Bad Idea (Stonewall Investigations Miami Book 1) Page 8

  “See ya tomorrow,” he said, a wide grin showing off his porcelain-white teeth. We clapped hands together and shook, something else shaking inside me.

  As I walked away, both of us headed in opposite directions, I couldn’t stop thinking of Jonah Brightly and the effect that straight boy had on me. I knew I shouldn’t indulge the feelings, shouldn’t feed the fantasies in my head, but I did. I fanned the flames and threw chum into the water by thinking of Jonah as anyone more than a new coworker and friend.

  As I walked past busy restaurants and a couple of closed storefronts, I let myself imagine Jonah as someone more. Briefly, from the time it took me to get to one stoplight from the other, I allowed myself to picture walking in the same direction as Jonah. Walking with him, hand in hand, walking to our shared bedroom together, where we’d spend the rest of the night tangled up in each other.

  And, in that short amount of time between walking from one corner to the other, I fell incredibly fucking hard for that idea.

  I knew it by the way my throat felt a little tighter and the tips of my fingers felt tingles, matching the ones in my gut. I knew I had fallen for the fantasy by the way the sea of faces had disappeared around me, even though I was walking through the streets of one of the busiest cities in the entire world.

  No one else mattered. No other faces registered, no other sounds came in.

  I had just fallen into the image of me and Jonah together, the only sound being our breaths, our moans.

  I had fallen, and I had fallen real fucking hard for the new straight guy at work.

  God damn it.

  I had no idea what to do with myself, but I knew for sure that I couldn’t go home. There was too much on my mind for me to go to bed right now.

  Oh, Jonah Brightly, what are you doing to me?

  8 Jonah Brightly

  The entire Uber ride home had me thinking about Gabriel “Fox” Morrison and that smoldering smile of his. The confidence that he wore like the most expensive coat he could find on the rack.

  And those fascinating hazel eyes of his. I don’t think I’d ever seen a color like that. Where the lightest browns blended with the brightest greens, creating a color palette I didn’t think was even possible unless you went out of this earth and went looking on some alien planet.

  That was what Fox was to me. An alien. Something extraterrestrial, striking up an intense curiosity down in the very center of my core. I was normally a curious guy, but Fox brought up so many questions inside me.

  One of the top ones being why the hell was I so physically attracted to him?

  Seriously, I was sitting there in the back seat of an Uber as we aggressively drove through Miami traffic, the streetlights passing over us in streaks, and I couldn’t stop myself from getting hard over the thought of Fox and those big lips of his.

  And his stony jaw.

  And those big shoulders.

  And the way his eyes crinkled whenever he smiled, really smiled.

  And how his cologne would sometimes drift over my way and set off an intoxicating chain reaction cascade through my body.

  I was rock hard, cock pressed against my thigh, and it was all for a man. A man who was now a coworker and who I had just met.

  A man who was everything my wet dreams were made out of. Dreams that I’d never tell a soul about, only recall them myself for days after, jerking off to the image of a hard, muscular body writhing over mine.

  A body like Fox’s…

  Why does life have to be so damn complicated? Why was I so consumed with Fox’s body? He was a… well, a he.

  I tried focusing on the bland pop song playing over the radio, and when that didn’t bring my boner down, I decided to try and distract myself with some bland conversation with the driver.

  After a few minutes of discussing the weather, and my cock still not getting the message, I switched gears and decided to think about Wendy and… yep, there we go. As limp as a wet noodle. Which was perfect timing since the driver was now pulling up to our apartment building and the last thing I wanted to do was walk out with a Fox-induced tent pole inside my pants.

  Maybe I have to jack off. That’ll probably fix it…

  Yeah. That’ll fix it.

  I thanked the driver and slid out of the car, back into the Miami humidity. It was eleven o’clock at night and there was still a sticky kind of heat in the air, enough to… holy shit! Holy fucking shit! It was eleven o’clock!

  Oh, I fucked up. I fucked up big time.

  I’d been gone all day. I had completely forgotten about the dinner Wendy had set up with us and her friends, one that she had warned me not to forget.

  I hurried up the few steps to our building and went to unlock the front door, but when I moved to put the key inside the lock, my fingers pretty much gave out and the key fell down to the floor, the golden color almost highlighted in the air. I watched as it tumbled down onto the floor, and then watched as it jumped down a few steps and slipped straight into a sewer grate, the distant noise of the key splashing into filthy sewage coming up as if it were mocking me.

  “Are you fucking kidding me…”

  I felt like crying. It wasn’t something I did often, but right now, it was the only thing I felt like doing. I knew what was waiting for me upstairs, and I hated it. I hated the fact that I felt chained to this relationship, and that chain had gotten more and more constricting. Even after my near-death experience, our relationship never got better. Hell, it probably got worse.

  And for what?

  I had almost died. I didn’t need to be tied down to someone I wasn’t happy with. I saw firsthand how short life could be, how quickly it could all be taken away. So then why was I wasting such valuable time?

  Why wasn’t I walking away? Should I walk away…?

  On the intercom, I hit the sequence of numbers that buzzed our apartment. A short moment later and the front door was unlocked with a loud click. I opened it and stepped into the small, musty lobby. At the elevator, I braced myself for the shitstorm I was about to endure.

  The five-floor elevator ride was long enough for me to make up my mind. I steeled myself for a decision that was already being made in my head.

  In front of our apartment door, I second-guessed myself before knocking.

  The door was thrown open and Wendy stood there, rage in her brown eyes, which were devoid of any love. I hadn’t seen love there for years.

  In that moment, I knew exactly what I had to do.

  “What in the name of all hell did you do, Jonah? You forgot about the dinner, and I was left looking like an idiot. And for what? Why would you do that to me?”

  She was shouting, her voice bouncing off the thin walls of our hallway. I moved to step past her, but she put a hand up on the doorframe, blocking my entrance.

  “You smell like booze. Were you out drinking instead of doing what you promised me you would do? You completely let me down today, Jonah. Like, I feel terrible. You—”

  “We’ve got to talk, Wendy.” I had to cut her off. I couldn’t let her keep making me feel bad when, at the end of the day, she didn’t care whether I was there with her or not. In fact, she probably preferred the fact that she had to go alone, without me by her side. I still couldn’t forget the last time we went out with her friends, when my hand shook and spilled soup all over the table, when she looked at me with such disdain and embarrassment in her eyes that it made me want to shrink down and drown myself in the puddle of lobster bisque.

  “Oh yeah we’ve ‘got to talk.’” She was like one of those dinosaurs in the beginning of the first Jurassic Park. The ones that have the frills and spit acid. She flared up in front of me, already sensing where I was headed. “We’ve got to talk about you being a complete turd of a boyfriend.”

  “Me?” I was inside the apartment. She slammed the door shut and the frame holding a picture of us smiling at Disney shook on the wall. “Wendy, you’ve been treating me like garbage for months now. I feel like you don’t want me around,
and I have no idea why. I don’t know what I did wrong, what I did to deserve it.”

  “Think about it, Jonah.” She crossed her arms. She wore a pink T-shirt that only made her red face even redder.

  “Think about what? All the times I had to drive myself to physical therapy because you had a nail appointment? Or all the times I cut myself shaving while you sat in the living room laughing at the dumb memes you spend your life looking at? All the times I needed your help, Wendy, and you were nowhere. And then, on the time when you were there, you made it clear to me that I was a burden—”

  “Jonah, you were never—”

  “Well, that’s how it felt. And you did nothing to make it feel better.” I was shaking. This was it. I was staring at the end, something I hadn’t done since I was shot in the head.

  “We can’t fix this, Wendy.”

  Her frills seemed to come down for a moment. “Wait, Jonah, hold on. We can talk things through.”

  “No,” I said, feeling more sure by the second. “There’s nothing we can say. It’s over, Wendy. I’m so sorry, but this relationship can’t—”

  I felt the crack of skin on my cheek before I registered what happened. The sting came soon after, marking the exact shape of her hand on my face. I was in shock. She’d never hit me before—I never thought she would.

  And then I felt the warm drip of blood. I put a hand on my cheek and wiped, revealing a bloody palm. She had used nails. Wendy had been out for blood, and she got it.

  “Get out,” she said. “I can’t believe I moved down here for you. I can’t believe I put my life on hold for you so that you break up with me? Well, guess what, Jonah, it’s over just like you said. This is me breaking up with you!”

  She was pushing me now, toward the door of our apartment.

  “Get out.”

  “What… Wendy? Wendy, calm down. This is crazy.”

  “Crazy!”

  Bad choice of words. Jurassic Park dinosaur was back, except this time she was a Tyrannosaurus rex, ready to bite down on me and tear me in half. I stumbled back and opened the door, stepping into the hallway.

  “Wendy, this is our apart—”

  “My name is on the lease. Come back tomorrow to get your stuff. I really need to be alone right now.”

  And with that, she slammed the door shut, locking it and kicking it for good measure, the cheap wood shaking. I’m pretty sure I heard the frame holding our photo come crashing down.

  I stood there in shock. My ears were ringing as if a grenade had gone off a few feet away from me. This all happened so fast, and yet at the same time, it was years in the making. A slow-moving sinkhole that was threatening to consume my entire life if I didn’t make a run for it.

  And that’s what I did. I had to. Wendy wasn’t happy with me, and I wasn’t happy with her. The realization had come to me back when I was confined to a hospital bed and she was nowhere around, but it took until now for me to act on it.

  I wasn’t sure if it was just timing or if there was another factor that had pushed me to act…

  “Everything okay?”

  The voice scared me. It was Shirley, our eighty-seven-year-old neighbor who loved taking care of Chibby when I couldn’t. That was another thing: Wendy hated my pet iguana and thought she’d get sick from looking at it, so when I was in the hospital, Shirley was wonderful enough to offer and help.

  “Yeah, everything’s… it’s… uhm.” I tried to make sure my face was tilted in a way that she couldn’t see the scratch marks.

  She put a soft, wrinkled hand on mine and looked up at me, age and wisdom, but more so love, radiating from her warm face.

  “It will be okay, Jonah. It will be. You’ve been through hell and didn’t even come back with a T-shirt. The least you deserve is a happy ending. I believe you’ll get that and more, sweetie. Besides, I strongly believe you’re much too handsome to be sad. So perk up and forget about the troubles that are haunting you now, because the ghosts of tomorrow are much more pleasant. I promise.”

  I smiled, something I didn’t think possible with how I felt. “Thank you, Shirley. That sounds… that’s actually pretty inspirational.”

  “Is it?” She coughed and smiled. “I’m on some new medical marijuana and honestly I wasn’t even sure what I was saying. But I’m very happy it made sense to you!”

  She started cracking up, which got me laughing, something else I didn’t think was possible with the way I was feeling. I wondered if Wendy could hear this from inside the apartment. Wondered if she was already making plans for a girls’ trip to get her mind off me.

  And then I started wondering where the hell I was going to sleep that night.

  “All right, honey, I just wanted to check in. I heard a commotion and then peeked out the door and saw you here. I love you, Jonah, and I want you to know that whatever that bitch says, it’s not true. You’re a wonderful man, and anyone would be very lucky to have you.”

  My jaw almost dropped to the floor. She gave my hand a squeeze, winked, and turned to disappear back into her apartment, laughing all the way.

  In my pocket, a key was practically burning a hole through my palm. I figured I wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight anyway, so might as well head into the office and try to work on this Dragon case. If I got too tired, I could crash with my head on the desk. Sure my neck would feel like a bag of lumpy rocks the next day, but whatever, I’d deal with it. If it was really that terrible, I could always stay at a hotel.

  I would probably need to while I searched for a new place to live.

  Holy shit… what the hell.

  I started down the hallway, wondering what in the world I was doing and if it was a mistake or not…

  And then, for some weird reason I would never be able to fully understand, my thoughts turned to Fox and I didn’t feel so unsure of myself anymore.

  It felt like every step I took was in the right direction.

  9 Gabriel “Fox” Morrison

  I decided to come back to the office after drinks and dinner with Jonah because I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, and I wanted to channel that energy into something productive instead into counting a flock of sheep in my head.

  So I sat at my desk, the clock reading eleven thirty at night, and I was currently digging through the dark web for any mention of Dragon and its source. It was a tiresome task, and the different subject headers started to blur together after a while. Plenty of illicit drugs were being offered for purchase, but there was no sign of Dragon anywhere. It must still be a small operation, which was a good sign for me. It meant there was still time to stop it from hitting the masses, and to stop it from taking any more lives.

  A thought hit me then, turning my stomach. It was bothersome to me that the drug’s source was clearly targeting the gay community and treating us like their little lab experiments. They were more than likely fine-tuning the chemical formula before going to the big leagues, and they were using the gay community as test subjects.

  It was sickening and it fueled me. I had to stop whoever was behind this. If I could get Dragon off the streets, I could save countless of lives. And now I had help, which I felt extremely confident about. Jonah was an asset if I’d ever seen one before.

  And boy, did he have an ass-et.

  Bada-boom, I’ll be here all day, ladies and gents.

  My window was cracked open, letting in some fresh air whenever the breeze decided to kick in. The sounds of Ocean Drive were distant but still audible, people cheering and shouting.

  He really does have one of the nicest asses I’ve ever seen on a straight guy.

  I closed out of the browser I used to search the dark web and shut down my computer. It was getting late, and when my thoughts started to focus on the asses of straight guys, I knew it was time to call it a day. Not to mention, I was still feeling a little buzzed from the drinks I’d had with Jonah.

  Maybe instead of bed, I’d swing by one of the bars and see if there were any gay asses I could fondle a
nd drool over. That way I could stop focusing on an ass that would forever be out of my reach.

  I got up, stretched, and started to head out. It was in the hallway when I heard a loud thump and a curse. I jumped, not one to be easily startled but still surprised by the sudden sound. It came from Jonah’s office. I noticed his door was open and the light was on, spilling out into the dark hall. I flipped the switch on the wall, the overhead hall lights flickering on, and walked over to Jonah’s office.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh, hey, shit.”

  I looked into his office and saw Jonah on his knees, picking up a pile of papers that had fallen out of a box that was lying on its side. I hurried over and got down on his level and helped him with grabbing the papers.

  “Thank you,” he said, both of us getting back up on our feet.

  “Since when were you in here?”

  “I came in like fifteen minutes ago,” he said. He looked a little… well, shaken? What the hell happened to him? His hair was a mess, and his shirt was untucked. Was his cheek red? I wanted to offer him a cold beer and a massage, but I knew how odd that would sound, so I offered him a compassionate look instead.

  “You okay?” I asked. “You know you don’t have to come into work until tomorrow, right? We have regular hours around here.”

  He chuckled at that, although it sounded a bit hollow. “Actually, I don’t know if I’m okay or not…”

  “Shit.” I pulled the heavy leather chair back and took a seat, motioning for him to do the same across from me. “What happened?”

  “Wendy happened. Well, no, I happened, I guess? I just… it was… just really crazy… I’m… ugh, I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, hey.” I could feel his anxiety rising like a geyser. “It’s okay. You’re here; I’m here. No one else, nothing else. You’re okay.” I made sure his eyes were on mine, tilting my head when he tried to look away.

  “It’s… a lot happened. Yelling and slaps. I wasn’t thinking it would get so out of hand… but then… I don’t know if I was thinking? Ugh. I’m sorry. I basically broke up with my girlfriend like an hour ago.”