“Yeah?”
“Be careful. Okay?”
Christ, he was in big fucking trouble. “I’m always careful, angel. We’ll talk soon. Night.”
“Night,” Bowie echoed.
Bowie wasn’t sure when he felt it for the first time. The hairs on the back of his neck standing at attention, the goosebumps rising along his skin. The feeling of being watched.
At first, it was easy to dismiss. Just the remnants of a threat, a residual haunting, the ghost of his past breathing its icy breath on his neck. But now, it happened a few times a day—not with any specificity, just enough for him to feel like he was losing his mind.
Each time it happened, he’d quicken his pace, slipping into a doorway or a shop long enough for the sensation to pass. But it was getting harder to ignore, even if he was imagining it. And he had to be imagining it, right? Giordano was dead. Bowie had watched a video of them loading the caskets onto a private plane.
He’d done what Javier asked. He’d made an appointment with a therapist. Bradley. He’d even gone to a few sessions. But even therapy didn’t make him feel any less crazy, no matter how the man attempted to explain away what he assured Bowie was paranoia. Maybe he was right. Maybe Bowie was paranoid. He was running from shadows, peering out storefront windows, scanning for any sign of a man who was confirmed dead. If that wasn’t textbook crazy, Bowie didn’t know what was. Maybe Bowie needed to up his visits to the shrink to three times a week.
It wasn’t like before when Giordano was alive. It wasn’t an overwhelming sense of panic or imminent danger that tormented him, it wasn’t the sharp stabbing fear that stole his breath and left him dizzy. It was more just a finger of unease running along his spine before quickly disappearing. Somehow, that was worse. It had his mind playing tricks on him.
Was Giordano haunting him? Bowie didn’t believe in ghosts, didn’t believe in life after death, but he believed his gut, and his gut told him someone or something was watching him. But no matter how many times he turned around, there was never anybody there. The sensation was starting to make him feel crazy.
Bowie didn’t go home after work, hadn’t gone home for the last few days. Instead, he went to Javier’s apartment, slept in his bed with his face buried in pillows that smelled like him, the sound of his voice still echoing in his ears from their hours long conversations. Bowie wanted him to come home, missed him in a way that wasn’t normal to miss a stranger.
It had only been two weeks but each day felt like a month, each week like a year. Odette made fun of him, said he was a smitten kitten. Maybe he was. If somebody had told Bowie a month ago that he’d be pining for a man who’d shot three men in cold blood, he would have laughed in their face. But there he was, desperate for a man he’d seen in person a grand total of five times.
Bowie was almost to Olive Street when that sensation crept over him yet again. He quickly spun around, pretending to take a selfie even though the camera was facing the street. He’d started the new ritual a few days ago, thinking maybe if he could see the pictures one after the other, somebody would stand out and he could put a face to the specter. But, so far, there was no culprit. Just Bowie and his misfiring nervous system.
Bradley said it was normal,Bowie reminded himself for the thousandth time. He said it was a trauma response, the brain trying to protect itself. It didn’t feel like a trauma response to Bowie. It felt like he was losing his mind. Bradley assured him that was all perfectly normal, too.
Lawson called Bradley “Blandley” because of how Bowie described him. Odette had cackled when she’d heard the moniker and had quickly followed suit. Bradleywasbland. Tall and painfully thin, like Lurch from the old Addam’s Family show. He had sandy blond hair and watery blue eyes and he crossed his legs in a way that Bowie found distracting and weird.
Truthfully, Blandley was exactly what Bowie needed right then, a boring guy with no agenda who didn’t judge Bowie when he lamented about his tragically halted sex life and how he was sure his attack had ruined him forever. Blandley let him be dramatic and a little fatalistic but challenged him to confront those feelings. Did he really think he was forever broken? Destined to never have sex again?
The answer was no. He wasn’t sure he’d ever go back to the carefree days of the past when sex was for sport and nothing more. But, with the exception of his freak out with Javier a couple of weeks ago, Bowie found he was getting a bit more comfortable with his own body every day and fantasizing about getting more comfortable with Javier’s every night.
A shiver worked its way over him as he thought of Javier. They were supposed to video chat for the first time. Bowie was going to be lying in Javier’s bed with Javier on the phone where they could see each other. He hadn’t implied there was any ulterior motive for switching to video chat. If anything, Javier had said he missed Bowie’s face…that he wanted to see him in more than just a picture. But part of Bowie hoped there was more to it.
Just the thought of Javier and the warmth of his voice had Bowie hard in the elevator. He had to will himself to calm down before Lawson most definitely got the wrong idea. Bowie swung the apartment door open without knocking. “Honey, I’m home.”
Lawson stuck his head out of his bedroom. “How was your day, dear?”
“More of the same. Waving a rose in the back of the room while another dancer dances my part.”
Bowie had been demoted from soloist back to the corps. They probably would have fired him completely if the optics weren’t so bad. Sacking a rape victim wasn’t a good look on anybody. His paycheck had taken a hit, but at least he still got to dance.
“You should just quit and, like, open your own dance studio or something.”
Bowie scoffed. That was the dream, of course, some day. Open a little school and teach kids how to dance. But that would take years, especially with Bowie now making half what he made as a soloist. “Yeah, sure. I’ll just ask Mumsey to cut me a check from my trust fund account for my swanky new dance studio,” he said, laying on a posh British accent between nashed teeth.
Lawson snickered. “You could just ask Javier. He’s loaded. I’m pretty sure he’d give you a kidney if you asked.”
Bowie rolled his eyes. “Shut up. We barely know each other.”
“No, he and I barely know each other. We spent four years behind bars together, live in the same apartment, and volunteer for the same rescue. Have since we got out. Despite that, I bet if we had to face off about who knows him better, you’d win. Javier’s not a talker, but you two spend hours on the phone together.”
Bowie flushed. “It’s just phone sex,” he said without missing a beat.
Lawson shook his head. “Liar. He likes you. Like, hereallylikes you. I think he’s been sweet on you from the second he saw you standing in that police station.”
Bowie tilted his head. “He told you about that?”
