Five Boroughs 01 - Sutphin Boulevard (16 page)

The delicate arch of his brows winding together and the red, abused curve of his mouth combined to make him look raw and open. His thrusts slowed and he pulled out with a quiet, “God.”

He licked his lips and blinked before clumsily trying to fit us both on the couch without having to unstick himself from my chest. It felt so right that my first instinct was to shove him away, which couldn’t be healthy at all.

“Damn, Mikey. You got me feeling some type of way.”

I bucked my hips, spent dick trapped against his thigh, and ass still holding in the streams of semen he’d shot into me. “What way?”

“Like I could get by pretty well fucking only you and be really okay with that.”

I snaked my hand around his waist and rested it on his ass, squeezing the plump cheek. “Thought this was just about sex.”

“It is. But fucking you is like shooting up, and I don’t think one more time is going to be enough.”

Nunzio skimmed a sluggish kiss to the side of my jaw, flicking out his tongue. I shivered, and he followed it up with a kiss.

“Does that freak you out?”

I shook my head, but truthfully, I didn’t know.

November

“T
HERE
’
S
NOTHING
I can do to make it up?”

I studied my laptop and the electronic grade book with rows of assignments, scores, and student averages. The column of zeroes beneath Shawn’s name was almost impressive. He’d missed everything from the past two months due to a combination of truancy and falling asleep in class. Now here he was, staring down at me and seeming five seconds away from a meltdown. He was probably expecting me to say he had to make up the credit in night school next semester.

“There’s not a lot of ways I can fix this for you, buddy.”

I turned the laptop so he could see the numbers that were damning him with unyielding objectivity. I’d tried to give him a couple of random points for participating—even though his participation had been limited to breathing—but it had merely managed to lift his average to a measly 3 percent. None of his homework was done, and he didn’t even know who Napoleon was, which indicated that he deserved to fail. Still, something about Shawn kicked in my overprotective nerve, and I wanted to help him out.

Shawn skimmed the screen once, then again, and I could practically hear the wheels in his head churning while he tried to figure out a way to scrape by with a passing grade. Every few seconds he started to speak, paused, and then shook his head. He had to know that every scheme he came up with would not work. Not with me, anyway. I was infamous for my strict policy on makeup work.

“Fuck.”

I nodded in agreement. “Why did you wait until now to show concern? It’s the damn middle of November.”

“Because.” Shawn shifted from foot to foot, fidgeting and biting his lip like I was interrogating him about something more serious than cutting out on every group project. He looked at the open door of the classroom, then back at me, and walked over to push it shut. “Look, it’s some real personal shit, okay? My dad is in jail, I got to be picking my little sister up from school all the time, and I work at night.”

“Work where?”

“Rodriguez, come on….”

I turned the laptop screen back to me and tapped my fingers on the track pad. Shawn’s reputation had found its way to my ear long before he’d stepped foot in my classroom. Typically, I disregarded rumors about a student until I taught the kid for myself, but him being truant for three weeks at the start of the school year had not made a good impression at all. He’d managed to live up to every expectation—bad attitude, short temper, and constantly LTA (long term absent)—but there was still something about him that activated my guidance counselor instincts. He wasn’t a well-behaved student, but I’d seen worse, and I could tell he had a story buried beneath all of the sarcasm and defensiveness.

“You gotta help me out, Rodriguez,” Shawn insisted. He combed his fingers through his dark blond hair, knotting them up and then releasing with a loud exhale. “Look, I can’t do p.m. school or summer school. I got no one to watch my sister.”

“Who do you live with?”

“People. That ain’t the point. I can’t get stuck being in this building every night and over the summer!”

“Shawn, you’re not even here during the day, which is why you’re in this position.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but then the side of his mouth twitched up into a silly grin. “Okay, good point, but still, you gotta help me, Mister.”

“I don’t have to do anything.”

“
Please.
I’ll buy you breakfast for the rest of the year.”

“You don’t get here early enough.”

Shawn thumped his hand down on the desk. “Come on, Rodriguez. I thought we were cool.”

Hiding a grin, I crossed my arms over my chest and studied the rows of assignments again. “Let’s make a deal.”

“What deal?” He was instantly wary. “I can’t be doing no after-school stuff.”

“I don’t care where you do it, but you need to start putting in that work or you’re screwed. The only way this is going to happen is if you make up both assessments and every homework from this marking period, and do the chapters on the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment in the prep book.”

I ignored the dawning look of horror on his face and jerked my thumb at an orange textbook on my desk. “Don’t give me that face, because this is a good deal. And I can tell you now that this is a one-shot deal. I don’t believe in magical makeup packets and get-out-of-p.m.-school-free cards for kids who can’t be bothered to show up. You feel me?”

“Yeah, I feel you, Mister.” Shawn leaned against the desk behind him. “But what if I don’t finish in time?”

“You have no choice.”

“Yeah, but what if I can’t?”

I snorted. “Stop making excuses before you even try.”

“I don’t got time for—”

The door opened, and Shawn stopped midsentence. David poked his head through. Brow furrowed, he looked from me to Shawn.

“Hey guys. Try to remember to keep the door open during all after-school meetings, okay?”

The look I nailed him with should have shriveled his insides until he keeled over on the linoleum, but he was riveted on Shawn. The kid looked like he wanted to punch David in the face.

“Wow, son. We’re talking about some shit, and I wanted the door closed.”

“I understand that, but it needs to stay open.”

“What the fuck for? What are you trying to say?” Shawn’s voice rose.

I stood up and clapped a hand on Shawn’s shoulder while giving Mr. Oblivious an exasperated look. David was definitely not picking up on the vibes Shawn was throwing, and continued to stare into the classroom like he was waiting for a PowerPoint presentation on how to deal with irrationally angry children.

“Did you need something, Mr. Butler?” I asked when he failed to speak.

David didn’t get the hint and kept staring at Shawn, who had drawn himself up to his full six feet. The kid was big for a fifteen-year-old, and looked like an undergrad instead of a sophomore in high school.

Finally David turned to me. “They’re looking for your attendance.”

I knew it was an excuse, but I pointed to the blue folder with my bubble sheets. “There you go.”

“Thanks.”

David shot me a harried glare and grabbed the folder before marching out of the room with a click of his boots. Once the sound faded far enough down the hallway, Shawn stormed across the room to shut the door with a defiant kick.

“I can’t stand his faggot ass.”

“Watch it, Shawn.” I dropped into my chair. “Number one, you don’t say that word, and number two, you shouldn’t talk about your teacher like that or give him that attitude.”

“But he be getting me tight in class, Mr. R. Always talking shit and calling me out to make me look stupid. He pretty much told me his day was better when I didn’t show up. Little homo ass bitch.”

Nice one, David.

“I’m not going to tell you that Mr. Butler has to be your favorite teacher, but you have to respect him. And the gay slurs are unacceptable. Next time I hear it coming out of your mouth, you can pretty much count on me writing you up and making sure it leads to a suspension.”

“What’s the big deal? I’m not talking about
you
.”

“Okay, so can I go around making racial slurs just because I’m not talking about the person standing in front of me? Can Ms. Price go around talking about spics just because she isn’t directing it at me? Can I kindly request her to stop hiring so many crackers because I’m starting to feel like the last man standing?”

“No, that’s some crazy shit.”

“Yeah, so what you’re saying is some crazy shit. Talking about gay people is the same thing, kid.”

Despite all the tough-guy talk, he still seemed surprised to hear me curse. After a moment of giving me the side-eye, Shawn sucked his teeth and shoved his hands into the pockets of his black jacket. “Whatever. I don’t got no trouble with gay people. They’re everywhere in this fucking school. They don’t call it McQueery for nothing.”

And that was the damn truth. The nickname was widely used because the school had such a high population of gay students and gay teachers, but his excuse just made his lack of wherewithal even more unacceptable. It was starting to frustrate me, so I ended the conversation with a wave of my hand.

“Shawn, I need to get going. Clean up your attitude and download your assignments from the website. The marking period ends in two weeks.”

“Aiight, Mr. R. Thanks.”

I nodded and watched him go. The annoyance didn’t dampen the concern, and I was unable to stop wondering what he did for money that caused him to fall into a coma-like sleep every day in class. I had another student who worked nights in a Laundromat, but something told me Shawn wasn’t folding clothes to make cash. Between me, David, and the guidance counselor, we’d tried to get in touch with a parent almost ten times, but never received a response. It was coming to the point where I knew a caseworker would be put in charge of the situation, and even though I hated to watch that go down, I suspected it might be for the best. The burgeoning mental image of Shawn raising his little sister by himself would not fade.

Slamming my laptop shut, I groaned and put my head on the desk. There were piles of papers, folders, and student work beneath my face, but I didn’t care. The day had been long, and due to my students having serious misconceptions about geography, my lessons were behind once again.

I shut my eyes and thought about the long commute home, the crush of people on the train, and the mind-numbing volume of music my father or Raymond would inevitably be playing. In the past couple of months, my house had transformed into a messy bachelor’s pad, and even though I was nowhere close to being a neat freak, the place disgusted me more often than not when I took a moment to look around on Friday night. Apparently being the responsible one also meant being the clean one, and all of a sudden the motherfuckers had me mistaken for the maid. Going to my favorite dive bar to get toasted for the trek home was better than rushing back to that disaster.

My life choices were narrowed down to either arguing drunk or arguing sober, and the latter always left me ten times more stressed than I’d been at the start of the fight. The internal debate ping-ponged in my head, back and forth, left and right, until the only thing I was certain of was that the predicament I’d found myself in was going to give me an ulcer and a ton of gray hairs.

I sat mulling over my options until I heard another pair of footsteps moving down the hallway. After twenty years, the tread of Nunzio’s motorcycle boots and the jingle of his wallet chain were unmistakable, so I didn’t look up when he strode into the room, shut the door, and stopped by my desk. His fingers wound into my hair and combed back, petting me like he was trying to soothe a feral cat.

Leaning into the touch, I released a soft sigh and kept my face pillowed in my arms. The feel of his long fingers dragging through my hair, scraping my scalp, and the rough pad of his thumb brushing along the curve of my ear almost drove me to wrap myself around him and enjoy being spoiled.

There had been a time when I could do that—stretch out beside him, on top of him, or cuddle up with him—and not feel anything more than the contentment of unconditional friendship, but after fooling around with him, things had changed. Now, as he chuckled quietly and let me bask in the attention, my mind was playing tricks on me and whispering that going back to his place to extend this mostly innocent show of affection would be a good idea. But the logical part of my brain that acted on more than base desires and instincts knew better.

Evidence of that had come the week before, when I’d spent the night at his apartment after a spectacularly shitty day at work.

Vegging out while sprawled all over each other had been anything but platonic when I’d been incapable of not ogling his bare chest, the V of his torso, and the crotch of his sweatpants. In turn, I’d felt him tracing my mouth with his eyes, and his casual touches had grown frequent; his hands had wandered all over me until he’d wound up squeezing my thigh with his knuckles grazing the bulge under my fly.

After two hours of simmering tension, Nunzio had turned on the hardest-core gay porn he could find. We’d watched each other jerk off while two guys played edging games on his television. We hadn’t touched until the white-hot surge of an oncoming ejaculation had led to me kissing him.

There had been no fucking, but making out for a half hour after shooting our loads only led to a conflicting series of feelings and fantasized scenarios that had nothing to do with the
just platonic sex haha
story I kept tossing around in my head. But we’d slept in separate rooms, and everything had been normal after that, so who the hell knew?

“Hey.” Nunzio’s hand slid down to glide along the side of my face. “You okay?”

“Just have a headache.” I turned my head to peer up at him. His dark hair was messier than usual and his blue eyes shot through with red. “Are
you
okay?”