4. The Fighters

CHAPTER 4

The Fighters

Roman

To a point, it felt like hazing. Not that I would know what preppy brats in college fraternities did, but I'd seen Frat Boys plenty of times. And even if I reminded myself that every frat event didn't culminate in a ten-hour orgy, I could imagine what hazing was all about.

In a more sincere way, opening the door of Neon Nights and letting Everett enter the bar to the sound of Freddy Mercury's "Don't Stop Me Now" blasting from the speakers felt like I was aiding a rebirth. This you must do to grow and be happy , I intoned silently. And so you become a brother in full right. Now, wear your rainbow cape and a pocketful of glitter.

I made myself snort a chuckle.

Everett passed through, and I followed, catching a strong scent of his woody, earthy cologne. It extended its seductive finger and pressed the raw space in my chest where low, simmering arousal never fully went away. A mind-shattering orgasm to leave me brain-dead for half an hour would have done it, but it wasn't meant to be.

This handsome mess I voluntarily asked to friendzone me had enough baggage to fill up an airbus all by himself. And it was fucking hot.

Other people had cute kinks, like secretly wearing butt plugs in public or giving their partners remote controls over their vibrators. Not me. I went straight for the fuckups that didn't know if they wanted to fight me or fuck me. Why couldn't I simply be into feet or whatever?

"Why don't we have a couple of Sunset Boulevards and hit the dance floor?" I asked Everett in a half shout against the blast of Freddy Mercury's promise to make you supersonic.

Everett made a pained expression, his nose actually wrinkling with distaste. "I don't dance."

"Neither do I," I yelled, threw my head back, and laughed. My hand found his hand, and I skipped Sunset Boulevards altogether, pulling Everett to the dance floor.

For all the things I could rightfully call him—a brute, a very hot mess, a closet case wise men steered clear from—Everett wasn't a liar. He was a terrible dancer. His hips wouldn't budge, and his fists were closed like he was a gladiator in an ancient arena about to face a bear. The discomfort on his face was borderline hilarious.

Although I imagined I had a better chance to teach Tristan's panda how to do great stand-up comedy, I resolved to make a dancer out of Everett. I put my hands on Everett's hips and rose on my toes, telling him to follow my lead. With my feet back on the floor, I caught the beat after a couple of false starts. To my surprise, Everett managed to do the same.

"Is that vodka working yet?" I shouted.

"Must be," he replied as he danced miserably. But two songs later, Everett no longer needed my hands on his hips. It seemed he was less of a disaster than I'd imagined, and his moves, although simple and safe, matched the tunes well.

We couldn't compete against the two Tasmanian devils in the form of my best friend and his prince boyfriend, but I kept Everett busy dancing until he completely surrendered to the melody.

He didn't pull away when my hand touched his shoulder. He stumbled once when my thumb brushed the bare flesh of his upper chest where the shirt he wore parted, held together heroically by a small, black button that gave it its all. He didn't move my hand away, and I didn't think he wanted to.

If I knew anything about him, I knew Everett wasn't the kind of person who could withstand discomfort of any sort without raising hell in return.

He touched me, too. He put his hand on the side of my rib cage, safely feeling me when a crop top separated his skin from mine. Even so, as moments went on, his hand moved lower to the wide space where the top ended, and my waist was bare. He touched me, licking his lips and looking into my eyes. At that moment, artificial fog hid everyone else, and darkness settled around us.

I told myself to chill and dance. I told myself to pretend this wasn't the most torturous sort of erotic daydreaming I'd found myself living out. I told myself that he was too messed up for anything more than dancing. He was not the kind of guy you'd ever want to date. He was barely capable of expressing his desire, let alone going through with the act.

And yet his dark eyes were so full of pain, starved for something that had always existed outside of his reach. He was needy for contact, for a touch, for intimacy, yet too proud to let himself show it. It leaked out of his eyes when all his muscles tensed, and he controlled himself. It spilled from him in small, explosive bursts when his hand wrapped around my arm before jerking back, when his body bumped against mine before his dancing slowed down with artificial calmness.

What he wanted was clear as day. We both knew it. But what was possible was a whole different story.

Before knowing anything about him, including his name, I would have gladly let him have his way with me and leave without another word. I would have been happy to sprawl on my bed, gasping for air, with only a memory of what it had felt like to have him inside me. Now, things were different. Now, I knew too much to let myself be a hoe with Everett. But more than that was impossible.

So we danced until Mama Viv's dramatic entrance. We danced until the roof came down with thunderous applause and deafening cheers. Mama Viv's rendition of the iconic song brought tears to my eyes, not only because Freddy Mercury had sung it with the last of his strength but because Mama Viv could fill every syllable with all the emotion it required. Every verse brimmed with meaning. The dancing stopped on the floor because we all gazed at the stage in awe.

You were meant for the big stage , I thought for a millionth time. There was rarely a time I saw Mama Viv perform in her bar without thinking that same thing.

"But this is my life," she would always say and gesture at Neon Nights.

Fifteen minutes later, when Everett and I finally got our Sunset Boulevards and carried them to the secluded terrace by the bar, Mama Viv came to greet us.

I was at the stage of drinking where my tongue worked just fine, but a wave of elation carried me around. I got up and hugged Mama Viv, introducing her to Everett, who was a frequent guest. Everett, I realized a moment too late, stiffened as they shook hands. His lips thinned as he pressed them, and his eyes were just slightly wider than they had been before. I wasn't sure if it annoyed me or made me pity him, but either way, mild anger was uncoiled in the pit of my stomach.

"You were such a star tonight, Mama Viv," I said as we sat around the round table under the canopy of colorful lights. "Broadway is worse without you."

"Who needs Broadway when you have a crowd like this, darling?" Mama Viv said. She sipped her cocktail and set it on the table, noticed someone across the terrace, and waved like a cartoon diva, hand flapping up and down and a soundless "yoohoo" traveling through the space between them. Mama Viv chuckled and turned back to us. "When I was still young to dream of Broadway, they didn't want queens."

"It's their loss," I said in a heated voice.

"Perhaps," Mama Viv said, but her tone carried a slight quality of regret. "I didn't think much of it back in the day. The truth is, I hadn't let myself hope for anything but rejection from every audition I attended. But this was in the '80s, darling, and New York was a different place. The liberation movement was in full swing, but the established culture didn't want to yield."

It looked to me that even Everett's lips were less tight and his neck less tense as Mama Viv spoke.

My eyes were wide. "So what was it like?"

"Darling, you sound like I'm recounting ancient history. It was only a few years ago," Mama Viv said cheekily, maintaining silently that she was still twenty-seven. "What was it like? Frustration, Roman. You would have given them hell, I'm sure, but we tried our best with what little we had." She wrapped her lips around the straw and sucked a sip of her cocktail. "You had to pick a side. So, a career on Broadway or fighting for basic civil rights. You can guess how that story went. But I had Thomas, and we had the bar." I only knew bits and pieces about Thomas, who Mama Viv had mentioned in passing now and again and whose photo from the early '80s was framed and hanging in Mama Viv's apartment above the bar. "It was remarkably easy to gather like-minded people when you had a bar with a rainbow painted above the door. We didn't bend when bricks crashed through our windows. Thanks to Thomas, mind you. He was the calm, strong one. He kept me whole when I thought I would shatter."

Everett startled me when his voice came in a deep and husky huff. "What happened to him?"

"What happened to all the gay men in the '80s we never got over?" Mama Viv said.

Realization dawned on Everett's face, and he said he was sorry.

"Don't be, darling," Mama Viv said. "He was a fiery soul. Full of passion and zeal. Sometimes I think he left a bigger mark on New York in those three years than I had in a lifetime." Mama Viv pulled on a big smile that I didn't doubt was completely genuine. What I knew of Thomas and Roger was that they'd loved each other madly but that they'd lived a tragic life together that ended far too prematurely. And I knew that Mama Viv continued to build on Thomas' legacy until she had a haven for runaways, exiles, and outcasts. She had generations of queer punks rebelling against the suffocating norms and looking up to her for guidance. "I hear you were nearly arrested today," Mama Viv said in a half-teasing and half-scolding tone.

I snorted. "As if they could ever catch up." But Everett shifted uncomfortably. That was probably a bit too mischievous for a devout Catholic.

"Said Achilles of the tortoise," Mama Viv exclaimed. "You have to be careful, Roman. Not every fight is yours."

"Don't worry about me, Mama Viv," I said. "I choose my battles." But when I glanced at Everett, I wondered if this was true at all.

Mama Viv told Everett she was glad to have him in the bar, thanked him for coming to the show, and walked away to greet other guests. That diva was the heart of this bar, and this bar was the heart of Hudson Burrow.

If Mama Viv questioned her worth even a little, then it was a sad day for all of us. We had failed to show her just how crucial she had been in all our lives. People like Everett came here constantly, seeking escape, comfort, and connections. And while the Stonewall Inn was the core of the liberation movement, Neon Nights had just as much significance in my own life.

Everett and I sat in silence as I pondered. He seemed perfectly happy to simply sit and look around. But when his straw made that tragic sound of an emptied cocktail glass, he looked at me. "Do you want to get out of here?" he asked.

My heart tripped, and the desire that had not been quenched all night leaped into existence again. But I bit my lip and reined myself in. "Do you think that's a good idea?"

Everett's facial muscles tensed for a moment. "I didn't mean to…you know."

"Oh," I said, heat rising into my face. "Like, for a walk?"

He nodded in a noncommittal way, and I agreed. We might as well stretch our legs when no other action was meant to happen tonight.

Everett

However much I looked at him, he didn't seem real to me. Not that he wasn't there, but that something about Roman was simply different from what people were like. People, in my experience, worried a lot more about the things they said. They worried about how they came across.

Not Roman. He didn't care if a stranger overheard he'd nearly gotten arrested this very day. He cared even less if my opinion of him was that he had no sense of shame. Nobody with a working compass for decency could hook his thumb so easily under his top and drag it up to reveal the lower part of his rib cage without knowing what he was doing. Roman touched himself with such an absence of thought that it infuriated me nearly as much as it turned me on.

He would put a hand on his throat, feeling his collarbones with the palm of his hand, like it was some erotic display, yet he would speak as though he was in a job interview. And when I had seen him lean back in his chair, his hand would wander restlessly to his crotch as if to feel his cock for no other reason than that it was right there.

Even when he agreed to walk with me, he bit his lip seductively but without any of the invitations he had displayed when he had truly wanted me. It looked as though he was alluring by instinct.

I hated how well it worked on me.

"Can you stop?" I asked, just as we turned around the corner, leaving the chatter of the bar far behind us.

"Stop what?" he asked, either confirming my suspicion or teasing me mercilessly.

"That," I said, pointing to where his hand had slipped under his top, resting on his ribcage casually.

Roman snorted. "Does it make you uncomfortable?"

"Actually, yeah, it does," I said.

This seemed to entertain him. "The only reason it bothers you is because of your unresolved issues with male physique." Even so, he made a show of pulling his hand out from under the top, patting the white fabric, and tucking both his hands inside his pockets. "I don't think I can blame you, though."

"Don't," I said. It sounded more like a plea than I would have liked. Don't blame me for the things that have been done to me , I thought in my most pathetic, self-pitying tone. And while I wouldn't want to sound like that if my life depended on it, there was some truth to it.

If you had a child and you raised that child in one windowless room, and you never told that child that stars existed, could you blame that child for hating all the stargazers? If for no other reason, then they would hate them with envy for getting to watch the stars their whole lives while the child lived in total darkness.

I was denied the truth of my own existence because it conflicted with the altered truth my parents had imposed on me. My mother's friends had sons with wives and children, all more pious, more devout, more successful, and more appropriate as sons than the pathetic old me.

"Mama Viv scared you," Roman said in a carefully controlled voice.

I swallowed. "I wasn't afraid."

"You were nervous," Roman said.

"I don't understand why…" I fell silent for a moment, hearing my mother's words speak in my voice. "What she does is new to me."

"You've seen her before," Roman said.

"We never spoke." Agitation in my voice had no place to be there, I knew, but to justify myself to a man of Roman's habits triggered something deeply buried in me. Cooling off, I exhaled. "I think she is talented." It seemed to please Roman that I said so, which made me happier than I would have admitted. "Is she…uh, transgender?"

"Mama Viv's a drag queen," Roman said simply. If that was self-explanatory, it didn't work with me. I still didn't understand. He glanced at me, not unkindly, and added, "Mama Viv is a persona, you see. The gender of the person wearing the persona is irrelevant because Lady Vivien Woodcock is a woman. Her life mirrors the life of the man behind the fake eyelashes, but they are not the same person. It's rare for Roger to spill over as much as he did tonight, bringing up Thomas and Broadway auditions. Lady Vivien is a wealthy widow sipping cocktails and cooling herself with a vintage fan; Roger is a man whose trauma motivates him to fix what's broken in this world."

"To help people like you and me," I murmured. I didn't know why this made my eyes sting.

"Yes," Roman said. "To be the pillar of a community that accepts itself with all its faults, virtues, and campiness. To never let history repeat itself. To never be in a world where your race, gender, and sexuality are somebody's issue." Roman hesitated for a moment, then licked his lips hastily. "You know, Roger doesn't profit from Neon Nights. I helped with the books once, and I know he gets a salary to cover his basic expenses, but the entire surplus is divided between the employees, community events, and charity donations."

That rang strange in my head. My father was a wealthy man and a true force in the literal landscape of New York City. What sort of person gave up their profits? It had to take a Diogenes-like madman or one of those rare altruists to do such a thing.

We slowed down as we neared the end of one narrow street and the crossing of a much larger avenue. I dared myself to ask what I wanted to know. "Your arrest?" I said, stumbling over my words.

Cracking a smile, Roman turned around and walked backward, looking into my eyes. He veered a little to the right and the long brick wall of an old building. "Oh, that?" he said. "I'm a troublemaker." He leaned against the wall, lifting one foot up and resting the sole of his shoe against the wall. "Or did you think I was a nice, law-abiding citizen?"

I snorted. Was he flirting? Even as I wondered about it, I found myself walking closer to him than the other edge of the sidewalk. "I didn't think you were nice."

"Ouch."

"Your words," I pointed out.

"It's true, though," Roman said. "I'm a bad boy." This time, he couldn't hold his laughter. He shook his head. "Nah, I'm not like that. Not entirely, at least. It was a Wall Street die-in."

I frowned. "It was a what?"

"A die-in, you know?" Roman cocked his head. "It's when protesters lie like they're dead and disrupt traffic."

"Why?" I asked.

Roman laughed. "Now, why would anyone want to stage protests on Wall Street, I wonder."

"Fair enough," I admitted. "But why would you?"

He thought about it for a moment, pushing himself away from the wall and stopping inches away from me. I hadn't realized how close to him I had stood. He lifted his head to meet my gaze. "Because I'm scared."

My frown asked the question my lips couldn't form. What are you scared of?

"I'm terrified," he said, closing his eyes for a moment of calm and quiet before looking at me again. "The world is getting faster. It's getting hotter. Artificial intelligence is threatening to create a graveyard of artists while spending enough electricity to power this entire city for years. Drones are calibrated better, they shoot down their targets more precisely, and the ice caps are melting. If you started a wealth jar in the last great ice age, putting ten thousand dollars in it every day, never spending a penny, you'd have thirty billion dollars today. That's ten times less than what the single richest person on the planet has. And these assholes wear their expensive suits and get hard on every company that mentions AI while we're literally burning the planet down."

My breath had left me midway through his speech, and I hadn't inhaled since. Lips parting, I realized my mouth was dry.

"Sometimes, I think we deserve to go extinct," Roman said. "Then I remember that the rich have their underground shelters, and it's the innocent who get swept away by the rising tides."

I stepped back, looking down with shame that felt as though I was solely responsible for all that was wrong.

Roman cleared his throat, some of the tension leaving him. "Ah, look, I'm not going to apologize for giving you an existential crisis before bedtime. The fact that no one else is on the verge of losing their freaking mind scares me as much as anything else."

"You don't need to apologize," I said. "You're right."

"Still, not a very high note to end the evening on," Roman said.

"No, but…" I wished I had a way with words like Roman. He could spill out a speech off the top of his head, and I couldn't even string a few words together when it mattered. "Tonight was good."

"You danced your heart out," Roman said with a cheeky smile.

"Thanks, Rome," I said simply. "It's more than what anyone else did for me."

He let the silence linger between us for a moment. "Would you come again?"

I nodded without thinking. I had been visiting Neon Nights while holding on to my envy, my hatred, and my righteousness for the pure pleasure of seeing others have a good time. Tonight, for the first time ever, I had some as well.

The night was over, and the time to go was here. I looked at Roman. I wondered. Everything tonight had led us to this moment here. He was unapologetically into men, into me, and he was willing. He was nice, even if I hadn't expected him to be. He was kind when I didn't deserve it. He was cute when the orange light of a streetlamp fell on his face and emphasized his dimples. Was it not the perfect moment to lean in and let our lips touch? Wasn't that how all stories made it happen?

I licked my lips as if I would kiss him, and then panic shut my body down. It froze my feet and balled my fists.

"See you around, Rome," I said in a strangled voice.

Something went out of him at that moment. He stepped back, his smile still on, unchanging, but his gaze dropped down and returned up after a second. "Right," he said cheerfully. "I'll look out for you next weekend."

I nodded, and then I turned away from him, striding down across the avenue and leaving him out of sight but never out of mind.