“Wait,” comes a breathless voice, and a soft hand on my arm. She squeezes me once before I turn around.
The woman he had cornered steps around Dylan’s hunched, shrieking form, and steps to my side.
“Wanna buy me a drink for your trouble?” she asks, eyes dancing in the low light.
“What I want is for you to get some mace,” I tell her. “Monsters are everywhere in this city. Don’t be afraid to protect yourself from them.”
That’ll pretty much do for one night, I think. Just a couple of walks and a subway ride later, and I’m climbing the steps to my fourth-floor walk-up in a shitty neighborhood of the South Bronx.
Is it close to the bodega in the Upper West Side or the restaurant in the Village? Nah.
But thanks to my second job, I can afford the whole place to myself, even if it’s nothing special. Nicer than one place I stayed for four years and seven months, that’s for sure.
Bonus is that it’s also not near my family business, they stick to Brooklyn.
All in all, today wasn’t a bad day. Haven’t had one of those in the seven years I’ve been a free man. I’m still chuckling over Aurora showing back up, with a husband who wouldn’t know humor if it bit him in the ass. At least he knew good food when he tasted it.
What rips the lingering smile from my face is the note taped to my front door, in thin, slanted handwriting that sends chills down my spine.
AMANTE
Opening the thick, folded paper, I see just an address, and a time.
An invitation.
A demand to be there.
My dad used to come home to these some days. “Paper can’t be wire tapped,” he used to tell me. “An address and time with no other details doesn’t prove shit.”
But I know exactly what this means.
I no longer have the blessing I need to be free of the life. They’re rescinding the deal. Going back on their word to let me live my life and calling on me to serve, like my father before me.
But there’s not a chance in hell I’m going back to that life.
Looks like my time in New York has come to an end.
It doesn’t take me an hour to pack everything I own in a couple of bags and head to the all-hours bus station.
Fate must’ve been looking out for me today, giving me an out right before I needed one, because I’ve got somewhere safe locked and loaded.
Smoky Heights, here I come.
TWO
LEXI
Kneeling on the ground, sweat drips from my face as I work it.
Hand fisted, grip strong, moving back and forth at a rapid pace, I don’t let up.
Ignoring the sharp pain in my knees on the hard ground, I stay focused on the job at hand, trying not to lose my rhythm, panting with every forceful jerk of my arm, determined to get the satisfying release.
I must be getting old, because I swear being on my knees like this never used to hurt this bad.
Hell, I used to drop to my knees a littletooeasily. Maybe that’s where the creaking and cracking came from. Too many blowjobs on the rough ground in my younger days. I should’ve focused more on sixty-nining in beds, or at least the bed of a truck. Something a little softer than fields of wheat or corn at bonfire parties.
Am I really facing a future where spontaneous blowies are out of the question because of my joints? Just kill me. What’s even the point of life without good dick? Not like I’ve had much of that lately anyway.
