Gulliver Takes Five (27 page)

“You scared
, pato
? You wanna show us how good you are at sucking dick?”

Their footfalls speed up. I imagine them descending on me, all fists and feet and laughter. The bruises and blood. Would they let me out alive if I just surrendered anything of value on my person?

Fuck, I was so stupid to get off here! Where am I? How do I get home?

“Hey!
Pato
! You gonna suck our dicks or what?”

There’s a hand on my shoulder now, grabbing me, pinching the skin hard, turning me around. The owner of the hand, the biggest of them, the leader, says, “Show us how good you use that pretty pussy mouth of yours!”

I’m surrounded. Scarred, pockmarked faces challenge me silently. Their tattoos are brighter, fiercer. I’m trapped and they’re enjoying every minute
.

My mouth moves without permission. “I’m just trying to get back downtown, thanks.”

“Oh, you’re not going downtown
, pato.
You’re staying right here.” The leader, with muscles bigger than my waistline, pushes me backward and laughs
.

I flail and crash into the sizable chest of one of the other guys. “Don’t touch ME
, pato
!” he yells, shoving me back to the guy who pushed me in the first place
.

“Leave me alone!” I scream
.

The leader of the group has a full beard and mustache. He’s holding me by the shoulders, grinning at me. “Hey, boys, should we let
pato
alone? Let him go back downtown?”

Snickers and giggles
.

“No, I don’t think we’re gonna do that, buddy.”

I’m going to cry. I’m going to scream. I don’t know what to do
.

Wait
.

Yes, I do
.

I throw a punch. A short uppercut to the guy holding me. Then another. And one more for good measure
.

I’ve never punched someone before in my life; I guess I was waiting for a good excuse
.

All my time at the gym seems to have paid off. The three guys I take swings at fall back in shock, clutching their faces. I kick the fourth in the balls, taking a shot to my chest in the process. I lose my breath, but don’t need it. To that last guy, I drop all semblance of masculinity and scratch him across his face, poking him in the eye, then swing at him with my Dora bag. The stainless-steel snaps rake across his face, bringing blood after them
.

Then I run
.

“Fucking faggot!” one of them screams. But he is far behind me. They all are
.

I sprint. They pursue, but they don’t stand a chance. It’s not their fault; they have no idea that Servando Reyes was a track star back in college. That, as recently as four years ago, he took his sprint team all the way to nationals
.

Well, maybe they know now
.

My brain has shut down. I am all feet. Lift and drop, push forward the moment the sole hits the ground. I’m not wearing running shoes, but I make do. And I’m NOT turning around to check up on their progress. I refuse to do a damned thing that’ll slow me down.
I hear the voices getting farther and farther behind, their screams of rage becoming tinier by the second
.

I am back on an avenue, sprinting too fast to read its name. It doesn’t matter. I can see, in the distant skyline, the Empire State Building. That’s all I need to know: south. I will sprint until I know exactly where I am
.

And when I get there, I’m going to Barrage and ordering one of those fucking frozen cosmopolitans! I will get the most amazing brain freeze as I suck it down and tell everyone in the place what just happened. Because, right now, I feel like some crazy action movie hero. Jackie Chan or Vin Diesel or The Rock. Except I can also run—and when it’s one on five, there’s no shame in fleeing
.

“Fuck you! Go suck each other’s dicks!” I scream over my shoulder, even though the guys must have given up blocks ago. I scream it again and pick my feet up even higher as I speed back to sanctuary in Hell’s Kitchen
.

Thunder. Lightning. It’s pouring. A blessing—the shock of cold gives me an extra kick to hurtle forward even faster. This is the final scene of a fucking movie and I’m the star, baby
.

But in the midst of this victory lap, or whatever you want to call it, there’s Rowan
.

Not on the street, just in my head
.

He’s the only guy I really want to tell my amazing story to, because I know how proud he’d be. He gets like that whenever I succeed at any
little thing: haggling over the price of a new outfit, getting a raise at work, doesn’t matter. And that smile he gets when he’s proud of me, it’s the only time he uses it. Like he reserves it just for me. The story of what I just went through would have him on the ground, laughing his ass off. He’d make me tell it over and over, asking for every little detail, and I would happily recount it—maybe embellish a bit. (“No, it wasn’t five guys...It was more like ten!”)

But there’s no way it’ll go down like that now. Not when you consider how pissed off he was
.

And yeah, he was a jerk, but I guess I was too. I could have just gone along with the trip to the Bronx, made an outing of it. Maybe I didn’t have to be SUCH a bitch
.

Nothing like almost getting your ass killed to put things in perspective, huh?

I’d text this revelation to Rowan, but I can’t right now. Not until I get home. Not until I am 100 percent positive that the thugs are a distant memory. Then I’ll apologize, and hopefully Rowan will too. We’ll smoke the weed he bought from Jack Smack, then have some of the roughest, hottest apology sex of all time
.

No—I push that thought away as soon as I have it, ’cause it’ll be a lot harder to sprint home with an erection (no pun intended)
.

The crowds get thicker on the sidewalk, forcing me to weave back and forth between elbows and strollers and shopping bags. I take a quick peek up at a street sign. I am in the mid-hundreds. A few miles from home. I cut into the street, sprinting even faster. Man,
even my screaming lungs feel good. I need to get back in the habit of running. Maybe try and qualify for the marathon next year
.

And who knows? Maybe Rowan is home already. Won’t he be surprised to see that his baby came home looking for loving?

Right now, that’s all I need
.

When I get home, Servy is nowhere to be found. Judging from the way things look, he hasn’t been here since we left together this morning.

Dammit. It doesn’t help that I’m still freaked out, casing the joint like the rat is the killer in a horror movie, hiding in a shadowy corner, always returning for one final scare. I switch on the light and scream, “HA!” to scare it into showing itself. Todd’s lacrosse stick is still leaning against the wall by the door, and considering the mood I’m in, I am completely capable of beating the little thing to death.

But there’s no rat. We dragged him out to the street hours ago. I’m just some idiot screaming at an empty apartment.

Make that a dripping-wet idiot. Great. I strip out of my wet clothing, hang it in the shower. To address the excess adrenaline running through me, I clean the mess Servando and I created during our early-morning rat race. I pick up scattered magazines and pile them on a bookcase. I switch on the vacuum and suck up the stray green of Smack’s delivery from last week. I giggle at the thought of
lifting the vacuum to my mouth and lighting the bag. And then that’s not funny anymore, and I go back to putting shit away.

As I wash dishes, my ears perk up every few seconds. I find myself hoping that every sound they detect is the creak of our front door opening. But no. It’s the PlayStation’s fan, or a creak from the heater, or the air conditioner turning itself back on. Never my boyf—

I mean, my whatever.

Ha. Okay, we’ve agreed not to use that label, and that’s fine. But “boyfriend” is how I think of him, in private, in my own head.

My little secret.

It’s been thirty minutes. I can’t just sit and do nothing. What do I normally do when I’m here alone? Well, I guess I’d be smoking. Stupid addiction. Now, without weed or Servy, I’ve got nothing. Make that two stupid addictions, I guess.

To keep myself occupied, I drag the vacuum into the studio area and get under the futon, under our bed, under the dressers, and into the closet. When that’s done, I make a cup of ramen, filling the room with the aroma of MSG and imitation, freeze-dried shrimp. It burns my lips and tongue when I sip too fast.

Forty-five minutes. Still no Servando. I look down at my phone for the fifteenth time in three minutes and see the same thing: No e-mails. No texts. No updates or notifications whatsoever. No nothing. I almost text him, but no. I can’t. He wants to be left
alone, and I’m going to show him I don’t need to be in touch 24/7, even though that’s exactly the fucking case.

Dammit, Servando! Do you know how important you are to me? Clearly, you’re my everything, since I’m shit out of things to do when you’re not here.

I have other friends, though—right? I’ll call them. Todd’s phone rings five times and then goes right to voice mail, which is as dead-end as you can get with him. Todd hasn’t checked his voice mail since it was invented. Instead, I text him:
“Hey, what’s up tonight? Anything good?”

Five minutes pass with no response.

This is not how it usually works. On weekend nights, Todd sends group texts to all of us—Servy, me, Brayden, Shane. In no more than the maximum amount of allowed characters for a single message, Todd informs us what time we’ll meet at his place to pregame. If there’s a dress code, that’s also included.

But tonight, Todd hasn’t texted. Our hot-party alert system is down. By now we should already know how our night will unfold, whether it’s a traditional Hell’s Kitchen bar crawl or one of his events.

What the hell?

Ten minutes later, I have texted Todd four times and still not received a response. I’ve called Shane and Brayden, only to spend some quality time with their voice mails as well.

I sit on the bed, staring at the empty kitchen and the door. Then at my legs. Then at the television, which isn’t even on. Then at the time display on the cable box. It’s been ONE HOUR since I got home? Have hours always gone this slowly? I need to get out of here.

Why hasn’t he called? Is he really that angry? Yes, I said some mean things, but Servando did too. This is quickly setting a record for the longest period of time we’ve not interacted after an argument. And it really wasn’t that big a conflict to begin with! Is this the guy I’m kinda dating? Really? Someone who KNOWS I’ll be waiting for his text or call, who takes sick pleasure in withholding? Someone who would intentionally leave me here worried and alone?

We fight all the time, no biggie. When you’ve been together—or kinda together—for as long as we have, arguments arise out of everything. If I left a plate out in the sink, or he didn’t text me before he went out to a party.

I guess we have been fighting more than ever lately, but so what? They’re never anywhere near serious. We’re having tiffs. Bickering. Like cute couples do.

Except...We’re not one.

Maybe this is it. The last straw. Fuck.

My stomach flips when I think about Servando coming home to tell me that this is over. Why not? We’re not together. Is it easier to end a relationship when it isn’t, technically, a relationship to begin with?

I look around the apartment, take stock of everything, separating what’s mine from what’s his. If Servando broke up with me, how long would we be stuck living together? I wouldn’t be able to stay. I’d ask Todd to crash in Gulliver’s old bedroom. And when it comes to custody, Servando better not think that Brayden, Shane, and Todd are his. I knew them first. They’re MINE.

My goddamned eyes are tearing. Really? Could a stupid fight on the subway be all it takes to turn off Servando permanently? To stomp out whatever was left of us? Or is this the result of a cumulative pile of crap that just got too heavy for what was holding it up?

Fuck, I need to smoke.

I’m DONE with this. How long do I plan on waiting around, just in case Servando changes his mind and decides to call us official again? How many potential ACTUAL boyfriends in this city passed me by as I headed home with my whatever-he-is every day, thinking,
Gee, maybe THIS is the night he’ll cave and tell me he’s ready to try again. Try the label again. Try US again
.

I never wanted this fucking nameless bullshit. That was all Servando.

I said it was okay that boyfriends are attracted to other guys. He said no. He wanted to play around, and he couldn’t do it with this label. He ALWAYS calls the shots when it comes to this shit, and I go right along with it. I let him hold the reins and yank me along. I act like this is enough for me. Enough for ANYONE.

But it’s not. Not by a long shot.

And if Todd isn’t going to write back and Servando is going to be a dickhead and Shane and Brayden won’t answer their phones, either, then I guess I’m all alone.