Five Boroughs 01 - Sutphin Boulevard (14 page)

“I don’t know. I didn’t invite them. Probably Karen and Danielle.”

David asked me another question, something about the venue and what time people were meeting, but I didn’t respond right away.

The tension and flirtation between us had drifted to the back of my mind like a lecture on educational theory—interesting in the moment but easy to forget once it was over. I was much too worried about what was going on in Nunzio’s head and wondering why I was suddenly in the dark about what he was thinking.

T
EACHER
HAPPY
hour started at four thirty. By the time the typical party crowd showed up, the remaining stragglers from McCleary were well and truly shitfaced. Nunzio and I were among them, which was a surprise to nobody at all.

The good thing about the outing being at a so-called beer garden in Williamsburg was that it was spacious enough for conversations to be carried out in the brisk October wind, and I was a good distance from the rest of our colleagues. Things were fine until I saw David and Nunzio getting cozy at the bar.

I choked on my beer, causing bubbles to rise in the Viking-style stein that I was holding with both hands. My throat burned in protest, and I gasped a couple of times before setting the stein on the table I’d moved to on the side of the patio. Nunzio had only invited a select group of teachers from McCleary, but they talked about work with a single-minded focus that I couldn’t handle—especially not when Nunzio was playing games.

All of a sudden, Nunzio was leering at David and giving him come-suck-me smiles. Even David had seemed caught off guard by the sudden shift in Nunzio’s behavior and had avoided him for most of the night.

Until now.

An enormous guy with a blond beard and a faux-hawk got in my line of sight, and I had to stop myself from shoving him out of the way. He stood there with his miniature can of PBR and ranted on like a goddamned idiot about being a bona fide zombie survivalist. The conversation was so absurd that I quit eyeballing Nunzio and David to sneer at Mr. Faux-Hawk and his skewer of minisausages. He beamed up at me, oblivious to my hatred, and asked if I watched
The Walking Dead
.

I shot him my most baleful stare and walked around him to return to my spying. David was close to Nunzio’s side, grinning as they looked at his phone while one of his hands rested on the small of David’s back. The motherfucker was rubbing it, but the movement was so subtle, I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t zeroed in on it with guided-missile precision.

What the hell was wrong with me? What did I care if Nunzio suddenly wanted to bang David? We both hooked up with random people all the time. Why did it matter if his fingers were slipping under the hem of David’s T-shirt? When had I reacted this adversely to the sight of Nunzio about to score?

For the past two decades, I’d watched him suck in scores of guys and had never felt this level of irritation, but I wanted to punch someone in the face at the sight of Mr. Ivy League leaning into Nunzio’s touch.

I could suggest a threesome, but David was off the table for me. There would be no nooky and no helping this poor, confused baby gay cheat on his oblivious premed/lawyer boyfriend.

With that in mind, I decided to inform my best friend of that decision. Just to give him the option of following suit.

A phone rang—the ringtone a blend of pop and dubstep—and David hightailed it like his ass was on fire. He answered and made his way to the entrance of the bar.

I took his place at Nunzio’s side. “Having fun?”

“Why are you standing in the corner and watching us like a creep?”

I grabbed Nunzio’s glass. It looked like cranberry but smelled like vodka, and I confirmed that by draining it. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“So you just stood there?”

“Yeah, why not? I was curious.”

“About what?” The sides of Nunzio’s mouth curled up.

“About your plans. So are you going to smash him all of a sudden?”

“Maybe. He’s a cute kid.”

“I’m just letting you know”—I scanned the row of bottles behind the bar instead of looking at my best friend—“that he’s got a man.”

“Yeah, but I don’t.”

“So where’s your moral compass?”

“I left it in the West Indies with Christopher Columbus.”

I wasn’t going to laugh at Nunzio’s stupid jokes. I refused to humor him no matter how adorable he was when his eyes crinkled at the sides.

“You know, what if it was me? What if I was David’s man and you were helping him to do me dirty?”

It was a weak line of reasoning. I knew it, he knew it, and the bartender with the eight-inch chops hanging off the side of his face most likely knew it. My desperation to keep Nunzio out of David’s pants was so crystal clear that a voice in the back of my head screamed at me to shut up and quit being so pathetic. I was embarrassing myself and the inner part of my psyche that still had a mote of pride. I crushed it mentally and tilted the glass to eat the ice.

“That’s really all you got, Mikey?”

I crunched the ice with my back teeth. “Whatever, Nunzio. I’m just saying—if I was you, I wouldn’t mess with him. He has a man. He’s like a little helpless baby gay who needs guidance and not cocks up his ass every time he gets drunk. Be a better gay guide, sucio.”

Nunzio’s elbows thumped on the top of the bar, and he listed forward, smelling like vodka and cigarettes. I wanted to lean in and inhale him, bury my face in his neck and just breathe. It was a weird urge, but this whole situation was weird. Including the fact that I now found his angular jaw so tempting and the way I kept admiring how his shoulders looked covered in a tight Henley.

“This is what I hate about queer people,” Nunzio said. “They always think you have to be some kind of activist. Why can’t we just not care about shit like everyone else?”

“Because that’s what’s wrong with this country.”

“What are you? My mother?”

“No, because your mother is part of the problem with this country.”

“And those are true facts.” Nunzio laughed, slapping his hand on the bar and so cheerfully drunk that I nearly regretted coming down on him for his life choices—but not if it kept his dick out of David.

“Look—don’t do it. Just leave him alone. Let him figure out his life. Don’t be a scumbag.”

Nunzio sighed through the remaining bursts of chuckles, wiping his face with the back of his hand. The music changed and grew louder, a remix of a song I hated even more with the inclusion of dubstep drops. The bass vibrated so loud that I winced and ducked my head as if we were under siege. I didn’t protest when Nunzio grabbed the front of my shirt to drag me closer so he could be heard.

“But maybe I just don’t want to go home alone?”

“Why not?”

“Maybe I’m lonely.”

“You can go home with me.”

Nunzio dragged his fingers across the bar, tapping a beat until they bumped into my hand. His skin was cold, and I covered the back of his hand with my palm, rubbing in a halfhearted attempt to warm him up.

“Yeah, but what if I need to let off some steam?” He looked down at our hands. “You know?”

Behind us, a cheer went up and filtered in from the patio. I didn’t have to avert my gaze to recognize the voices—Danielle, Charles, Karen, a couple of other teachers from our floor and at some point David had returned. He must have taken a roundabout route along the perimeter of the bar to avoid me and Nunzio, which was smart, since I was almost positive he’d been on the phone with his allegedly ex-boyfriend.

It solidified my own decision to keep off him. At some point the kid would figure out what he wanted, but I had a feeling he wasn’t the type to be satisfied with being passed around like a toy, which would be the case whether he slept with me or Nunzio. He wanted perfection, and not being someone’s top choice didn’t fit that goal.

David’s laugh rang out again, and I almost turned to seek him out in the crowd, but I kept looking at my best friend and the tiny grin playing around his generous mouth.

No, David would never be my or Nunzio’s top choice. Not even for a casual fuck. Not anymore, anyway.

“We can figure something out,” I answered finally.

The grin got wider and Nunzio slid off the barstool. “Bet. Then let’s go.”

W
E
TOOK
two trains to get back to the West Side of Manhattan, and the entire time Nunzio’s gaze was on me. The Medici bedroom eyes were near infamous for those who knew him, but I’d never had them aimed at me other than on that one drunken night.

Since high school he’d always been the playboy, even though I had become sexually active first. I’d gone for whatever I could get as a teenager, but Nunzio had always set his sights on the hottest and the most unattainable. One look into those Sinatra-like baby blues and even the straightest of the hottest jocks or thugs at our school in South Jamaica melted in front of him and wound up with their knees in the air. Everyone I introduced Nunzio to always went on about how fuckable he was but I’d known him for so long I’d never truly understood what they meant until I’d felt his hands and mouth on me.

Was this what other people felt once they’d had Nunzio’s hard, muscular body against them? Did their stomachs go all hollow and fluttery when he pinned them with that filthy eye-fuck? I was hard just from the expression on his face, and I felt like the other straphangers had to know that he was thinking something dirty—about me. About whatever he wanted to happen in the next hour.

Jitters crawled through my body. I licked my lips, overly aware of how warm I was and of the sweat gathering beneath my jacket. When we arrived at our stop, I was grateful.

The station at 50th was deserted when we got off the train. As soon as it took off through the tunnel, rushing by and causing my hair to fly about wildly, Nunzio dropped his backpack and shoved me against one of the columns lining the platform. My heart caught in my throat.

His tongue slid between my parted lips and caressed my own. I dug my hands in the folds of his leather jacket and tried to regain a measure of control.

Everything about him drove me crazy—how good he smelled, how strong he was, the menthol and vodka taste of him, and the way he immobilized me so casually with one arm pinned alongside the column above my head and the other cupping the side of my face.

He knew what he was doing, and he knew what he wanted, and I was just along for the ride.

I peered at him, but all I saw were lashes and delicate eyelids as Nunzio coaxed a response out of me with talented strokes of his hot velvet tongue. He made a sound low in his throat, a soft hum of pleasure, and it cut through my scattered thoughts.

I returned his kiss, intending to make him as breathless and frantic as I was, and released one hand from his jacket to tangle it in his hair. I gripped hard and attacked his mouth. I didn’t resist when he pushed me harder.

Nunzio rocked against me, but the layers of denim made the friction less intense. He hissed in frustration and dropped a hand between us, aggressively pawing at my belt and fly before yanking his own.

“Wait,” I muttered when my jeans loosened and sagged.

He shushed me with his lips, and I heard his zipper slide down. “I just wanna touch it.”

My heartbeat spiked again. I wasn’t nearly drunk enough to get through this. I was too conscious that this was Nunzio playing me like a goddamned symphony and making my dick ache. This was Nunzio turning me into a wreck in an empty subway station in the middle of the night.

I started to say something, but the words dissolved into a hoarse gasp when he stroked both our dicks with slow, measured tugs of his hand. I arched my hips into his touch, using the column for leverage.

My concern about our state of undress, and the faint sound of voices on the other side of the platform, disappeared. Every thought centered on his fingers sliding along the veiny slickness of my dick, and the way he explored the inside of my mouth.

He sucked on my tongue, nursing at it and then released it to nip at my lower lip. My fingers tightened in his hair, a death grip that kept his face close to mine so I could kiss him with bruising force. I didn’t let him pull away, didn’t want to see his knowing smile and hooded eyes. I wanted to taste him without thinking, feel him without seeing, and enjoy the sensation of my body turning inside out with a fierce desire to never let this end.

His hand moved just enough to stimulate, but the intensity of our kiss swelled until my mind was void of everything but him. The sound of his breathless sighs, the feel of his hand releasing my dick to slide upward so he could hold me tighter, our bodies grinding languidly together, and the way we both poured everything into the other until we were raw and undone.

A tremor stole over me, and, finally, I had to pull away. He stared at me wild-eyed and shattered with his lips damp and parted.

“Train coming,” I said, voice scraping out low.

“Oh.” Nunzio fumbled with his pants. “Yeah, okay.” He zipped up around his erection and winced a little.

I did the same, fixing my jeans, and trying to ignore the sharp pang of unsatisfied lust. “You good?”

Nunzio nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

“Okay, then. Let’s go.”

I shifted away from the wide column that had shielded us, but he jerked me back. “Wait a sec,” he muttered and leaned in for one last kiss. He licked in slowly, deliberately, and then traced my swollen lips with his tongue before pulling away.

I stared dumbly and was forced into mobility by the sudden rush of the train hurtling through the tunnel. No one departed from the car nearest to us, but we started walking anyway, acting as though we hadn’t just spent ten minutes kissing on the filthy platform.

I stole glances at him as we strolled toward the staircase, but he looked no different than usual, as if us fooling around was now just a normal part of our friendship.

Maybe it was and I was overreacting, but I couldn’t stop myself from analyzing his every move, like a teenage boy with a crush. Things were better off with my dick in his hand, when I was too distracted to think about the implications of what was happening between us.