Luis cracked a wary eye open. “Okay.”
“You can say no if you want, even before you know what it is.”
“I didn’t say no.”
“I know, I’m just saying— You know what? Never mind.”
Paolo lay back down. Luis nudged him until he looked at him again. “Just ask me the question. What kind of arsehole do you think I am?”
“I don’t think you’re an arsehole.”
Luis made a gesture that was as impatient as he ever seemed to get.
Paolo took the hint. “What’s it like being outside after so long in prison? Most days, I forget about it, then random shit seems to freak you out, and I wondered if they were connected.”
Luis sighed. “Are you talking about the tomato thing again?”
“And the park thing.”
“What park thing?”
“You didn’t like it when we walked home through the park the other day. It was like you’d never seen the sky.”
“It’s a big park.”
“So?”
“I haven’t been in open space like that for a while.”
Paolo crawled up Luis’s body and kissed him, throwing a leg over his waist for good measure. With Luis’s dick hard beneath him, it was easy to forget they were having a serious conversation. Too easy. But, fuck, if he couldn’t stop kissing Luis. They’d already fooled around on the couch, making each other groan and come while the evening news droned in the background. Sometimes Paolo worried Luis would suck him dry. Then they’d kiss, and his body would come to life like the first time all over again. But... this wasn’t the time. He’d opened a can of worms, and he needed to put the lid back on.
He broke the kiss and pressed his forehead against Luis’s. “Sorry. I keep making you explain stuff that should be obvious to me. I never knew I was this fucking dense.”
“You’re not dense. And it’s stupid anyway, at least the tomato thing was. It’s not like there weren’t a thousand different types before I went down. It was six years ago, not sixty. I had two iPhones and a car with its own sat nav. It’s not like I didn’t know how the world worked.”
“What happened to it?”
“What? The car?”
“Yeah.”
“It was confiscated as proceeds of crime, even though I bought it with the money my dad left me.”
“Can’t you get it back?”
“I don’t care enough to find out.”
“Did you lose anything else? Apart from the obvious, I mean.”
Luis shook his head. “Only cash and tools that scare the shit out of me now.”
“Tools? You mean, like weapons?”
“Why do you want to know this stuff?”
Paolo didn’t. He’d stopped equating the Luis who shared his bed with the feared road boy he’d once been. But the masochist in him wouldn’t quit. Or maybe it was the nosy old woman Nonna had once told him he’d been born to be. “I just want to be there for you as much as you’ve been there for me, and that’s hard when I don’t really know you.”
“You don’t need to know the police found two zombie knives and a samurai sword under my bed to know who I am now.”
