Scott Sherman - First You Fall

Marc looked down and blushed. “You stil look beautiful to me.”

If Freddy was the sexiest man I knew, and Tony was the toughest, Marc was definitely the sweetest.

I kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

Just then, I heard my cel phone ring. I ran into the bedroom to get it. It was Tony.

Shit.

I didn’t want to talk to him.

I desperately wanted to talk to him.

I turned off my phone and put in my pocket.

I went into the kitchen and took a long swig of my tea.

“Who was it?” Marc asked.

“Just someone I used to know.”

“Are you OK?” he asked me.

“I’m better,” I said. “I just got a little freaked out.”

“What are you going to do?”

Good question.

“First, I’m going to finish this croissant, which, by the way, is delicious. Then, I’m going to go home, shower, and get into some clean clothing. I’l figure the rest out later.”

“You can stay here if you want,” Marc said. “I mean, if you don’t want to be alone.”

“I don’t think I’m in any danger,” I told him, remembering how I thought that the pebbles my father was throwing at the window were gunshots. “I don’t think I need to be too paranoid.”

“I don’t know,” Marc said. “You can’t be too careful.”

I was getting advice from a man too afraid to leave his apartment. Had it come to this? I kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for taking care of me.”

By the time I left Marc’s apartment, it was almost noon. I grabbed a cab home and on the drive turned my phone back on. Three messages from Tony. I was debating whether or not to listen to them when the phone rang.

It was Freddy.

“Hey,” I answered.

“Yo, bubbala,” he said, “how are you holding up?

Did you cast off your spinsterish ways and spend the night with Macbeth?”

“Romeo.”

“Whatever.”

“I spent the night with someone,” I said. I explained what Marc had found out about Michael’s customers.

“That evil fuck,” Freddy said. “I knew he was bad news from the moment I laid eyes on him.”

“You thought he was hot the moment you laid eyes on him,” I reminded him.

“Wel, that too,” Freddy admitted. “What are you going to do?”

“That’s the question everyone’s asking me. What do you think I should do?”

“Cal Tony. This needs to go to the cops now.”

“He’s been cal ing me,” I said.

“See? It’s bershert.”

“What if he doesn’t believe me?”

“What if he does?”

“What if he’s cal ing because he wants to get back with me?” I asked. “What if I can’t say ‘no,’ and then he breaks my heart again? Flow many times am I going to keep making the same mistake? I can’t keep doing the same wrong things and expecting them to turn out right. It’s been seven years now…”

Freddy interrupted. “You didn’t take your medication today, did you?”

I admitted that I hadn’t.

“OK, champ,” he said. “Just take a breath and listen. What if the mistake is not taking that chance with Tony? You’ve waited seven years for him, Kevin.

And, let’s face it; you did lay a kind of heavy trip on him with the whole Working Boy thing. Maybe he just needed some time to work through it.

“He’s cal ing you, Kevin. Isn’t that what you wanted? What if you gave him one more chance?”

That’s the thing about Freddy. A part of him would always be in love with me, just like a part of me was always drawn to him.

But in the end, what he wanted most for me was to be happy. Even if that meant I wound up with another man.

The cab was just pul ing up to my apartment.

“I think I wil return his cal,” I told him. “I love you, you know.”

“Please, you know I detest cheap sentiment,” he answered. “Now go cal your man. And be sure you tel me al about it.”

On my way up to my apartment, I thought about what Freddy had said. He was right; it was a big deal for me to tel Tony I was working as an escort. Of course he was upset. Not that he had a right to be, but I could understand it.

I was looking forward to a nice long shower and then a cal to Tony. With any luck at al, he’d be moved to come right over and the makeup sex would be great.

But when I got to my door I discovered the worst news of the day-it was unlocked.

My mother was back.

Great, I thought, I guess the limo didn’t work.

Thanks a lot, Dad.

“Mom?” I said, opening the door.

The masked figure from the hotel room stepped out from the hal way. “Not quite, whore.”

I had just enough time to see the flash of the Taser before the lights went out.

Darkness.

I tried to open my eyes, but they weighed a mil ion pounds.

Arms hurt.

Whole body hurt.

I slipped back into the darkness.

Huh?

Where am I?

Opened my eyes but everything’s stil black.

Must be night time.

So sleepy.

Woke up again. The good news was I wasn’t dead.

That was pretty much it for good news.

Now for everything else.

I was blindfolded, so I couldn’t tel anything about my surroundings.

I was standing with my arms tied above my head.

My shoulders ached. The floor under my feet felt rough, like cement. The air was stale and smel ed faintly of leather.

One arm hurt like it had been jabbed with something. My guess was an injection of some kind.

The last thing I remembered was coming home and someone shooting me with a stun gun. It knocked me out. Whoever did that must have drugged me and brought me here.

Wherever here was.

I felt cool air on my skin which made me realize something else.

I was naked.

This was so not good.

I would have expected that my heart would have been pounding out of my chest, but I felt strangely calm. Whatever my abductor knocked me out with must have stil been in my system.

Good, I thought. Use that to your advantage.

Breathe. Relax. Listen.

Don’t panic.

Focus, Kevin, focus

Boy, did I wish I’d taken my medication today.

I heard someone in the room with me. Breathing.

“Uh, hel o?” I asked.

I felt something touch me on the bel y. I jerked away. “Hey!”

“Shhhh…” someone said. Something-a finger- touched me again, right under my neck. The finger slowly trailed down my chest, between my nipples, over my abdomen, stopping at my pubic hair.

“Shhh…”

It was al very Silence of the Lambs.

I knew I was supposed to be screaming or something, but I couldn’t muster the energy. The hand slipped down to my bal s, rol ing them between his fingers. Then around to my ass, tracing over my crack, lingering at my hole.

“Shhhh…”

I know it sounds weird, and it must have been the drugs, but my most prominent feeling at the moment was boredom. If he was going to kil me, I wished he’d get on with it.

“What are you doing, Michael?”

The hand smacked my ass. Hard.

“Ow!”

OK, maybe hoping he’d get on with it wasn’t such a good idea.

“I’m not Michael,” he answered.

And it wasn’t.

I knew that voice.

It hadn’t been Michael al along.

How had I gotten everything al wrong?

The brother I thought was the victim was real y the kil er.

“Paul,” I said.

“I’m not Paul,” he said.

Huh?

“Cal me Stryker,” he said.

OK, that was definitely Paul’s voice.

This time, he slapped me on the bal s.

“Oww!”

“I said ‘cal me Stryker!’”

“Fine, fine, you’re Stryker!”

I felt my blindfold being pul ed off. The room was dim, and it took a minute until my eyes adjusted.