Xavi nodded. He knew it wasn’t the same. It was never a question of Joe and Noah not loving each other or wanting to be together. It was Noah’s pain that had caused the rift between them. It hadn’t been Joe that Noah had tried to run from; it was his past, his trauma.
“I don’t know if I can.” It was true. Xavi wasn’t sure if he knew how. Because the thing was, if he wasn’t Lulu’s friend, his protector, the man who loved Lulu more than he loved himself, Xavi had no idea who he was. Sure, he was a son, a brother, a teacher. But none of those roles made him feel just a fraction of what he felt when he was with Lulu.
“So you’d rather go on like this for the rest of your life?” Joe prodded. “Even if it hurts you every single second of every single day?” Shit, when his friend put it like that…Even if it hurts.He’d never thought about it like that before. Did he prefer the hurt over… over nothing? Over not feeling anything at all? Perhaps he did. Perhaps he was a masochist when it came to Lulu.
“Maybe,” Xavi murmured, a sour taste building in the back of his mouth. The thought alone of distancing himself from Lulu made him sick to his stomach.
“Even if nothing ever comes of this? Of him and you?”
“Oh,hermano, I know nothing will ever come of us,” Xavi chuckled bitterly. “I gave up on that a long time ago.”
“Did you?” Joe’s eyes bored into his, pulling the indisputable truth from him. Anger built inside Xavi. He’d wanted the truth from Joe, and he’d already known going in that he probably wouldn’t like it, but he hadn’t imagined how much it would hurt. “Did you really, though?”
“I can’t turn my back on him, Joe. I can’t.”
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about some distance. Not a goddamn road trip,mano.” Joe frowned. “It’s the worst idea in history. You know that, don’t you?”
“But I need to make—”
“Sure that he’s okay. I know, I know,” Joe groaned. “But willyoube okay?”
“Joe…” He probably wouldn’t. It would be five days in a confined space with Lulu up in his face 24/7—or even worse, Lulu giving him the silent treatment, a hurt expression in his haunting eyes. Joe’s expression tightened, a deep furrow digging into the space between his eyebrows.
“Look,hermano.I know that night did something to you.Coño, it did something to me too. To see him like that. All broken and—”
“It has nothing to do with that night!” Xavi spat, although deep down he knew that Joe was right. It had fucking everything to do with that night, but that was one place Xavi didn’t care to revisit, guilt eating away at him like piranhas every time he did.
“Xavi, you can deny it all you want, but it doesn’t make it any less true.” Jeez, Joe was fucking relentless. Like a dog with a bone. His talent was wasted as a street cop; he should be a fucking detective.
They hadn’t spoken about that night in ages. The worst night of Xavi’s life, except for the night he’d lost his dad in the fire.
“It has everything to do with that night,” Joe continued. “The one night you told him to leave you alone—”
“Stop! Just stop. Okay? Just… stop. You weren’t there. Neither was I, not until it was almost too late.”
Joe nodded, reaching out, wrapping his arm around Xavi’s shoulder. He didn’t deserve it, though, Joe’s kindness, his empathy. “He nearly died in my arms, Joe,” Xavi croaked, the dread of that night washing back over him like a brutal wave, threatening to drown him in a sea of anger, fear, and guilt. Oh, so much guilt. “He…”
“Xavi…”
“We almost lost him, Joe.”
“I know.”
“And it was my fault. Please don’t say that it wasn’t, because it was. I sent him back home that night, like a lamb to a lion.”
“You didn’t know what was going to happen. You couldn’t have.”
“I should’ve.” Xavi slumped his shoulders, resting his elbows on his knees. He should’ve known.
Joe rubbed his shoulders, but it brought him little comfort, only more regret. He didn’t deserve to be comforted by Joe. Silence stretched between them for a few minutes before Xavi eventually swallowed back the bile and said, “So yeah, Joe. Every time. Every fucking day. No matter what. Everything I do, I do for him. I’m his. Whether he wants me or not. Even if it hurts me. As long as he’s safe.”
Safe.Lulu needed to be safe. The memories of that night zeroed in on him like an enormous black hole, threatening to spin him out of control or eat him up. They’d been eighteen, he and Lulu, and they’d gone clubbing, using their fake IDs like they usually did. They’d gone dancing at Noches Habaneras, just the two of them. Joe had been home, sick with an ear infection. As usual, the other guys at the club had been all over Lulu, their hungry eyes lingering on his slender body when he moved sexily to the rhythm of the music on the dance floor. As usual, Lulu had devoured their attention, grinding up against people he knew and some he didn’t. Xavi didn’t dance; he never did. He felt too self-conscious about how he looked, how he moved; besides, he preferred to watch Lulu from afar. Xavi didn’t usually drink when they went out, but something that night had made him down a few shots while he’d watched Lulu dance.
When the club closed in the early morning hours, they’d left together and walked toward Xavi’s place like they always did. Xavi always insisted that Lulu slept at his place when they went out, because he didn’t want to risk Lulu’s dad catching him in his clubbing gear. Lulu’s dad didn’t know his son was gay. If he found out, there would be hell to pay in the currency of punches, kicks, and things even worse. They both knew that, so Lulu always went home with Xavi when they went partying.
Something had been different that night, though. Lulu had been gushing about this one particular guy, Danielo. How he would like to do things to him, with him, that he hadn’t done before. How Danielo could be a guy—theguy—that Lulu would want to go all the way with. When they’d been halfway to Xavi’s place, Xavi had, out of nowhere, told Lulu to shut up. Lulu had laughed at first, thinking he was joking, but that had only made Xavi even angrier. Jealous. So he’d told Lulu that if he really wanted to be with that guy, he could go do it now and just fuck off and leave Xavi the fuck alone. And then, blinded by anger and jealousy, Xavi had spoken the words he would forever regret and carry around with him like a cloak of shame for the rest of his life. He’d told Lulu that he’d acted like a slut at the club.That he was one. A slut. Fuck, he’d called the most beautiful boy in the world a slut. Even now, after all these years, Xavi felt disgusted with himself and how he’d behaved that night.
And Lulu had gone home. Well, he ran, actually. And Xavi had gone to bed hating himself even more than he ever had before, already thinking up hundreds of ways of how he was going to make it up to Lulu the next day. He’d barely fallen asleep when his phone rang, Lulu’s number flashing across the screen. When Xavi had answered the call, the ‘sorry, please forgive me,mano’already burning on Xavi’s tongue, he’d been met by a gurgling sound, then Lulu’s muffled, broken cries. Xavi yelled into the phone, but Lulu kept moaning, crying, that awful gurgling sound increasing until it took over Xavi’s entire world, the sound of Lulu drowning in what turned out to be his own blood.
