Heartless (Keeping Secrets) (2 page)

“Okay,” I said. What a weird guy. Somehow he managed to get the paper towel dispenser unclogged and then handed me a towel to dry my hands. I finished drying them, wadded up the cheap, brown towel, and tossed it a few feet into the trash bin flawlessly.

“Nice shot,” Danny complimented. I looked back at him and gave an internal sigh of want. He wasn’t much of a talker, but God, what I wouldn’t give to have a half hour of playtime with him. But if he was that worried about his dads, he was probably straight. Too bad. All the good ones were.

“Thanks. Later, Danny. See you around.” I turned and walked out the door to get back to my pop quiz.

Chapter Two

“I
THINK
I love you, Jason.” The words had been spoken to me multiple times by multiple people. My stomach churned every single time. Cade MacDonald was a rich boy in our group that I’d fooled around with off and on since sophomore year. We weren’t exactly “friends,” per se, but we were equals. Though if his daddy hadn’t been absolutely loaded and provided him with a ton of expensive toys and enough of his own money to buy good friends, he never would’ve made the cut for the crew I ran with.

He was the only closet case I ever bothered with because he was the only eligible playmate I absolutely didn’t want to publicly admit to sleeping with. He wasn’t ugly, but he certainly wasn’t pretty either. His girlfriend was a little mouthy thing who had visions of marrying him for his daddy’s money one day. I hated going to such lengths just to get satisfaction, but when I had an itch, he was the one who normally scratched it.

“Yeah?” I whispered in his ear as I lay beside him on his king-size bed in his room, which would’ve probably fit my entire apartment inside of it. That was a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one.

“Yeah,” he murmured dreamily. The thing I’d learned early on was that boys always thought they were in love after they came. I pressed a kiss to his cheek and leaned over the side of the bed to grab my blue jeans. I had lost my shirt at some point coming up the stairs, so I’d have to pick that up on my way out. He half sat up, frowning. “Where are you going? My mom and dad won’t even be back until tomorrow. I thought you could spend the night?”

I snorted. “And have to listen to you and Denise’s ‘I love you, my fellow Republican’ speech before bed again? No thank you.”

“I broke it off with her.” The words were a whisper. I turned back toward him and arched my eyebrows. I so did not like where this was going. I’d apparently missed a lot during lunch if I missed that little fact. “I did it before I went to pick you up.”

I snorted. “God, why? Aren’t you guys supposed to have a fucked-up version of happily ever after, complete with three good-looking rich kids, which do
not
belong to you?” I stood and pulled my jeans up my hips before buttoning them. Today was my day off, and I was not wasting it spending the night with Cade and his emotional problems.

“I’m in love with you, Jason.” Cade was dead serious as he said the words.
Great
.

“That’s the postorgasmic bliss talking,” I hedged, trying to find my other shoe very quickly and get the hell out of there. How hard could it be to find an orange shoe against white carpet? There it was, hiding under the corner of the bedspread.

“Jason, I’m serious,” he whined. “Look at me, for Christ’s sake.” I did. Reluctantly. “We’ve been doing this over a year. Don’t you feel, I don’t know, anything?”

I blinked and knew I hadn’t covered the disgusted look on my face fast enough, because tears began to stream down his face almost immediately after he finished speaking.
Shit
. Now I felt obligated to comfort him in some way. I wasn’t into comforting. It felt weak to me. Every sort of emotional outburst that was pawned off on other people felt weak to me.

“Look, we’ve had a good time, Cade. But I’m not the ‘dating’ type.” As was evident by my inability to “date” anyone for more than two weeks at a time. At least I had thought it was evident. Apparently not.

“I can make you happy,” Cade mumbled, fisting his fingers in his sheets. I almost threw up. No joke.

“You can’t,” I said reasonably.

“You won’t even let me try!” Cade snapped. He was crying in earnest now. Not pretty Hollywood tears. Nasty, snotty, red-eyed tears. He was really ugly when he cried. I shrugged. He was right, though. No way in hell would I let him try.

“When you calm down, you’ll realize that this would never have worked.” I stuffed my foot into my shoe and crossed over to his bedroom door. “Later, Cade,” I called before disappearing through it. The sound of something thumping against the door behind me was barely discernible over the sound of his sobbing. I winced. Yeah. I was such a fucking asshole.

My shirt was on the top stair on the way down to the main floor. I grabbed it up and pulled it on. I nodded to Henrietta, the maid, as I passed her in the foyer before I walked out the front door.

I
WAS
soul sick by the time I got back to my apartment on the other side of town. It had taken me a good two-and-a-half hours to get there, and I had wallowed in regret the entire way. Maybe if I were a different person, I would’ve called Cade when I got in and apologized, but I wasn’t. So I wouldn’t. I couldn’t let him see any weakness in me.

I was tired by the time I hit the rusted outside steps that led up to my second-floor apartment. Some of the Hispanics who lived below me were already outside in their lawn chairs, smoking cigarettes and blasting music. I waved at them. Raphel, the big daddy of the group, held up his beer in greeting. He and his two sons, along with most of the other people on the first floor, worked construction for various contractors in town. Most people talked crap about them, but they were actually pretty cool. Raphel was a nice guy when he was drinking, so I hoped they’d bought the twenty-four pack. He would usually throw me a couple when they did.

“Nice shoes,
conejito
!” his youngest son, Juan, yelled after me. Well, at least someone liked them. They all liked to call me
conejito
because I was small and apparently petable. It meant bunny. Juan always said I was pretty as a girl and let me sit in his lap when things got too bad upstairs.

I approached the front door cautiously, knowing they were both home. My stepfather’s beat-up ’97 Toyota was a testament to that. It would be okay if Mom was home and awake, but if she was asleep…. I turned the knob and pushed. The door was never locked when they were home.

I walked into the living room and was assaulted by the smell of cheap beer and something burning. I sighed as I saw Mom sleeping soundly in her bathrobe on the couch. She had narcolepsy, so she passed out quite often. It kept her from driving and working most jobs. She’d gotten disability a couple months back because of it, which actually put us a little better off. We weren’t always so bad off, if the things my stepdad mumbled in my ear when he got wasted could be believed. He’d apparently been in real estate before the market had bottomed out, and he’d lost his company to his business partner and his shirt to the bank that’d repossessed his several-million-dollar home over in Biltmore Forest. I didn’t remember that house or anything in it but apparently we used to live across the street from Kevin and his parents.

“Hey, Jason. How was your day, big man?” My stepdad’s oily voice sent a shiver of dread through me. I swallowed.

“It was fine.” I crossed into the kitchen from the living room and turned off the stove eye as it boiled what looked to be the remains of food but was now so black it was hard to tell what it had been.

“You weren’t home when I got in.” He was in the hallway now, moving toward me.
Wake up, Mom
, I thought desperately.
Please, wake up
. “I had hoped to spend a little time with you before your mom got back from your Aunt Wanda’s house.” I’d forgotten: she went over there every Friday to go grocery shopping and spend some time with her family. If I had known, I would’ve stayed at Cade’s and put up with his clingy routine.

“Sorry about that. I was studying with a friend.” I went to the fridge and opened it. Soda, milk, eggs, some sort of pasta bowl. I wasn’t hungry, because Cade had gone through a drive-through on our way to his place and had bought me a meal, but I needed something to busy my hands with. I grabbed a soda and popped the lid of the can.

“Just a friend?” That was a deadly question. I covered my hesitance with a deep swallow of my pop. When I finished, I nodded. He was standing in the space between the kitchen and the hallway. There was no way to get past him without seeming like I was deliberately avoiding touching him. Shit.

“Yeah. Just a friend. He’s too ugly to fuck.” I knew he liked it when I talked like that, despite the fact that when Mom was awake, he’d correct me. I leaned a hip against the fridge and forced myself to smile. Cocky and confident usually worked best on him too.

“Good. I’d hate to think you’d waste your time with some loser high school boys.”

I finally raised my eyes to meet his. My stepdad was just a hair taller than me but twice as thick through the chest, his arms were bigger than my head when he flexed, and his once-washboard stomach was quickly turning to fat from sitting on the couch without a job for the past ten years. He had a round baby face with a wide mouth, brown eyes, and light hair that he kept shaved in a military cut.

“Nope. You know me, Jonathan. I’m a hit-it and quit-it kind of guy.” He preferred that I call him Jonathan when we were alone. I called him Dad in front of Mom so she could pretend it was something else, but we all knew what it was.

“You won’t quit me, baby.” My stomach started rolling, and I glanced toward my mom, whose chest rose and fell in even sleep. My stepdad chuckled. “No worries, baby. She’s out like a light. I gave her something with supper to help her doze.” Probably the Ambien he’d bought off Jim, one of his buddies.

“That’s cool.” I shifted from foot to foot, antsy. “I really need to go do some homework. I want my weekend clear for some fun.”

“Come give Daddy a kiss and then you can go study. The game comes on in another ten minutes, so that’s all we’ll have time for.” He was grinning like he’d won the fucking lotto, and my heart pounded adrenaline through my veins. Fight or flight, my mind demanded one or the other. I shuffled forward, wrapped my arms around his meaty neck, and tilted my head up for a kiss.

I
STARED
blankly at my history book on my navy-blue bed and then flipped the page. I was sightless and numb. It was the way I usually felt after he left. A kiss, as always, turned into so much more. He’d been a whole five minutes late to watch his game, but he hadn’t been too pissed about it. Jonathan was one of those people who assumed that if you were gay, you were automatically up for grabs. He had done a happy dance all the way to my bedroom when the counselor at the middle school had called to ask how I was adjusting after the fight and my announcement. It was sick to say that he was my longest running relationship.

I flipped the page angrily. I was just a twink to him. I flipped it again, uncaring when the page ripped. I wanted to hit something. The urge to go in there and attempt to pound the shit out of him was so strong that my muscles trembled from the effort just to stay still. My mom too. It didn’t matter that she tried to act as a buffer between the two of us. She fucking failed at it. I counted backward from ten and blew a stray bit of brown hair out of my face. I slammed the history book closed. No way was I going to learn anything about civics and economics like this.

I pulled on my clothes for the second time that evening, stuffed my feet into shoes, and stomped toward the door. I walked down the darkened hallway and out into the living room. The only light in there was the illumination from the small twenty-five-inch TV, which Jonathan had bought at a garage sale a couple years ago. The cable was hijacked from somewhere. I didn’t ask.

Mom was awake and lying against Jonathan’s chest as she read a magazine my aunt had probably given her. She looked up and smiled at me. She was still pretty at forty-four. Jonathan didn’t even look up from the game.

“I’m going out,” I announced, stuffing my hands into my pockets.

She frowned. “But, honey, Jon said you’d only been home an hour. Where are you going?”

I shrugged. “I think I’ll go downtown and hit up the drum circle. A few friends mentioned that they were going to be there.” I lied through my teeth, but she accepted it with a nod and went back to her magazine.

“Don’t wake us up when you come in,” Jonathan contributed. I waved my hand and was out the door without a goodbye.

Chapter Three

I
CHUGGED
my third beer and tossed the can into the collection we’d made in the shell of the kiddie pool someone had left at the end of the cement porch on the side of the building. It was already mostly full, so I had contributed fairly little. I’d always been a lightweight, so I was slightly buzzed off the three beers I’d had.

I was cozy in Juan’s lap as the music played on and everyone talked to one another in rapid-fire Spanish around me. I just liked listening to the cadence of their combined voices. I squirmed in my companion’s lap as my mind inevitably turned, as teenage minds were wont to do in moments of reprieve, to scandalous thoughts. It didn’t matter that I’d come already tonight. My body wanted to do it again. Juan squeezed my hips and kissed my ear.

“What are you doing, little
conejito
?” he whispered as his father started yelling at Juan’s older brother in words I couldn’t understand.

“Hopefully you in about thirty seconds,” I replied with a wink. The quickest way to forget Jonathan’s meaty hands was to wash it off with something new. Juan’s brown eyes widened, and he glanced over at his father to make sure that he hadn’t heard. While they accepted my presence well enough and even allowed Juan to give me a cuddle, they were strict Catholics who wouldn’t take kindly to me “converting” one of their own.