Slide, page 2
Yeah, that’s right; sometimes I hid from my sketchbooks too.
I sat motionless for a while, but without my work to distract me, the eerie silence of the apartment got under my skin. I still wasn’t used to that. Though I’d been off the streets for more than a year, the places I’d lived before I came to Chicago were noisy: rowdy Philadelphia hostels full of drunks and attitude. The peace of my new home scared the hell out of me, and it didn’t take long for me to resort to my usual habit of turning the TV on low to keep me company. Nature shows were my favorite, especially the ones about the ocean. With all the lights off, the TV turned the whole room blue. I liked that, especially when the walls rippled.
I curled up on the couch and stared at deep-water fish. I’d been sitting there a while when the front door creaked open.
Pete.
My roommate worked funny hours. Sometimes I hardly saw him at all, but that suited me. I spent enough time with people at work. By the end of the day I’d usually run out of energy to communicate. I only regretted being so antisocial when each night seemed to go on forever. Pete didn’t seem to mind my nocturnal ways. He was either resigned to me being a freak or he didn’t notice. I didn’t care either way. We’d only exchanged a few words since my friend Ellie had answered his advertisement for me a few weeks before. He wasn’t even here the day I moved in. Usually, when I heard him coming, I’d get up and slink away, but tonight, in the blue-tinged gloom of the room, I found I couldn’t be bothered to do even that. It was dark; with any luck he’d fail to see me.
“Hey.”
Or not. I looked up and there he was, standing in front of me, all olive-skinned, dark-haired six feet of him. A grin warmed his face. Even in the darkness I could see his brown eyes gleaming.
“Hey,” I returned awkwardly.
That was the other reason I avoided him. He was fucking hot. Talking wasn’t my thing at the best of times, and with him, it was hard to speak without tripping over my words or gawking like an idiot. Sometimes, he was lucky enough to get both.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Nah, not tired,” I lied. “What about you? Long night?”
“Fuck, yeah.” He stretched his arms over his head with a wide yawn. “Don’t think I could sleep, though. Tired but wired.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “I know that feeling.”
That earned me a smirk. “Yeah, looks like it. Are you working tomorrow?”
“No.” I shook my head absently. It already was tomorrow, and I hadn’t even thought about how I was going to spend my midweek day off.
Pete eyed me shrewdly, the way he had the first time I’d met him. I wanted to look away but didn’t, because something in his eyes held me still. It was weird—like the way my friend Ellie could hold my sketchy attention—but it wasn’t quite the same, and not quite as effective, either, since it seemed he’d asked me a question and I hadn’t even heard him. “Hmm?”
“Breakfast,” he repeated. “There’s no food in this place. Want to go to the diner?”
He said it like it was the most normal thing to do at four in the morning, but who was I to judge him? I was wide-awake, and it wasn’t like I had anything better to do.
I shrugged and got to my feet. “Sure.”
He seemed slightly surprised that I’d accepted his invitation, but he waited patiently while I got my shit together. I followed him outside, and the moment I set foot on the street, I felt better. The cold air stung my scratchy eyes and felt good against my skin. I lit a cigarette and fell into step beside him, enjoying the sensation of being in the one environment where I truly felt I belonged.
Pete was silent for a while, and I let him be. Though he’d said he felt wired, he seemed half-asleep. After a block or two, he turned to me. “So you’re an artist?”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. “I wouldn’t call it that. I do tattoos at Finnegan’s on Fort Street.”
Pete shrugged. “That’s still art, isn’t it? I knew it was tats. Your friend told me when you came to look at the room, remember?”
I shook my head slightly. I was in a world of my own the day Ellie dragged me off her couch to view the room in Pete’s apartment. Until then, I’d been content enough to observe Chicago through her high-rise apartment windows.
I’d heard it said all big cities were the same, but Chicago didn’t feel like Philadelphia, and it certainly didn’t feel like the asshole of Texas, where I grew up.
Some days I wondered what Ellie would make of Texas. She’d been all over the world with her wealthy folks, but always the big cities and those coastal places you saw on postcards, the ones with the white beaches and really blue oceans. Perhaps she’d like it, but who knew? I could hardly remember it myself. By the time she found me sleeping on the streets of Philadelphia, I’d been away from the South for more than two years.
Now I’d left Philly behind too, and I wondered how long it would take me to forget it.
I turned my gaze back on Pete, picturing the day we’d first met, but it was no good. I remembered nothing from that day but how amazing his dark skin looked against the smooth white walls. “What do you do?”
“I’m a paramedic,” he said. “That’s why I’m not around sometimes. I pretty much just work and sleep when I’m on rotation.”
Paramedic. Damn it, I knew that already. Ellie told me before I’d even met him. What the fuck was up with my brain tonight? I’d even seen him in his uniform, and that wasn’t a sight I’d forget in a hurry.
I’d also noticed that he slept a lot when he was at home. One afternoon, I’d discovered his habit of sleeping with his bedroom door wide open. I hated that. Open doors bothered me, especially when I was asleep. Odd, because for a long time, my life didn’t contain any damn doors. That night, to avoid disturbing him, I’d stayed out and picked up a chick in a bar. It was morning by the time I came home to an empty apartment.
Pete led me to a booth in the deserted diner and slid into the seat opposite me. “You want coffee?”
“Um, sure.”
The server poured coffee, took our orders, and left. Pete eyed the sugar I dumped in my coffee when she was gone. “Sweet tooth, huh?”
“Yep,” I admitted with a reluctant smile. Ellie had said the same thing a few weeks after meeting me too. “Don’t leave any cookies lying around.”
“I’ll remember that next time my mom sends me a care package.”
He laughed. The rich sound made me look up from the swirling coffee in my mug. I didn’t really like coffee, but it was habit to drink anything warm I could find when the weather got cold. “You get those, too? I thought it was just Ellie’s mom who did stuff like that.”
“Nah, moms are all the same.” Pete took a quick sip of his own scarily black coffee. “My mom lives up in Edgewater. Whenever I get up there, she gives me a big box of home-cooked food. She’s Italian, so she always cooks too much.”
Italian. Suddenly his dark hair and deep-brown eyes made sense. Shit, why am I looking at his eyes so much?
“What about your mom?” Pete asked when I didn’t say anything. “Does she live in Philadelphia? That’s where you lived before, right?”
“For a while,” I said absently. “My mom lived in Texas, but she died when I was a kid.”
Pete was silent as he sized me up in that subtle way of his. “My dad died when I was fourteen,” he said eventually. “He worked on an oil rig, and the drillship he was on capsized and sank.”
His eyes flashed with an emotion I vaguely recognized. It was gone before I could name it, but I figured it wasn’t anything good. My own father was a mystery to me—I didn’t even know his name. My mom died of a drug overdose, and it was possible he’d shared her fate, but I didn’t grieve for either of them. You couldn’t miss something you’d never had.
Pete reached for his coffee again and took a slow sip. “Man, I needed that,” he said wearily. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No. My mom was seventeen when she had me.”
“Seventeen?” He let out a low whistle. “Wow. I saw a fourteen-year-old give birth last year. These kids get younger, man.”
“You sound like Ellie’s dad.”
“Are you calling me old?”
From his appearance, he didn’t look much older than me, but he had his own place, a real job, and his eyes… damn, they just seemed so wise. “Maybe,” I countered as my curiosity got the better of me. “How old are you?”
“I turned twenty-four a few weeks ago,” he said with a wink. “Is that too old for you?”
The coffee in my mouth went down the wrong way and made me choke. What the hell was wrong with me? Thankfully, the waitress arrived with our food. She put the plates on the table, refilled Pete’s coffee, and walked away without a word. I took my cue and hastily changed the subject. “Why did you become a paramedic?”
“Didn’t have any better ideas.”
“Do you like it?” It felt strange to be so interested in another person, but for some reason, I wanted to know.
Pete glanced up from his food. He reached for the hot sauce and doctored his eggs while he considered his answer. “Some days, but then some days it sucks.”
“What about today?” I chewed slowly and deliberately on some toast. I was still learning to eat normally and not shovel every meal down in ten seconds flat. “Was today good or bad?”
Pete made a face somewhere between a wince and a scowl. “Today sucked ass. Did you hear about that big pileup in West Loop?”
I shook my head. I’d worked until late and then sulked at home. I hadn’t seen any news reports or newspapers. “Was it bad?”
“Yeah.”
His answer was short and clipped, so I let it go. I had plenty of shit I didn’t want to talk about, so it was only fair I give him the same privilege. He changed the subject, and the conversation stayed light after that. Turned out he liked ink, and he had some of his own.
“Show me?”
“Sure.”
Pete took off his jacket and rolled up the sleeve of his T-shirt. Despite myself, I leaned forward eagerly. Tattoos with personal meaning fascinated me. They often told me more about a person than their words ever could.
I took my time examining his two pieces. The oilrig sketch on the inside of his bicep was really cool. With the American flag curled around it and the date inscribed beneath, it was clearly a tribute to his father. I’d seen and done loads of designs dedicated to dead relatives. His was definitely one of the best I’d seen. His second ink, a small set of stars, was on the opposite shoulder. I looked at it with a critical eye. It was rougher, less refined, and it hadn’t been finished well, but it still looked amazing against his smooth olive skin.
“You look like you’re plotting,” Pete remarked as he rolled his sleeves back down and shrugged into his jacket. “Are you going to creep into my room some night and fix it?”
The plate of food I’d eaten felt suddenly heavy in my stomach. I swallowed the last of my cold coffee. “Are you ready to go?”
Pete shot me a strange look. “Sure, let me just get the check.”
“Nah, I got this.” I reached for my wallet and threw some bills on the table. Suddenly, I needed to get the hell out of there. I slid out of my seat and made for the door without looking to see if he followed.
I leaned against the wall outside. The fresh air cleared my head, but I could still hear the blood pumping in my ears. I hated that noise. The pounding made me dizzy, and I felt completely detached from the world around me, like I was looking down on myself from another planet.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I’d pretty much forgotten about Pete until someone kicked my foot. I snapped my eyes open and there he was again, grinning like he didn’t have a care in the world. “Let’s go home.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE smell of warm chocolate roused me from where I lay sprawled on Ellie’s couch—the couch that had been my bed until she found Pete’s place for me—half-asleep and staring at her huge TV.
She nudged me with her knee. I didn’t move. With a sigh, she gave up and sat on top of me. “So, how are things going with your hot roommate?”
I turned my head and lazily raised an eyebrow. “You think he’s hot? Isn’t he a little too male for you?”
“Honey, even a closeted lesbian can appreciate a smoking-hot guy.” She smirked and ruffled my hair. “He’s nearly as pretty as you are. Don’t you think he’s hot?”
I made a grab for the plate of brownies she’d brought through from the kitchen. “Is that why you wanted me to live with him? So you could wonder about what might have been?”
Ellie held the plate just out of my reach. “Maybe,” she hedged. “But, lesbianism aside, I doubt he’d be interested in me. Besides, I hardly ever see him.”
“That’s because he’s hardly ever home.”
It was true. I hadn’t seen him for a few days. The last time had been outside a bar a few blocks from his place with some blonde chick all over him. I only saw the back of her head as I walked past, but she looked pretty hot. I stayed out that night, in case he brought her home. He was gone when I got back, if he’d been home at all.
Ellie sighed. “Shame, you two would look so hot together. I bet he likes guys too; I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
I rolled my eyes. Her gaydar was seriously flawed, especially when it came to men. “I thought you hardly ever saw him.”
She leaned forward and shoved half a brownie in my mouth. “That’s not the point. He’s still nice to look at, right? It’s better than living with some pimply blimp.”
I chewed quickly and swallowed. “Are you calling Angela a blimp?” I inclined my head toward the spare room just down the corridor. “She’s not that big….”
“No!” Ellie flicked me just hard enough to shut me up. “And keep your voice down. I just meant I’d rather look at him in the morning than some greasy fat-ass.”
I let out a rueful laugh. Though she was being a little harsh on her own roommate, she was more right than she knew. Even when Pete was on his way in from working a night shift, he was still amazing to look at—so amazing that those days he’d be on my mind for hours: a sensation that was equal parts fascinating and disturbing.
Ellie shook her head. My sexuality confused her because it was undefined. Sometimes I liked women, and sometimes men. I was unpredictable, and I hadn’t been with a guy for months, not since I left Philadelphia. A new city made me nervous, and being with a woman was easy—too easy. You just told them they were hot and made them feel good. Fucking a dude was more complicated, for me, anyway. It was going to take a while to find the nerve.
Despite all that, though, Ellie was right. Pete was hot, and it was hard not to notice him. He was a little shorter than me, but he was more defined and definitely stronger. Everything about him was strong—his arms, his chest, his eyes—like he could handle anything. With his dark hair and smooth olive skin, it was a killer combination.
“So you’ll come, then?” Ellie said hopefully.
I blinked. “Come where?”
She gave a long-suffering sigh. “You have the worst attention span ever. My mom wants you to come with me for dinner on Sunday. She misses you.”
“Your mom misses anyone she hasn’t seen in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Aw, don’t be so grumpy,” Ellie chided. “Megan won’t be there, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
It wasn’t. So what if Ellie’s older sister thought I was a tramp? Even at my worst, I could look at her and know she was more miserable than I was. Scars on her wrists, a different guy every week, and she thought she was better than me? Nah, rich people just called it something else.
Meg didn’t worry me. What put me off was Ellie’s father. He’d been nothing but nice to me since she’d dragged my sorry ass home with her last fall, but he still gave me the creeps. He had a way of staring at me like I was some kind of experiment. I always came away from him feeling like I’d had my brain bleached.
“If you don’t see my mom soon, she’ll come looking for you,” Ellie warned as she correctly interpreted my silence as mutiny.
“She doesn’t know where I live,” I countered. Ellie looked away guiltily. “You told her where I live?”
She scowled. “Of course I did. Why wouldn’t I? Is it so bad that she wants to send you boxes of food like she did to that crappy hostel when I left you behind in Philly? You didn’t mind it then.”
I grunted a retort. That was different. With Ellie’s mom, Vivienne, in Chicago, there’d been little chance of her appearing on my doorstep back then. Seemed I wasn’t so safe now I was here too.
Ellie curled up beside me and flipped the TV channel over to some girlie chick flick she watched all the time. “She’s like that with everyone. You’re just not used to anyone caring. Someday you’ll learn to like it.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I let it go without ever answering her question. We both knew when she came looking for me on Sunday I’d go with her, because, really, what else was I going to do?
I LEFT Ellie’s after snoozing on her couch for most of the evening, and made my way home. Halfway there, I heard my name and I looked around to see Ted, my boss from the tattoo shop, waving at me from across the street.
“Hey, Ash,” he called. “Come over here, boy.”
Usually, I hated people calling me boy, but with Ted, I didn’t mind. He was a big old biker dude and it was a term he used for everyone. I crossed the street and made my way over to where he was standing outside a busy bar with a smoke in one hand a drink in the other.
He grinned and showed me the gaps in his teeth. “I thought it was you slouching along with your hands in your pockets. Come on, I’ll buy you a beer.”
