“Can I have this?” he asked and I nodded. He carefully ripped the paper out of the notebook and was about to tuck it into the pocket of his pants. “Wait, you got to sign it.”
I scrawled my signature, just my first name with the T overshadowing the rest of the letters like a tree.
“Yeah.” He tapped the paper. “This’ll be worth a million dollars one day.”
He wasn’t the first person to say it, but where I got annoyed with others because it seemed like empty flattery, I found his sincerity adorable. Soon after, he left to do dishes. I found him later and invited him out again for a beer, but he declined. I begged off Melissa’s invitation, choosing instead to take a spin around the block and smoke a few cigarettes before returning to the restaurant under the guise that I’d forgotten something. I’d timed it so I could be the one to give Andre a ride home, not Fang.
I walked through the open back door, expecting to find Andre stacking clean dishes, but instead I found him down on his knees in front of Fang, who was moaning with pleasure, rocking his hips back and forth, holding the back of Andre’s head in his sausage-like fingers. Andre’s full lips were molded around Fang’s pasty cock.
I shoved a pot off the counter, and it clattered to the ground.
“What the fuck?” Fang yelled when he saw me. Andre feinted backward, sprang up like a firecracker, pushed past me, and bolted into the night.
Torn between the two of them, I grabbed Fang by his shirt and pushed him back until his head banged into the pots hanging above the counter. I wasn’t as big as him, but I was fast. I’d caught him off guard while he was still fumbling with his pants.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. I’d slit his throat with his own fancy fucking knife.
“None of your fucking business.”
“Is it your wife’s business?”
“Fuck off, man. You’re not going to tell anyone.”
“Try me, you sick sack of shit.”
He pushed me off him. “We’re friends. That’s all.”
“Friends don’t suck each other off after hours,” I said viciously.
He grinned. “Good friends do.”
I picked up a knife and aimed it at his gut. “Next time I see your wife, I’m going to tell her you like to get head from teenage boys.”
Fang glared at me. “Fuck you, you jealous bitch.”
“It’s over. Whatever it is, it ends now.”
“That kid still owes me rent money.”
They had an arrangement, then. Andre gave Fang head and whatever else in exchange for a place to live. Fang probably scoped out the shelter on the regular, looking for pretty boys to prey on like a pedophile.
“How much for that scummy roach hotel?” I asked.
“When were you there?”
“How much?” I demanded.
“Five hundred dollars.”
Fucking snake. I tossed the knife on the counter and pulled out my wallet, laid out three one-hundred-dollar bills. “That piece of shit apartment should be fucking condemned. There’s your money. That’s all you get. You fucking touch him again, and I’ll slit your throat.”
It wasn’t as if I went around making death threats every day, but the words felt real when I said them. The intent was there.
“Shit, man. You could have just told me to break you off a piece.”
I wanted to choke him until his fat fucking face exploded. Instead I flew out of the kitchen, slammed the key into the ignition of my car and put the top down in order to see better. I headed north on Bayshore Drive until I caught up with Andre eating up the sidewalk with his long legs. I called to him, but he ignored me, not breaking his stride in the least.
“Andre, let me give you a ride home,” I called.
