Page 20 of Brick
He stopped working, leaned back on his heels, and took in the guy’s earnest expression. “What makes you think something is bothering me, kid?”
“Because I have eyes.” Robby wrinkled his nose. “And why do you always call me kid? I’m twenty-three years old, Brick.”
Maybe, but he looked closer to twenty, and a naive twenty at that. Had he ever been so innocent? Lifting his hands in surrender, he shook his head. “I didn’t know it bothered you.”
“It doesn’t really,” Robby sighed, settling on the floor beside him. “Not from you, anyway. Sometimes, though, there are people I wish would see me as more.” He lowered his voice, almost speaking more to himself than Brick. “As if wishing would make a difference.”
Aw hell. It bugged the hell out him for Robby to sound so small.
He made himself comfortable next to the kid—man, whatever—and uncapped his water bottle. “You talking about someone special?”
“I’m talking about a guy. A completely unattainable, completely straight, completely perfect…guy.” Robby let his pronouncement hang in the air defiantly, then he deflated a little. “Does it bother you?”
He chugged down about half the bottle before wiping his mouth with the back of his arm. “You being gay? I hate to break it to you, but it’s not exactly a secret.”
“Who told you?” Robby’s eyes held the panic of a rabbit trapped in a snare.
When an animal got scared, it needed soothing, or else it could break its own neck fighting its fear. He modulated his voice to speak as gently as he could. “Nobody had to tell me. And I don’t give a shit, Robby. You don’t judge me. I don’t judge you.”
He meant it. Robby was sweet. Kind. He extended genuine friendship to people, which was a rare thing. Who the guy wanted to warm his bed didn’t matter in the least.
Robby stared at him like he’d unleashed the secrets of the universe. “Thank you,” he said softly.
“Don’t sweat it.”
Robby gave him a wobbly smile. “You’re a good guy, Brick.”
He shut down whatever softness must be showing on his face. “I’m really not. You should believe me when I tell you. You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’m really like.” He returned to his knees, bending back over the wall he’d been working on.
The dismissal worked as intended. When he looked up again, Robby had moved on. The kid didn’t talk to him for the rest of the day, but he smiled and waved when Brick headed toward his truck at quitting time.
For the life of him, he couldn’t understand what was happening. No one had ever looked at him through rose-colored glasses before. Now, twice in the same week, he had to shut down the crazy-ass idea he was someone safe to be around, someone worth knowing.
The envelope on his passenger seat told a very different story. It had been waiting under the windshield wiper when he left for work this morning. A five-inch lock of grey hair rested inside, no doubt his grandmother’s. Sucre always delivered his message crystal clear; no one was out of his reach.
He scratched his head as he pulled his beat-up blue truck to a stop, waiting out the red light. The windows were down, the smell of freshly cut grass reminding him how far he was from home. He could cover the distance from the work site to his apartment in a half hour, but this neighborhood might as well have sat on another planet, it functioned so differently from his own.
Maybe the environment tricked Robby and Olivia into thinking he was a regular guy. They’d only ever seen him in places like this, where people could walk around without checking over their shoulder. Where a stray dog posed the biggest threat, and guys like Sucre only existed in the movies.
He took one more deep breath as the light turned green before hitting the accelerator. It would be awesome to belong here, to have a dog and a kid and someone like Olivia in his bed every night, but those kinds of fantasies were dangerous. Sucre would never let him go. The best he could hope for was to save his grandma, then disappear to somewhere his sick fuck of a boss could never find him.