev. You’re still traveling with that decrepit duffle bag?”
“Hey,” I said, watching my brother swing it off the slow-moving carousel. “You’re gonna get old yourself someday.”
A couple of business cards fell out of my pocket. Jack smiled at me as he bent and picked them up.
“You’ve been here less than a minute and you’ve already got friends. Awesome, Kev.”
“Da plane,” I bleated. “Da plane. We got very chatty. Now I’m not sure I wanna see any of ’em ever again.”
Outside, I was too stunned by the weather to gauge my first impression of Austin itself.
“It’s snowing?” I almost screamed. “It’s friggin’ snowing in Austin?”
“Can you believe it?” He threw up his hand and waved. “There’s Tito now.”
Tito angled their Honda into a small space between an SUV and an airport shuttle van right in the red zone.
He jumped out and hugged me. Oh, he still had that scent. Dressed in jeans and a blue sweater, Tito was a good-looking guy. He was dark-eyed with hair almost black and his caramel colored skin spoke of his Salvadoran background. The lingering glances he and Jack exchanged told me the sexual and emotional heat was raging between them.
“Great to have you here, Kevin.” He grabbed my laptop and duffle bag, putting them in the trunk. At this angle, I saw his nose was aquiline. A lot of bad breaks as a result of his now-abandoned boxing career. I climbed into the back, moving my legs across the seat. No legroom in front of me.
“You hungry?” Jack asked over his shoulder.
“Starved, since you asked.”
“So are we. We thought we’d take you to our favorite place. They make the best barbecue.”
I couldn’t get over the big, fluffy snowflakes coming down in sideways drifts on the car.
“First snow in forty years according to the news,” Tito told me.
There was a light, powdery covering on everything, but Tito still drove like a lunatic. My mom, who had already descended on the newlyweds, had warned me about that.
Austin looked like a country town that had seen better days. Dilapidated in parts, a lot of places looked closed up, and I realized it, too, had been hit by the economic downturn.
The city skyline loomed ahead. I don’t know what I’d been expecting. More farmlands, green pastures and sexy gay cowboys. As we neared the city, however, I saw that Austin had a spectacular downtown district.
“We’re coming up on Fourth Street. We want to show you the bar then we’ll head out to dinner,” Jack said.
“Fourth Street is the
gay district of Austin,” Tito added.
“Cool.” I sat back in my seat as we drove along, the snow dancing around us in thick drifts.
“See over there on the right, this is Congress Avenue. Look way down the end.” Jack tapped the window. “It’s a replica of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., only when this one was built the government was upset that our building is bigger than theirs.”
“My God, you’re right.” I leaned forward. “It looks so beautiful. With all this snow and the high-rise buildings here…I could be in D.C. right now.”
“We’re mighty proud of it,” Tito said. “D.C. isn’t, though. They are still plenty pissed about the replica, but they should have known everything is bigger in Texas.”
“When do we come to the gay section?” I asked.
They both turned and looked at me.
“That was it, on our left.” Tito turned his gaze back to the road, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder. “You didn’t see it?”
I stared at him. “See what?”
He made a big deal of having to circle around and backtrack a myriad of one-way streets. We cruised down Fourth again and I worried, wondering if Austin had cruising laws. The gay district consisted of three bars, a tattoo parlor and a coffee bar on the edge of the block.
“The Gay Pride Parade starts right here on the corner of Fourth and Congress.” Jack jumped all over my silence.
I was sad to see the rainbow flags flying on so few establishments. I was starting to get the feeling that Austin wasn’t so gay-friendly after all. The plethora of gay-romance novels set in Texas made me wonder if the gay cowboy theme was one big myth.
“This is the most tolerant city in Texas,” Tito said.
I wondered if he could read my thoughts.
“It’s okay.” Jack reached behind his seat and squeezed my hand. “We don’t live in closets. But we don’t walk around in hot-pink shorts and feather boas, either.”
“Except for the gay parade,” Tito said.
They both laughed.
“You’ll find this is a hip, cool, funky town,” Jack said. “You will love it. And look, there’s our baby.”
On the other side of the coffee shop was a rustic-looking shack. A large, expensive looking sign read Tiki Tito. I knew Jack and Tito had spent a small fortune on the place and it made me grin. Rainbow-colored tiki lights were strung up around the roof and windows. It was a nice touch. Trust my brother to open a gay-friendly Spanish tiki bar in Austin. The reproduction of an Easter Island statue out front was being used as a photographic prop by a couple of guys who waved as we passed by. They looked ridiculous in grass skirts over their jeans, holding snowballs, but maybe that was the point.
“Uh-oh, maybe I spoke too soon about not advertising our sexuality.” Jack shook his head. “Wait till you meet Miguel and Jimmy. They’re a riot.”
Tito parked in one of the spaces to the building’s left side and we hurried to the front. I kept my arms around me. I was freezing.
Jack introduced me to Miguel and Jimmy, who worked as bartenders.
“We’re posting these on Facebook,” Miguel said. “Nobody’s gonna believe it’s snowing in Austin.”
We all went inside. I glanced at the drinks menu. Impressive. A lot of cool-looking martinis and tropical drink blends. I liked the tapas menu, too.
“Salvadoran cuisine,” Tito said. “My cousin Maria and my Auntie Vero cook for us.”
I glanced at his right hand. The one that had almost killed him. It was still badly scarred and swollen. He covered it up with his long sleeve. It seemed an automatic gesture and I wondered if it hurt.
Jimmy and Miguel appeared to be great guys. They didn’t appear to be a couple, but I had no idea. They shrugged off their now-wet hula skirts and shook my hand.
“You should see the wonderful vintage pieces Tito and Jack collected from online auctions,” Miguel said. He led me around the room pointing out a tiki-carved canoe hanging above the bar laden with 1950s tiki mugs, glasses, bottles, masks, lamps and ashtrays. The latter were for display purposes only.
I loved what I saw of the place and would have been happy to sit back with a cocktail, but Jack checked his watch.
“We’re taking Kevin to the County Line for an early dinner. Check in with you guys later.”
“Are we working tonight?” I asked Jack.
“No.” His answer was firm. “Tonight we have fun. Tomorrow we’ll put you to good use.”
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About the Author
A.J. Llewellyn lives in California, but dreams of living in Hawaii. Frequent trips to all the islands, bags of Kona coffee in the fridge and a healthy collection of Hawaiian records keep this writer refuelled.
A.J. never lacks inspiration for male/male erotic romances and on the rare occasions this happens, pursues other passions such as collecting books on Hawaiiana, surfing and spending time with friends and animal companions.
A.J. Llewellyn believes that love is a song best sung out loud.
Email: [email protected]
A.J. loves to hear from readers. You can find A.J.’s contact information, website and author biography at http://www.pride-publishing.com.
Also by A.J. Llewellyn
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Pearl Harbor: Gypsy Heart
Pearl Harbor: Abiding Heart
Pearl Harbor: Avenging Heart
Sins of Summer: Burnt Island
Sins of Autumn: Full
Sins of Winter: If Come
Sins of Spring: The Kaupe
Cloaks and Daggers: Stavros
Emergency Servicing: Roley’s Wood
Haunted By You: Tall With Room
Oberon’s Court: Sex and Candy
Titania’s Court: Orange Crush
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My Yakuza
With D.J Manly
Blood Slave: Nibiru Vampire Warriors, Chapter One
Blood Slave: Nibiru Vampire Warriors, Chapter Two
Blood Slave: Nibiru Vampire Warriors, Chapter Three
Blood Slave: Nibiru Vampire Warriors, Chapter Four
Blood Slave: Nibiru Vampire Warriors, Chapter Five
Blood Slave: Nibiru Vampire Warriors, Chapter Six
Blood Slave: Nibiru Vampire Warriors, Chapter Seven
Blood Slave: Nibiru Vampire Warriors, Chapter Eight
Blood Slave: Nibiru Vampire Warriors, Chapter Nine
Blood Slave: Nibiru Vampire Warriors, Chapter Ten
Blood Slave: Nibiru Vampire Warriors, Chapter Eleven
Blood Slave: Nibiru Vampire Warriors, Chapter Twelve
Tiki Vampires: Fever
Tiki Vampires: Fever Pitch
Tiki Vampires: Fever Quenched
Stealing My Heart: Stealing Rain
With Serena Yates
Elemental Superpowers: The Cake
Elemental Superpowers: The Blancmange
Elemental Superpowers: The Mudpie
About You Page 12