The Guy With the Suitcase (Once Upon a Guy #1) (20 page)

And he did. He went by the homeless shelter that required a blowjob on registration and took pictures of the people outside, carrying unfolded sleeping bags, walking on slippers with no socks on. He went by Central Park, where the drunk old man had managed to buy a bottle of booze and was downing it, remembering all that he had once been and all he could have been before life slapped him hard across the face. He went by the street that Rafe sold his body and took the pictures of boys from all walks of life, selling the last dignified thing they owned over and over again. He went by Mario’s and snapped pictures of Sonia and her charitable smile, giving to everyone when she had so little. He went by Les Fourches and without entering, recorded photographs of a hopeless case, rebuilding a future behind the bar.

And as he was standing across the street, looking at Rafe from inside his camera, the longing burning in his chest gave him purpose. He didn’t want to work bars for the rest of his life. He knew that. And he didn’t want to take pictures for the rest of his life, although it was a welcoming addition to his lean hobby list. What he did want was to see that smile on Rafe’s face. But he didn’t want to see it only on Rafe. He wanted to see it on the drunks, the junkies, the survivalists, on all those people who been defecated by life and were still here, still alive, still praying and still hoping. He wanted to be that hope.

Right there, right then he decided. He’d fight until his last breath to achieve his dream. He might not have had a clue how to go about it, but he would. And with that thought, he finished his day’s session and walked into the restaurant where he knew a free and delicious meal awaited him.

When Rafe finished his shift and all his money was handed in, he sat down with Pierce, giving him a big smooch. Ever since he’d started, everyone always asked if he was hooking up with Pierce, and now that he finally had, he wanted everyone to know.
 

Pierce informed him that he had taken a ton of pictures and couldn’t wait to show him, and he couldn’t wait to see them. He couldn’t wait to be alone with his boyfriend. He had been thinking of Pierce’s sweet kisses all day long. How cozy it was nested in Pierce’s big arms and racing heart.

“Oh, would you two get a room?” Vance exclaimed as he took a seat on their table, gagging at the look of the new couple.

Some of the waiters were waving goodbye before closing the door behind them.

“Uhm…” Pierce stared at his old boss and got his attention. “Fuck off, Vance. And I say that from the bottom of my heart,” he said.

Vance grinned and sat back on his chair. “You guys are so cute together. What the fuck took you so long?”

Neither one of them answered that. They preferred to look into each other’s eyes instead. Pierce stretched his hand on the table and Rafe laced his fingers with Pierce’s.
 

“Do you guys want to get a drink at Marcy’s before you go shack up?” Vance asked, looking at their hands instead of their faces, the creases around his eyes making it obvious his mind was now somewhere else.

Rafe looked back at Pierce and nodded knowingly. Vance wanted to talk, or take his mind off something, and they’d be total pigs if they didn’t help their friend. “Sure thing, Vance.”

Vance shook his head as if waking from sleep and nodded in agreement. “That’s fine,” he said, “I’ve done my wild boozing last night.”

Rafe downed the remainder of his beer, for once not in a mug, but in an actual pint glass, helped Pierce stand up, and Vance close down the bar. They walked across the street and around the block, where Marcy’s was situated under flashing lights and risqué posters of drag queens and go-go dancers. One of them was of Conclabia and her Pubescent Pubes. Tonight was live rock music, so they didn’t have to endure the waxing act of the sexually deprived drag queen and her sexually charged dancers.

They walked in and climbed the stairs to the mezzanine where Vance had a table reserved on a nightly basis. Their waiter, a nicely dressed young man with a terrible fringe covering half his face took their order for a Dry Martini and two virgin Cosmos and left them to their peace, where Vance could finally pour his heart out on whatever was bothering him.

“So you wanna tell us what happened or wait for the drinks to get them to get you to tell us?” Pierce asked with a discernible grin. Rafe nudged his arm next to him.

Vance looked up at them and crossed his hands on his lap. “What are you talking about?”

“Come on,” Rafe rolled his eyes, “something is
clearly
bothering you, boss.”

Vance winced. “
Chico
, you know me so well.”

Pierce chuckled and held his stomach to restrain himself from laughing any harder. “Dude, the fucking singer can tell you’ve got the blues, and he ain’t even a blues singer.”

“Okay, okay. You got me. I just had a stupid night yesterday so I’m just not feeling very…uppity,” Vance admitted, holding his hands up in surrender.

Rafe tapped his hand on the table, demanding the beans. “Spill them,” he shouted over the music.

Vance huffed and looked at the ceiling. “Well, you know the
friend
I was supposed to spend my New Year’s Eve with?” They both nodded. “Well, he was sort of a date.”
 

Pierce and Rafe turned to look at each other while Vance was being coy with them. “No joke,” Pierce commented.

“Anyway,” he ignored both of them and continued, “we went out last night, I put on my new suit, we went somewhere nice and expensive, and as we were talking he started mentioning his boyfriend. You know, ‘my boyfriend this, my boyfriend that’…”

“I thought you said it was a date,” Rafe said.

“I did too,” Vance retorted. “I hadn’t seen him in ages, when he got back in touch with me he was being very funny and flirty and I genuinely thought he was interested. But, he was only interested in business tips and how to get started in New York. He wants to open his own restaurant and
apparently
I’m the only one he knows who’s got a business,” Vance sighed.

Pierce whistled. “What a Debby Downer. Sorry, dude, but please…”

“…don’t tell me you’re down because of him?” Rafe interrupted to also scold at Vance.

Vance nodded. “Well, I really liked this guy. I mean I’ve known him for like ten years, but I met him when I was with my then-boyfriend. By the time I became single again he moved out to L.A. and stuff. So he contacted me, I really thought he was interested. Our message history certainly read as such. And, I don’t know guys, I’m sick of all the fucking frogs I have to kiss. When is
my
prince gonna arrive? I’m not getting any younger.” He pursed his lips and the waiter arrived with their drinks. Vance took hold of his before it was given to him.

Rafe and Pierce spent the rest of the night consoling their depressed boss, trying to convince him that his life hadn’t ended and that he would find his soulmate if such thing existed. At around 2 a.m. they decided to make their way back to the apartment and got on the subway.

“He’s only thirty-six for crying out loud,” Pierce exclaimed. “Gay guys are such big, fat, drama queens.”

Rafe laughed. “Come on, give him a break. He’s been through a lot of relationships. It’s natural to lose hope. Especially when guys have fucked him up so badly.”

“Yeah, I know. And he’s such a catch as well. I don’t get it,” Pierce said.

“I know. Me neither,” Rafe agreed.

Pierce found Rafe’s hand on the seat between them and held it. “You’re not gonna fuck me up, are you?”

Rafe looked at him and put his forehead on Pierce’s. Those damn eyes. Blue like the morning sky, lighting with such glimmering desperation, hanging off Rafe’s reply as if they depended on him to keep their spark. Rafe couldn’t believe he was even asking him that.

“Never, you stupid,” he told him and gave him a gentle kiss.

Pierce’s cheeks puffed up and Rafe saw them blushing despite the smile.

They got off at their stop and got to the apartment in no time. Wang was still not back, so Rafe snuck his laptop into his bedroom so Pierce could show him all the beautiful pictures he’d taken. Pierce inserted the SD card and clicked the camera folder that popped up on the screen.
 

The first few pictures were urban shots that he’d seen a thousand times on posters, Facebook, TV shows, portraits. They looked like the pictures that tourists take of every single thing they see in their destination as if they’d never seen it before and never would again. There were a few that were stunning in their perception, especially for a photography fledgling like his boyfriend, but the majority were dull and uninteresting. Not that he let Pierce know that. He didn’t want to burst his bubble. Besides, it wasn’t as if the pictures were for display. They were for Pierce to create memories, and if those were the memories he wanted to make, who was he to stop him?

But then something magical happened.
 

The pictures were no longer about inanimate or animated objects, but of people, of every color and walk of life. He’d managed to get shots of people doing private things in the ever-so-public and always-busy streets of the Big Apple. The shot of a woman in a red suit lighting a cigarette while holding a telephone with her shoulder. A man picking oranges to put in a grocery bag. A young girl blowing a bubble. A boy’s attempt at a skating trick. One by one those pictures revealed a talent he didn’t know Pierce possessed. Not only had he taken nice colorful pictures, he had also taken soulful pictures.

And then they got to snapshots of a life he knew well. He saw the homeless with their carts, scavenging in trash, men, women, and children sleeping on carton boxes. He even saw the street he’d spent a year at, picking up customers for a dirty business he wished he’d never have to go back to.

“Those are so beautiful,
chulo
,” he told him, snuggled up next to him in the single bed, with only the peaceful light of the fairy lights casting a warm tone to the room.

“You mean that?” Pierce asked in a hushed voice.

Rafe smiled. “Yes,” he confirmed, and Pierce’s shy look made him give in.

He’d been feeling it all night, since he saw him walking in Les Fourches with his sapphire coat and camera in hand, like a model posing for a magazine cover. He’d felt it whenever he held his hand and his fingers massaging the back of it. He’d felt it sitting next to him at Marcy’s, consoling Vance, but doing so with such happiness he couldn’t help but feel like a hypocrite during Vance’s heart-to-heart. He’d felt it in the subway train, casting away Pierce’s fears, and he was feeling it now, seeing the talent that oozed out of him.

He wanted this man. This
bruto
who had patched his heart back up after his parents had shattered it to pieces. This tough guy who had gone out of his way to help him get back on his feet. This vulnerable soul that needed more love than Rafe could possibly give him. He couldn’t wait any longer. He wanted to be one with him.

And so he kissed him. Pierce kissed back while placing the laptop on the little floor between the bed and the wall, and his hands came back more triumphant, grabbing Rafe’s waist and his tongue going in for a deeper kiss. Rafe could almost chuckle at how inexperienced this big, muscular guy was compared to him, and how badly it showed on Pierce’s delicate moves, who touched Rafe as if he was afraid to break him. But instead of laughing, it turned him on. It was sexier than someone who knew his way around the game like his clients. Most of them so seasoned in the sexing-up that they’d forgotten all the good bits and skipped straight to the action. But Rafe didn’t want that with Pierce. Pierce wasn’t a money machine, nor a bed until the next morning. With him, Rafe wanted to explore the art of lovemaking. An art he’d only explored with one other person. The person who had cost him his good health.

He shook the image of his first boyfriend off his mind and focused on his current one, still afraid to touch anywhere but the waist and face. Rafe took Pierce’s hand and put it on his ass, placing his own on Pierce’s. His hand squeezed the firm, full buttock, and his cock in his jeans ached as it grew harder. The closeness was already making him sweat and they hadn’t even started yet.

He put his hand under Pierce’s jeans so that he could feel the smoothness of his buttock and pulled him closer where his cock could rub against his boyfriend’s, and from the feel of it, Pierce was as painfully hard as he was. He wanted to touch it, but he was sure if he did, he would shoot a load in his jeans. So instead he turned Pierce on the mattress so that he was lying fully on his back and sat on his lap. Pierce’s cock pulsed under his groin. Rafe moaned. Pierce couldn’t seem able to take his eyes off Rafe. He felt his stare heating up his face.

Rafe grabbed Pierce’s t-shirt and took it off so that he could admire the body he’d been craving for months. He saw the bandaged wound on the left, under his lung, and made a mental note to not go any rougher on him. He’d probably have to do all the work while Pierce lay down, but he didn’t mind. He wanted to worship the body of his boyfriend like he deserved. He dived in for another kissing session, which Pierce starved for. His lips and tongue were on fire in Rafe’s mouth from the longing. That man could kiss!