Duke Dolce
I must have lost my ever-loving, mother-fucking mind.
That’s what I’m thinking when we pass the subway entrance, when we turn right.
But holy shit. Colt fucking Darling is in New York.
Maybe I have lost my mind, and this is some fevered hallucination, his shimmering reflection in a shop window where reindeer with garland around their antlers stream by on our right, where the street on our left is busy with holiday traffic. We step around heaps of trash bags, a crowd outside a bakery that some influencer made famous for their cranberry cake.
“This way,” I call, holding out a hand to Colt, just to see if he’ll reach for it.
Of course he doesn’t.
It’s Colt fucking Darling, the boy I bullied relentlessly for all of high school.
Except he’s not a boy anymore. He’s a man, all hard and tan, with more piercings than before, in his ears and eyebrows and nose, and a piercing below his lower lip that is way too hard to keep my eyes from straying to. What is he doing here?
Besides, obviously, making me lose my ever-loving, mother-fucking mind.
Why else would I be bringing the worst mistake of my life to a place that I hold dear, almost sacred? Showing him away from the busy street, down an alley, through a side door, and up the echoing back stairway of a building I shouldn’t have access to?
“Are you taking me somewhere to kill me?” he asks.
“Maybe,” I say, starting to jog up the next flight, just to see if he’ll do it. Some old, asshole part of me can’t help myself. Or maybe it’s not so old. Tigers get sober, but they don’t change their stripes. I can’t blame it all on the drugs and alcohol I used to consume.
With this guy, my brain helpfully reminds me. I used to get fucked upwith this guy.
But fuck that. I’m not using because of Colt fucking Darling. Unlike him, I’ve never gone back. You couldn’t tempt me if you shoved a whiskey bottle up my nose.
Making him race to catch up on the stairs, though? Going faster up the next flight, just to hear him breathing hard? Yeah, that’s too tempting to resist.
We’re only halfway to the top of the building when he’s breathing so hard he sounds like he’s about to die.
Or cum.
That’s an even more unwelcome thought. Because fuck if I’m going down that road again. Fuck if he’s going to make me beg like a pathetic little dog the way he used to. I was always chasing after him, a moth to a flame, unable to resist, unable to fucking stand up.
I’ve learned self-control since then, though, and I want him to know it. I don’t know why. I shouldn’t care what he thinks of me. But I do.
I still fucking do.
“So, you’re going to give me a cardiac arrest and kill me without even pushing me off a building?” he asks behind me.
I smile and finish the flight of stairs before I turn back, grinning at him as he huffs his way up.
“That’s what you get for smoking so much in high school.”
“I still smoke,” he says, reaching the landing. He leans over, resting his hands on his knees, to catch his breath.
To be fair, the guy kept up a lot better than I expected. Not everyone can run up ten flights of stairs without stopping.
“You’re doing good.” I smirk at him and then add, “Little buddy.”
He looks up at me from under that perfect fringe of blond hair, his eyes narrowing. “Fuck you.”
“You’ll have to catch me first,” I say, patting him on the back. Then I start jogging up the next flight. I hope watching my ass for the next ten flights of stairs reminds him what he’s missing.
When we finally reach the top, I lead him out onto a roof that’s a million times better than that shitty warehouse roof where we spent one night during our senior year.
