“I...as in?—”
“Crazy about each other, madly in love, and doing things in private that I don’t want to think too hard about.”
Levi blinked, pouting his lips for a moment before sucking them back in. “I...see. I can’t say I’m surprised, but I can’t say I’m unsurprised either. They were close, but they were just kids at the time. I did have a feeling about Milo, though.”
“Really? He was like...seven.”
“Gay can recognize gay sometimes, even at that age. I didn’t magically end up gay at the age of twelve just because I randomly found a boy cute. There were signs long before that, well before puberty reared its head.”
“Huh, straight guys don’t have to go through that. Mostly, we just went through the ‘ew girls’ stage. I guess gay guys don’t have to worry about that sort of thing getting in the way, huh?”
“We don’t,” he said, eyeing me in amusement. “And last I recall, you weren’t all that straight.”
I snorted. “I can tell you right now that would be news to my family, that’s for sure. I’ve never dated a man, and as far as they know, I’ve not been with any men in any way.”
“Interesting,” he said. “Did you go into the closet without ever really coming out, or was...thatjust a bit of horny teenage fun?”
I cocked my head. “I guess I never really thought about it, but if I had to give a name to it...I’d say I just never bothered to come out in the first place.”
“Not what I would have expected from you,” he said with a snort. “I knew back then you weren’t coming out for your own reasons, but I always expected that one day your ‘I don’t really care what other people think of me’ would kick in and you’d be free from the closet.”
“It’s not like I’ve been hiding anything,” I said, a little uncomfortable now we were on the topic. “I just...never saw a point in bringing it up. I’m not really all that different about that sort of thing from what I was back then. I’m not all that interested in guys...just once in a while.”
“I have a few memories that say otherwise,” he said, and although he’d stared at me before, this one felt different, searching and intense.
“And everything I said also means that there’s still a chance I could be into a guy.”
“So...there were others?”
“A few,” I admitted, trying not to be obvious that I was squirming in discomfort. It wasn’t that I didn’t talk about that sort of thing often, which I didn’t; it was just...weird admitting I’d been with other guys to him. Not that there should have been any expectation that I would somehow remain gay celibate, I certainly didn’t expect that he had kept it in his pants. “But it never sticks. Actually, my family would tell you none of my sexual escapades stick. I haven’t exactly had the best luck with relationships; they tend to fizzle out or blow up in record time.”
“I know the feeling,” he said with a snort. “It’s not easy to have a love life with the kind of...well, with what I do.”
“I can imagine,” I said, thinking that ‘drug and crime lord’ was probably something that would drive people away or attract the wrong sort. “How does uh...I mean...Augustine and the rest of your...coworkers think about that? Or did you have to go back in the closet?”
“I neither had to come out nor go back into the closet,” he said with a shrug. “I live my life as I see fit, but I don’t make a spectacle of myself either. It works out, allowing people who don’t like it but are willing to mind their own business a way for them to ignore it, and the rest simply don’t care. I get to do whatI want in that regard, and others are polite or smart enough to keep their mouths shut. It works.”
“I see,” I said, looking him over. “So...now what?”
“Funny, I was preparing to ask you the very same question,” he said with a snort. “This is the second time you’ve found me, and after I swore I wouldn’t go where I knew you’d hang out.”
“And yet you came here.”
“I was walking, and saw the building was still standing, albeit with a different name,” he admitted. “I was shocked. I would have thought that with the owner gone and the entire building a ramshackle death trap, no one would want to touch it with a ten-foot pole. My shock overrode my sense, and I came in. And even if I’d been thinking, I wouldn’t have suspected for a moment that you would come in here.”
“I come in once or twice a week when I’m not out of town,” I admitted. “Started when I realized it had reopened. I couldn’t even tell you why. Maybe at first it was just to see if the place was still the hellhole it had been before, but after that...I don’t know. We used to come here all the time, drink pop and munch on fries, remember?”
“Mom would sneak them to us because the prick of an owner would have taken it out of her pay if he saw her handing out free food, even if it was cheap food that wouldn’t be missed,” he said with a shake of his head. “And you could tell too. Even as cheap as the food here was, it was still overpriced.”
“Yeah, I guess I couldn’t help but think about it every time I came in. Your mom was easily the best part of this place, and maybe in some weird way, it was like going to her grave,” I said quietly.
“Mmm,” he hummed, but added nothing else.
Which still begged the question...what happened next? I’d finally gotten him to sit down and talk, but I could sense the conversation was shifting toward its natural end. Didn’t helpthat he had checked his phone a few times, and frowning, shifting in his seat as if he needed...or wanted to be somewhere else.
He snorted, an echo of a smile on his face as he shook his head, tucking his phone away. “I can’t get away from my life, but it seems I also can’t get away from you. I’ve long since made peace with the former, as to the latter...well. Three times might be the charm, but I don’t need three different occasions to start seeing a pattern. Call it superstition or paranoia, but it seems that so long as both of us are in this city, I’m going to keep seeing you.”
“I really like how you make that sound like a curse,” I said with a snort.
