So In Love Box Set

Caught Off Base-1

Caught Off BaseOn his way to work, Ange saw the guy with the cardboard sign standing near the exit to the interstate. He noticed the dark jeans hanging low, a black sweatshirt whose hood was cinched tight around a pale face, and dark eyes that stared at the cars whizzing by with a hopeless wish that someone would read the sign the guy held, that someone would stop. Ange almost hit the brakes but he didn’t have any cash on him and he was already late for work. Let someone else play the hero today. It didn’t always have to be him.

Eight hours later rain pounded the pavement as Ange ran from the garage where he worked to his dry car. Slipping behind the wheel of his old Nova, he cut on the headlights to push back the growing night and glanced toward the interstate, just curious. In the fading daylight he could see someone standing by the turn-off, hunched against the weather and holding a mushy cardboard sign no longer readable. As he lit a cigarette, drawing hot smoke into his lungs to warm himself, he muttered beneath his breath, “Fuck.”

He should go home, forget the guy standing like an i***t in the wind and the rain. But the quick glance Ange got of those dark eyes had haunted him all day, and he knew his own heart well enough to know if he went home now, he’d be back out again in a few hours, just cruising by, making sure the guy was all right.

Ange didn’t know why but the kid reminded him of someone he used to know—the white skin perhaps, such a livid brand in a city such as this, or maybe it had been the baseball cap the kid wore beneath the hoodie. Ange had seen the bill sticking out when he drove past. Whatever the reason, regardless of whoever Ange saw when he looked at the guy, he was probably cold as hell and soaked through, and a hot meal wouldn’t hurt. Ange could eat, himself.

The decision made, Ange peeled out of the parking lot without bothering to wave to his friend Lamar, who still stood under the awning of the body shop in the hopes that the rain would let up enough to run to his own car. A pair of golden arches blazed through the gathering darkness, the promise of hot food just minutes away. If he’s gone by the time I get back…

But Ange shook that thought away. The guy would still be there. He knew it.

* * * *

Ange circled around over the bridge that crossed the interstate and stopped a few yards from the exit, his headlights dying just before they reached the stranger. He let the car idle for a full minute before he flashed his high beams to get the guy’s attention, then he waited. Couple of seconds later, a shadow detached itself from the night around it and ran for the car.

Ange rolled down the window and cool wind whipped in, chilling him as it dispersed the smoke from his cigarette. When the guy leaned down, arms crossed on the door frame, Ange got a good look at him up close for the first time.

Rain spiked his eyelashes into tiny triangles and ran down his cheeks like tears. His eyes were pools of ink in his face, wide and black. A faint moustache struggled to grow above wind-pinked lips, the dark hairs an indication that he was probably older than Ange originally believed. He smelled stale and damp, like a neglected dog, and his skin was the same color as the white police lines chalked around dead bodies at crime scenes. On each finger of both hands, in the long space between the knuckle and joint, blue letters like faded jailhouse tattoos spelled out f**k this.

Sniffling, the stranger rubbed his nose, glanced into Ange’s empty car, and saw the McDonald’s bag warming the passenger seat. “Hey.”

Ange studied him for a long moment, weighing his options. Drive away topped the list, but there was something about this bedraggled boy that gave him pause. Finally, after another sniffle and another wipe of the nose, Ange took a deep drag on his cigarette and let the smoke curl out of him like gray clouds in the darkness. “What’s your sign say?” he asked softly.

The guy held it up so Ange could read it. stranded in bold, black letters that seemed to be all that held the cardboard together after a day in the rain. Beneath that, in small words he had to squint to read, the words, Please help. No amount too small. Get me out of here! Ange nodded at the fine print. “Where you want to go?”

“Some place else,” the guy said, suddenly sounding so damn young. “Got any money I can bum off you?”

Ange shook his head. “I got some burgers.” The guy glanced at the McDonald’s bag again, hunger bright in his eyes. “Got dry clothes at home, couple dry towels, a shower to clean you up. Warm bed. What do you think?”

Those eyes dulled. “You sick pervert.”

Without turning his head, Ange pierced the guy with his steady gaze and stared until the stranger had to look away. “You think I have to cruise the streets looking for a f**k?” Ange asked, his voice low. “A guy like me?”

“No,” came the mumbled response. Then, unexpectedly, “Sorry.”

“You gonna stay out here all night?” Ange asked, switching tactics.

With a shrug, the guy lied, “I ain’t been here long…”

Ange spat out, “Bullshit.” The word hung between them but the guy didn’t argue with it. “I saw you first thing this morning on my way to work. You want to kid yourself, chico, fine by me. But I probably made enough money in the time you ‘ain’t been here long’ to get you a ticket to where you want to go. Where’d you say, again?”

Another muttered reply. “Anywhere, I don’t care.”

Ange waited. The guy looked at his hands, the dashboard, the steering wheel, up into the rain for a moment, anywhere but at Ange. When he ran out of places to look, he finally met Ange’s hard gaze. A quick glimpse, nothing much, but enough to give Ange the measure of the man. The boy, panhandling on the side of the road because he had no one looking out for him, no where else to go. Softly, his voice barely rising above the purr of his idling engine, Ange told him, “Get in the car.”

The guy hesitated. Ange sighed and stubbed his cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray between the seats. “Look kid, I ain’t gonna hurt you. But I’m wasting gas sitting here while you make up your mind and I’ve been on my feet all damn day, so if you’re gonna come along, get in now. Otherwise I’m going home and you can sit out here, freeze your scrawny ass off, doesn’t matter to me. Just make up your mind because I’m about starving and these burgers are getting cold.”

His hunger was apparently greater than his fear because he pulled away from the window and ran around the front of the car, keeping one hand on the hood as if to ensure Ange didn’t take off without him. As Ange rolled up his window, he stretched one lanky arm across the passenger seat to unlock the other door. With a whoosh of cold, wet air, the guy slid into the seat, practically sitting on the McDonald’s bag in his haste to get out of the weather.

Setting the bag in his lap, he opened it like buried treasure he’d just unearthed. Ange laughed as he put the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. The greed on the stranger’s face made him look impossibly young. “Are these all for me?”

“Save me one.” Ange gave the guy a sidelong glance and nodded. “So what’s your name?”

“TC.” The guy dug into the bag, barely unwrapping the first burger before he bit into it. An orgasmic smile spread across his lips and his eyes slipped shut in delight. “God, so good.”

“TC’s just initials. What’s your real name?” When his passenger frowned, Ange added, “I’m Ange. Angelo Echevarria, para servile.”

Distrust flickered across TC’s face. “What’s that mean?”

“Free b*****b if you can figure it out.”

The hand rummaging in the McDonald’s bag froze, but when Ange winked, TC stuck a few French fries into his mouth and grinned. “I knew I should’ve taken Spanish in school. Is it cheating if I look it up? My name’s Tyler, by the way. Tyler Collins. TC, get it?” Now that he had something in his stomach, Tyler turned talkative. “Were you serious about me crashing at your place tonight?”

“No, I just give driving tours of the city for fun.” Tyler’s hand froze halfway to his mouth and Ange grinned. “Course I’m serious. I didn’t ask just to hear myself talk.”

Tyler laughed, a quick boyish sound that made Ange want to hear it again. “But if you snore,” Ange warned, “I’m taking you to the bus station myself and you can spend the night there.”

“Don’t worry,” Tyler said. “I’m good in bed.”

The coy look he gave Ange over the top of his second burger left little doubt what he meant by that comment. In mock disbelief, Ange asked, “And here you called me a p*****t?”

Tyler simply laughed in reply.

* * * *

Ange’s car took up much of the garage apartment where he lived. As the car eased to a stop, the front bumper just inches from the back of the pull-out sofa that doubled as a bed, Ange grimaced at the squalid room illuminated beyond his headlights. He raised his voice over the ragged sound of the engine off the corrugated tin roof. “Be it ever so humble.”

Tyler offered, “It’s nice.”

“You think?” Ange climbed out of the car and stretched, his arms reaching high above his head as his back lengthened, working out the kinks that had settled in during the day. The hem of his shirt pulled up to expose a flat stomach, smooth skin the color of damp sand, a few dark hairs hinting at more just beneath the belt that rode low on his narrow hips. He felt Tyler watching him, trying to figure him out.

But Ange was a private person who kept to himself. Picking a kid up off the streets wasn’t something he normally did, and even now he wasn’t sure it’d been a good idea. What if the guy was a murderer or thief? Ange could wake up tomorrow and find his meager savings wiped out, his apartment overturned, his car gone. Or he could never wake up at all. Why take the chance tonight? Because it’s raining, he told himself. If it were me, I’d want someone to do the same. But why did it have to be him?

He looks like Stacy, Ange thought suddenly.

The answer came out of nowhere and blindsided him. Stacy, a former friend ‘with benefits,’ as they liked to say. Who had crashed with Lamar for half a dozen years until he finally found someone to lift him up out of that shitty relationship and lay the world at his feet. Someone who loved him, someone he loved in return.

In another life, that someone might have been Ange, but whatever he felt for Stacy had been locked away, deep inside, and by the time he got around to telling his friend, it was too late. Stacy had already met his prince and Ange wouldn’t mess that up. Stacy deserved more than this garage apartment, a back-breaking nine-to-five job, sweaty sheets on a pull-out sofa. He deserved so much more than Ange could offer.

In all honesty, Tyler didn’t look like Stacy—they were about the same height, the same build, were both white boys with dark eyes, and that was where the physical similarities ended. But there was something about Tyler that reminded Ange of his old friend, a wounded pride evident in his bold swagger, a hurt that ran through him like a chasm, daring Ange to try to bridge the gap, to find the real boy inside the hard shell. More than his appearance, that undercurrent of pain Ange suspected lay just beneath Tyler’s façade attracted him to the boy. He wanted to chase away the shadows that haunted those black eyes.

As Tyler circled the car, trying to look everywhere at once, Ange resisted the urge to touch him, just wrap his arms around those squared shoulders and hug the boy back against him, assure him everything would be okay. They were here now, he was safe. Like Stacy, there was something in Tyler Ange wanted to protect, something he wanted to shield from the rest of the world, an ache he wanted to take away and a soft innocence he wanted to buffer and save for himself.