FRIENDLY STAKES

CHAPTER ONE: THE STRADDLE

a voluntary blind bet made before the cards are dealt

The shift key is broken.

Jamie noticed this three days ago, an hour or two before dawn, while designing a logo for a startup selling meal kits to people who pretend they don’t have time to cook. It took him forty-five minutes to realize it wasn’t the software. Just the shift key. Dead. Unresponsive. He ordered a replacement from a site that sells Chinese knockoffs at American prices. It’s supposed to arrive tomorrow. Or next Tuesday. Could be a month from now—those delivery dates are meaningless. They say it’s guaranteed, but then the package sits in a warehouse on the other side of the world for six days.

The thought settles in and stays.

Waiting stops being a prelude to action and becomes the action itself. Jamie stays still because movement requires believing something will be different on the other side of it. The paralysis feels almost reasonable—why move when the delivery date is a lie, when the money isn’t coming, when the only certainty is that nothing will arrive when promised, and being scammed is unavoidable? He sits. He waits. The apartment becomes intolerable first, then the street, then anywhere that isn’t moving while staying still. Eventually his car is the only space that makes sense—enclosed, temporary, capable of motion even when parked. The possibility of change mattering more than change itself.

There’s a smell to poverty, the slow erosion of self-care. The smell of a car that hasn’t been vacuumed in four weeks and empty takeout containers in the back seat from two weeks ago. Metabolites of snorted drugs and sweat. Burnout and tunnel vision, this is all what life feels—it’s the feeling of fading away. The smell of a boy wishing he was a man, a smell Jamie didn’t shower off himself—but could have. Penance requires suffering. His mother taught him that. Taught that pain is how God measures devotion, taught him that wanting wrong things means you deserve wrong treatment. He stopped going to church at seventeen but the architecture remains—confession, punishment, the desperate hope that submission might equal salvation.

The sun is nearly gone. His hands are on the steering wheel. His car is parked three blocks from Sarah’s apartment, in front of a house painted with an insane shade of yellow that the owner clearly felt very strongly about. Jamie associates it with piss in snow—aggressive, diseased yellow. Van Gogh painted his yellow house in Arles, right before his psychotic break. It was supposed to be a utopian artist commune with Gauguin. Instead—a mental collapse, the ear-cutting and finally—institutionalization. Jamie approves of the color despite knowing all that. It’s his favorite, despite all the insanity. Or because of it. His phone is face-down on his thigh, right where his cock is starting to thicken just from proximity to the thought of what’s waiting three blocks away.

Sarah’s waiting for her best friend.

The one who tells him everything, who trusts him completely, who has no idea that when Marcus puts his hand on her lower back at parties, Jamie imagines that hand on his own body. When she complains that Marcus is too rough sometimes, Jamie wants to tell her she deserves better—wants to call Marcus what he is, an insecure asshole, a criminal with prison tattoos and a short fuse who’ll probably hurt her worse than he already has. But instead Jamie finds himself making excuses. “Maybe he doesn’t realize.” “He’s probably just stressed.” “Give him another chance.” He hates himself for it. Hates that he’s protecting a man who doesn’t deserve protection just because that same man makes Jamie hard when he raises his voice. Hates that he writes down every detail she shares—the notes app, don’t you dare touch his notes app—how Marcus pins her wrists, how he doesn’t ask permission, how he’s rougher than she wants—sex wasn’t love to Marcus—it was hydration, a biological need he satisfied with the same indifference he showed a water fountain.

A woman with a stroller walks past. Jamie watches her through the windshield. She’s young, maybe twenty-five, pushing an expensive stroller. She doesn’t look at him. Nobody ever does. Thirty seconds later, an old man with a small white terrier appears. The man stops to let it piss on a tree. The man looks up at the yellow house, shakes his head slightly—judgment or appreciation, impossible to tell—then walks on. Nobody looks inside the car. Nobody sees Jamie, not even Jamie sees the real Jamie—he’s high on drugs. Every day.

The speed he snorted an hour ago is making his jaw tight. His teeth grind without permission. The comedown will be worse—it always is—but right now everything feels sharp and possible and inevitable. Right now he can imagine walking into Sarah’s apartment and pulling Marcus into the bathroom while she’s in the kitchen making drinks. Can imagine dropping to his knees on that tile floor. Can imagine Marcus’s hand in his hair, fingers tightening, the weight of him filling Jamie’s mouth while Sarah hums along to music in the next room, completely unaware that her boyfriend and her best friend are—

He bites the inside of his cheek. Tastes like pain. The thought makes him sick. Makes him hard. Makes him both at once because that’s how his body works now—arousal and nausea braided together so tightly he can’t separate them anymore.

A man appears on the yellow house’s lawn. Maybe sixty, body soft and lived-in, wearing a tank top that says CHICAGO HALF MARATHON 1997—the year Jamie was born. His knees look like they’ve been through wars. He’s carrying a garden hose. It’s 7:46 PM on a Friday. Who waters their garden at 7:46 PM? What’s the point? This is the wrong time to water. The water will sit there overnight, breeding fungus. The man knows this. He’s doing it anyway.

The man turns on the hose. Walks to the tomato plants. Three of them, staked and tall, heavy with fruit. He speaks to them quietly—Jamie can’t hear the words through the closed window but can see the man’s mouth moving. Tenderness. The way someone talks to something they’ve nurtured. Something they’re responsible for keeping alive. He rolls down his window, just a bit.

“Come on, you bastards,” the man mutters, louder now. “Just one more week.”

Jamie’s chest seizes. Affection makes him feel like he’s drowning. The man is watering each plant methodically. The water soaks into the soil. The man moves to the next plant. Then the third.

On the sidewalk beyond the yellow house, movement. A couple appears from around the corner. Already mid-fight. The man is tall, possibly six-three, maybe six-four. Linebacker build. The kind of neck that suggests high school glory and two decades of declining relevance. The woman is smaller, dark-haired, arms crossed tight against her ribs like she’s trying to keep herself from flying apart.

The man on the lawn moves to the zucchini. Four plants, broader leaves, taking up more space. He speaks to them too.

“Drink up. Gonna be a hot one tomorrow.”

The gardener’s devotion is mathematical. Consistent. Fair. Each plant gets exactly the same amount of attention. No favorites. No neglect. Just steady, patient care.

The couple on the sidewalk gets closer. The tall man is talking, mouth moving fast, hands gesticulating, cutting shapes in the air that are meant to land like arguments. Hands like wrenches. Voice loud enough now that Jamie can hear it through the window that he rolled down a bit, through the broken membrane separating Jamie’s perversion from the world’s innocence.

“You don’t get to do this,” the man says, and Jamie’s cock pulses once.

Sarah said that to Marcus last week. Jamie was there. They were all watching a movie and Marcus got up to leave before it ended and Sarah said it, and Marcus just looked at her and said, “Watch me,” and walked out. Sarah cried for twenty minutes on Jamie’s shoulder while Jamie stroked her hair and thought about Marcus’s shoulders disappearing through the doorway. Thought about following him. Thought about what he’d do if he caught up.

The gardener doesn’t notice the couple. He’s bent over the zucchini, completely absorbed. The argument escalates fifteen feet away. Two kinds of attention. Care and violence happening simultaneously in the same frame.

His voice does everything. “You don’t get to just fucking disappear—”

“I’m not disappearing,” the woman says. Flat. Dead. “I’m standing right here.” Her voice does nothing for Jamie.

The authority. The certainty. The way he takes up space without asking permission. Jamie types a message about being stuck in traffic and sends it to Sarah. Licks his lips. He could walk to the apartment—it’d be faster than driving, faster than typing out the truth: “I’m having a panic attack about seeing you both because I’m in love with a man who’s currently dating my best friend and I’m also forty thousand dollars in debt which I haven’t told anyone about and also I want to fuck every man I see so badly since my standards are so low and I’m unlovable and I can’t breathe and I know that I am a terrible person that isn’t trying to do better and I know you’d never forgive me if you knew and I know I should stay away but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

The lie sits in his throat like Marcus’s cock would—too big, uncomfortable, impossible to swallow but he’d try anyway. He licks his lips. Does it. The lie goes down. Communion in reverse. Swallowing sin instead of salvation.

His grandmother is dead. His grandfather is dead. His father’s father who used to take him fishing is dead. All of them watching from wherever the dead watch. All of them seeing this. Seeing him three blocks from his best friend’s apartment, hard and grinding his teeth on amphetamines, fantasizing about betraying the one person who still thinks he’s good. The Catholic guilt his mother instilled doesn’t leave room for atheism—you can stop believing in God but you can’t stop believing someone’s watching. Someone’s keeping score. Someone’s writing it all down. Hell will come, the eternal suffering and fire. The idea of fire is fun, but fire is boredom with no stimulants, pain with no painkiller in sight.

The gardener moves through his plants with methodical care. The couple is directly in front of the yellow house now, stopped on the sidewalk. The woman’s face is closed. Locked.

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

The man reaches for her arm. A grab. Not gentle. The gardener stands up, moves to the fourth zucchini. Final plant. The woman pulls away from the man’s grip, but slowly, like she’s already decided what the outcome will be and is just going through the motions. Her face is very still. Her eyes are very empty. The gardener turns off the hose. Starts coiling it. Neat loops. Practiced. He still hasn’t noticed the couple fighting ten feet from his property line. Or maybe he has and he’s pretending he hasn’t because that’s what you do—witness violence and call it privacy. Most of the time, if not always, being a witness is worse than being a victim, or the abuser.

Jamie’s hand moves to his crotch without permission from his conscious mind, pushing down so it can grow larger, feeling the first pulse of pleasure. He loves it, so he pushes again, harder. He moans, but quietly. He loves the drama, being a witness, he loves secrets, being a secret. He adores the lack of kindness. It makes him not feel like his skin is too tight, like he’s not wearing someone else’s body, like he hasn’t been mistaken for someone worth loving.

Now there’s more pressure. It’s 7:55 PM. He needs to be at Sarah’s by 8:00 PM. He cannot move. He picks up the phone and checks his bank balance. Refreshes. The number doesn’t move. Negative space. Debt is the only thing he’s good at creating. He refreshes again. Nothing. Negative numbers don’t glitch into positive ones. That’s not how math works. That’s not how anything works. He puts the phone face-down on the dashboard.

“Don’t,” the woman says on the sidewalk.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t touch me like that.”

“Like what?” The man’s voice climbs. “I’m not—”

“Like you own me.”

The gardener wipes his hands on his shorts. Looks at his garden—all seven plants watered, tended, loved in the only way he knows how. Then he turns and walks toward his front door. He will go inside where presumably there’s a wife or a bunch of kids he loves or a dog or just the sound of the TV. Maybe he waters his garden at 7:46 PM because it’s the only thing that makes him feel like he’s doing something right. The man will have dinner. Probably pasta. Something simple. Something he’s made a hundred times. The man will be fine, he disappears inside the yellow house. The door closes. Now it’s just Jamie in his car and the couple on the sidewalk and the space between them filled with potential energy, violence not yet kinetic but promising to be, like a drawn-back fist or a cocked gun or a bet placed on a hand you know you’re going to lose.

This is the thing about him that he has never told anyone—not Sarah, not a therapist, not the nineteen-year-old kid who tried to blow him in a bathroom at a Pride event five years ago. He doesn’t get hard for soft things. Tenderness makes him feel like he’s dying. Dominance, being dominated, the violence—the specific architecture of one person erasing another through force of presence, through voice, through hands that take without asking—that works. That bypasses every defense, every layer of self-hatred, every voice that says he doesn’t deserve to feel good. Because if someone is taking it, then it’s not Jamie’s fault that he wants it. If someone is forcing him, then he doesn’t have to admit he’s been begging for it his whole life. If someone is using him, then he’s just an object, and objects don’t have to reconcile their queerness with their Catholic upbringing, don’t have to explain why they’re twenty-seven and still lying to their mother, don’t have to justify why they’ve gambled away four hundred and thirty dollars trying to impress a straight man who will never want them back. Objects just exist. Objects just take it. Objects don’t have to be Jamie. Objects get to kneel without shame because kneeling is their purpose. On his knees is where Jamie feels closest to something like peace—not God’s peace, the kind his mother promised, but the peace of total surrender, of finally stopping the exhausting work of being a person with agency and becoming just a body that receives.

And if it’s Marcus—if it’s Sarah’s Marcus, the one she calls baby, the one she fucks and fights with and plans a future with—then the betrayal becomes part of the appeal. The wrongness of it. The fact that he’s not supposed to have this. That it belongs to someone else. That taking it means destroying something good. There’s a sick electricity to it. Like stealing. Like desecrating something holy. His mother’s voice in his head: You ruin everything you touch. Maybe she was right. Maybe this is just who he is. The poison in the well. The rot in the foundation.

But God, he wants it anyway. “Oh, God” he wants to say—through the pain.

Jamie unzips his jeans. The car is dark. The street is empty now—the woman with the stroller gone, the old man with the dog gone, the gardener inside his yellow house. Just the couple on the sidewalk and Jamie watching them like this is pornography he paid for, like this is a show staged for his benefit, like their pain exists to service his pleasure.

Jamie wraps his hand around his cock—already hard, already leaking—and the first stroke is slow. Deliberate. He’s good at this. He’s had practice—seventeen years of it, since he was fourteen and realized that the boys in the locker room made him feel something the girls in his biology class never did. Since he learned to time his showers so he could watch them towel off, memorizing the geography of their bodies like he was studying for a test he’d never be allowed to take. He strokes twice. The man on the sidewalk steps closer to the woman. Jamie thinks about the forty thousand dollars in debt to people who photograph buildings like they’re hunting prey. Like he’s prey. They’re all coming for him. They want to hurt him unless he submits. Unless he kneels. Unless he opens his mouth and takes what’s given and says thank you.

“You know what?” the man says. “Fuck this. I’m done.”

“Okay,” the woman says. “I’m serious.”

“I believe you.” The man stares at her. His hands drop to his sides, but they’re still fists. Clenched. Shaking.

Sarah thinks Jamie is safe, thinks Marcus is hers. She has no idea how many times Jamie has jerked off thinking about her boyfriend’s hands. How many times he’s imagined those contractor’s hands—scarred knuckles, calluses, nails clipped short—gripping his hair, forcing his head back, making him look up while Marcus decides what to do with him.

Imagines Marcus saying, “You want this, don’t you?”

And Jamie wouldn’t be able to answer because the hand would be too tight, because his mouth would already be opening, because his body knows what it needs even when his mind is screaming that this is wrong, this will destroy everything, Sarah will never forgive him. Jamie would nod, with tears in his eyes, with preparation for a thumb going down his throat, with total submission for his anal hole to be filled with something only an alpha male could fill.

And Marcus would say, “That’s what I thought.” Because Jamie needs to hear it, be emptied out and filled up with someone else’s will.

The woman on the sidewalk turns and walks away. The man stands there, watching her go, shoulders heaving. Jamie keeps stroking, jaw clenching from the drugs, thoughts fracturing into sharp-edged fragments. He’s not watching them anymore. He’s watching Marcus. Marcus at the poker table last Saturday, shuffling cards with those contractor hands—scarred knuckles, calluses on the palms, nails clipped short but still rimmed with sawdust. The way Marcus dealt. Smooth. Confident.

Jamie studied every man at that table—picturing each one with arms extended, himself between their legs, tongue out, craving, waiting for baptism through humiliation, for the communion of being pissed on and calling it holy. Then he’d measure himself against them and fail to fit the space. Too thin. Too weak for the Vitruvian Man with ideal proportions, the perfect human body inscribed in circle and square. Jamie’s body inscribed nothing, fit nowhere, proportions all wrong for the world he was born into.

Marcus smiled and took Jamie’s money. Said, “Better luck next time, buddy.” Winked. Degrading. The way he said it. Buddy. It’s neutered, condescending, a slur disguised as friendliness. In Cruising—William Friedkin’s film which Jamie’s seen eight times—buddy is what straight cops call gay men they’re about to entrap. Not friend. Not bro. Buddy. The word you use for someone you’re never going to fuck.

But Jamie’s not his girlfriend. Jamie’s nothing to him. Which means Marcus could do anything. Could be as rough as he wants. Could hurt him and Jamie would say thank you because pain from Marcus is still attention from Marcus and attention is all Jamie’s ever wanted.

The thought makes him sick. The drugs make him sicker. His dead grandmother is watching. His dead grandfather is watching. God is watching and taking notes and Jamie is going to hell but at least hell is honest about what it is. At least in hell you don’t have to pretend you’re good.

Jamie strokes faster now. The couple is gone—both of them walked away in different directions, fight unresolved, violence deferred. Jamie doesn’t care. He started so he has to finish. The cards are dealt. He’s all in. He’s thinking about Marcus’s hands. The way they moved over the cards. The way they’d move over Jamie’s body if Jamie ever had the courage to ask for what he wants. If Jamie ever stopped pretending he’s Sarah’s friend and admitted he’s just a parasite feeding on her proximity to Marcus. That every time he hugs her goodbye he’s really just trying to smell Marcus on her skin. That he’s using her as a bridge to something he’ll never be allowed to cross.

Marcus would say, “Say it.”

Jamie would choke out, “Yes.”

And Marcus would say, “Yes, what?”

“Yes, sir.” While Sarah sleeps in the next room.

And Marcus would laugh while Sarah dreams about a future with a man who’s currently inside her best friend.

Not cruel.

Just amused.

“Good boy.”

While Sarah plans their life together, completely unaware that the foundation is already cracked, that Jamie’s already ruined it, that the betrayal has already happened a thousand times in Jamie’s head and soon, maybe soon, it’ll happen for real and everything will explode and Sarah will hate him forever and Marcus will disappear and Jamie will be alone again but at least, at least, at least he’ll finally know what it feels like.

Jamie comes. Hard. Into his hand. Shaking, jaw locked, teeth grinding, the speed making everything feel too sharp and too bright and too real. He holds his palm steady and looks at it. White, translucent, pooling in the creases of his life line. His hand is cramping. His zipper cut into his wrist—there’s a red mark, angry and raised. He tastes copper. Bit his tongue without realizing it. Stigmata in miniature. Wounds that prove nothing except his capacity for self-inflicted suffering. He raises his hand to his mouth. Doesn’t lick. Swallows it whole, immediate, like medicine. Salt and bleach and something bitter at the back of his throat. Communion again. Body and blood. Eat this in memory of me. He finishes every drop. Because wasting it would mean leaving evidence. Evidence is how people find out who you really are.

His dead grandmother again, in his head, standing and watching, crying. Can she see this? What would she say if she could speak? She worked so hard to raise his mother. His mother worked so hard to raise Jamie. Will she know this, when she dies? Is anybody watching Jamie? Can everybody who died see him swallowing his own cum three blocks from his best friend’s apartment while high on speed and thinking about fucking her boyfriend? Can see exactly what this pathetic faggot became. The rosary she gave him for his confirmation is in a box somewhere. He hasn’t prayed in ten years but he can still feel the beads between his fingers, can still remember the words: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Blessed is the fruit. He just swallowed his. The thought makes him laugh. Then panic. He wipes his hand on his jeans. The stain spreads. Damp.

It’s time to go. Time is real. He finally perceives it correctly. He’s really late. His phone buzzes from an unknown number again. He looks. Another photo. This one is closer. His apartment building entrance. The door he walks through every day. They’re not just watching anymore. They’re announcing themselves. Saying: we know where you sleep. He throws the phone onto the passenger seat. He is being seen, and he is wanted.

Tables turned, now he wishes the dead could see him, because being seen by them would be much scarier.

He starts the engine. The radio comes on. Sarah’s playlist. Some song about needing someone so badly it stops being love and starts being obliteration.

I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees

I’ll never marry but Ohio don’t remember me

A song about being carried somewhere you don’t belong and never being remembered there. Sarah made this playlist six months ago. Marcus is from Ohio. Marcus spent twenty-three months in Mansfield Correctional. Sarah knows this. Jamie knows Sarah knows this. Sarah put this song on the playlist anyway. A test or a confession or a territorial marking. Jamie doesn’t know which. Doesn’t turn it off this time. It plays. The lyrics sink in.

Lay my head on the hood of your car

I take it too far

I put drugs in my protein shake

In holy water, sparkled with lines

Breathing sin while confessing

Still don’t feel nothing like I oughta

Jamie thinks about how they’re all just passing through each other’s lives leaving stains that fade. He thinks and drives, as always.

Two blocks away. Then one. Now none.

Jamie parks in the same spot he always parks—across the street, under the broken streetlight that’s been out for eight weeks. Nobody’s fixed it. Jamie wonders if someone broke it on purpose. Then stops wondering because the answer might be worse than not knowing. From here he can see her third-floor window but she can’t see him arrive. Or maybe she can. Maybe she’s been watching this whole time. Maybe everyone’s watching everyone and calling it love. He sits in the dark. Engine off. Hands on the steering wheel.

His phone buzzes. Sarah: where r u??

He types: parking now.

Licks his lips and sends it.

Before he gets out, he closes his eyes. Thinks about Sarah. About Marcus. He thinks about the gardener and his patient devotion and wonders if that kind of steady care is something you’re born with or something you learn. Wonders if he could learn it. Wonders if it’s too late. Wonders if Sarah will be able to smell the guilt on him. If Marcus will see the want. If they’ll both know, immediately, what he is. What he’s been thinking. What he wants to do.

He gets out of the car. Locks it. The night is warm. The air smells like garbage and gasoline and someone’s barbecue a building over. A dog barks. A siren wails in the distance—normal Friday night in this city of people pretending they’re fine. He walks toward Sarah’s building. His legs feel like concrete. His chest feels like it’s being compressed. His throat feels like it’s closing. But he walks anyway because stopping would mean admitting he should turn around and he can’t admit that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

He climbs the stairs. Two flights. His hand on the railing is shaking. The drugs are wearing off. The comedown is starting. His jaw aches. His teeth hurt. His head is beginning to throb. He reaches Sarah’s door. 3B. Brass numbers screwed into wood that’s been painted over so many times the grain is gone. He rehearses his lines. Traffic. Couldn’t find parking. Sorry. The lies come easier each time. That’s how you know you’re getting good at something—when it stops feeling like work and starts feeling like being alive.

He knocks.

Waits.

The deadbolt slides. The door opens.

Not Sarah.

Marcus.

Marcus stands there, gray tank top riding up over his jeans, and Jamie wants to drop to his knees right there, be dragged all the way to the kitchen floor, by his hair, by force and violence. Wants to press his face against that exposed strip of skin and inhale like an animal scenting its mate, wants to lick Marcus and be slapped and spanked and be marked by his spit and swallow as much as Marcus as possible. Until everyone knows, until Jamie smells like Marcus’s claim, until Jamie is Marcus. Until Jamie is no more.

The thought makes him dizzy, makes his mouth flood with want so sharp it’s almost nausea.

That shaved head is still damp from the shower, water beading at the base of Marcus’s skull where Jamie wants to set his mouth and suck until the skin purples, wants to be collared by him and be painted with bruises, act like a dog and be a bitch being pissed on like alpha dogs piss on a fence post, be his, only his, be him, forever stuck in wanting. Marcus’s jaw is a blade. Jamie wants those scarred knuckles in his hair yanking his head back, wants to be used like something Marcus owns, wants to crawl and beg and be pinned down until he can’t move, can’t think, can’t do anything but take whatever Marcus decides to give him, and he’s so far gone he doesn’t even care that it’s pathetic, that he’s pathetic, standing there shaking and hard and desperately trying not to let it show.

Marcus smells like Old Spice and something sharper. Sweat. Speed. Something chemical and sweet Jamie can’t identify but wants to bottle. Wants to keep. Wants to drown in.

“You’re late,” Marcus says.

His voice is exactly the same as the man on the sidewalk. Exactly the same as the voice in Jamie’s head three minutes ago when he came into his hand thinking about being used. About being erased. About finally, mercifully, not having to be himself anymore.

Jamie smiles. Licks his lips. “Traffic.”

Marcus doesn’t smile back. He just stands there, blocking the doorway, taking up space, making Jamie wait for permission to enter. Making Jamie feel like an intruder. Like a guest who wasn’t really invited. Like someone who should have known better but came anyway. Like someone who should be on his knees asking forgiveness for the sin of arriving.

Marcus’s eyes drop. To Jamie’s mouth. To his neck. To his jeans. To the stain. Small. Damp. Right on his thigh where he wiped his hand.

Marcus stares at it for one second. Two. Three.

Then his eyes come back up. Meet Jamie’s eyes. Hold them.

“You good?”

Jamie’s throat is dry. He licks his lips again. “Yeah.”

Marcus steps aside. “Sarah’s in the bedroom. She’s pissed.”

Jamie walks past him. Their shoulders almost touch. Almost. The apartment smells wrong. Not Sarah’s usual mix of incense and laundry detergent and the vanilla candles she burns compulsively. It smells like bleach, a little bit fungus. Something floral trying to cover something rotten. Jamie doesn’t ask.

On the coffee table, there’s a book. Frisk by Dennis Cooper. Dog-eared. Spine cracked. Someone’s been reading it. Jamie’s read it. Jamie owns a copy he keeps hidden under his mattress. Sarah’s never mentioned Dennis Cooper. Neither has Marcus. But there it is. Face-up. Cover showing a young man’s torso, shirtless, vulnerable, exposed. A body offered up for consumption.

Jamie doesn’t look at it. Pretends he doesn’t see it. But he sees it. He always sees everything. That’s his problem. That’s his gift. That’s his curse.

Marcus closes the door behind him.

The deadbolt clicks.

The chain slides.

Two locks.

Jamie counts them both.

Licks his lips.