Touch the Sky (Free Fall Book 1) (7 page)

I
almost told him
.

I can’t believe I almost told Gabriel about my mom. It’s crazy and confusing, because I don’t do things like that. People don’t need to know my business. No one needs to know that I couldn’t save her…that I let her die alone, but just like when we were kids, Gabriel doesn’t feel like just anyone.

He was a computer screen to me when we were younger. Obviously I knew someone was behind it, but that screen made things easier. It was almost like we didn’t live in the same universe, so what would it hurt if I let him inside?

But now, he’s fucking real. He’s flesh and bones. Warmth and a heartbeat. His big, blue eyes that see the world in a way I’m not sure I ever have…like he wants to think there’s a lot of good in it when all I see is the bad. Even his reaction to the plane today turned me inside out, because I want to be that excited about something. I want to be able to let all that passion and joy out, instead of keeping shit locked up tight inside me.

I’ve never known anyone like him, even back when we were just names on a screen, and that’s what makes me fear I might let all my secrets out to him.

“Do you wanna grab food or something?” I ask him as we make our way back to my car.

“Yeah…sure, I could eat.”

Nodding, I open the passenger door to my car, and then climb over to the driver’s seat. Luckily, I don’t drive too much in the city, but since we were coming out here, I knew I had to take my car.

“Sorry,” I say again even though I already apologized for my car. “Rusty’s been good to me, but he’s on his last legs.”

Gabriel climbs in behind me. “You have nothing to apologize for, and you named your car?” He grins, like he’s really happy. You can always tell fake smiles from real ones. Gabriel’s are real.

“Rusty the Rust Bucket, but he doesn’t like his full name.” I wink and earn myself another one of his smiles.

While we’re driving, we chat for a few minutes about where to eat. Gabriel mentions In-N-Out, and I shrug and tell him okay. It doesn’t take us long to get there, and less than fifteen minutes later, we’re sitting at one of their outdoor tables with fresh cut fries, and Gabriel has a burger.

“You weren’t very hungry?” He nods to my tray before putting a fry into his mouth. I watch him, still surprised that he’s sitting across from me, wanting to know more about him, and even his diagnosis. I’m not sure if I should talk to him about it, though. How does something like this work? Do I pretend like he didn’t tell me? Ask him questions? I just don’t know.

“Not really, but I also don’t like bread.”

His blond brows pull together, a wrinkle forming in his forehead. “Why? Can’t be a carb thing since you’re eating the fries.”

His question doesn’t surprise me. Everyone asks when they find out I don’t eat bread. Who the hell doesn’t eat bread? “Nope. It’s a texture thing. It grosses me out. I hate how it gets mushy and gross when you eat it.” I shiver and Gabriel looks at me like he thinks I’m crazy. “Seriously. It’s gross. It makes me gag. I have a weak gag reflex. I’m picky about what I put in my mouth.”

Those last words make his eyes get even bigger. His cheeks suck in like he’s trying to hold back a laugh. “Picky about what you put in your mouth, huh?”

“Aren’t you?” I cock a brow, before tossing a french fry at him. Gabriel manages to dodge it, his lips in a full-fledged smile now. “But yeah, I am specific about what I put in my mouth, and while I may have a weak gag reflex for things I
don’t
like, I can promise you it’s not a problem with things that I
do
like.” I let my eyes dart down, even though the table is covering his crotch. Gabriel gets the picture. His cheeks flush a soft pink as he shifts on the seat.

“I’m glad to hear that,” he says, his voice grainy. “That you like it.” Gabriel tenses up and then his words begin coming out faster. “Not that it has anything to do with me. I mean, I don’t think. I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t assume that we’re gonna…that you will…”

A loud laugh jumps out of my mouth. It almost startles me because I can’t remember the last time I laughed like that. His face is a full on tomato now, and I clutch my stomach as laughter continues to barrel out of me. “Holy shit. Your face is so red, I think your head is going to explode!”

“Shut up.” This time it’s Gabe throwing a fry at me. It bounces off my chest because I’m still cracking up too much to try and block it.

His eyes look brighter, bigger, happier, and I can tell he’s having a good time too. When we both settle down, I take a drink of my soda and then risk a glance at him. “I’m glad to hear you’re excited that I like giving blowjobs.”

This time when he looks at me, I can’t read his expression, so I just let it go. Gabriel and I finish eating before throwing our trash away and climbing back into my car. We don’t talk much on the way to his place, but it’s a comfortable silence. It doesn’t weigh heavy on me. It’s one of those situations where you don’t really need to speak, and you can just
be.

When I pull up to his apartment, I turn off the car, even though I don’t plan on going inside. I had fun with him today. It meant something to see him happy at the airport. It’s not often in my life that I feel like I’ve made someone happy. Maybe because in the past I didn’t take the time, or because I didn’t have the means, but today made Gabe happy, which in a weird way, did something for me, too.

Strangely, I feel like I owe him because of it. Doesn’t make the words want to come out any easier, and doesn’t keep my hands from gripping the steering wheel. “I tripped carrying her to bed.”

Gabe hits the interior light and then turns sideways in the seat to look at me. “Huh?”

“The scar. You asked how I got it the other day. I came home to find her drunk. She’d been sober for six months before that but she was fucking gone. Wasted. Stumbling all over the place and crying. She got like that, when she was drunk. It made her sad because of the life she led. It made her sad for me, because she blamed herself for the shit I had to deal with.”

I let a deep breath fill my lungs and then let it out slowly. This would have been a whole lot easier if he hadn’t turned on the light.

“She’d feel guilty because she was an alcoholic, or because she thought I didn’t have the things I needed.” Really, I only needed her. Nothing else mattered. We could have lived on the fucking streets, but if she were sober, I would have been the happiest guy in the world. “So yeah, she was drunk and crying saying,
I’m sorry, Luke. I’m so sorry.
Fuck, it used to piss me off so much. If she was sorry, why the hell did she do it? If she felt so bad, why the fuck didn’t she stop?”
Why wasn’t I enough to make her want to stop?

As though he knows I don’t really need an answer to my question, Gabe stays quiet.

“I just wanted to make her stop crying. I couldn’t handle hearing her sadness so I told her I’d help her to bed. I tried to carry her, but I was just a scrawny-ass kid. My feet tangled with hers. We tripped and I hit the corner of my eye on the coffee table.” I shrug it off dismissively. “And that’s where the scar came from.”

Really, it’s a big fucking deal. Even after all this time, I’m back in that apartment, my head gushing blood and Mom crying even harder. I’m back there holding a towel to my head and telling her it will be okay when nothing fucking felt okay.

When Gabe doesn’t reply, I turn to face him. Slowly, so fucking slowly, he lifts his hand, touches my cheek, then rubs his calloused thumb over the scar. His fingers smell like salt and grease from the fries.

This stupid urge to close my eyes hits me, to just close my eyes and
feel.
To pretend my past isn’t my past and Gabe’s past isn’t his past and we’re just two guys sitting in a car together.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says, still touching my face.

“I know,” I tell him. I’m sorry for what he’s been through the same way he’s sorry for my life. Being sorry doesn’t change anything, though. “I should go.” Really, I don’t need to, but I think it would be better if I did. Maybe. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just afraid of this, of letting him get close.

“Okay,” Gabriel replies. He opens the car door, shifts to get out but then he stops. Suddenly, he’s moving toward me instead of away. I think he’s going to kiss me, and on instinct, I wet my lips with my tongue. I want to taste him. Even as a kid, I wondered what he’d taste like, what it would be like to kiss Gabriel.

But he doesn’t. Not in the way I expect at least. He leans in and presses his lips to the scar at the corner of my eye. They linger there a second, warmth and breath against my skin, and then he pulls away, gets out of the car, and walks inside.

For at least five minutes afterward, I sit in my car, my finger absently rubbing where his lips pressed against my skin. I’ve kissed my share of guys before, but not like that. No one has ever kissed me the way Gabriel just did.

M
y lips touched
Lucas’s face and I couldn’t stop thinking about it all night. That faint scar and that screwed up story he told me. Damn.

I sound like I’m fourteen fucking years old or something. I can’t stop my leg from bouncing as I straddle the beam that supports the scaffold and Lou yells at me about shaking the box of spiral flooring nails he placed on the joist.

But more than the kiss kept me up—it was the look on his face right before my mouth met his skin. Like he wanted me to. He was ready for a full on kiss. He would’ve accepted having my lips right up against his.

And when he flirted with me at the burger joint about putting things in his mouth, well fuck, I thought a lot about that too. After I got inside, I jacked off in the shower and Ezra might’ve heard me, but I didn’t even care.

I take deep breath after deep breath, trying to get my racing thoughts in order.

He told me that he was locked up in juvie and I don’t know how to feel about that. But maybe he doesn’t know how to feel about me spending time in a psych ward.

I learned my lesson and turned myself around. I won’t be that person again.

And hell if I don’t believe him. How could I not? I’m the one not being completely truthful. The fact is, I’m ignoring a pretty significant part of myself, but it feels so goddamn good to be winging it. I was under my parents’ constant scrutiny, my father’s ruling fist, for so long, I just want the chance to truly be me. No barriers, no groggy meds. Just me. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

I refrain from pulling out my phone to see if Lucas has responded to my text from earlier in the day.
So what are your plans for that skyscraper?

I usually only check my phone during breaks so that I can get the day job done.

As soon as the foreman blows the whistle, I spring up and balance myself on the support plank I helped Lou install. I began as an unskilled laborer but this past year I’ve been shadowing him more and increasing my skill level. It isn’t my dream job but it makes me feel like I’m getting somewhere.

I throw out my arms and stare down at the ground below, imagining that I’m one of those single engine prop planes. Damn it feels nice up here, the wind on my face, nothing but air around me. It’s like I’m floating. If I stepped off the beam, I almost feel like my wings would carry me away.

“What the hell are you doing?” Lou hisses from somewhere behind me. “I swear, kid, sometimes I think you’re going to jump because you believe you can fly or some shit.”

“Well maybe I can.” A laugh bordering on maniacal bursts from my lips, and though I can’t see him, I already know I’m making Lou nervous.

“Don’t be crazy, G Man,” he says in a shaky voice. The same voice Ezra uses when he’s worried about me. And because I have enough sense right now not to lose my job over a stunt like this, I draw back and land my feet on solid concrete.

“Sorry, Lou. Just excited about the end of my day.” When I get to his shiny Ford pickup and hop inside, my face burns with shame that I act like such an idiot when he’s willing to give me rides. Lou gets a call from his wife as we’re pulling onto the street, so I fish out my phone and find a text from Lucas.

You realize you never even told me about flying the other night?

My fingers soar across the keys as I type him back.

Damn, you’re right. LOL. I’ve been taking an on-line aviation course, but I also need to take lessons too, which are expensive.

I leave out the part where I have to apply for a student pilot certificate in order to log at least 40 hours of initial flying time. But in order to get that document, I need to undergo an exam by an FAA board-certified doctor and that’s where my dreams fall to crap. Because your prior medical history matters and depending on the type of meds you take, you might not be allowed to go airborne at all. Or what meds you’re
supposed
to take, I guess I should say.

The smell of pot hits me as soon as I walk through my apartment door. Ezra’s blasting depressing stoner music, standing in front of one of his creations in his make-shift studio. Contact high, here I come.

He waves to me over his shoulder and says, “I left a number on your bed.”

I see the torn paper with a
Dr. Damien
scrawled across the center along with a couple of ways to get in touch with him. It’s the referral from his psychologist sister. I pull out my phone and consider making the initial appointment.

My fingers linger there, the phone suddenly heavy in my hand. I’m suspended in limbo. Damned if I do. Damned if I don’t.

I think about Ezra doing this for me, and what might happen when I go to the doc. That shitty feeling I get because I have to be on meds just to make me normal. And what if this time they don’t work the same? What if the prescription they put me on makes me feel even more like a zombie than that initial week last time? It’s fucked up. People shouldn’t have to take meds just to live.

I just want to be like everybody else. Want to pretend I’ll have a flying career someday. A cool apartment, a boyfriend who loves me, and a brain that can regulate itself all on its own.

But then I feel like a hypocrite because I should be glad that prescriptions are available for practically every medical condition out there. And having a mental illness shouldn’t be any different than having diabetes. Except that society doesn’t see it that way.

My phone buzzes in my hand and I nearly drop it. It’s Lucas.

Nice. Glad you’re working toward something. That’s more than I can say. I’m just servin’ people alcohol.

There’s an edge to those words, a story there. One I’m desperate to know.

Are you at work right now?

Yeah, slow night.

My fingers hover on the keys, debating with myself, but then I just type it.
I would much rather see him than deal with the piece of paper Ezra left me.

Feel like a visitor?

I remove my clothes to shower as I ignore his long pause. Afterward, I pick up my phone to tell him to forget it when his response comes back.

That’d be cool.

An hour later, I’m walking into Pete’s. I notice a few tables are occupied along with several barstools. Maybe business has picked up in the last few minutes.

Lucas’s gaze tracks me across the room, making my pulse pick up speed. He looks me up and down and tips his chin in my direction. I didn’t wear my hoodie this time so maybe he likes what he sees.

After he serves a couple of men their drinks down the bar, he heads my way, pausing briefly to answer another bartender’s question.

“What can I get you?” He has his beanie on today, the one he wore when I first saw him a couple of weeks back. It hides his hair but brings out his strong jawline. Either way, he’s striking.

“How about a Jack and Coke?” I say and I see a flicker of something in Lucas’s eyes that looks a lot like disappointment. I’m not sure what it means, but I want to follow up when I get a chance.

I watch as he reaches for a glass and pours my drink effortlessly, his forearm flexing beneath his black button-down shirt that he has rolled to his elbows.

Suddenly starving, I reach for the bowl of snacks realizing that I haven’t eaten dinner.

“So does this bread aversion extend to pretzels?” I ask when he sets my order down in front of me. He watches as I bite off the edge of one of the twisted knots.

“Guess I never considered that.” He rubs his hand along the scruff on his chin and I wonder what it would feel like against my cheek. “Not the same consistency.”

“True. I like this brand,” I say grabbing another one from the bowl. “Not too salty. Just right. Not opposed to salt are you?”

I feel a line of heat crawl across my neck as I arch my eyebrow.

“No, I’m definitely a fan of salt,” he says with a smirk as he watches me swipe at the pretzel with my tongue and crunch down on it. “And sweat.”

We’re doing that flirty thing again, and I can’t help discreetly pushing down on my lap with the heel of my hand. “Pretzels don’t sweat.”

He barks out a laugh and I love seeing his green eyes light up. Not sure why but I don’t imagine that Lucas laughs nearly enough.

Two female customers slide up beside me at a couple of stools and place their orders. I sip my drink and glance around the bar, noticing that it’s filling up with more patrons.

Before you know it, the place is hopping for the middle of the week and the girl beside me mentions that there’s a Lakers game on tonight. There are two televisions above the bar and most of the customers’ eyes are intent on the match.

I don’t want Lucas to feel guilty for being too busy to talk, so I strike up a conversation with the ladies and settle into watching the game. Time flies by as we’re cheering and high-fiving each other, and at one point, a burger is waiting for me at the edge of the bar. When my gaze seeks out Lucas’s across the room, he winks at me.

And damned if that doesn’t make my stomach buzz.

By the end of the fourth quarter, the Lakers are losing so the tavern clears out, including the two women next to me.

Lucas rests his arms on the rim of the bar top and blows out a breath as I pick at the last of my greasy fries. “Sorry, should’ve paid closer attention to the game schedule. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“No worries; I don’t need a babysitter,” I say, slurping the rest of my watered down drink.

“I can see that.” He clears the empty glasses from the ledge.

“So hey, you still got that sketchpad?” I inquire out of the blue. But in reality, I had been waiting to ask him since earlier in the evening.

He looks over his shoulder at the other bartender as if making sure our conversation is private. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

“Yeah, you even emailed me some drawings once.” One of them was a Frank Lloyd Wright sketch, all clean lines and modern flow. “You scanned them through your printer.”

“That’s right,” he says as he thumps the top of the wooden bar. “At this point, you know more about me than any of my friends around here.”

“Freaky right?” I lean forward and whisper. He nods. “Scary too?”

“A little, yeah.” He adjusts the beanie on his head. “Just don’t want to—”

“Mess anything up?” I say as if I can read his mind, when in reality it’s the exact same thought I have. I glance casually at my watch, maybe to avoid the heavy turn of conversation. But I also need to get home and finish a school assignment.

“Something like that,” he says as I meet his eyes. “So, I’m taking a break in five minutes. I can walk you out.”

“Sounds good.” I pull out my wallet to pay my tab.

Lucas waves his hand at me. “Put that away; it’s on the house.”

I hesitate but then see the determination in his eyes and drop it back in my pocket. “Cool, I’ll be sure to get you next time.”

After we get onto the street, we slow near the same back alleyway where I threw my arms around him days ago. I keep myself in check so that I don’t do anything stupid like that again. But my body is thrumming with nervous energy and I have to keep a distance away from him to keep my impulses under wrap.

“So,” he says, adjusting his cap on his head, making me wonder if it’s a nervous habit for him.

“So.” To avoid his eyes, I look down the street toward the direction I’m heading.

“You hiking it home?” he asks with some trepidation in his eyes. He knows it’ll take me a good thirty minutes.

“Yeah, I like to walk,” I say.
Helps me burn off energy
, I leave out.

Now we’re in a staring contest and if he glances at my lips and back up to my eyes once more I just might tackle him to the ground.

I kick at a stone on the curb. “Want to do something soon?”

“Yeah, sure,” he replies.

“Cool, what do you want to do?”

“Surprise me.” He throws my words back at me.

I grin. “Okay.” And I know exactly what we’re going to do. As soon as I figure out the logistics. “So I’ll see you again.”

“Yeah.” He leans against the wall as I turn toward the light to cross the street.

But then that impulse takes hold and I spin around. Take a step toward him.

His breath hitches in his throat as I crowd him against the bricks.

“Gabe…”

Before either of us can think it through, my hand fastens around his neck and my lips press firmly against his. He tastes like mint and sweat, musk and man.

I hear a husky groan under his breath and before I drag my mouth away, I flick out my tongue to swipe it across his lower lip.

“Been wanting to do that forever,” I say against his ear.

Satisfied with the glazed look in his eyes, I force myself to back away. I turn and cross the street, making sure to never glance back.