Back home, the apartment was dark, too quiet. Lonely.He turned the three-way lamp up to the highest setting, then wentaround to every room, clicking on the lights in an effort to expelthe shadows. They retreated before him, hunkering down into thecorners, beaten back by the light. In the bedroom Vic stood for along moment, staring at the bed, but the mattress held no comfortfor him. He couldn’t face it alone, but before he left the room, hesnagged the blue bear from where he’d set it on Matt’s bedsidetable when he’d stripped the sheets, then took Matt’s pillow aswell.
He crashed on the couch in the living room instead,fully dressed. Stretching along the couch, he curled one armbeneath Matt’s pillow and tucked the cordless phone receiverbetween the arms of the teddy bear, then hugged both to his chest.The bear’s head nuzzled beneath his chin, and Matt’s scent rosefrom the pillow to envelop him, connecting them even though theywere apart.
Vic thought he’d just lie awake in the bright livingroom until morning came, but his body was more exhausted than hewas willing to admit and he dropped off within minutes. Strange,vivid dreams disturbed his sleep, dreams of loss and abandonment,dreams where Vic’s superhuman strength was not enough to rescue hislover. Matt drifted through his mind, calling out to himsoundlessly, arms reaching for Vic but fingers slipping through hisgrip. Vic tossed on the couch, rolling onto his back, then onto hisside—the bear he kept clutched to him but the phone fell to thefloor, forgotten. A thin sheath of sweat covered his body, slickinghis skin, and more than once when he thought of Matt, his handstrayed to fist at the front of his jeans, where his body respondedto the dreams of his lover with a painful erection that throbbed sohard it finally woke Vic with a start.
The blood in his cock pounded in time with thedistant pulse of an alarm. His hand trembled as he ran it over hisdamp scalp. Pushing himself up off the couch, Vic unzipped hisjeans as he stumbled to the bathroom. His hard dick unfurled fromthe confines of his pants without help; absently one hand encircledhis shaft, stroking it, anything to alleviate the pressure andtension that had built in him overnight. In the bathroom hesquatted on the tiled floor and masturbated—it was a pleasurelessexperience, something to do to take his mind off his troubles, torelieve the ache and the pain that wracked his body, and when hecame, he felt disgusted with himself.
After he cleaned his hands and rezipped his jeans, herealized the sound that had woken him continued to buzz through hisbrain. It was the alarm clock in the bedroom, set to get him up forwork. But the thought of dragging his ass into the bus garage, ofnavigating the traffic downtown as he drove along the samemindless, circuitous route—God. How could he pretend to goon, with Matty gone? He couldn’t.
In the living room, he dug out the phone book andflipped through the white pages under M. His finger traceddown the list, every nerve in him dreading the call he was about tomake. If there was anyone else he thought might take his shift forhim other than Kyle Munley, Vic would call them in an instant. Butdespite being a royal pain in the ass, Kyle would cover for him—Vicknew it. When he found Kyle’s number, he dialed it, eager to getthis over with.
It rang once, twice, three times. Vic listened to it,counting, then realized Kyle worked the early shift so he’d havealready left home. But why didn’t his answering machine click on?Vic knew he had one; he’d called Kyle a few months before, lookingto switch shifts so he and Matt could take a weekend trip to theshore. The message on the recording had been a stupid one,punctuated by Kyle’s donkey laugh and then some lame attempt at hipslang that Vic hadn’t understood and didn’t bother to decipher.He’d left a message and within the hour, Kyle had called back. Vicalso knew Kyle called home to check for any messages throughout theday—he’d seen his coworker at the pay phone in the locker roomoften enough. So why…
Then it hit him, a thought so powerful it knocked thewind from him. Vic tried to draw in a breath and couldn’t, tried tospeak and couldn’t. He could only listen to the phone ringin his ear as his mind struggled to wrap itself around the oneblinding thought that seared his senses. ::Matty—::
Of course. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Kyle’sshould’ve been the next place he looked when Jordan’s didn’t panout. A dream-like trance descended over him; he wasn’t aware ofhanging up the phone, of dropping the receiver to the floor, ofstanding and heading for the door.
One thought shone in his mind like the sun, chasingaway the darkness that had taken up residence from the moment hecame home the night before and found his lover missing.
I know where Matt is.
* * * *
Chapter 26
Matt woke to darkness.
He lay on the floor of the closet in Kyle’s sparebedroom. The cloying stench of mothballs that had threatened tochoke him hours before, when Jordan first dumped him into the tinyspace, now barely registered to Matt’s dulled senses. Through thethin walls he could hear the murmur of the television, and Jordan’sthroaty laugh.
Matt had no concept of time—how long had his armsbeen bound behind his back? Or his shorts tugged down just enoughto let his genitals hang out, the carpet scratchy against his bareass and damp beneath the tip of his weeping dick? His T-shirt hadbeen rucked up, the bottom hem pulled back over his head and tuckedbehind his neck to expose his chest; the half-dressed state he wasin made everything seem so…so dirty, for some reason. Hewould’ve felt better nude, instead of torn open like the damnScarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. His wrists tingled from lackof circulation, and his upper
