Head 01 Hot Head (17 page)

“Avenue X is a long way to go to haul boxes for a couple bucks.” Loretta was determined to side with Griff.

“It is. And I don’t like to work for strangers.” Griff’s copper eyebrows came down over the bridge of his nose.

Mikey chimed in again, “I could realy use a couple bucks, bro.”

“Are these equipment people crooked?” Mrs. A. folded her napkin, trying to read Griff’s expression.

Dante raised one impish eyebrow. “Wel no, Ma. I mean… I guess he’s not exactly what I’d cal
straight.
”

“Excuse us!” Griff stood up at the table, almost knocking over his chair. He didn’t care if he was making a scene. He took Dante by the arm, yanking him

toward the back door. “We’l be right back.”

GRIFF didn’t let go of his best friend’s arm til they were out the back door and it was closed safely behind them. Last thing he needed was any of the Anastagios overhearing what was going down in their backyard.

Dante didn’t even have the decency to look sheepish.

“Goddamnit, Anastagio! Do you always have to be such a cock?!”

Dante shrugged, unfazed. “I’m not. Fuck you. I’ve found some kinda solution for a bad situation. And you said you’d help.” He seemed almost confused by

Griff’s reaction as he paced the little brick porch above the enclosed yard. Al round them, the neighbors’ trees were visible over the fence.

Who knew how many people were listening to them have this conversation? They needed to talk about this somewhere else, like a different state, at night, in

a sealed subterranean vault.

“In front of your family!” Griff’s hands itched to hit something. He had to remind himself over and over where he was so he didn’t punch Dante or throw him

through the back fence. This wasn’t his house, even if he forgot that sometimes; this wasn’t his family. Jesus H. Christ. “Some solution! Your kid brother wants to fucking pitch in.”

“Right. Yeah. Like that would happen. He’s a kid.” Dante roled his eyes. “I had to find some way to get you to talk about it.”

“So
that
was your briliant plan? The dinner table!” Griff knew he was being too loud this close to the family. He took a couple breaths, stifling his rage and disbelief.

“You would’ve avoided it forever if I hadn’t trapped you. I just wanted an answer.” Dante was holding his arm, making Griff look at him. “Look, G, you can

help me if you want, or you can walk away and let me deal with it. You don’t have to do anything. I’m not holding a gun to your fucking head.”

“Back off. Al right? Back the fuck off!” Griff stomped down the steps that led into Mrs. Anastagio’s little herb garden and the backyard, then circled back to glare up at his best friend.

“Shhh. Keep it down, wil ya? Loretta’s probably got her ear to the fucking door.”

“
Now
you want to keep it down.” Griff planted his ass on the steps, Dante at his back. “Asshole.” He hated himself for wanting to help Dante and also for wanting to walk away.
What a soup sandwich
.

“You been dodging me al week.”

Griff couldn’t argue with that; it was true. He knew that Dante had been trying to reach him.

Dante sat down beside him, bumped their shoulders together. “It was a joke, man. C’mon. It was pretty funny.”

That made Griff turn to glare at him, but Dante didn’t look guilty in the slightest. His black eyes twinkled, fucking
twinkled
in response. Instead of facing them and what they made him feel, Griff leaned over his knees and looked down at his pale fingers where they twisted together.

“Did you go to the site?” Dante was serious. Like he wanted advice.

“What?!”
Yes, every damn day.
“No! Fuck.” The lie tasted like soot in his mouth, but Griff didn’t have to fake the shock.

“It came out realy great. Even I thought so. Course I’m biased. I just thought you might’ve….”

Griff shook his head and looked at the yard. “Yeah, I don’t need to see you. Like that.”
Well, not more than three or four times a day.

“He’s offering a real bump for me to come back. A lot more if I bring a friend.” Dante turned to him. “Look, you don’t have to do this for me. I can go over

there again on my own, but it’s a heluva lot more money if you’re in the mix. Cash money.”

He put an arm over Griff’s shoulders and squeezed, like he was only asking to borrow a hammer. “This Alek guy wil pay the two of us a lot more as a

package deal. If we”—he lowered his voice—“uh, work together, ya know?”

“Fucking perv.” Griff grimaced.

“He’s actualy realy decent, considering.” Dante defending him only made it worse.

“How much wil this dicklick cough up?” Griff couldn’t believe he was even asking. He swalowed around the lump in his throat.
“Like two for the price of one?”

“More like two for the price of ten, G.” Dante looked back over his shoulder to see if they had an audience. His voice dropped to a near murmur. “If and

only if it’s the two of us. He said that you and me together would be real special ’cause we’re, ya know, so close.”

Griff chewed on that thought.
Close
. He wondered what mental gymnastics Dante had done to wrap his head around this batshit plan. Obviously he had, and he couldn’t understand why Griff wasn’t on board. “I’d feel weird.”
Understatement of the year.
His brain was hot tapioca.

Dante shook his head. “We’re buddies. Inside out. For better for worse. You seen me every way I ever been. And vice versa. We been naked together. We

fucked girls in the same room. No big. It’l just be like jerking off with buddies in junior high.”

The fuck? How did everything get so stupid?

“I didn’t jerk off with my friends in junior high.”

“Bulshit. Everybody did. Hormones? I jerked off every ninety minutes like a damn clock.”

“Uh. No. You must’ve been at St. Porno’s, ’cause I pretty much fought with my dad and did homework.” Griff’s face felt tight. He ran his hands through the

red thatch on his head, and he could feel it sticking up in a mad-scientist tangle:
alive, ALIVE!

The Anastagios’ back door loomed behind them, but the curtains on the windows didn’t twitch. Everyone must stil be at the table or up front watching the

game.

Dante’s eyes were bright on his, like he was teling a dirty joke in church. “C’mon. We al did it. You must’ve jerked off with Paulie a few times. He jerked

off in that sock like six times a day, and you guys hung out ala time. Athletic shit and al.”

“What sock? Wait….” Griff gasped and covered his eyes. “Never mind. I get it.”

Had Dante jerked off with his teammates in the showers? On the bus?
Another visual I don’t fucking need.
Griff swalowed. He could hear himself swalowing. The wet sounds of his throat working sounded like Dolby THX stereo inside his own head.

“We al ragged him about that sock. Nasty, crusty thing. We caled her Darna.” Dante winked, sidling up like Griff was a scary mastiff.

“Okay. Okay. I don’t need to know. But I swear, Paulie and I never—”

“Oh.” Dante’s face closed like a safe.

Suddenly Griff felt like apologizing, but he couldn’t figure out what he was apologizing for: Jerking off alone? Not having a cum sock? Not living with the

Anastagios in what had apparently been hot Italian jerk-o-rama?

Don’t think about that one too long.

“Paulie’s sock….” Dante shrugged one shoulder, his mouth hooked in confusion. “Hel, I just ate mine.”

I know, I’ve seen you.

Flashback to HotHead: Griff suddenly had a crystal clear picture of Dante squirting into his own open mouth. He’d watched it dozens of times. He knew

every second of it.

Dante acted like it was the most normal conversation to have on his parents’ porch. “Eating it’s way easier. Good for you.”

Man down! Man down!

If Griff had been standing, his knees would have buckled; he hoped he hadn’t made a weird sound, but he couldn’t be sure. As it was, a shiver chased down

his length like he was a horse trying to lose a fly, and his traitorous cock chubbed up against his thigh.

Dante made everything seem so reasonable.
Whacking off together; what’s the big deal?
But this offer wasn’t “just” anything, and they both knew it. It crossed al kinds of lines. There was a reason that Alek was wiling to offer so much more for a scene involving both of them. And Dante didn’t even know how

many lines they were talking about, because he didn’t feel the crazy things Griff did.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. A late October breeze shifted brown leaves on the tiles Mr. A. had put down beside the little garden back when they

were in high school. Al of the boys had helped, including Griff; Mrs. Anastagio had cried when she saw it.

Right then, Griff felt older than thirty-one. How had so much time slipped by?
It would be cold soon, and he was stil living in his father’s basement. The leaves skittered around the legs of the little iron café table.

But for now, the two of them sat in this little quiet bubble together—the family inside, the neighbors just over the fences, Brooklyn beyond, and this weird,

impossible offer hovering huge in the air between them: Dante begging him to live out his secret fantasy.

Close. Because we’re so close.

Griff realized Dante was breathing quietly beside him, waiting for some kind of decision from his best friend that was going to change their lives, either way.

Dante was probably as scared as he was but for very different reasons.

Griff tried to imagine what it was like for a straight guy to ask a good friend to do something this ful-on, no-bones-about-it queer. He knew how much Dante

loved that house. He knew how much Dante trusted him. He knew how bad things had to be to force Dante to ask for help. He knew what asking must have cost.

He knew what he’d give to share that kind of intimacy. And then, he just knew; he knew exactly what his answer had to be.

Griff checked the windows and the wals again for any obvious eavesdroppers before he broke the silence. “Do you have some kind of a plan?”

“I know how to jerk off, G.” Dante roled his eyes and made a dumb face. “If you don’t, I can give you pointers.”

“Idiot!” Griff smacked his head.

Dante yelped and held up his hands, laughing.

“No.” Griff glared at him. “I meant, do you know how much you need to get the bank off your back and get caught up?”

Dante nodded and faced the low shrubs along the fence. “Four grand is the emergency number, but if I could put away, like, nine or ten grand, I’d have some

breathing room through the holidays. Then there’l be construction stuff in the spring.”

Griff felt his resistance slip for a moment. “And that wil get you out of the hole?”

Dante looked like a little boy praying for a bicycle. “I hope so.”

“Hope is not a strategy.” Griff felt himself frown.

“Wel. Then I think….” Dante shrugged.

Griff wrinkled his forehead, shaking his head, trying to stop this runaway train. “What are you gonna tel your dad when he asks about the money?”

They both knew the Anastagios would question money appearing out of thin air and bils getting paid on a house that everyone knew Dante couldn’t afford.

“Oh. Shit.” Dante heard that with no problem. Gears turned in his head. “Construction maybe? I can say you found a gig in Bayridge doing demolition. Like

they’re paying cash under the table. And maybe, like, Alek can pay you for both of us, and you can loan it to me.” Dante looked back at his parent’s back door.

“Hel, they al know you’re the responsible one.”

Griff searched his friend’s, trying to resist that charm and the real desperation swimming in their inky depths. “Dante, you gotta know exactly what you need.

Not want, but seriously capital-N need.”

“I do.” Dante nodded and bumped their shoulders together. “No one has to know. He even said he can hide your face if you want. But we get more if you’l

let him show it.”

“What does he pay?” Griff was literaly whispering now as he looked at the bricks between his old sneakers. His size fifteens seemed enormous down there.

“Two grand for us both… maybe a little more if we push some boundaries.”

Griff closed his eyes and tried to find the wil to stop himself. He thought of his dad’s empty house, and nights on the web like a horny spider spying on

“Monte,” and Dante needing him, and al these crazy feelings. His impossible hope. He knew what he was doing, knew it was madness, but truth be told, he

couldn’t stop himself from saying yes, from helping Dante. And he couldn’t resist the temptation, the chance to see his best friend like that in the flesh. Knowing him in that way. Of being with him, just once, even under false pretenses. A completely selfish sacrifice hidden in plain sight.

No one has to know
.

“Griff?” Dante was stil looking at him when he opened his eyes.

Because we’re so close.

The screen door creaked behind them. Griff stiffened and twisted on the steps.

“Uncle Dante?” One of Flip’s boys stood there looking annoyed and uptight in his striped shirt: a miniature version of his dad. He held a big spoon as a kind

of scepter. “Grandpa says there’s more dessert if you both get your asses back inside.”
Slam.
And then he was gone.

Dante chuckled but stayed on the brick steps, waiting for Griff to say something.

Clank.
Like a rerouted subway, Griff felt his whole life angle slightly in a dangerous direction without any idea of the destination, wiling to gamble for once because Dante needed him back. He got to his feet, brushed the seat of his tan cords, and looked down at Dante smiling up at him.

So close.

“Yeah, D. Okay.”