“But—” I started to say, only to be interrupted by him.
“No more questions! Take what you need, and we are out of here. You look great, by the way.”
He was already heading out the door, but I couldn’t resist saying, “You look pretty great yourself,” just before following him through the door.
If I’d had any preconceived notion that he might be joking when laying down his plan, I came to my senses soon enough. I was handed a bottle of vodka, while he carried a carton of juice.
The drinking began the second we left the settlement and entered the haunted woods.
“I’m not drunk yet, but there must be some kind of ghosts or fiends among these trees,” I told him, whispering, because even the smallest sounds seemed to echo so terribly.
“There are no fiends out here, don’t be ridiculous,” Nino said, but shot me a smile while the words were still leaving him. Somehow I wasn’t very reassured.
“Are we there yet?” I asked as I looked around.
“Baby, not even close.” The words had my head snapping in his direction, but whatever I hoped to see was hidden by shadows as he walked beneath a pine tree, and no other comment came from him.
“You think there will be people there?” I tried again, gazing at him in the hopes of seeing his smile if it came once more.
“Of course, it’s the weekend. There are always people there on the weekends. It’s halfway between two settlements and also the only club on this part of the island.” He spoke more slowly the more we walked.
“What is the name of the club?” Booze always made me talk too much. When decently intoxicated, I tended to do idiotic things too. I didn’t really expect this night to go any different.
“It’s called the Crazy Chicken. Now will you stop with the questions? I’m having trouble thinking that clearly.”
“You’re shitting me!” I shot back loudly, making the sound ring in the silence, and Nino stop.
“I’m serious; that’s the name of the club. Give me that vodka; you’re not all clear anymore.” He took the bottle from my fingers, only to tip it to his lips.
“You’re the one to talk! You can barely walk a straight line!” I pouted, surprised by that new experience. I never pout.
“Baby, I’ve never walked a straight line in my life!” he said before burping quietly.
I tried figuring out what he meant by that, “a straight line,” but then a bottle found its way back into my hands.
“Drink up. We have to finish this before we get there.”
So I forgot the “baby” comment, seeing only the curvy lines of the road beneath my feet, and I tipped my head back as I took a substantial gulp of the vodka. One minute I was standing a few feet away from Nino, and the next, I was falling backward off the edge of the road. It was pitch-dark around me suddenly, and thorns scraped against my forearms annoyingly.
I could hear Nino calling my name from somewhere above me, so I answered.
“I’m down here somewhere. I fell!”
“Jonathan? I think I see you. Well, come back up!” he told me, like I didn’t realize myself what I was supposed to do.
“There are thorns everywhere, and it’s fucking dark!” I yelled at him, getting frustrated.
“It’s just wild rose hip. Stand up, and you’ll be able to get up here just fine. I think there’s a small clearing behind you.” He said all of it calmly, like people fell off the road every damn day.
“Well, why don’t you get your ass down here and help me?” I shot him a look he couldn’t possibly see, but it made me feel better, even if only slightly.
“I’m wearing white pants! There is no fucking way I’m dragging you out of a pit in them!” His voice sounded offended. And to think I’d never once considered him to be a pussy!
“Fine! Be that way!” I pulled my legs back and stood up, discovering how the “pit” wasn’t even a pit, but just a roadside ditch, barely four feet deep.
The first thing in my line of sight was Nino, standing at the edge of the road, his whole body shaking as he pointed at me. I understood immediately that he was laughing, but laughing so hard that no sound managed to escape.
“It’s not that funny!” I shot back as I slowly climbed out of the ditch and onto the road.
I hoped he would stop, but realistically my chances were slim. He’d just seen me fall down into a ditch and was also pretty drunk. I knew I would be hearing him laugh all the way to the club and then again tomorrow when he sobered up enough to remember.
“Nino, stop laughing. You’ll hurt yourself!” I tried again, but by that time a smile was twitching at my lips too.
“Wish it was light out and I could have seen you.” I heard him stumble behind me as he whined.
“Are we there yet?”
“Almost. But I don’t think I can stop laughing yet.”
“That’s fine; don’t even bother.” I waved my hand at him, looking for any signs of a club in the middle of nowhere.
“See that light on the right? That’s the club. We’re just a few minutes away.” His hand touched my shoulder and slid all the way to my elbow.
I shuddered under his warm fingers, especially when they connected with my skin, but the touch was nothing more than a reassurance and was over too soon.
The club looked more like a private house that had two bouncers at the door. We—or should I say I—paid the entrance fee and led us to an open space with tables lined up in the corners. It was already filled with people, drinking, dancing, and talking, and the heavy beat vibrated through my chest.
“You can see the bar from here, right?” Nino came close to me, pointing to the left at a crowded space that was covered with a roof held up only by the stone pillars and with no surrounding walls.
“To the right from there is the inside of the club. It’s not much different from here, but when the weather is nice, people like to stay outdoors more than indoors. Do you want us to stick together for a while, or will you just go your own way?”
It was a question I had no answer to. I wanted to stay with him badly, but there was no way of knowing if he had any plans about meeting some girl or if he wanted to spend a night away from me.
“What do you prefer?” I asked cautiously.
“How about we stay together for a while, and if one of us finds an attachment, we go separate ways?” he suggested, and I reluctantly agreed. The idea that some girl might cling to him in front of me didn’t sit well with my possessive nature, and it took all my strength not to show it.
“Should we go to the bar now?” I asked but was already halfway there.
I wasn’t much of a dancer, but as soon as I had my drink in hand, my body started to move of its own volition. It was nothing more than swinging from side to side in time to the beat, but it made me smile. Especially when Nino found his way onto the dance floor, his hips circling, his hands high up in the air.
I watched him as he was throwing his head in different directions, his body twisting and teasing. It was an incredible sight to see him so free and without a worry in the world.
Even though my eyes were glued to his lithe form, people around me didn’t seem to notice. A palm connected with my forearm, and long, painted fingernails pressed gently against my skin as they slid up to my bicep. Only when the palm stopped did I look down into the brown eyes of a gorgeous woman.
She had a seductive smile, her eyelashes lowering appreciatively as she measured my Nino-dressed body. Without planning it, I did the same, noticing her long tanned legs and an extremely short skirt. Her cleavage was pushed up toward me, especially when she leaned on my side, her fingernails exploring my chest.
There was a pointed crystal nestled between her breasts, making it hard to look elsewhere.
“Are you here alone?” Her voice was damped, forcing me to get nearer in order to hear her.
It also had the effect of playing with all the right buttons of my body.
“No. I’m with a friend. He’s out
there dancing.” I pointed approximately, not taking my eyes off her.
“That means I have you for myself tonight. Buy me a drink.” She smiled as she looked straight into my eyes.
I don’t know what it was about her that attracted me besides her good looks, but I turned around and ordered that drink. I pressed the glass between her fingers, then watched as she lifted it to her red lips. She took a slow sip.
Her every move was seduction, and before I knew what hit me, I was seated at a table with her moving on my thighs. Her lips played with my earlobe, sucking on it, biting it, but never missing the dance her fingernails performed at the back of my neck.
She never told me her name, never spoke except those first few words. The drinks kept coming to our table, keeping me buzzed and aroused, too consumed with the sensations and not sober enough to be aware of my surroundings.
Her thigh rubbed over my erection, causing short breaths to leave my lungs, and I was thinking where we could go to continue the exploration when a wave of guilt splashed over me.
I’d left Nino alone, but not only that, I was planning on bringing a woman into our place. It seemed wrong on so many levels, and my eyes automatically started searching for him.
The woman ceased to exist despite all her efforts. She finally gave up on me when she almost fell off my knees. It was the moment I was waiting for. I got up off the chair and, looking over the moving heads on the dance floor, searched for that right one. What I saw caught me unprepared.
Nino was standing chest to chest with some dark-haired guy, arguing profusely. I was too far away to understand what it was all about, but that didn’t stop me from going there.
My first step almost caught me by surprise, making my head feel dizzy and almost putting me to the ground. I realized I’d drunk much more than I first thought, but being dizzy also made me remember that one, unchangeable fact. I had been served the papers and was only waiting for my expiration date.
It’d been a while since I even remembered my tumor, having been spared from the worst of the daily headaches and, generally, having a blast every day. In that moment it made me terribly angry; a dying man in a club having fun with women, pining after a man, and going to the rescue of said man. If I hadn’t been angry, I would have been laughing. Laughing at the absurdity of the situation, at the unfairness of it all…
Nino was what kicked me out of my anger-filled stupor, the way the man standing face-to-face with him pushed Nino away. The green eyes that shone with unshed tears. I was already halfway there, but the rest of the distance disappeared in my red haze.
Not even asking what happened, I pushed the guy the same way he’d pushed Nino only moments before.
“Who the fuck are you?” The man puffed up his chest as he shot the question my way.
“Who the fuck are you?” I spat back, just waiting for that one wrong move.
The rage must have been visible on my face, because reluctance radiated from him in abundance.
“This doesn’t concern you, but I don’t want his kind anywhere near me!” He wasn’t backing down, but I was too far gone in my emotions to even realize what he was referring to.
“When a ball-less dipshit picks on a smaller man, I make it my business!” It must have been the alcohol, because the whole situation was so far away from my personality that it wasn’t even funny.
“Who the fuck are you calling ball-less?” He frowned, not understanding why I was meddling in something that was clearly none of my business.
My next action must have been the product of alcohol, because nothing else would ever be able to explain it. I closed the two steps between us, grabbed his balls between my fingers, and squeezed them snugly.
“You.” I said it calmly as all the anger in me turned into satisfaction laced with mischief.
The expression on his face was one of shock and confusion, but his whole body breathed with helplessness. I had him in my hand, literally, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Now, you will calmly crawl back into whatever hole spit you out in the first place and never cross my path again.” The coldness in my voice chilled even me, but it had a terrifying effect on him, because his gulp was audible despite the music. The quickness with which he nodded his head rattled my teeth.
I let him go, watching as he left the club, before I turned around to face Nino. He was holding himself, like only one wrong word was needed to shatter him completely. Seeing him that vulnerable made some of that previous anger come back, and I walked over to him before it could flourish.
“I think it’s time to go,” I said as I threw my arm around his shoulders and directed him toward the door.
“Why did you do that?” he asked quietly when we were back on the dark road.
“Because you’re my friend, and no one treats one of my friends that way,” I said as evenly as I could, trying to at least control my voice when I wasn’t able to control either my body or my jumbled mind.
The words left him for a while as we mostly carried each other, stumbling back home. It was the alcohol that made everything slightly different before my eyes, making me see shadows that weren’t there, turning the distance before us into a light walk. Everything was different, but yet the same.
What turned the drunkenness into a problem was my noticeably looser tongue. Words that would never have left me before poured out of my mouth like a wild river, crashing solid bridges on its way, but purposely notching new adventurous paths.
“I wasn’t always like this,” I told him casually, like we’d known each other for decades but only now reached that solemn subject. “I used to have friends when I was a child, and parents who loved me. My mom was so beautiful, and she adored both my dad and me. You could see it in the way she always looked at us. There was never anything else but love there. And my father was fearsomely serious with everyone but the two of us. With us he laughed, chasing us around the house when we teased him, telling us scary stories late on weekend nights. I loved them both so much…” I went to a place that had been locked away years ago, deep inside me, as I held him close enough to smell his soft hair. I remembered how good we’d had it back then, and what I used to think every family should be like.
“What happened?” Nino’s caring voice made me look at him.
His shiny eyes were so close and so expectant that the rest of the story followed naturally, like the words were saved just for him. I loved the closeness we shared in those moments, the feeling of his body next to mine, the way I was able to catch him every time he stumbled.
“They had a car accident. Everything disappeared in one night, and I was left with only a trust fund in my name. The house was sold, as well as every single memory I’d had of them. Even that trust fund had a clause that prevented me from touching it before the age of twenty-one. It would have been fine if I’d had any living relatives to take me in after the accident, but my parents were very private, without close friends or family capable of looking after me. It was only later that I found out what the social workers missed. Both sets of my grandparents are still very much alive. The situation was like something Shakespeare would have written.” I smiled slightly at that, thinking just how true the words were.
“Two families basically at war with one another over something trivial had their only heirs fall in love. Only my parents didn’t choose death as their escape. They fled, using their savings and influence to hide from my grandparents. It took me a lot of money, persuasion, and even more time to discover my origins, but in the end, nothing could have brought my parents back. I understood the reasons behind their decision to leave my family unknown even after their death. I would have been all but sawed in half in the fight for the only heir of two empires.” In my head I had a clear memory of meeting both my grandfathers on the pretense of business, a memory of that one time when I’d needed to just see what they were like, to see parts of my dead parents again.
It was mostly the eyes that carried the resemblance. My mother h
ad her father’s eyes, and I recognized the same sharpness in them; only his let out icy coldness, while hers never cast anything less than love.
My father inherited the seriousness and posture from his own sire, the same hair and the same calculating look I’m sure I carried too. But despite all the similarities between them, I could never have imagined my grandfather smiling at anything. He was a vicious shark, always just a step away from devouring both people and businesses mercilessly.
“So you ended up in foster care?” Nino’s question echoed in the numb silence.
“Yes.” I shrugged. “You know how it is. They push you from one place to the next. I never had money to run away, never a house I could call my own. I swore I would never be hungry again in my life, and the only way to fulfill that was to study. It didn’t matter how many times I changed schools; I always took as much out of it as I could.” It hadn’t been easy, nothing ever was in life, but I’d made it worth my effort. At least that was what I’d naively thought, until my death sentence came banging on my door.
“How about your grandparents—did they ever find out about you?”
“I met them as Jonathan Morgan, a big shot in commercial law. Even if they had seen some resemblance to their children, it was so far-fetched that both of them ignored it.”
“And you didn’t tell them that you were their grandson?” He sounded shocked.
“No. Why should I? It was their fault all of it happened the way it did. I could have had a big family, and my parents could have still been alive if they didn’t have to hide for ten years from their own parents. They didn’t deserve to know.” I could hear the simmering rage at the edge of my voice. I still held a grudge without realizing it, even after almost twenty years since the day of the accident.
“Yes, but aren’t you more like your parents than your grandparents? They escaped because it was the only way for them to be happy, but they don’t seem like the kind of people who would have intentionally hurt others. You are doing that by hiding your existence. Your grandparents don’t even know their children are dead. You don’t have to be a perfect grandson or even stay in touch with them, but they deserve to know the truth.” He got fierce all of a sudden, fighting for justice—even when it had nothing to do with him.
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