Black John Read online

  “Yeah. He worried us all. But Tommy says the medication is worth it, and they’re going to work hard.” Dex looked away, and John remembered that everybody had their demons. John hadn’t told Dex about Tory, and Dex hadn’t told John why he’d picked Dex as his name and why he hadn’t faced up to being gay when he’d spent six years fucking guys for cash.

  John tried really hard not to be a self-involved douche bag and squeezed Dex’s hand like he meant it. “You’ll help,” he said sincerely. “You’re good at that.” He sighed and rubbed his face with his free hand. His whiskers rasped at his palm, and given that he had red-blond stubble that didn’t grow in well or quickly, that was saying something.

  Dex looked him in the eye then, and John tried his damnedest to look back. At the last minute, he failed miserably.

  “I don’t mind helping you out,” he said evenly. “Please don’t feel bad because you had to ask for help.”

  “Yeah, I know,” John snapped, out of patience with guilt. “You know when an outstanding time to ask for help would have been?”

  “Before you sold me in a porn scene to my ex-boyfriend?” Dex asked flatly.

  John grimaced. Apparently Dex was out of patience with guilt too.

  “I don’t know how to fix that,” John stated.

  Dex jerked on his hand—not to break the touch but to get John’s attention, because he still wasn’t making eye contact, and they both knew that was bullshit. “You can’t,” Dex said honestly, and John thought Tory might have had the right idea. “You can’t fix it. But you might mend it.” There was a pause during which John actually ached. “You were my friend for years, John. Do you really think I can just give that up?”

  John groaned and leaned his head on the table. “God, David. I just wish you could have loved me.”

  So naked. Maybe the most honest thing John had said in the past year, really, since his cocaine use had gone up and his interest in any other guy had gone down. Sad, so sad, when you were surrounded by porn stars, some of them willing and happy to give a fuck-and-suck on the side, and you spent your time at home getting high and wishing for something you couldn’t have.

  “You know what I wish?” Dex asked. For the first time, his voice was as angry as it deserved to be.

  “That I wasn’t a douche bag?” John asked, almost hoping for a smile.

  “That you had told me,” Dex snapped bitterly. “Oh my God, John. We were friends. Do you know who I just fell in love with? My friend. Do you think maybe it could have happened between us? Hell, I don’t know. For a year I thought I was in love with Scott. And before that—”

  “You were straight!” John snarled, feeling like a savage. Davy, so transparent, watching the porn with hunger in his eyes.

  “I was lonely!” Dex snarled right back, the wounded expression on his face sharp enough to dig a trench in John’s soul. “Do you think maybe I could have used someone saying they cared like that? Do you think maybe knowing my friend thought I was gay might have helped me figure things out a little? Jesus, John, aren’t you supposed to learn how to be honest in rehab? We could have meant something to each other, and you just sat there and watched me eat my heart out! You’re pissed because Kane came and picked me up from under your nose? I was drowning under your nose, and you couldn’t have told me you loved me to save my life. So I’m not gonna feel sorry I fell in love with someone else. I’m not saying we would have been happy, or even that it would have been forever, but you’re damned right it could have been you.”

  “This is a pep talk?” John asked, staggered.

  “This is a wake-up call! If you didn’t make a move on me, it’s because something held you back—not because you thought I was straight.”

  Something held you back. And John wasn’t strong enough to do it. He wasn’t strong enough to apologize and pull back into his shell, which is what he would have done before rehab.

  He buried his face in his arm and just stayed there, shoulders shaking, until Dex moved. Good. He’d driven Dex away. Great—way to go, John—

  Dex wrapped his arm around John’s shoulders, and John took a deep breath and cried some more. The storm shook him—not as bad as the day before, but pretty bad. When it was over, Dex kissed his temple.

  “I’m a friend,” he said, his voice resigned. “I’ll do what I can, but it can’t be about you and me, okay?”

  John nodded. “Tory,” he mumbled. “My boyfriend. He’s what was holding me back.”

  Dex grunted. “Now see, not being able to let go? That’s something I know about.”

  John smiled into his arm, feeling marginally better. “Help me get to Florida and take care of the funeral, and that’ll be my solid,” he said softly. “Thanks, David. It’s more than I deserve.”

  Dex’s sigh ruffled his hair. “John, you maybe think this whole problem is because you deserve more, but you’re afraid to ask for it?”

  John wiped his face off on his thin white T-shirt so his snort wouldn’t be so full of phlegm. “Not likely.”

  Dex shook his head and took his place across the table again. That was it. That was all John got. Now it was business as usual. “I’m saying you’re a good guy,” Dex said patiently, and then grimaced. “Just don’t tell Kane I said that. But you are good. And you’ve been watching guys fuck for years through a camera lens and not reaching for nearly enough of ’em. Maybe it’s time you thought you deserved to get some too, right?”

  John shook his head and tried to sit up. “Sure.” He shrugged, but he didn’t believe it.

  Apparently Dex thought so too.

  “Look,” he sighed, running his hand through his hair. “John, I know what it’s like to lose someone. Whatever it is about this old boyfriend that’s got you tied up in knots, maybe going away is what you need to do to untie those knots, you think?”

  John blinked at him, so completely exhausted that he was willing to be led anywhere. “Sure,” he said. But in his head, he’d already lost. He honestly didn’t think he had the strength to go back and confront Tory’s ghost alone.

  BUT DEX didn’t give him time to relapse, much less score.

  John’s new business partner picked him up from rehab looking exhausted and sad. John came out of his own head enough to ask what the deal was and got a glimpse into a Dex he’d never seen before—and a full-frontal shot of the damage John himself had wrought when he’d been stoned.

  “Scott bashed in all her windows?” John asked, stunned. God. You let a guy blackmail you into selling your best friend, and you think that maybe that’s only your own ticket to hell, right? Having his dealer bash in his secretary’s windows because said dealer had knocked up said secretary while John had been stoned?

  God.

  “Yeah,” Dex sighed. “He’s a psychopath and Kane and I took him down a peg. Not all your fault, Johnny—don’t stress.”

  “How could I not see it?” John asked, mostly to himself, but Dex was there to answer and, yes, still a little pissed.

  “Being a pornographer doesn’t always make you the best judge of people,” he said, running a hand over his face. “John, you maybe ever think that life was to be lived and not looked at?”

  “Like Kane?” John asked, letting some scorn drip into his voice. It wasn’t fair to say—apparently the gorilla with a soul patch was in the hospital for defending his sister from her abusive husband. But God. So much drama. One of the best things about filming porn was that the drama was over as soon as the jizz spurted.

  “Kane’s happy,” Dex said, his voice catching. “He’s living his life and he’s happy with me. God, John—stop just watching, okay? You’re a good guy, but you’re just… fucking afraid to live in front of the camera, you know that?”

  “Davy, I’m about to go bury my dead ex-boyfriend in a place where both our families would rather spit on his grave than look at me. Is that fucking real enough for you?”

  “Been there, done that,” Dex snapped, surprising him. “And I’m telling you right now, i
t sucked. But you can do it with coke as a lens and never know what it really feels like or if you can survive it, or you can do it stripped bare and tell yourself you lived to walk away.”

  John took a deep breath and leaned his head against the window. Sacramento in February was dreary and foggy and gray, but at least it rained. The alternative was a summer that made dandelion fuzz look moist. Scott hadn’t been his only dealer. John could probably get on the phone and have enough coke to give himself an aneurism delivered at his front door before Dex pulled into his driveway.

  “Kane’s going to be okay?” John asked, realizing that he wanted it to be so for Dex’s sake.

  “Yeah,” Dex replied softly. “And we’re going to get married, and we’re going to adopt his niece, and we’re going to be a family.”

  John’s heart did a weird hop-skip then. How long had it been since John had even contemplated being a part of something like that?

  “Good,” he whispered, getting the words past a tight throat. “One of us should be happy.”

  “Both of us can be,” Dex said and then pulled into John’s driveway, and he put any chance of calling another dealer on hold.

  DEX HAD taken care of John’s house while he was away and, in fact, had been the one making sure John’s mail arrived at the rehab center, whether or not Dex was the one who delivered it.

  But John’s house—a warm, homey single bedroom in the twenties area of downtown, with a large backyard and a tiny kitchen—was clean and dusted. His fish were all fed, and their tank was clean, and even his windows had been washed in anticipation of his arrival.

  For eight years he’d holed up in here, watched television, read books, beat off, whatever, in complete independence. Yeah, he’d had a few lovers in that time, but none of them had left a mark. And he’d done a few drugs here—mostly coke when he had to wake up early and attend his business—but since most of that had been done at the business, even the traces of his addiction would have been easy to clean up.

  It was a home, with a green area rug and a green corduroy couch and dark brown hardwood floors and end tables and a bookshelf.

  Dex was in his room, pulling down his suitcase and throwing clothes in it while John wandered the small space and gazed unhappily into his fish tank to make sure everyone had survived being completely ignored by the maid.

  “I think the catfish has gotten bigger,” he said suspiciously.

  “Imagine that,” Dex replied, his voice muffled.

  “And it has spots I don’t remember.”

  “It’s been a month!” Dex called back, and he heard a thump and a curse word thrown in there. John thought he should maybe help.

  “Davy, did you kill my fish?”

  “No! At least”—Dex’s voice grew louder as he wandered into the living room—“not actively. But, you know. The maid didn’t know what to do, and there was some chaos, and—”

  John was suddenly struck by what Dex had done. “So you replaced my fish like I was a little kid and you were Mom and Dad and didn’t want me to cry.”

  Dex curled his lip at first, and then, as he thought about it, his face relaxed. “Yeah, okay, that’s fair.”

  For the first time since Dex had picked him up, John stopped running through possible dealers in his head. He launched himself at Dex in a full-body hug that wasn’t sexual in the least.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled.

  Dex stood stiff for a moment. Then, when he apparently realized the moment wasn’t going to become romantic, he relaxed into the gesture. “Did I mention we want you to be well,” he said quietly.

  John nodded. For the first time—literally the first time—since Dex had driven him to rehab, shaking from detox and not wanting to think about how Dex had found out about how bad it had gotten, John remembered Dex was a friend.

  “What’s the weather like in Florida?” Dex asked after a minute.

  John sighed, stepping back. Nice moment over. “Lots of cargo shorts,” he said. “And a porn star’s buttload of sunblock.”

  Dex winked and ruffled John’s overlong red hair. “I think we can manage that. I even saw some of those gauzy long-sleeved shirts that make people look like they belong in a Mexican soap opera. I think we should pack some of those.”

  “I’m not supposed to get laid after rehab!” John complained, following him into his room in determination not to let Dex mother him any more than he had been.

  “Well, it’s not like you were getting laid a lot before rehab,” Dex said practically, rifling through John’s closet. “I think you can take a pass.”

  “I think maybe I should just watch a lot of porn instead of editing it, and wax my own knob,” John said shortly.

  Dex turned to him with a grimace, holding up a green shirt, short-sleeved, with nice detailed threadwork around the bottom.

  “I’m not getting laid,” John said, wondering what about this Dex didn’t understand.

  “I’m definitely packing it,” Dex shot back. “And I think you should stop watching porn entirely.”

  The connection between John’s shocked brain and his sarcastic mouth shorted out, and he was left gaping. Not watch porn? John was a pornographer, for sweet fuck’s sake. He’d graduated from film school and had become one of the few people in his class to actually go out and make film.

  “Shut your mouth, you’ll catch flies.” Dex was apparently too tired to be impressed by John’s identity crisis. “Do you know that porn may be fun to look at, but it’s not necessarily fun to make?”

  John grunted. “I always tried—”

  “To make it fun for us—I get that. And it was. I mean, you know, we all came, and we all made money, and that was great. But you know what?”

  “If you mention Kane’s name—”

  “Well, since you brought him up, I will. The best sex I’ve ever had has been no one else allowed. It’s been private. And I get porn has a function, and I’m not ashamed I made it. Porn lets us look at sex and go, ‘Oh my fuckin’ God, that looks fun! I should be having that!’—and then we do. But if the only kind of sex we’re having is by ourselves, then porn stops becoming a little bump to get us going. It becomes….” Dex trailed off unhappily, and John realized this was his word to use.

  “Addictive,” he said, looking down at his bed. He sort of loved this coverlet—forest brown and green, with hints of black. It probably looked really good with his skin, but very few people had seen him naked on it.

  “A crutch,” Dex agreed, folding the shirt carefully and adding a pair of white drawstring pants.

  “Are you trying to make me look gay?” John asked irritably.

  “You’re going to be in Orlando in March, John. Tell me there’s not going to be some guys with their asses hanging out of their swim trunks, wanting to have a good time.”

  “No sex—”

  “After rehab? I think that’s a likely fucking story from you. I think you were probably thrilled to sign on to that. I think sex was probably the thing that scared you the most. I think you’ve spent the last ten years watching other people have sex on camera so you could avoid having sex off camera, so I’m conveniently not listening to you on the ‘no sex’ thing. When Kane gets out of the hospital, I’m sucking his cock until his eyes roll back in his head. I’m your friend, so I’ll be hoping someone is doing the same for you.”

  Well, fuck. David Worrall, aka Dex, premier poster boy for Johnnies, really was making a go at making this friend thing work.

  “Fine,” John muttered. “You throw that in there, and I’ll go sit alone and drink club soda in a corner.”

  “Don’t you get white wine spritzers or something?” Dex asked, irritated. “I mean, you were doing coke, not gin.”

  “Substance is substance,” John said glumly, remembering sitting in on those talks too.

  “Awesome. When you get back, Kane and I will buy sparkling cider. Kane is barely old enough to drink.”

  John’s laugh cracked. “Oh my God. I mean seriously, what is it
with you two?”

  Dex looked at him levelly. “I was drowning, and he threw me a rope. Then he hauled me in. Then he took care of me when I was shaking from the shock, and then he let me do the same thing for him. You want a magic formula to make someone fall in love with you, well, I don’t got it. Kane and I work. We just do, and nobody is as surprised as I am, so I’m not going to question it. But you want to know how to make them look at you? Throwing them a fucking rope is where you start.”

  John raised his eyebrows and thought about it.

  “The last guy I threw a rope to let go of it to drown,” he said quietly, and there could be no doubt whom he was talking about.

  Dex pursed his lips. “You can’t help that. Next time throw a rope to a guy who wants to be saved.”

  John laughed bitterly, and Dex joined him. It wasn’t the answer because there was no answer, but really, it was more than John deserved.

  Flights

  WHEN JOHN was twenty-six, his grandmother passed away. She’d only lived an hour from the town John had grown up in, but her house was way bigger than the one John’s dad bought on a cop’s salary, and unlike John’s mother, she belonged to the local country club and could afford her really nice clothes.

  She’d told John once that she had fucked her way to the top via three late husbands with varying degrees of wealth. She’d been the only member of John’s family to keep talking to him when he came out (rather spectacularly), and she’d done her damnedest to leave him her house and grounds—and enough money to pay taxes for pretty much the rest of John’s life—with the caveat that he shoot dirty movies there.

  He’d complied in spades.

  He remembered when she’d told him she was going to do it.

  He’d been fleeing from Tory and his spectacularly failed third time in rehab, and from their original porn business, which had actually been doing decently with Tory as their lead attraction, but not decently enough to fund Tory’s addiction.

  He’d landed on her porch, just like when he was a boy fleeing from his father—because preacher or policeman, being the kid of a controlling asshole who thought he spoke for God sucked ass large—and she’d greeted him in a white pantsuit, a green scarf around her neck, with perfectly coiffed blue hair. She called for lemonade on the porch, and her “man”—a fiftyish white valet whom she often bragged gave the best face in the state—brought it and then kissed her temple and bowed before he backed into the house.