A Brother At My Back

by A. J. Downey

  “You like her.” It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer, I just looked back his way. He nodded and asked, “She like you too?”

  “She kissed me back the other day.”

  He nodded slowly, “She’s never let me kiss her. I imagine she doesn’t let just anybody.”

  “I wouldn’t say anything to her, I didn’t want to upset her more or say something unfortunate.”

  “She locked in her place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You headed back over there?”

  I wanted to, but I didn’t know if it was best. Dragon sighed and said, “I know it ain’t going to make you feel better, but as far as someone in her situation goes, I know she’s responsible about it.”

  “How so?”

  “Condoms, always. Goes in for regular testing. Real selective about who she’ll fuck. She may sell herself for sex, but she at least has enough self-respect that she ain’t doin’ it cheaply.”

  I grimaced, “Too right, you ain’t makin’ me feel better.”

  “You want I should have someone else help her?”

  “No,” I said quickly and he sat back.

  “Well, I think that’s the only answer either you or me need. Now man the fuck up, and go work out your shit.”

  “That an order, Boss?”

  “For once, yeah. Yeah, it is.”

  I nodded and got up, “Thanks, Bro.”

  “You’re learning,” he said with a nod. “I’m proud of you.”

  That struck me right in the heart. It meant a lot that he would say so.

  When I’d come here, I’d been lost without my family, my people, far from home – shit, you name it. Dragon had sat me down and asked me what I wanted most out of life and I’d told him honest; I wanted to be a man. A man my mum and my people could be proud of and he’d told me flat out that only I could make it happen and I needed to figure my shit out.

  Part of figuring my shit out had been admitting to myself that it was all right not being the best, the smartest, or the craftiest one of any given bunch. I needed to leave my pride be, and just concentrate on finding myself and that connection to the rest of it.

  I’d put in a lot of work on myself since coming here and I had to admit, even to me, that while I didn’t like what Tiffany was doing, I hadn’t been completely blind to it, even though I didn’t want to see it. I also had to admit, that while I could judge her for it, keep things strictly business and try never to think about her like that again, doing that would just make me a bigger asshole.

  She hadn’t judged me, even though she’d told me her friend had done plenty of it. She’d always been honest about things and while she didn’t readily volunteer what she did, I couldn’t recall her actually ever hiding it.

  At the end of it all, we were just two people stumbling around in life trying to make our way and be better than the people we were the day before and if anything, I could respect that. In part of being a better man than I was yesterday, I wanted to help her be a better woman, but I didn’t want to end up with things more munted than they already were, and so Dragon was right.

  I needed to go back to her place, even if it was out in the wops, and talk to her. I rode back the entire time, trying to figure out what just to say. Practiced it a few times even, but all the words left me when she opened the door for me, her lashes thick and clumped with a constellation of tears on them.

  I felt my shoulders drop and a defeated sigh escape me as I figured the saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions was true. So instead of saying anything. I just pulled her tight against me and hugged her and I think it was what she needed because she completely fell apart sobbing against me.

  I felt like such an asshole, afraid I’d carked it before it could even get started.

  Fuck me.

  11

  Tiffany…

  He came back.

  I don’t know what I’d expected, but that certainly hadn’t been it. I also hadn’t expected him to shut his mouth and to just pull me against him.

  His silence had cost me dearly, and I didn’t realize how much I had begun to like him back in such a short amount of time until he had refused to even look at me, let alone talk to me.

  It wasn’t often I felt like a dirty whore, but that had done it for me and I had barely made it into my apartment before the locks had started to blur as I’d twisted them into place. At the last one, the dam had broken completely and I couldn’t stop the tears from leaking out of my face.

  I’d slid to the floor against my front door and had sworn to myself that I was done with hooking. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I needed to stick to dancing and forget about the extra money because there wasn’t any amount of money worth the feeling I’d had when Nik had kissed me. That, and I would be damned if I ever wanted to go through the feeling of the look on his face when he’d walked into the back room and seen me with that john.

  So I sat on my floor, hugged my knees, and cried it out in my sanctuary, and no sooner had I gotten up to find a damn tissue then here he was, back again, knocking on my door. He had this look on his face when I’d opened it that was better than any ‘I’m sorry’ any guy had ever invented and then he’d pulled me into his arms and I lost it all over again for a completely different reason.

  It was all I had ever wanted any man to do. I think it’s what any girl had ever wanted in a man. Someone who could, even without words, sincerely admit when they may have done something wrong – even though he honestly hadn’t. I knew I had, and it made me feel miserable.

  “I get it,” he said quietly, shaking me momentarily from my hamster-wheel of spinning thoughts. “I get it, and I’m sorry I reacted that way, but I hope you’ll maybe talk to me.”

  “What am I supposed to say?” I asked, pitifully.

  “What’s in your heart,” he answered gently. “It’s not for any man to tell you what to say or how to act. Only you get to decide how you think or feel. I think that’s been taken away from you enough, don’t you?”

  I pulled back enough to look up at him and he smiled down at me a little sadly, his fingers sweeping my hair out of my face, his thumb gently tracing the curve of scar in my cheek by way of silent emphasis. I closed my eyes and leaned my cheek into the little touch and told the truth.

  “I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

  “Do what?”

  “Be normal. Be one half of an actual functional relationship with a man. It’s all so foreign and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Ain’t no rush, but is that your way of saying you like me, too?”

  I opened my eyes and fixed him with a look and said, “See, I told you.”

  He laughed and it was a good sound. I shivered and he swung the door shut behind him. I automatically went to it and threw every one of the locks.

  “Guess I’ll stay a while, yeah?” I turned, but he wasn’t smiling, the look on his face telegraphing loud and clear that he wanted that. That he’d like that very much.

  “I was hoping you would,” I said, nervously.

  “Come here.” I went to him and he pulled me close again, holding me, swaying gently. A soothing thing. He had a hint of a smile in his voice when he said, “Got some music?”

  “Yeah, why?” I asked.

  “Dance with me.”

  I smiled then, and he let me go just long enough for me to go to my phone and pair it with the little Bluetooth speaker. I turned on something slow. He took my hand and drew me in against the worn leather of his jacket and the newer leather of his vest, which was still pretty worn. We slow-danced in the little space provided in my entryway until my tears finally dried and my heart stopped its racing. As my pulse slowed, so did my rapidly-spiraling thoughts until my mind was a quiet, pleasant, blank.

  “Kiss me?” he asked, and I loved that he did. I raised my head from his shoulder and met his mouth with mine. It was the perfect kiss, deep and full of hidden meaning. A treasure I wished I could just run back into t
he dark with and cherish. It was a slow kiss, full of promise and heat; a heat that shimmered between us with sensual tension, sexual, sure, but so much more than that.

  I cradled his face in my hands, the one side raised in lines begging to be traced by my fingertips, his tattoo something more than just ink under his skin. I’d never felt anything like it before. It was as if the lines were carved, etched deeper than that. As if his heritage were more than just displayed but were etched beyond muscle into his very bone, into his soul. I liked that about him. I wanted to know more about it, but I didn’t want him to stop kissing me. I didn’t want his tongue to stop its seductive sweep against my own or his hands to stop kneading my body through my clothes.

  “I don’t want to stop,” he breathed against my lips.

  “I don’t either,” I confessed and it felt really good that I didn’t.

  “Got a French letter then, eh?”

  “A what?”

  He laughed a little and said, “A condom.”

  “Oh, no.”

  He made a slightly frustrated growl and breathed along the side of my neck, kissing me at my pulse point in a way that made me shiver.

  “It’s not like I bring my work home with me,” I said half sarcastically, half defensively. “You’re the first man I’ve ever let into my apartment.”

  He pulled back, dark eyes alight with desire, searching my face. Satisfied with what he saw there, he gave me a reckless grin and said, “I like that, makes a bloke feel special.”

  I laughed slightly and he touched light fingertips to the corner of my smile, a sweet one echoing on his own full lips.

  “Go get a hot shower, find the warmest whatever you have to sleep in. I want to hold you if that’s alright?”

  “I’d like that,” I murmured. “You’re seriously okay with just that, though?”

  “’Course I am, I suggested it, eh.”

  I pressed my lips, swollen from his kiss together and gave a short nod. I really liked the sound of what he was offering. There was sex and then there was intimacy. I needed the latter like I needed the sun, like I needed air to breathe, and the sincerity in his gaze as he followed my movements around the room even as he made himself at home, hanging his jacket on the back of one of my little two-seater table’s chairs… It was everything I’d longed for.

  Maybe I was letting myself be fooled like Delia seemed to think, but the look in his eyes, his easy posture… something told me to follow my heart and my heart was very nearly weeping in relief.

  12

  Zeb…

  She was warm, soft as silk under my fingertips as I played them lightly along her back, under the hem of the little tank top she wore with these stubbies that, I had to admit, did fantastic things for my dick.

  She lay on me in her narrow bed, one leg over both my own, ear over my heart and listened to me tell stories about my greenstone pendant, but only after I got done telling her about my tattoos. I liked how she let her fingertips trace the ones in front of her nose, over my shoulder and one pec.

  She reminded me of her cat, Max, who was curled with her nose under her tail, tucked between her owner and me where Tiffany had bent herself at the waist to allow room for her. It was an awkward sleeping position for her, but she was sound asleep against me now and made it look easy.

  I didn’t like that she slept with strange men for money. I liked it even less that even though I said I wasn’t, I couldn’t help but be unhappy about it and that in turn made me unhappy with me, because it felt like I was being a judgmental bastard. Of course, the fact that I said I wouldn’t judge and then secretly stewed over it like a judgy cunt pissed me off even more because I hated being a hypocrite even more than I hated being a judgy cunt.

  So I lay awake, the same thoughts chased by guilt in a circle around the inside of my head while a beautiful woman was sleeping on me, oblivious to it.

  We’d talked about it, and she’d told me she didn’t want to do it anymore. That the money was good, but the money certainly wasn’t buying her any sort of happiness. I’d asked her if I made her happy at all and she’d really thought about it before she’d answered and the answer was unexpectedly raw and honest. She’d said, “I think I’ve forgotten what happiness is, but when I’m with you, learning or just talking like this, I can almost remember what it was like. Do you make me happy? I don’t think anything could make me happy, but you remind me that it’s there and when we talk, like this, I can almost believe I can be happy again.”

  I didn’t know what to take away from that, but it made me smile and I had to laugh a little as I said, “Ah, yeah, now I know how you feel, I think.”

  “Oh? How’s that?”

  “I dunno whether you just said yes or no.”

  She’d smiled then and had laughed and it had been a good sound, but I still didn’t know if it was a yes or no. She’d helped me understand a bit better by telling me, “I’ve learned that a lot of things aren’t simply black or white, yes or no answers.”

  That’d been fair enough, and I’d said so. She’d grown solemn then and our conversation had dropped off and then she’d dropped off, too, into sleep.

  I tried, and as comfortable as I was, I reckon I was bothered by the fact that she hadn’t said she wouldn’t do it anymore – that she’d just said she didn’t want to. I didn’t think I could share a woman with another man, and not even in the practical application of it was her job. Stripping I could deal with, but another man inside her? Knowing that it made her sad, that she didn’t want to? I couldn’t bear the thought. It was so uncomfortable I must’ve shifted because she jolted awake slightly and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  I decided she’d been honest with me, so I could be honest with her. That I had to be honest with her.

  “I don’t want you to sleep with other men anymore if we’re gonna give it a go. It bothers me and honestly, it hurts my heart to know you’ve done it for so long. You’re worth much more than that, eh.”

  “I told you, I don’t want to anymore,” she said.

  “I know, but not wanting to and not doing it are two different things, eh.”

  She was quiet for several moments and she cuddled closer to me and stroked the top of Max’s head between the cat’s ears.

  “I don’t do what I don’t want to, not anymore. Still, telling a guy ‘no’ outright isn’t the easiest thing to do when you’re a woman and in the line of work I’m in.”

  “What’re you saying?”

  “I’m saying the best way for me to go about it is to say I don’t want to, and when they push, the only way I really have to push back is with money. I have a better chance of getting out of it by naming an exorbitant price, but Nik,” she let out a bit of a hard sigh and said, “everyone has their price.”

  “Name yours,” I said softly. She named a figure and I let out a low whistle. I could see what she meant. “Yeah, at that price, I reckon even I couldn’t argue you going for it.”

  She rested her arm on me and propped her chin on her wrist, staring me in the eye, “Then whoever asks, that’s my price. Most, if not all, of the guys around here wouldn’t be willing to pay that much to fuck anyone, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Lucky if one of ‘em doesn’t try to hit you for even suggesting it,” I said carefully.

  “I really didn’t turn tricks that often, and only for a handful of men. Regular customers that I got to know enough to know if they were that type of guy. Plus, if any of them tried it, that’s what Zeke is for. My problem is that I know not even Zeke could stand up to Silas, which is why I went the only place where I knew I could find someone who could.” She looked sad again but I was too busy replaying the part where she said she didn’t turn tricks often. ‘Didn’t’ as in past tense. She really was out of the game as far as she was concerned and I was well pleased with that.

  “How much extra did that kind of thing net you?” I asked.

  “Two, sometimes three extra grand a month, but I’m almost done with
my debts. It will take me a bit longer with just dancing but like I said, money doesn’t buy happiness, and I’m looking at a chance to maybe be happy again; I don’t want to screw that up.”

  She was staring at me, searching my face. I nodded. “A compromise then. You name that price. If someone matches it or offers more, you really think about it and if you can’t pass it up you do what you think is right. Not what I think is right or what a citizen might because fuck them – you do you, and we can talk about it, just like we’re talking now.”

  “You wouldn’t be mad?”

  I lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug and said, “I didn’t say that I wouldn’t be. Can’t say how I would feel until it happened, but I promise I’ll never hurt you, or smack you around.” I reached up and traced a thumb along her cheek. “What I will promise is to listen to you and talk it out. I can’t and won’t make decisions for you, Girl. That’s not something you should ever sign up for again.”

  “I won’t, believe me, but Nik, I am signing up for taking your feelings, thoughts, and the like into consideration when making my decisions. That’s part of a relationship, isn’t it? Doing things with your partner in mind?”

  “Ah yeah, that’s what I reckon.”

  She laid her head back down and cuddled up to me again. I held her tight and Max stretched between us and reached out a paw, putting it on my stomach. Then her claws came out and she dug in.

  “Ay!” I cried and tried not to jerk. “Crazy cat!” She let up and looked at me, green eyes full of feline judgment and I had to smirk. It was like she had spoken, and I was listening. It was a good talk, and I felt better about things and suddenly felt far more tired than I had a moment before.

  “So are we okay then?” Tiffany asked, voice small, and I stroked my fingers along her silky skin beneath her tank, along the top of her stubbies.

  “We were never not okay, Wahine. Go back to sleep, I’m here and I’m not going anywhere, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she said and sounded relieved. I could feel good about that, at least. I kissed the top of her head and tried to put thoughts about her going to work that night out of my head. It was easier than I thought, surprising enough. When she fell asleep this time, I went with her and I think we both slept pretty hard.