by Zach Jenkins
The way things were going, it wouldn’t matter.
How can Levi be interested in staying with me when I’m so unreliable? What kind of adult lets himself get distracted while watching a kid? I had one job.
Instead of driving home, he went to the bar closest to his house and asked for a double shot of whiskey.
“Bad day?” the bartender asked.
Inigo chugged the drink. “Don’t wanna talk about it. Keep ’em coming.”
He only had one goal for the rest of the day. To get so drunk that he’d forget about how shaken he’d been by the incident.
When the bartender finished pouring the second shot, Inigo chugged it just as quickly as the first.
I’m a horrible person. I can’t run a business. I can’t keep track of a kid. I need a new start.
“I thought I said to keep ‘em coming.”
Inigo smiled as he heard the words already starting to slur.
29
Levi
“You should call Inigo,” Cory said as soon as Levi walked through the door.
Levi collapsed onto the couch with a tired groan. He had forgotten that Cory was there. During the drive home, he had hoped he would be able to talk Inigo into spending the night. “Okay. I’ll call him after I shower. How’d your meeting earlier go?”
“Seriously, man. Give him a call.”
Levi finally recognized the edge in Cory’s voice. Something was wrong. “What happened? Is Inigo okay?” He imagined a car crash, or at least a broken leg.
“Relax. He’s not injured.” Cory flopped onto the other end of the couch. “Just very shaken with what happened at the mall. He looked like he could use someone to talk to when he dropped Daxter off.”
“Why didn’t you talk to him then?”
“He practically threw Daxter through the door and ran away. I barely had a chance to say anything before he was gone. I was able to find out that he apparently lost Daxter there.”
Levi sprang to his feet and ran to Daxter’s bedroom. He was lying on the floor, stomping on his toy cars with his dinosaurs. He couldn’t see any sign of injuries, at least. “Hey, Dax. How’s it going?”
“Great, Dad.” He held a dinosaur up toward Levi. “Roar!”
Levi held his arms up defensively and leaned away in terror, setting Daxter giggling like usual.
“Okay,” Levi said hesitantly. “I’m going to go talk to Cory and make some dinner. I’ll call you to the table to eat in a few minutes.”
“Roar!” Daxter said in agreement.
When Levi made his way back to the living room, he slapped the top of his brother’s head. “What the fuck you scaring me like that for? Dax is sitting right there. Don’t joke about that shit. You’ll give me a heart attack.”
“Ouch.” Cory rubbed his head where he’d been hit. “Sorry. I could have phrased it better, I guess. He did lose him, though. They were at the mall, and Daxter disappeared. It sounds like your big dude had to search all over the place to find your little dude. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.”
“Dax?” If anything happened to his son, he was going to make heads roll. He flopped onto the couch to avoid pacing, and stared at his phone, trying to decide what to do. With a sigh, he set the phone on his lap. He figured that Dax seemed like he was fine, and arguing with Inigo wasn’t going to fix anything.
There’s no reason to go off half-cocked.
“No. You kidding me?” Cory said. “He’s a kid. He probably didn’t even know he was lost. But Inigo was fucked up. His hands were shaking. As soon as he’d told me the basics, he bolted.” Cory pointed at the Levi’s phone. “Call him.”
“I’ll call in a while. If I call now, I’ll just end up giving him a piece of my mind, and it won’t be one of the good pieces...” He trailed off when he saw his brother shaking his head. “What?”
“How many times did Mom and Dad have to come pick us up from some security desk when we were kids?”
Levi couldn’t help but laugh at the memory. He fidgeted to the edge of the cushion. His heel bounced anxiously on the ground. “Remember that time at Disney when we both got lost at different times and met up when they dumped us at the security office?”
Cory nodded. “Yeah. Dad was so pissed. We missed out on half our day there. He dragged us by our sleeves straight out to the car and drove us back to the hotel. God, we were such little assholes.”
“Why’d you wander off?” Levi asked.
“I wanted to ride Space Mountain.”
“Were you even tall enough?”
Cory threw a pillow at Levi. “I thought I was. But when I got to the front of the line, I found out I was wrong. Only then did I really realize that you guys were gone. What happened to you?”
“We’d been looking for you for about an hour. I needed to piss, but I couldn’t get their attention.” Levi laughed at the memory. “They were so mad at you. I was pretty sure the only reason they wanted to find you alive was so they could kill you. They were talking to a photographer to see if she’d seen you. I figured I had time to pee and get back before they missed me.”
“Dumbass. You should have at least run off to do something cool.”
“This is different, though,” Levi said, turning the nostalgic conversation back to the present. “Dax is my boy. He lost my boy.” He picked up his phone. He needed to yell at someone, and Inigo was the only one he could blame.
“How many times was it our parents’ fault when we got ourselves lost?”
“Shit.” He set his phone on the coffee table. “None of them. We always picked the worst times to disappear on them. I don’t know how they kept track of us as well as they did.”
“Exactly. They should get some kind of award for us making it this far.”
“What am I going to do?” Levi asked.
He had dealt with plenty of parenting issues since getting custody of Daxter. He’d even lost Daxter at the mall himself already. He hated how vulnerable parenting made him feel some days.
“You’re going to call him, man. He needs you. He was the one that was there when it happened. You think you’re spooked? I’m telling you, you should have seen his face. Daxter is fine. You’ll be fine. I’m not so sure about Inigo.”
Levi hated that answer. He was still too mad at how horrible the whole incident had left him feeling. It wasn’t enough that he had to be on his A game whenever he was around Daxter. He was also still responsible for whoever he let be in charge of his son. That meant any family, boyfriends, neighbors…shit, even teachers.
Maybe I can quit my job and homeschool. I just need to win the lottery before the school year starts.
When Levi hesitated, Cory continued. “Listen, you seem to have a great thing with this guy. You’ve talked about him nonstop since I got here. Don’t throw it away over this. Everything ended up fine, and us Hamiltons have a long history of being dicks to our parents when we get bored in crowded places. Daxter can’t help but be one, too. It’s genetic. Man up and call Inigo. But don’t yell at him. Talk to him. Comfort him. Later on, you can spend a few minutes with him and Daxter and discuss what to do if it ever happens again. That’s your job as his dad, right? Besides, didn’t you lose Dax at the mall once already?”
Levi banged his fist against the top of his head and groaned. “Fuck you. I hate it when you’re right.”
“That’s gotta suck to hate me so often.” Cory grabbed the phone from coffee table and tossed it back to Levi.
Levi dialed Inigo’s number, but he didn’t answer. He finished listening to the recording telling him to leave a message, and then he said, “Hey, it’s me. Give me a call when you get this.”
He followed up with a text that said the same.
He rocked back and forth, waiting for a reply that never came. “That’s odd. He’s normally quick to get back in touch. He must be ignoring me.”
“I told you that he wasn’t all right. Go find him. Make sure he knows that you two, no, you three are going to be okay. I’l
l watch Daxter. It’ll be good practice for when I get out of the military in a few months and I watch him while you guys go out on dates.”
Levi nodded. Not being able to reach Inigo had made him really worry. The poor guy certainly didn’t need any other stress in his life right then. He hoped Inigo wasn’t at home, packing bags to move.
When he knocked on Inigo’s door, though, nobody answered, and no lights were on.
If he isn’t at home, where could he be?
Levi thought about what he liked to do when he was stressed. He doubted Inigo was working out. He wasn’t inside eating ice cream, drinking wine, or watching movies.
Thinking about wine made Levi wish he had a drink. He rarely drank it. He much preferred beer and whiskey. But at that moment, he would have taken almost anything to help take the edge off.
Up until recently when Inigo’s drinking had tapered off a bit, he had definitely drunk more than Levi. If he wasn’t drinking at home, where could he be though? There were a million places to drink in the area.
How will I ever find him in all the bars around here?
Seconds later, Levi was back in the car and racing off to the bar they had gone to on their first date.
30
Inigo
Inigo stared down at the glass in his hand. If he drank that third drink, it would start an assembly line of drinking that would end in a blissful blackout, and the glorious silencing of all his self-doubt.
I’m not good enough of a businessman to keep the rink open.
I’m not good enough of an adult to keep track of a kid for an afternoon.
I’m not good enough of a man to not screw up a relationship.
He raised the glass to his lips, but hesitated before pouring the shot into his mouth. He recognized his fight or flight response kicking in. For once, he realized that meant he had an option. As much as he wanted to run away from it all, fighting for what he wanted was an option, too. It would leave him much more vulnerable to rejection once Levi realized that Inigo wasn’t good enough, though.
But if it does work out…
He really wanted to know what that future looked like. He had run away from so many men over the years, but all of them together didn’t add up to the quality of one Levi.
Realizing that he was going to try to make it work, he smiled.
I’ll drink to that.
As he raised the glass to his mouth again, the smell of the alcohol snapped him back to the moment.
No. Not tonight.
He banged the glass on the bar, splashing most of the drink out onto the counter.
“You okay, Inigo?” the bartender asked.
“I just might be.”
Inigo tossed a twenty-dollar bill onto the counter and started walking. On his way to the door, he decided that he was a little too wobbly to drive. Calling Levi was not an ideal option. He wanted to have the conversation face-to-face, but he definitely was not going to wait until the morning. He was too afraid he would chicken out if he lost the heat of the moment.
He started jogging and didn’t slow when he reached the door, hoping he’d be able to flag down a cab right away. It swung about two inches before meeting a jarring resistance.
“Fuck! Watch where you’re going!” the man on the other side of the door yelled.
“Levi? Oh my God. What are you doing here?”
Levi pulled himself up from the ground. He tested his nose and must have decided that it wasn’t broken.
Inigo couldn’t think of a worse time to smash Levi’s nose.
I really am hopeless.
“I’m sorry about the door,” Inigo said. “I didn’t know you were there. I just need to go—”
Levi shook his head. “Shut up. I have something to say to you.”
His tone silenced Inigo. Levi was pissed.
Inigo braced himself to get dumped. He’d lost Levi’s kid and just nearly broken his nose. Inigo had left many men for so much less.
“Do you remember what you said to me that first night we met?” Levi asked.
Inigo remembered lots of things about that night in the hotel, but almost none of them had to do with anything they had said to each other. The whole night had been overwhelming. “Can you give me a hint? I can’t remember anything specific.”
“Yeah, exactly. Me neither.” Levi nodded as if proving his point.
“Okay…” Inigo trailed off, unsure where the conversation was headed, but kind of wishing he still had a drink in his hands.
At least he hasn’t dumped me yet.
Levi exhaled before continuing. “Back then, we weren’t supposed to last together. You were just a pretty face to fuck. But we both knew that, right?”
“Okay…” Inigo tried the word again. If he said it enough times, maybe it would be true.
“If we’d never bumped into each other again, we’d just be guys who had a great night of fucking.”
“Levi, I’m not sure if you’re sweet-talking me or insulting me right now. Do you have some kind of point here?”
Levi dragged his toe across the concrete. He seemed to be struggling to find the right words. Inigo wanted to help him, but decided to let it play itself out. He knew he wouldn’t want to be rushed if the tables were turned.
“Shit. I’m not good at this kind of stuff,” Levi said. “What I’m trying to say is that we’re not just guys who fucked one night anymore.”
“Sure,” Inigo said. Confused by the conversation, he raised his defenses a little bit. If bad news is coming, this is the moment it drops. “We’ve fucked several times. Does that mean something?”
“Of course it does. I mean, not the fucking. Well, not just that.” Levi closed his eyes and groaned. “I’m doing this all wrong.” He pounded his fist against the door.
Inigo was about to say something to prod the conversation a little further along when Levi spoke again on his own. “We’re good together, man. You gotta recognize that. I know you have your own things going on. So do I. But together, man, we’re good. Don’t throw that away. Don’t run away from me. I need you.”
A wave of relief washed over Inigo.
He’s not trying to dump me. He’s fighting for me!
“Shit. I was worried you were here to kick me to the curb. I’m not going anywhere. I won’t lie. I considered a million stupid ideas tonight. But there’s one flaw with running from my problems.”
“What’s that?” Levi asked.
Inigo tensed. Saying that he wanted to talk things through with Levi was a lot easier than actually doing it. Afraid that if he hesitated, he’d chicken out, he hurriedly said, “You won’t be there if I run away. I need to be with you, Levi. I’m scared of going bankrupt. I’m scared that I’ll screw up with Daxter again someday. I’m terrified that I’ll blow it with you. I’ve definitely run away from plenty of men in the past when things got difficult. But I’m not going to do that this time. You’ll have to be the one to end it if you ever want to get rid of me.”
Levi smiled, but didn’t move. “There’s a problem with that, Inigo.”
Inigo frantically tried to figure out what he had said wrong. “What’s that?”
“I’m not ever going to want to get rid of you. I love you.”
Inigo almost collapsed with relief. “I love you, too. I think I have since that first night, but was too dumb to believe it. Well, I guess that means we’ll have to be stuck with each other.”
He leaned back against the door and nibbled on his lip, hoping to turn the talk to more pleasant topics.
Levi nodded. “Sounds like it.”
“I guess that means you should head back to your place for the night?” Inigo asked coyly.
Levi shook his head. “Definitely not. My brother has things under control there. He’s working on becoming a better babysitter for when he moves back. I vote that we go back to your place.”
Inigo turned his head to the side. “Okay, but I have the big derby tomorrow, so don’t go getting any ideas. It’s bad luc
k to have sex the night before a competition.”
In his peripheral vision, he saw Levi’s eyes shoot open wide. “Are you serious? Nothing at all tonight?”
Inigo stepped forward and pressed his lips against Levi’s. Any lingering doubts that things wouldn’t work out with Levi evaporated immediately. “I’ll make an exception for you tonight.”
Levi pulled Inigo toward his car. “I was hoping you’d be willing to make a few exceptions.”
31
Levi
The next afternoon, Inigo was busy giving his third pregame pep talk to the team when Riley strutted into the roller rink, pulling his wheeled bag behind him. He waved and smiled at people he knew as he passed through the crowd.
Levi nudged Inigo to get his attention. “Is he supposed to be here?” He had to nudge him twice to get him to halt his speech.
“Who?” Inigo asked, turning toward where Levi was looking. “Shit. What’s he doing here?”
Inigo shoved his way past the other men on the team and hurried to intercept his ex. “No, no, no. You’ve gotta go.”
“Good to see you, Inigo.” Riley completely ignored being rejected by Inigo.
The smile on his face was as fake as could be. Levi thought he looked ready to cause trouble, so he quickly joined the two of them. He stood a step behind and to the side of Inigo, close enough that his presence would be felt, but not where he’d be in the way if things stayed calm. He forced himself not to make fists, but he did stand with his feet shoulder-width apart, ready to pounce if needed.
Riley gave Levi one quick glance before mentally discarding him and turning his full attention back to Inigo. “Listen, we both made some mistakes. Let’s put that all aside for one day and just skate. The guys deserve a chance to win this bout.”
Levi couldn’t see Inigo’s face, but the way his shoulder and tricep muscles were tensed told Levi all he needed to know. If he thought they were going to lose by a million, it was clear that Inigo had no intention of letting Riley back on the team.