“Good. Whatever you two have going on, I don’t want it splashing back onto me. It might take me a couple of days to get the phone to you. Do not try contacting him on your regular cell phone.”
“Yeah, duh. That’s why I came here. I’m not stupid.”
Lawson looked him over. “You’re not stupid, but you’re most definitely trouble. I’ve never known Javier to think with his dick before.”
“Javier’s dick has nothing to do with this. Just…get me the phone. I need to talk to him.”
Bowie turned and left before Lawson could say anything else insulting. He didn’t need the night getting any worse.
If one had to lay low, a thirteen million dollar hacienda in the middle of Mexico City wasn’t a bad place to do it. The sun was shining, the air balmy and breezy. A sharp cry followed by a maniacal cackle cut through the picture perfect day.
Javier sighed.
The only real downside was dealing with his teenage cousins, Miguel and Daniela, and hisTíaSylvia’s invasive questions about his love life. Did he have a girl? A boy? When was he going to get married, settle down, have babies? He wasn’t getting any younger. Javier always waved off her questions, but he knew they came from a good place.
Sylvia was a saint. Dealing with histíowas a full-time job, one she handled with a grace and deftness Javier found fascinating. Loving a man who did bad things for good reasons took a kind of strength Javier didn’t think most people possessed.
The other downside to laying low in Mexico was not walking Bowie to school. Javier found Bowie’s kinetic energy addictive. Even when he was perfectly still, he just seemed to vibrate on a frequency all his own, one Javier wanted to be hardwired into.
Did Bowie know why Javier had taken off? Would he think his absence had something to do with the aborted blow job in his bedroom yesterday? If Bowie did know why Javier had left, would he want anything more to do with him when he returned? It was one thing to wonder if somebody was the bad guy, it was another to have it confirmed. Javier had made peace with being a loner a long time ago, but something about Bowie made him want to rethink things.
“Javier,ven a nadar con nosotros!” Miguel shouted.
Javier didn’t want to swim with the hellions or their friends. He squinted, raising his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. There were four of them. His cousin, Daniela, was thirteen. He imagined her little friend in the yellow suit was about the same age, but she was doing her best to seem older as she posed on the lounge chair.
The two boys were in the pool, splashing the girls and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Miguel was fifteen and clearly had eyes for the girl in the yellow suit if his behavior was any indication.
Javier would be lying if he said he hadn’t liked them more when they were young, when he could just pick them up and fling them in the water and they’d laugh and scream and run away. Now, they were spoiled teens trying to act fully grown. Maybe he was just jealous.
Javier would have given anything to spend his teen years lounging poolside with only histía’s matchmaking to deal with. It wasn’t that he wanted his cousins to know his suffering—nobody deserved to spend their formative years as a soldier in an endless war. He just had a hard time relating to the hair twirling and the giggling or the posturing and showing off. It was all normal teen stuff, but it had never been Javier’s normal.
“Tal vez más tarde,” he called. Maybe later…but probably not. The last part he kept to himself. He picked up his brand new phone. His real new phone, not the burner one he’d ditched halfway to the airstrip.
“Where the fuck are you, man?”
Javier chuckled at Lawson’s greeting. “Hello to you, too. I told you. Family emergency.”
Lawson scoffed. “That emergency have anything to do with the platinum-haired twink who showed up at my door at three a.m.?”
Bowie. Javier smiled against his will. He somehow knew he wouldn’t be easy to dodge. Bowie seemed to plow headfirst into his troubles with no fear. “What did he say?”
“That he wanted to talk to you.” Lawson seemed to correct himself. “No, that heneededto talk to you. On a secure line, like some cloak and dagger shit.” Lawson’s exasperation made Javier laugh.
Smart boy. “What did you tell him?”
Lawson scoffed. “What do you think? I told him I’d get him what he needed. Was that not what you wanted me to do?”
Javier wanted Bowie to have anything he wanted. Anything. That was the problem. Four days of knowing Bowie and he was ready to turn himself inside out for him. It made no sense at all, but Javier refused to question it. “No, that’s exactly what you should have done. He gets whatever he needs. Got it?”
“Since when do I take orders from you?” Lawson asked, sounding hurt by Javier’s sharp tone.
Javier rolled his eyes. “It’s not an order,vato. It’s a favor. Like me letting you stay in my apartment rent-free. It’s what friends do.”
There was a long pause on the other side of the line. “And this kid…he a friend, too?”
Javier felt himself smiling. “Yeah, something like that.”
Lawson let out a long suffering sigh. “If you want a phone that’s completely clean, I’m gonna need to ask Nicky. Even the prepaid ones can be traced if the cops know where to look. I’m assuming that’s who he’s worried about? The cops?”
