Holding Out for a Fairy Tale (24 page)

He’d meant to get it out of his system. And he’d totally failed.

All he’d wanted when he woke up was to touch Elliot again. It freaked him out, how much he wanted it. How much he wanted to keep his fucked-up domestic fantasy alive. Indulging in the fantasy was one thing, but he’d let things go way too far. Way, way too far.

Desperate, he’d called his former partner, hoping for advice. Hayes was the only openly gay man Ray was friends with, and he was the only one who might be able to help him. As usual, though, Christopher Hayes was impossible to get a hold of. Hayes was about as comfortable as Ray himself was with the idea of being in a relationship, so he figured Hayes would be able to tell him what to do about Elliot Belkamp. Even though his partner had essentially moved in with a cowboy he’d hooked up with nearly nine months ago, Hayes still wasn’t willing to give up his apartment or his ties to the city. Ray knew his partner, and he knew that Hayes and his cowboy would probably be growing old together before Hayes was willing to nail down just what their relationship amounted to.

Because Ray was determined to prove he was still Hayes’s friend, he’d been stuck playing property manager ever since. He’d rented out Hayes’s condo overlooking Seaport Village as a vacation rental throughout the summer and over the Christmas holidays, but in the middle of January, it was as empty as any hotel. It was also comfortably familiar, and it had a kitchen.

So Ray had bought a few days’ worth of groceries, notified the building manager that the apartment would be occupied for a week or so, and made himself at home.

He finished his beer and buried his face in Hayes’s couch. Being in Hayes’ apartment helped remind him just how badly falling in love with someone tended to fuck up his life.

Ray had been alone for so long, isolating himself from everyone, that he’d been caught off guard by how Christopher Hayes had wormed his way into Ray’s life. For a long time, he’d thought he might be in love with the guy. Since he’d managed to keep his interest in men confined to his own head up until that point, it freaked him out. He’d been more freaked out by the idea of losing Hayes to the gunshot wound that had nearly ended his career, though, and he’d made an ass of himself trying to hold on to a man who had never been his to begin with.

He’d resolved never to let himself be so stupid again, but he was barreling along the same course with Elliot. And he’d made an ass of himself again.

That was nothing new. Somehow, Ray could make an ass of himself pouring coffee in his own empty kitchen in the morning.

Every time he thought he had people figured out, he did something that managed to upset somebody, or more often
everybody
. It was better, he knew, to be the office clown than to admit he really didn’t know how others expected him to act. He could analyze body language, tone, and connotation as easily as he could analyze a computer program, but he had a hard time actually employing the things he observed. Hayes had recognized how socially awkward he could be, but he had taken it in stride, just like everything else. Hayes was the only one who had ever managed that.

Until now, anyway.

His phone rang again. Carmen’s ring tone, this time, so Ray didn’t hesitate to answer it.

“I haven’t found her,” he said, not bothering with hello. His sister, at least, he always understood.

“I figured.” He could hear the disappointment in Carmen’s voice. If they were together, he knew she’d be pouting. “I finally got the lady running the investigation to realize that Sophie’s parents and brother don’t give a shit about her. I thought I’d check in with you anyway. You sound like hell, by the way.”

Ray sighed. “I feel like hell.”

“You’re drunk.” There was no mistaking the comment for a question.

Ray tipped his empty beer bottle up, wishing that he had brought more beer with him. “Come on, Carmen, you don’t think that’s a bit unfair? I’m having a bad day, and you automatically assume I’m drunk? What kind of sister does that?”

“Uh-huh. How much have you had to drink?”

“Not nearly enough,” said Ray. “But that’s not the point.”

“Sophie’s missing, and you’re getting drunk….” she sounded exasperated for a moment and then she gasped. “No! You think something’s happened to her?”

“No. I don’t think anything’s happened to her. She was dating one of her professors at the same time she was dating a guy in his class. She packed up her stuff and left her dorm room on her own. I don’t know why she left, but I don’t think she’s hurt.”

“What?” Carmen called out something to one of her kids. “All this crap because she was dating some creepy old man?”

“Not quite. All this because she stole a butt load of money from Alejandro. Don’t pretend you haven’t heard about it, I know you have. I don’t know what the professor she was dating has to do with it. I think maybe she went to him for help.”

“Sophie wouldn’t steal! Not from family, Raymond, you know that!”

Ray huffed. Twelve years as a police officer, and a lifetime tied to organized crime, had convinced him anyone was capable of just about anything in terms of crime. The fact that Sophie was family didn’t absolve her of responsibility for the theft—if anything, it made Ray more likely to believe she was guilty. “The FBI called in tech personnel from the NSA to try and get into her laptop, Carmen. They’ve traced the program she used. And, honestly, from what I’ve heard, I think she was the only one who could have created this program. I told you she’s smart. But no matter how smart she is, they’ll find her.”

“But if she stole from Alejandro….” Carmen’s voice to the barest whisper.

“The FBI will find her first.” Ray tried to sound reassuring, even though he didn’t quite believe they’d find her before Alejandro. “They’ll be able to protect her. And I probably won’t be able to find out anything else. As soon as I started looking into it, her ex-boyfriend broke into my apartment and trashed the place. My apartment is a closed crime scene, and the FBI wants me under house arrest.”

“What? That’s ridiculous. You’re a police officer, they should—”

“He’s dead, Carmen. The body they found in Hillcrest was Sophie’s boyfriend.”

“The one they’re talking about on the news?”

“Apparently, someone shot him just after he broke into my place. He still had my gun on him.”

“Dead? But they didn’t find any sign of Sophie?”

He spent another ten minutes trying to be reassuring, promising her that Sophie was in trouble but likely fine. He listened to the sniffles through the phone, listened to Carmen’s sobs vanish as she said something strong and reassuring to her children. “Why do you sound like the world is ending, then?” she sniffled.

“Personal stuff.” He hoped she’d drop it, but he was never that lucky.

“Personal stuff? Sophie’s missing, and you’re hooking up with some new girl? Raymond, I swear, sometimes I want to strangle you!”

“No, not a new girl. An old lover walked back into my life when this whole mess started. Since I haven’t been able to stay at my place, we were hanging out together. It’s been… weird.”

“
Lover
is kind of a big word for you, Raymond. The longest you’ve been with a girl is what? Two weeks? Three? And that was in high school.”

“Oh, sure, I try pouring my heart out, and you make fun of me.”

“That’s what siblings are for,” said Carmen. “So some girl has managed the impossible, after all this time? Who is she? When are you bringing her for dinner?”

Ray wondered how much shit he’d catch if he just ended the call. “It’s complicated.”

“Real relationships tend to be.”

“It’s really, really complicated. This lover was kind of a rebound thing for me. I thought I was in love, I thought it might be real, and it wasn’t. And then, well, I thought the person I used as a rebound fu—fling.” He caught himself. “I thought this one was perfect, too. At the time, I thought I was imagining things, just because of how weird the situation was, but now they’re still perfect.”

“If she still seems perfect this time around, then she might actually be perfect, you know. And when were you ever with someone long enough to go through a rebound relationship? Why didn’t I hear about it?”

“Because it wasn’t a relationship. I fell hard for somebody who didn’t want me.” Saying those words aloud still hurt, and the pain made him feel even more pathetic.

“Oh. I’m sorry, Raymond, I shouldn’t have joked around about it. So this rebound girl, she’s back in the picture? And you’ve been staying with her?”

Ray grunted. So long as he didn’t say anything to confirm her belief that Elliot was a woman, it didn’t feel quite like lying. “Not anymore. I’m at Hayes’s apartment until I can go back into mine.”

“Not anymore? What happened?”

“Things got weird. Kind of
clingy
weird. So I left.”

“But, if you like her, is clingy such a bad thing?”

“I started feeling clingy,” he clarified. “It freaked me out. So this morning, I left.”

Her sigh echoed through the phone. “Raymond, I love you. I do. And you know I think you’re brilliant, right? But sometimes you’re a fucking idiot. You finally find a girl you really like, and you walk out on her first thing in the morning? Because you like her?”

“I did say it was complicated. There’s work stuff between us, too.”

“So what? A lot of relationships start at work. If she still seems perfect after all this time, go after her.”

Ray grunted again.

“It’s worth it, you know. Having someone to come home to each night.”

Carmen didn’t have the best track record with men, having been married twice and engaged a third time. She’d kicked her most recent boyfriend out just six months ago, after he got drunk and pushed her down a flight of stairs. Ray wanted to ask her if it was worth the weeks of pain she endured each time, not to be cruel, but because he sincerely wanted to know. Every relationship seemed to end the same way.

She would interpret it as him being cruel, though, and hang up on him. Then it would take a month of groveling before she would talk to him again.

“If you decide to bring her to dinner, you know you’re welcome any time.” Any time their mother or grandmother wasn’t visiting, but he didn’t need the reminder. “Call in advance, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Do you have any idea how relieved I am?” She laughed. “After all this time, I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever find a woman willing to put up with you past the first night.”

“Carmen, what would you say if….” Ray tried to think of a tactful way to tell her that the lover in question was a man, but he was pretty sure anything he did say would result in her screaming at him. Screaming at him wasn’t so bad. She screamed at him if he stole the chocolate she kept hidden on top of her refrigerator. If anyone in the world would be okay with him sleeping with a guy, it was Carmen. “What would you say if I told you it’s not a woman?”

“What?” Her voice became icy. “Raymond Louis Delgado, if you are trying to tell me you’re hooking up with some little teenager Sophie’s age,
again
, I will castrate you myself!”

“He’s not a girl at all, Carmen.” Ray held his breath, half hoping she wouldn’t hear him.

“
He
?”

“He. And if it makes you feel any better, he’s only two years younger than me.”

“She’s a
he
? Raymond, are you trying to say you’re gay?” He could hear the disbelief in her voice, hear the defensive anger he’d been dreading.

Why the hell had he decided to try this over the phone? He couldn’t see her expression or evaluate her body language, and he couldn’t read her stunned silence at all. “Jesus, Carmen, please don’t be mad at me. I’m serious about this. I don’t know what to feel right now, and I’m probably just being an idiot anyway…. I mean, it’s not like we were serious.” Ray didn’t know what he and Elliot had been. The only thing he was sure about was that walking away from Elliot, as if last night was just sex, hurt.

And now he’d fucked things up with the only person within a thousand miles he might have been able to talk to about it. “I’m sorry….” he whispered, ending the call before she could blow up.

He set the phone on the couch and spared it a single glance when it beeped once more. A text message from Elliot demanding he call had been sent while he was on the phone.

Ray pulled up Elliot’s phone number and almost called him. He silenced his phone instead. Finishing off the last two beers and falling asleep might not help him regain his sanity, but it seemed like a pretty decent option. Ray opened up another beer, pulled a blanket out of the linen closet, and popped
Pirates of the Caribbean
into Hayes’s DVD player. It was one of those perfect movies Ray never had trouble sitting through again. Halfway through the movie, someone hammered on Hayes’s front door hard enough to rattle the doorframe.

No one knew he was here except the building manager, and if he was knocking on the door, it was probably important.

Ray let the movie run and checked the peephole. His sister, holding a brown grocery bag and looking furious, stood tapping her foot impatiently.

He swung the door open. “How did you get into the building?”

“Please! There’s a party every other floor in this place. I just followed a bunch of drunk kids through the front door. Take this; it’s heavy.” She shoved the bag toward him. Wine and beer bottles clanked inside. She calmly tossed her jacket onto the coat tree and let herself in. “Now, I’d like to know where you get off thinking you can say something like that, on the fucking phone of all things, and then hang up on me? What the hell, Raymond?”

“Come right in. Make yourself at home.”

“Don’t start!” She turned a long, beautifully manicured nail on him. “You hung up on me! What choice did I have? Besides, Mama was there, and I’d never be able to keep my mouth shut after something like that!”

“She’s watching the kids? And you brought beer?”

“I brought
you
beer. But from the smell, I’m guessing you already thought of that. I brought some wine, too, in case you needed someone to commiserate with. I don’t commiserate over beer.”