by Daryl Banner
Yeah, I wouldn’t be winning a dancing award anytime soon, but my movements did the trick. Soon, Lucas joined me—a little bit a first, then more so as he gained confidence. I gripped the small of his back, connecting our hips, encouraging him, and then the two of us danced together to the throbbing beat of the music.
Then I turned around and started grinding my ass against his crotch, my hands in the air as I laughed, danced, and then laughed some more. The crowd did nothing but scream and cheer us on no matter which way our hips moved.
I think we were literally fucking each other with our clothes on. Apparently no one minded paying witness to that.
Then I felt something tug at my pants. I glanced down to find a very humored, drunken-eyed Lewis stuffing a dollar bill in my back pocket. Quinton was hanging on him laughing hysterically while Duncan just watched us, mesmerized by our courage in standing on this tiny table doing our thing.
Inspired, I whipped around and put a kiss right on Lucas’s lips, sending my head into the clouds. I held onto him tightly, our dancing stopped, as our mouths became one.
Yes, I’m falling in love with you, too, Lucas.
When the song ended, we pulled apart, and the bar erupted into applause. We must have had every single person’s attention, including the whole bar staff, who were also applauding. Even a couple of security guards standing by the wall were grinning and applauding, apparently having no plan to stop us at all. It was like the whole universe was in sync right then, uniting to grant us that perfect, wonderful moment.
Lucas’s eyes detached and focused on something near the exit doors. His face sunk at once. His eyes turned into pebbles.
I followed his gaze, concerned. At the exit door stood a man in an expensive suit. I felt sobered up at once at the sight of him, staring at that eerie, icy-eyed face standing at the door, watching us. “Who’s that?” I asked through the deafening roar of the crowd.
Lucas barely drew air when he answered: “My fucking father.”
Chapter 24
LUCKY
I couldn’t believe it.
I couldn’t fucking believe it.
How did he find me? Why was he there? What business did he have staring at me like that?
James was off the table in an instant, and he was pulling me with him. “C’mon,” he urged me. “We’ll go. We’ll get the fuck out of here, Lucas. You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to. You’re an adult. You owe him nothing.”
When I got off the table, Quinton slapped my back. “You were hot up there, you go-go dancer freak, you!”
“Guys, we gotta go,” James said right away. “Now.”
Duncan lifted his head. “Why?”
“Lucas’s father,” he answered.
Duncan sobered up at once. “I’ll take care of the tab.” Then he headed for the bar.
Through the crowd of heads, I could still see him. He wasn’t moving. It was like someone had cruelly made a wax statue of him, a perfect likeness, and set it at the exit to the bar like a scarecrow to fuck with my mind.
“Lucas.” James was trying to get my attention. He tugged on my arm. “Lucas, c’mon. Let’s go.”
“I’ve been running,” I murmured, deadpan. “All this time.”
“Lucas …”
“I’m not fucking running anymore.”
“Lucas, don’t.”
I pushed past them, cut through the crowd, and came face-to-face with my father, who stood there in front of me in his fancy suit with his perfectly parted blond hair and icy eyes.
I hadn’t seen the man in almost two years. He looked eerily the same, like a ghost.
He was a ghost. He was dead to me the day I left home, the day he chose Countess Cunt over my mother and me, the day he told me never to call her a cunt again.
Over his shoulder, I saw her standing in the lobby. Strange, how the first thing I saw before recognition dawned on me was the glitter of her cocktail dress. My eyes literally had to fish her mousy, plastic face out of all of that gaudy glitz.
“What are you doing, son?”
It wasn’t exactly a greeting. It wasn’t exactly rude. I couldn’t even tell if he cared what my answer was. He already presumed I was pissing my life away. That much, I could tell just from the way his half-lidded eyes regarded me.
“I’m living my life without you,” I answered coolly.
“Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?” He tilted his head, his voice low, almost gentle. “Do you even know what sort of stress you put me and Chri—”
“Cunt,” I corrected him before he even had a chance to say her name.
His cold eyes narrowed. “Enough with that childishness.”
“Cunt,” I repeated, lifting my eyes defiantly to him. “Maybe I should ask you what you’re doing. And what Mom would think of you right now, what you’ve made of things. Would she be proud?”
I might as well have brought up the weather for as little as the subject of my mother affected him. “You need to come home.”
“Why? Are you actually about to admit feeling guilty at all? To having a conscience about what you did to Mom?”
“Lucas, you have wasted enough of my time and resources.” A flicker of irritation passed over his face. “Haven’t you had enough fun on my dollar? Running off into the city with your … friends? Acting out like a petulant child?”
“On your dollar? I didn’t take a cent from you when I left. Any money I have, I fucking earned. I had to survive out here because Countess Cunt didn’t—”
“Lucas,” he warned, his eyes turning into slits.
I carried on, heedless. “—didn’t want me around. She couldn’t stand having anything in her life that reminded her of the better woman she’ll never dream of replacing. You’re the one having fun on your own damned dollar, buying yourself a whore to fill your bed because—”
“If you call her one more name other than her own—”
“—because you can’t face the memory of the woman you lost.” I stepped right up to him. “Maybe that’s the reason you turned your back on me. Your only son. Maybe it’s just too painful to play the what-if game when the last thing on Earth that Mom gave you is standing right in front of you.”
My father lifted his eyes to the four people who stood around me. Lewis on my left, James on my right, and Quinton and Duncan flanking them.
My father let out a sigh, then nodded at the others. “Who are they? Men you pleasure for cash? There’s another name for that.”
Lewis’s eyes flashed. “Oh, no, he didn’t.”
“I can take being called a man-whore,” mumbled Quinton to himself. “I can own that.”
“And this one,” my dad went on with a nod at James. “Is he your sugar daddy? The one you were dancing so obscenely with?”
James took a step forward. “I think it’d be best if you leave.”
My father seemed to find that amusing, regarding James like a bug that just landed on his arm. “I have just as much of a right to stand here as anyone. Just as much a right to speak.”
Funny. I recall saying those exact words when that fucker at Alberto’s tried to run me off from the front of his restaurant.
“What do you hope to accomplish, exactly?” asked James, his voice even and, I daresay, polite. “All I hear are words of vitriol. I don’t hear the concern of a father. I don’t hear the compassion of one, either. Aren’t you concerned about Lucas’s wellbeing?”
“I don’t have to answer any of your questions.” He eyed me. “Lucas. End this charade. Come home, where you belong.”
But James wasn’t finished. “Does it even cross your mind the amount of time your son has been on the streets?” James took yet another step toward him, standing between us now. “Did you even lose a wink of sleep at night wondering whether your son was in an alley starving, or being mugged, or freezing to death? We had a record-setting winter last February, if I remember correctly.”
“And what’s your point?” My father
didn’t return the polite, mature tone that James gave him the courtesy of. “That you can be a better father to my son? I know who you are. My associate Brian saw you in a bar in Little Water with Lucas. Letting him drink, no doubt. Buying him pretty things so he’ll sleep in your bed. How dare you even speak to me. That’s who you are, isn’t it?” His voice gained conviction as he glared acidly at James. “You ought to be ashamed of your perverted self, having your way with my barely-legal, eighteen-year-old son.”
“I’m nineteen now, you fucking ass clown,” I spat back.
He flinched at those words. “What did you just call me?”
“And James is taking care of me, like a decent human being. If you want an example of a pervert buying someone pretty things so they’ll sleep with them, turn the camera your way, Dad.”
I had just touched the precious subject of his new wife in a way that truly hit close to home. Now, at long last, I had gotten him angry. His eyes burned with a fury I couldn’t even measure.
But it didn’t faze me. I wanted to be finished with him. I said goodbye to him long ago and promised never to look back. This was my opportunity to keep that promise. At least someone in this family could stick to their word and prove their honor other than my departed mother.
I walked right up to my father’s face. He stood his cold ground and stared me down, his eyes like steel. “If you really want me back home to deal with your guilt, that’s on you. Find a therapist, and let them lead you down the road to your own self-redemption. You have my full support as your son, and in the future, after you’ve finally come to terms with what you are, maybe I can come to terms with what you’re not. Until then, you can stay the hell away from me and enjoy your time with Countess—”
“I warned you,” he stated so low, his words were like blades. “I warned you that if you called her that word one more time …”
“That it would be over. I remember your promise fondly, Dad. Maybe this time you ought to learn to keep your promises.” I got right in his face. “You and Countess Cunt.”
My father stood there, emotionless, for the longest period of time. I didn’t know what was going through his mind. Had I finally reached him? Did he see the pain in my eyes? Or the truth?
Then my father did the worst thing he possibly could. His eye twitched, his lips pursed, and then he said, “I love you, son. And I always will. But this …?” He gave a microscopic shake of his head. “You disappoint me, Lucas. And you disrespect the memory of your mother.” His eyes went cold. “You are better than this.”
I had no response. My eyes merely reflected the ice in his.
I knew my mother. I saw her face every single time I blinked. I felt her spirit every time my heart beat whenever I was angry, or impassioned, or just plain happy. She was my companion so many nights on the streets when I feared it might be my last night.
And my father’s words were a dark sword of doubt that struck through all of that light.
Unbelievably, I felt the sting of a tear in my eye. Don’t you dare, I scolded myself. Don’t you fucking dare. Not in front of him. Not like this. Stop it. And yet the sting worsened. It wanted release.
My face as still as a glass figurine, I parted my lips and hissed my last words to my father: “If you ever speak about Mom like that to me again, as if you knew her, as if you know what she’d think of me, as if you even have a right … I will end you, and you’ll never say a goddamned thing again.”
I shoved past him, making my way for the door. James called out at my back, but I couldn’t hear it, not even from him. The darkness was closing in, and nothing could dare to touch me.
Nothing except my father’s cruel words, which followed me like the ghost of my mother: You disappoint me. You disrespect the memory of your mother.
You are better than this.
Chapter 25
JAMES
Lucas took off for the front doors and busted out into the streets despite my shouts.
“Go after him,” I told Quinton, who dashed off.
Lucas’s father paid me exactly two seconds of mind before he muttered, “I have nothing to say to you,” and turned away.
I took a step toward him. “I have plenty to say to you.”
Despite his arrogance, his father actually stopped and turned back around to face me, his eyes burning with resentment.
I was sure he resented me. Even if my relationship with Lucas was a romantic one, his father must have seen me as a sort of father figure replacement. He was threatened by my presence. He hated me without knowing the first thing about me.
A hundred foul words rose to my mouth like bile. I didn’t let a single one of them out. Instead, I took a different tack entirely. “Lucas draws beautiful monsters.”
His father squinted at me, confused.
“Beautiful, beautiful monsters,” I went on. “And you might, in several years, click open a big fancy website and admire the well-designed logo on the screen in front of you. It’ll be a logo designed by your son, whose life you will be missing out on. Thinking you can push away the memory of him, just like you did his mother, you’ll flip open a magazine to shop for a new piece of furniture to distract yourself from your own crippling doubt that you’ve truly lost your last opportunity to make things right with Lucas. And you’ll notice on the last page of the magazine, there is a credit for graphic design. It will have your son’s name. You’ll become certain that you made a mistake on this day, right here, right now, in the lobby of the Royal Flush Hotel & Suites, by letting go of your son. Still, you push on with your life, arrogantly determined to keep your chin lifted so high, you stop looking at your feet. You stop looking where you’re going at all. That’s when you end up at an art show you didn’t know you had tickets to. You and your loving ‘countess’. And when you stand in the middle of all those works of art, you’ll realize that they are all portrayals of beautiful monsters. Some with horns. Some with antlers. Some with six eyes, twelve eyes, or no eyes at all. You’ll realize you’re surrounded by your son, because you’ll remember this day, and you’ll recall my words: Lucas draws beautiful monsters.”
There was a moment after I spoke when I swore that I could see the faintest glint of remorse in his eyes. I had painted a picture for him of the future. I wanted him to feel what I felt for Lucas. Maybe he would even see that I was a good man and would take care of his son, even if he still stubbornly chose the woman at his back over the blood at his front.
But his father said nothing. He turned and linked arms with his wife, and together they strolled away.
I had a suspicion they would not be returning.
Quinton was back the very next moment. “He’s gone.”
My heart sank. “But he only ran to the door,” I protested. “He can’t have gone far.”
“He ran down the street so fast and around the corner. I tried to catch up, but he’s gone. I can’t find him any—”
“No, he’s not,” I threw back, then tore across the lobby to the doors to see for myself. “Lucas!” I called out the second I burst through them. Alberto’s stared me in the face. “Lucas!” I shouted when I reached the street corner, looking in all directions. I darted toward the park a few blocks down, just outside the perimeter of the casinos. It was poorly lit. I saw a homeless man cuddled up on a bench and another under a tree. Lucas wasn’t anywhere in sight.
I fought an instinct to cry. I was completely, utterly helpless. I shouldn’t have tried to get the last word in with Lucas’s father, who likely didn’t give a shit what I had to say. I should have gone after Lucas myself. He didn’t even have a phone.
“Lucas!” I cried out, then raced toward another street, but he was nowhere to be found. He’ll be back, I told myself, already in denial that Lucas had gone. He needed some fresh air. He’ll be back.
I sank against the side of a building, staring at all the roads, at the shifting streetlights, at the cars slowly humming by.
He’ll be back.
* * *
“He left his bag in your room,” Duncan reasoned with me. “He wouldn’t just leave it there. He’s gonna come back for it. He knows your room number, doesn’t he?”
All I felt were stinging doubts. Every tiny misgiving blew itself up into a giant, totally plausible mountain of skepticism. Maybe Lucas really was just involved with me temporarily. Maybe Lucas was too affected by his father’s words. Maybe I was just kidding myself with all this talk of love and care and compassion.
Duncan sighed. “You can’t stay down here all night, man.”
“I will,” I stated stubbornly, sitting on that couch in the lobby. “I’m gonna sit right the fuck here until Lucas walks through those doors. I’m not giving up on him.”
“He just needed to take a walk. He probably has … places.”
“It’s been over two hours, Duncan. Almost three.”
“I mean, he lived out there on those streets for over a year, didn’t he? He knows them. Maybe he has friends.”
Duncan’s words were doing little to comfort me at all. “I’m not leaving this chair.”
“Shit. Are you crying?”
I looked away, annoyed. I couldn’t even tell anymore what were tears and what was just irritation from the smoky air of the casinos. The confrontation with Lucas’s father stirred me up, too, though that had more to do with nerves than it did tears.
Duncan sat by me and put an arm around my back, deciding to stay instead of go to bed. Then he said nothing at all as we sat there together staring at the front doors and waiting for Lucas.
Instead, we got a teenaged girl.
Full of sass, the teenager pushed through the door, then stood there hugging herself as she scanned the big lobby, squinting. Her gaze stopped at us, and then she began to walk in our direction.
“James?” she muttered, coming to a stop in front of us.