by A. M. Arthur
“Long day.” Alessandro was too tired to deal with Tony’s attitude.
“You look like shit.”
“I feel like shit, and watch your language.”
Tony’s mouth twitched. “Whatever. What happened to you, anyway? Eunice said you had an emergency last night, and you never came home.”
“It’s complicated grown-up stuff, Tony.”
Tony glared. That was the wrong thing to say. Alessandro had always hated it when adults told him he was too young to understand, even when he knew something was wrong. And he’d just done it to Tony.
“I’m sorry.” Alessandro rubbed his face with his hands, hoping that would wake him up a little bit. “A good friend of mine was hurt yesterday, and I was over there today helping out.”
“Which friend?”
“Jaime.”
“The queer one?”
His temper flared. “I wish you wouldn’t say that, but yes. That Jaime.”
“Sorry.” Tony fled the table for the fridge. He produced a foil-wrapped plate and carried it back. “Here. Eunice made fried chicken.”
Alessandro removed the foil to find a pile of golden-fried chicken parts that smelled amazing. He loved cold fried chicken, and he had a drumstick halfway finished before he noticed Tony was sitting next to him, silently watching him eat. Tony was rarely quiet and he didn’t often do nice things like bring Alessandro food.
“Is Jaime okay?” Tony asked.
“Physically, he’s fine. He hurt his head and has some bruises. He was pretty scared for a while. Someone pulled a really mean prank on him, Tony. Jaime’s a good guy, and he didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
“Joe Parsons says God hates queers.”
“Joe Parsons is an asshole, and I wish you’d stop hanging out with him.” Okay, not the best way to approach a belligerent ten-year-old about his choice of friends, especially when those friends were older and seemed cool. Tony was glaring daggers at him but didn’t actually defend Joe. “Look, I know he’s your friend, but I don’t like some of the stuff he tells you. God doesn’t hate queers, okay? God made all of us, right? How could He hate someone He made?”
Tony picked at the corner of the tinfoil. “Isn’t being gay a choice, though? Joe says so.”
“No, it isn’t a choice, any more than me being Brazilian is a choice, or you being Mexican. It’s what we are.” Alessandro put down his piece of chicken. Now or never. “I didn’t choose to be Brazilian any more than I chose to be gay.”
Tony’s young face twisted in confusion. He stared at Alessandro, silent for a long moment, before making an expression of horror so exaggerated it looked cartoonish. “Gross! You mean you, like, touch other guys? Down there?”
“Sometimes.” He really wasn’t prepared to have a gay-sex chat with his foster brother after the day he’d had, and he floundered for the right thing to say. “I love boys instead of girls, but I’m still the same guy I was two minutes ago.”
“Two minutes ago you were normal.”
“I am normal. So is Jaime and every other gay person out there. That’s what I want you to understand, Tony. You know that feeling you get when a kid at school looks at you funny because you’re Mexican? Or because they know you’re a foster kid?”
Tony frowned. “Yeah.”
“Do you like that feeling?”
“No.”
“Well, gay kids feel that way when people say mean things to them about being gay. There’s nothing wrong with any of us, and no one deserves to be hurt for something they can’t change.”
After a long silence, Tony finally met his eyes. “You’re really gay?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Like, always?”
“Yes.”
“So is Jaime, like, your boyfriend or something?”
Alessandro smiled. “Yeah, he is.”
“Then I’m real sorry he got hurt.”
“Me too. Now the police just need to catch whoever hurt him.”
“They don’t know?”
“No. Jaime didn’t see them, and he didn’t recognize any voices.”
A familiar sense of frustration washed over him, and Alessandro tried to ignore it by working on a chicken thigh. He finished it and was debating which part of the bird to devour next when he noticed Tony hadn’t moved. He was staring at the table, lips pressed together, in the middle of some sort of internal battle.
“Tony, what’s wrong?”
“You gotta promise you won’t get mad or hate me.” Tony’s voice was so soft, so completely un-Tony-like that Alessandro’s pulse jumped.
“Why would I hate you?”
Tony chewed on his lower lip before answering. “I was hanging out with Joe and Andy and their friends today after school, over at Joe’s house. Eunice said it was okay. Joe was showing everyone a video he’d made on his phone.”
Alessandro recalled the park last Saturday when Joe had showed something on his phone to the other kids, including Tony. The same morning as the bakery graffiti. “What was on the phone?”
“I didn’t know who it was, I swear.”
“What was on the phone?”
“A guy they’d stripped down and taped up in a bathroom somewhere. Joe didn’t give details, and I swear I didn’t know it was Jaime. You gotta believe me.”
A kick in the solar plexus would have hurt less. Alessandro shoved back from the table so fast his chair fell over with a deafening clatter. Tony scooted away from the table and retreated to the far side of the kitchen island as if expecting to get hit at any moment. Alessandro couldn’t think to comfort him. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea that a bunch of juvenile delinquents-in-training had been responsible for Jaime’s assault, or that they’d bragged about it to a ten-year-old. Bragged about it and fucking recorded it to show off later.
“Alessandro?” Eunice was in the kitchen entryway watching him with wide eyes. “Tony? What happened?”
Her voice snapped him back, and Alessandro whirled to face Tony. “Were you involved in any of it during the fact?”
“No!” Tony shook his head so hard a vertebra popped. “No, I swear, Alè, I wasn’t there for any of it. I just saw the videos.”
“Videos of what?” Eunice asked.
Videos. Evidence.
Alessandro yanked out his phone and dialed the number he’d put in that afternoon.
“Police department.”
“This is Alessandro Silva,” he said. “I need to speak with Detective Raines, please. I have information about an ongoing assault cause.”
“One moment, please.”
He waited, and for the first time in two days, saw a glimmer of hope that Jaime might get justice for his pain.
* * *
For the second day in a row, Baker’s Dozen didn’t open. Jaime would have chalked that up to a sure sign of the impending apocalypse, if he hadn’t been up until past one a.m. with Alessandro and Shannon, waiting for news from Detective Raines. The news, when it finally came, left him both stunned and saddened.
Joe and Andy Parsons confessed to everything once the videos were discovered on Joe’s cell phone. Slashing his bike tire, painting “fag” on the front of the bakery and the bathroom assault. All of it, they said, because God hates fags.
Jaime didn’t understand some people’s need to use religion has an excuse to hate. And it disturbed him to see two kids, twelve and fifteen, in custody for various felony charges because of what they’d been taught by their own minister father. The only bright light to the entire ordeal was that Tony’s hero worship of Joe Parsons was over.
He’d been floored when Alessandro told him that Tony confessed. Floored, and grateful that the boy had trusted Alessandro enough to be honest.
After the haunting ordeal of the last two days, and despite his body’s physical exhaustion, Jaime lay in his bed next to a snoring Alessandro, unable to sleep. His mind whirled with the events of the past few weeks, ever since meeting Alessandro in the bakery. The relationsh
ip neither of them could define, the complications caused by it, the incredible stress of Justin in their lives.
Justin. The name sent zaps of anxiety down Jaime’s spine. Maybe Jaime’s issues were behind bars, but Justin wasn’t. The situation with him was just beginning, and he was scared. Scared that money and power would help Justin shift blame somehow to Alessandro, and that Alessandro would be the one in jail.
Jaime curled up closer to Alessandro’s sleeping body, enjoying the closeness and the heat of him. He’d fight for Alessandro, just like Alessandro had fought for him. They wouldn’t let Justin win this time, no matter what. They were both better men together. Alessandro made him feel truly alive and wanted. He made him feel beautiful. Jaime wanted to give this thing between them a chance.
He wanted to take that final tumble into love and be able to tell Alessandro that and mean it. And he hoped that Alessandro wanted the same thing.
* * *
Shannon was in the kitchen with the stand mixer going, and Jaime was upstairs taking a shower, which left Alessandro the only one who heard the doorbell. He didn’t live there, but he answered the door anyway, unsure who’d be visiting the Winterses’ house at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning.
He stared through the screen door at the last face he expected to see on the small front porch, clutching her purse like a personal shield. “Brittney,” he said.
She didn’t smile. She wasn’t glaring at him, either, which helped a little. “Hi, Alessandro. I’m sorry to bother you so early, but I stopped by Mrs. Deforio’s and she said you were here.”
“Yeah.” Brilliant. “Would you like to come in?”
“Yes, thanks.”
He held the door for her, nervous that she’d been looking for him. Shannon poked her head out of the kitchen. He waved her back. She took the signal and disappeared upstairs.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked.
“No, I’m good.” Brittney perched on the edge of a chair, hands still clutching her purse. “Detective Raines came to see me last night. She had some interesting things to say.”
He sat opposite her on the sofa, hands flat on his thighs to keep them from shaking.
“You know, for a lot of years, I thought I was crazy,” she said. “I did some really stupid things at that party. I drank too much and I took some pills I shouldn’t have and I blacked out the entire night. No one had a clue how I got home in that state, and now I know why.”
Alessandro swallowed hard against the nausea churning in his stomach. “I’m so sorry, Brittney.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. “When I found out I was pregnant, I thought it had to be Ryan’s, but the timing wasn’t right. Then I thought something happened at the party, but no one there saw anything. People assumed the worst about me because of that. Assumed I’d gone home with someone and fucked them to get back at Ryan and that I was lying when I said I didn’t remember anything. I almost didn’t have the baby.”
Acid hit the back of his throat.
“But raising Kyle is the best thing I’ve ever done. I love my son. A month before he was born, I made a choice to love him no matter what. I stopped caring why he’d come into my life. I stopped caring that he’d probably never know who his father was, and that if Ryan couldn’t step up, then I was better off.”
Her eyes shined with tears, but she still looked more peaceful than upset. “You know, a few weeks ago I was cleaning some stuff out of the attic, and Kyle got into a box of old photos. He found one of my second-grade class. He pointed at a little boy and said, ‘Mommy, is that me?’ The resemblance was insane, Alessandro. I hadn’t seen it until that moment.”
“Justin,” he said.
“Justin.” A single tear trailed down her cheek, and she brushed it away. “Justin and I had flirted a little in high school, but he was with Claire. We never dated. We never even hung with the same people. I had no idea how to ask him about it, and it was so long ago.”
“I’m sorry, Brittney, so sorry.”
She shook her head vehemently. “Don’t be sorry. You were the missing piece of the puzzle, Alessandro. Now I know how I got home that night, and I know it’s very possible that Justin is Kyle’s father.”
“No, I’m sorry I didn’t stop him, or try to do something. That I was so self-absorbed I didn’t even ask questions.”
“Detective Raines said that Justin paid you to keep quiet and that you didn’t actually see me in the truck, just someone.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t understand how she was so calm about everything. She should be screaming at him, furious that he’d kept his mouth shut for so many years. That his own self-absorbed idiocy kept him from understanding sooner that he’d been witness to a crime.
“Justin probably would have paid you more money if you’d gone to him about this instead of the police.”
“It isn’t about money.” His gut churned at the idea of accepting another bribe from Justin now that he knew what had happened. He could never willingly cover up something so cruel. “It’s about you, Brittney, and doing the right thing. I was such a shit growing up. I’m not that guy anymore.”
She studied him a while, before nodding. “I’m going to get a lawyer and ask for a paternity test. I have grounds now, thanks to you. Best-case scenario is that Kyle ends up with a nice college fund.”
“And Justin ends up in jail?”
“That would be a bonus feature. Wasted doesn’t equal consent. One step at a time.”
“Of course.”
“Anyway, I wanted to say all of this in person, since you helped put it in motion.”
The statement struck him in the guts. He had put it in motion by taking Justin’s hundred bucks. He cringed.
Brittney’s eyes went wide. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant you helped put the paternity test in motion. I don’t blame you for what Justin did, I swear. Unless you could read his mind, or you jumped in front of his truck, you couldn’t have stopped it.”
She didn’t have to blame him, because Alessandro blamed himself enough for both of them. “I hope it works out for you,” he said in a rough voice.
“I should go.” She stood, and he followed her to the door. “I’m sure we’ll talk again soon.”
“Yeah.”
He watched her climb into a rusty car parked on the street. Watched her drive away and disappear. He didn’t feel any better knowing Justin would face what he’d done, because in some ways, Brittney’s pain was beginning anew. He’d do whatever she needed to make this right.
Chapter Twenty
“Bug, we’re going to be late!”
Shannon’s shout echoed up the stairs. Jaime winced at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He looked fine, and he was dressed and ready to go. He was dawdling on purpose. Eunice had invited them over for Sunday dinner, and while he wanted so much to eat with Alessandro’s family, the idea of leaving the house made him nervous. Except for two trips to the police station, Jaime hadn’t set foot outside since Thursday’s attack.
He wasn’t going to a public restaurant, or anywhere close to the park. Eunice’s house wasn’t terribly far away, and he’d been there once already. He had to get over this new anxiety and get on with his life, before his already overprotective sister turned into a basket case.
“It’s just dinner with your boyfriend’s family,” he said to his reflection, who looked queasy at the words. “No big deal.”
No big deal. He repeated that over in his head as he went downstairs. Shannon had already packed her triple-decker coconut cake into the backseat, and she was waiting for him by the front door.
“You okay?” She’d asked that once an hour for the last three days, and he was so over it he almost snapped.
“Fine, let’s go or we’ll be late.”
She rolled her eyes. She didn’t comment on how quickly he walked to the car, or the way he slid into the seat and snapped his belt before she’d gotten her door entirely open. She saw it, though, silently observing th
e way she always did.
Silent until they were halfway to the Deforio house. “Have you thought about talking to Dr. Piccolo?”
He groaned. After his transplant, he’d had mandatory sessions with a psychiatrist to help him make the adjustment. He liked Dr. Piccolo well enough but had no desire to talk to him again. About anything. “No, I haven’t, and I’d rather not, sis.”
“If you say so.”
Code for I’m not letting this go yet.
He forced himself to walk more slowly up the steps to the Deforios’ front porch. His palms were sweating by the time he made it. Alessandro opened the door before they could ring, and Jaime was pulled into a comfortable, welcome hug. He clung, not wanting to let go.
Eunice bustled into the foyer and took the cake with a big laugh of surprise and delight. She introduced Shannon to Tony and Molly, who watched from the living room with solemn eyes. Tony wouldn’t look at Jaime. He didn’t blame the kid for what the Parsonses had done, and he’d make a point to say that tonight before they left.
Molly tiptoed up to Shannon and tapped her on the hip. “Alè says you bake cookies for a living,” Molly said in a hushed voice, like she was revealing a secret.
Shannon squatted down to eye level and matched Molly’s whisper. “I sure do. Cookies and muffins and yummy little cakes and things. Maybe one day you can come down to the bakery and I’ll show you.”
“Oh, can I?” Molly practically bounced on her toes. “Really?”
“Absolutely. Maybe Tony can come along, too?”
Molly glanced over her shoulder at her skulking foster brother. “I guess he can. But he has to be nice to you.”
“I’m nice,” Tony squawked.
Jaime laughed at the very sibling-like banter between the pair.
“That’s a very kind offer, Shannon. Thank you,” Eunice said. “Now, I hope everyone’s hungry, because there’s a roast chicken on the table waiting for us to carve it.”
The kids made rooster noises and barreled down the hall to the dining room. Eunice placed a hand dramatically on her breast. “I swear those two lose all sense of manners when we have guests.”