Page 7 of Friendly Skies
“Sweetheart! Open up!”
The voice on the other side of the door was very masculine but also angry and possibly drunk. Luis shrank deeper into his cocoon. The voice didn’t belong to Andrés, but that didn’t matter to his brain. The fist pounding on the door and the raised voice were dangerous, and he was doing his best to be invisible.
“Come on! I said I was sorry!” More pounding, more curses followed.
“Sean, what the fuck?” It was a second voice, somewhat muffled by—Luis assumed—distance, but it made the pounding stop.
“What the fuck are you doing over there?”
“I livehere, you fucking idiot. Now, get your ass away from that door, and stop bothering my neighbors.”
“Oh.” There was a knock, this time quiet and polite. “Sorry if you’re in there, dude.”
Luis counted backward from one hundred very slowly and tried to control his breathing. He closed his eyes, repeating to himself that he was safe, everything was okay, and there was nothing to worry about. By the time he got to fifty, his heart rate had slowed. At thirty-seven, he was able to open his eyes, and by the time he reached twelve, he was able to unclench his hands and rub them together to warm them up.
“Estúpido idiota,” he muttered, disgusted with himself that he was so freaked out by being home alone at twenty-eight.
As if he’d summoned it, his phone buzzed with a text message.
Darius:Having a good time tonight?
Luis:Aren’t you working?
Darius:Wanted to check in and see if you’re enjoying yourself before I catch a few zzzz’s in the crew loft.
Considering his options, Luis went with lying his ass off.
Luis:Of course I am. I’m fabulous, and Neon’s great. Good crowd tonight.
Darius:Glad you’re having fun. Sorry I’m not with you.
Staring at his phone, Luis agreed. He’d love to have Darius with him right now. And not just right now. He’d love to have Darius with him. Period. He hated lying to his best friend, but how could he tell Dar what had happened without also telling him the reason why Andrés freaked him out so much?
Darius:Chico? You there?
Luis:Yeah. Sorry. Got distracted.
Darius:K. I’ll leave you to it. Home soon. Love you!
Luis:Love you, too. Get some sleep.
He stared at his phone, hoping for another message, but when nothing else arrived, Luis turned it off and put it on the table next to the couch without looking at the unread message from his cousin Gabriella. When the message had arrived earlier in the day, he’d seen enough of it in the preview window to know she was telling him something about Andrés. Now, he was pretty sure she was letting him know the POS had gotten out of jail. He’d long ago given up trying to convince his family that Andrés was a lowlife because they never listened. Gabriella and her parents were besotted with him, and his mother would never speak against her older brother. As much as he loved his family, it wasn’t worth the arguments.
The dating show had ended, and now it was a ridiculous gladiator contest with scantily clad men and women all with bulging muscles trying to scale impossibly tall walls or cross bridges made of giant balloons. Luis didn’t even try to figure out the point; he flipped through the channels until he foundDrag Raceand settled back into his blanket nest, comforted by the antics of the outrageous queens and thrilled by their performances. It helped keep his mind off his anxiety.
When he started to doze off, Luis knew he should go to bed, but the thought of sleeping in the king-sized bed he shared with Darius without his best friend was not just unappealing, it wasstressful and scary. When he started yawning repeatedly, Luis knew he had no choice but to give up and go to bed. He had a prescription for sleeping pills because changes in time zones sometimes made it impossible to fall asleep when he needed to, but he hated to use them when he was home. He also knew that if he didn’t take it, the nightmares were likely to come back, and that would be worse.
One night, and then Darius would be home, and he’d be able to sleep for real.
They’d shared a bed almost as soon as they’d met at eight years old and began having sleepovers at each other’s houses. As teens, they’d stopped to appease Luis’ mother, who said it wasn’t appropriate since Darius was gay. That was before Luis was willing to admit to himself and his family that he was, too, though he wasn’t sure if it would have made his mother feel any better about the two of them sharing a bed. He suspected it wasn’t that big a surprise to her when he came out at nineteen, but she’d never said a thing. His father had taken a few months to come around, but he’d loved Darius almost like a son, so in the end, he’d come to accept Luis.
In college, he and Darius had pushed their beds together after Luis started having nightmares following a date with a particularly aggressive guy. Darius had walked in before anything happened, but it took Luis a long time to risk bringing anyone back to the room, let alone going to someone else’s, and even longer to be able to sleep without Darius’ arms wrapped around him.
When one of Luis’ uncles left him the West Hollywood condo six years before, he and Darius had tried sleeping in separate bedrooms, but the experiment didn’t last long. They migrated into each other’s rooms more often than not, and then Darius suggested that they share and rent out the second bedroom to another flight attendant. The suggestion had the added benefitsof additional income and eased Luis’ anxiety over being alone if he and Darius couldn’t synchronize their flight schedules.
As Luis made his way down the hall to the bathroom, he looked at the closed door to the second bedroom and thought about the roommates they’d had over the years. Some were okay, but others, like Micah and Greg, had become dear friends. Micah was gone now. He’d moved to San Francisco to be with his boyfriend, now husband. It was likely they’d be losing Greg in the near future for the same reason. The man was currently on the East Coast visiting his silver fox boyfriend, and Luis knew they were already talking about moving to Greg’s hometown of Denver so they could get a place together. Their current fourth, Ricky, was Greg’s roommate and as much of a mystery to them as the day he moved in. He paid his rent on time and did his share of the cleaning, but none of them had gotten to know him very well.
After brushing his teeth and filling his water bottle, Luis went into his empty bedroom and told himself he only needed to last a few more hours. He was still shaken by the evening’s events, so he gave in and downed a sleeping pill before crawling under the covers and turning out the light. While the pill got him to sleep just fine, it didn’t stop the nightmare from returning. Sometime in the small hours of the night, Luis found himself back in the bathroom at his parents’ house with Andrés. Though the music outside was quiet, Marissa’s party was still going on with the voices of people he knew on the other side of the wall. It would have been so easy to cry out for help, but he was still high from the Molly, still disoriented, and when Andrés touched him, he thought it was Darius. It wasn’t until he was on his knees, Andrés’ fingers twisting painfully in his hair and Andrés’ cock in his mouth that panic set in and he tried to resist. By that time, Andrés wasn’t stopping. He called Luis a slut, told him he knew how much Luis would like this, then came in Luis’ mouth. Cumspilled down Luis’ chin and mixed with his tears. He gagged as Andrés withdrew, tasting blood from his split lower lip, then gasping as Andrés leaned down, grabbed his penis through his shorts, and snorted in disgust when he discovered Luis wasn’t hard.
