Zipper Fall (31 page)

“Wyatt….” There was alarm in his voice.

“Don’t worrry, Jackie! We’re all gettin’ sssshitfaced to—hic!—to honor the mem… the mem’ry of your shister. She was one tough broad and an awesome climber.”

“Wyatt. Let me talk to Reyna.”

“Okay.”

I passed the phone to the very amused Reyna. “Hi,” Reyna said, and before my head hit the table, I vaguely recall having felt very relieved she didn’t call him Azz-hole.

I
WOKE
up in the middle of the night. I was on the floor on one of the sleeping bags we always used at Chico’s place. My head swam a little, and all those chicken wings began to flap around in my stomach.

I bit back a groan. Best get it done and over with.

Very, very slowly I rolled onto my side. Then I eased onto my knees and got up, navigating the small apartment by memory.

The bathroom—here.

I flipped the switch, flinching away from the light. Then I got rid of those pesky chicken wings and pizza and tequila and beer. I rinsed my mouth with water and used some of Chico’s mouthwash, cleaned myself up, and pattered slowly to my little spot on the floor.

There was a giant lump there in the dark, right next to where I always slept. I eased my way down, feeling better but still fighting nausea. A familiar scent of aftershave and musk wafted to my nostrils.

“You okay, Wyatt?” Jack whispered.

Here was that question again. If he’d asked me any other questions that day, I had already forgotten—it was all drowned in a barrage of inquiries after my health. A wave of irritation washed over me. Can’t a guy have a night out with his friends? “Yeah,” I said, settling next to him.

“OK,” he said, draping his arm over my torso and pulling me in. Only as I turned to my side, my eyes closing of their own volition, did I realize Jack had brought me my own, favorite pillow.

“W
YATT
…
Wyatt… Wyatt….”

I batted my hand at the source of the repetitive, disagreeable noise. It had to stop. My body wasn’t done sleeping yet. Hung over and dehydrated, with my eyes glued shut and my hair in my eyes like a stringy mop, I turned away and buried my face into my pillow. The rustle of the sleeping bag fabric underneath hurt my ears.

“There are other ways,” said another voice, full of mischief.

“I bet I can wake him up pretty fast for you.”

“C’mon, guys,” a calm baritone intoned. “Another twenty minutes won’t hurt anything. So what if he misses breakfast?”

The mention of food roused me some. I inhaled deeper, intrigued by the scent of bacon.

So good….

I felt my stomach growl, but it didn’t turn over like it had the night before, and I was grateful for actually wanting to ingest food. Yet the voices around me filled me with morbid curiosity.

What will they do next?

The guys were a bunch of morons, and my best-ever girlfriend Reyna was no better. I kept my eyes shut tight, my breathing even. I felt a hand near me and forced myself to ignore it. I picked up the sound of a zipper opening. It went on and on—then the cool morning air hit my bare legs. I whimpered, wiggling deeper into the still-warm sleeping bag.

Wild hands ripped the cozy covers off me; a deluge of ice-cold water hit my body right after.

I shrieked, trying to strike at targets far out of reach. My face was drenched and my hair dripped water into my sleepy eyes. An errant ice cube slithered under my loose T-shirt and slid down my formerly warm and comfortable back. I was awake alright, surrounded by grinning faces. “You assholes!” I picked the ice cubes off my legs and from around my butt.

Seated in a freezing, sodden mess, I glared at Reyna’s vile smile and Tim’s easy grin. I met Chico’s amused gaze with a petulant scowl. Then there was Jack. He, too, held a large, empty beer glass. The smooth container was still wet, telltale streaks tracking through the condensation on its sides.

“
Et tu, Brute
?” I shot in his direction, mock hurt in my eyes.

“I came to praise Caesar, not to bury him.” His devastating grin split his face, bringing a bright twinkle into those impossibly blue eyes. He reached his warm, dry hand down for mine, offering help. I grasped it, pretending to get up—but then pulled him down, moving aside with every consideration for the comfort of his fall.

“Fuck, Wyatt. Now I’m soaked!”

Tim rushed off, presumably to rescue the bacon on the stove and Chico joined him, saying he had to crack the eggs. Only Reyna stood there, looking at us with an incredulous, hurt expression.

“Since when does he get to be Brutus? I thought I was your best friend.”

The kitchen was small and the dining room nonexistent; we had to eat in shifts anyway, so I draped the wet sleeping bag over the railing of Chico’s small balcony and opted for a quick shower first. My jeans were still dry and so was my workout shirt from the night before. After peeling the wet T-shirt and black silk boxers off my body, I was about to turn the shower on when Jack slipped into the small bathroom. He locked the door and leaned against it.

“We have to talk,” he said without ceremony. His tone was serious and all business, and there was an air of urgency about him.

I wrapped my cold, wet body in a large bath towel and leaned my butt against the porcelain sink. “Right now?”

“Damn straight, right now,” he growled, his eyes as hard as arctic ice. “Don’t fucking ever do this to me again, Wyatt.”

“Sorry… but you got me wet first.”

His eyes were uncomprehending for a brief moment. He shook his head. “Not that. Just… what you… you did to me last night was….” He grasped for words, finding none.

Three steps spanned the distance between us. He crossed over and grabbed me by the towel draped over my shoulders and pulled me in. Every part of Jack was hard. His chest, his hands, his eyes. Gone was the tender lover who brought sunburn blushes to my face only twenty-four hours ago. Now fear and despair tightened the set of his mouth, and the squint of his eyes. The once-soft, generous lips were pressed together in an angry line; I saw his jaw muscle work hard, striving to retain control.

“Don’t fuck with me like this. Don’t you ever disappear like this again, only to be tracked down across town, drunk… and….” His nostrils flared as he took a quick, shallow inhale. “Don’t fucking just disappear on me.” His voice was but a whisper barely audible.

My mind swirled with mixed emotions. The intensity of his gaze set off a swarm of butterflies in my stomach. I’ve felt this before—a memory of Jack standing over me at Starbucks flashed through my mind—he’d been angry then, angry and sexy as hell. Now, in the tight privacy of the bathroom, he didn’t look so pretty anymore.

“Jack….” I strove to placate him. There was a wild, feral edge to the energy he exuded, triggering what was left of my survival instinct. I didn’t know why he was like this but obviously I’d played a key role in it. I felt my eyes soften, trying to understand his distress. “Jack, what set you off?”

He pushed me away. “What set me off? What am I supposed to think happened to you when you disappear like that? You could’ve called, left a note, anything. You still have that wound healing up. Just…. And then….
Dammit
.” He let go of me, wiped his hand up his face, and ran his fingers through his hair. “Then I call you and you fuck with me.”

“I don’t remember saying anything objectionable.”

“Ask your friends.”

“Well, then, I will. After I have my shower.” I dropped the towel over the rack and turned the water on and waited until it got just warm enough.

“Wyatt.”

The bossy insistence of his voice grated on my nerves, and I turned my back on him as sudden resentment welled within me. I didn’t need to check with him on every single thing. He could damn well wait until I was done and dressed before he got to drive his point home all over again. Streams of hot water erased the searing cold of the ice cubes off my skin. My hair was already shampooed and rinsed, and I was about to reach for Chico’s conditioner when a draft of cold air hit my back and a chill body, still wet from ice cubes, pressed against me.

“Hey… you’re making me cold again.”

Jack only shut the shower-stall door and pressed his chest into my back, embracing me. “I thought I’d go where the action is.” His voice was so choked, he barely got the words out.

“No action for Brutus. History has declared he hasn’t gotten laid since the Caesar incident.”

His hand skimmed the contours of my chest, tracing wet, warm fingers up my neck and to my chin, turning my face to the side. He didn’t say a thing. His silence was palpable as his tongue traced the sensitive skin from behind my ear down, stopping only at the crook of my neck. Hot lips descended; an insistent arousal ground against the small of my back. Still eerily soundless, he pushed me around and into the corner.

I twisted to turn around; his intent was clearly written in his eyes. “Jack! Are you nuts? We can’t do it in here.”

“Watch me.”

Anger welled up in my chest. “No. You watch me.” I turned the shower off and met his eyes. “You are not my mother. I get to spend time with my friends whenever I want to, and I get to come home late, or the next day, if I want to. I’ve been spending time with this group of people, just like this, for years.” I met his frozen, stunned gaze, and softened my tone. “I was not thrilled to see you last night. I’ve been hoping we could meet each other’s friends another time.”

His hands slid up the wall by my face and he leaned in and kissed the corner of my mouth, pressing his body against me. “Wyatt.”

“I already said no.” I evaded him, trying to slip to the side, away from the press of his body and his need. “Jack. I want you to leave this bathroom so I can take my shower.”

His eyes hardened, blocking the warring emotions within, and his hands slipped down to my shoulders, squeezing hard. “Don’t ever do that to me again, Wyatt.” His grip was hard enough to hurt.

“Let go,” I said.

“Don’t you ever disappear on me.”

“Jack, you’re hurting me! Let. Go. Of. Me.” I was pushed against the walls of a cold shower stall by a bigger, much angrier man. Hitting him where it hurts sounded good about now, and part of my mind was figuring out the best way to twist and plant an elbow in his gut when the panic in my voice got through to him somehow. He shook his head and looked at me—
really
looked at me this time, seeing fear and pain and disbelief—and he let go of my shoulders slowly.

Entirely silent, his face a blank mask of iron control, he turned around and left, closing the glass shower door and then the wooden bathroom door, and only then did I turn the shower on again as my angry tears mingled with the water. I forgot I had been hungry only minutes ago.

T
HE
North Face Climbing Gym was open for business at six in the morning on Saturdays. By the time our group sauntered in, the regulars and early birds were long gone, and the space was full of kids and climbing wannabes. The ubiquitous vending machine that dispensed sports drinks was right next to the bathroom door; the display with Celia’s memorial was on the other side. I nodded toward it. “They’ve done a good job.”

With a corner of my eye, refusing to look at him directly, I saw Jack stiffen at the obvious expression of someone else’s grief for the sister he’d loved and lost. Chico walked over, avoiding close proximity, still pissed over the two of us having ruined the pleasant morning for everyone else by exchanging cutting remarks, interspersed by icy silence. They skimmed the articles behind the glass, eyeing her trophies.

“Too bad I didn’t get to meet her,” Chico said. “I guess I run with a different crowd.”

“What crowd would that be?” a low baritone intoned from behind us.

I turned around. The bald man was chewing fragrant cinnamon gum. His scrunched eyebrows gave his previously thoughtful look a fierce appearance. “Mmm… Carlos, right?” I asked, retrieving his name from my sore, hung-over brain.

He nodded at me. “Wyatt. From the Loose Rock.”

“You know of me?” Confusion must have been written in my eyes. I’d never seen him down there.

“I make it my business to learn about anyone who’s interested in Celia’s death.” His voice was low and menacing.

I didn’t see Jack turn, but I felt him, the heat of his body radiating right behind me, and I drew away, because I was still sorting out my feelings regarding that morning’s shower incident.

“Then you’d want to know that I’m her brother. Jack Azurri.”

A
LOT
happened in a short period after Jack revealed his identity to the intrepid guardian of the North Face Climbing Gym. There had been a good bit of posturing and those too-tight, long-lasting handshakes, and Jack had to prove that he was, in fact, Celia’s next-of-kin.

Soon we were all packed into the cramped little office in the back of the facility. A young, punked-out girl with wild eye makeup took over the front-desk traffic while Carlos poured burned coffee into paper cups, trying his best at hospitality under difficult circumstances.