Orly glanced at him, surprised. “When?” he asked. “When you were out renting hookers, trying to get me a girl?”
“I only did that because you seemed so sad!” Cort protested. Cort was a lawyer, so his job paid well, and his well-cut hair had barely even ruffled in all that wind. Orly was a content creator, and he knew his shaggy hair had blown out of its queue and was probably all over his face like a dandelion on attack.
“I’d just lost my job,” Orly said, but it was weakshit, and they both knew it.
“You’d beentryingto lose that job,” Cort grumbled, and it was totally fair.
“And my apartment—”
“The apartment should have been condemned before we both were born,” Cort muttered.
“But Cort, my life was falling apart, and—”
“And I wanted to do something great for you!” Cort shouted. “Okay? You’ve been my best friend since I came out to LA—you remember that? I walked into a bar, ordered a beer so I could cry into it, and you sat down and just… just told jokes and made me feel better and let me crash on the couch of your shitty apartment until I got a job. Do you remember that, Orlando? And here you were, going through a rough patch, and I wanted to take you out to Vegas, see a show—”
“The show was great,” Orly said belatedly. “I didn’t thank you for that. I really should have. I love that comedian. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Cort said on automatic. He frowned. “Do you hear that?”
Orly frowned, listening. “It’s your car—only it can’t be your car because you took it to that mechanic in Primm on the wayinto Vegas, and he charged you a mint and told you it would all be okay.”
Cort grunted as the knocking got a little louder. “It doesnotsound okay,” he muttered. “Keep your eye out for some place to stop.”
Way out in the distance—maybe a mile—they could both see the stoplight that marked the only rest stop for fifty miles in either direction. There was also a gas station and a garage, Orly remembered, and suddenly he was hoping the car could make it.
And that Cort would drop the—
“And just the fact that you didn’t remember to thank me meant something was wrong,” Cort said. “Youalwaysthank me. Orly, you’re the nicest guy I know. I’m sorry about the girls. I wasdesperateto get you to snap out of it. I just didn’t know.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were gay?”
Orly groaned. “Cort, do we have to—”
“You should haveknownI wouldn’t have cared. Dude, you’ve been such a good friend?”
And the same thing that had snapped inside him in Vegas, in the middle of the slots at the Bellagio when Cort had walked up to him with two girls who were clearly escorts—pricey ones—and he’d practically screamed, “Dammit, Cort, I’mgay!” snapped in him now.
“Because I don’t want to be just your friend!” he shouted. “I’m inlovewith you, you stupid moo!”
And at that moment, something in the car gave a big “poom” and the thing started pouring smoke, and Cort had his hands full wrestling the mostly dead vehicle into the hardpan turnout that marked the garage.
“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill ’em, Ace.” Sonny announced it plain-like, without any sugarcoating, because that Ford Explorer should have had another 200,000 miles on it.
“Hold on, hold on!” Ace held his own hands up, hoping Sonny would listen to his words, his tone,andhis body language. “These boys say they had it looked at in Primm.” He turned to the clean-cut one, who was wearing a pricey shirt over tight shorts with loafers that probably cost Ace and Sonny’s mortgage. “Let me see your invoice there, okay?”
“What for?” asked the kid. He may have been older than Ace, but he still had that wide-eyed, clueless look that said neither love nor life had ever clocked him upside the head. Ace had sort of a soft spot for bunnies like these two—and the other one had lots of fluffy orange hair he kept trying to contain in an elastic band, so he almost looked like a real bunny too.
“Let’s just say,” Ace told him with a meaningful look at Sonny, “that you’re not the first folks who’ve ever told us they had their car checked out at Quick Johns in Primm.”
Sonny blinked a couple of times. Ace’s lover was quick-tempered, sure, but he wasn’t stupid.
“That fuckin’ asshole?” Sonny asked sourly.
Ace held out the invoice with the badly copied logo. “That fuckin’ asshole,” he agreed. “You wanna come with me and Jai and leave Dimitri here with Eric and Ernie on window?”
Sonny grunted. “Nice of you to ask me,” he said. “But you and Jai are still recovering. No.”
