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Supposedly, the man I’d been chatting with online for the previous couple of weeks had a room on the third floor, but we’d agreed to meet up downstairs since both of us weren’t just looking for a quick fuck and run.
We’d found each other through an online dating service meant to connect gay men with their soulmates. He’d seemed decent enough, we got along without stilted conversations over the phone, and more importantly, he’d claimed to be my perfect match in the bedroom. Something I’d always had trouble with since my outward appearance didn’t match most people's idea of what a top ought to look like.
And finding a larger man who was confident enough in himself to allow a smaller, more feminine guy to be the leader, the caretaker in a relationship? Damn near impossible.
While I hadn’t gone so far as to wear a pink dress shirt like I’d have preferred beneath my suit coat, my expectations for the night had remained high. I had allowed myself to be hopeful when past attempts at finding my person should have taught me better.
I’d been nothing but a failure since childhood.
My father offered love and acceptance—as long as I didn’t act like the faggot femme boy I was at heart. His flesh and bones rotted six feet under, but I was still stuck beneath his influence, unable to free myself from the strain of never being enough. I’d hoped a love match would help heal my soul-deep wounds that still festered, but I would forever keep my secret desires locked up even if I ever did find a man I connected with.
Lips in a thin line over my latest failure in findingthe one, I headed toward the bar’s rear exit. I couldn’t put through a call to my date amidst the noise, and he hadn’t answered either of the texts I’d sent in the previous thirty minutes.
Maybe something had happened and he had a good reason for not showing. A few excuses ran through my head, including emergency phone calls from loved ones. Maybe he’d fallen asleep after arriving at the hotel from his long cross-country flight for a work meeting in Boston the following Monday. Perhaps he’d ordered room service for an early dinner and had choked to death.
That final scenario amused me regardless of my bitter disappointment.
Muggy darkness hovered over Boston’s sky when I stepped out into the night, stopping my mind from thinking of more possible causes as to why I’d been stood up. I jerked my tie loose while fumbling with my phone in my other hand. I would allow my date one last chance to answer my call.
A door to my left slammed—another suited guy had stepped outside, cell in hand, his dark hair slicked back. Unfortunately, he looked like an Italian mob boss, not the blond I’d been waiting for.
Ignoring Mr. Mafia Dude manly-man, I clicked on contacts. I’d never had trouble finding hookups with twinks when I’d grown bored with my hand, but for once, I had thought I stood a chance of having a bigger man beneath me. Why couldn’t I get lucky for a change?
Someone hollered close by—a curse and call for help.
The mobster beside me took off for the building’s corner toward an alleyway where the ruckus had come from, and always the protective one, I followed on his heels, almost losing my loafers in my rush to keep up.
A slim person dressed in dark clothes stood over a man curled into a fetal position on the road.
“Hey!” I shouted, jerking the attacker’s head our way. They wore a ski mask, but even without the covering, I wouldn’t have been able to make them out in the alleyway’s darkness.
They took off in the opposite direction. Mafia Dude beside me gave chase.
“Hey, Siri!” I hollered, my cell in hand. “Call 911!”
An operator answered immediately, muffled and not on speaker.
I yelled out about the attack and my location while running toward the man on the asphalt.
Blood seeped from a wound on his head, the skin around it already swelling. Keeping the operator on the line, I set my phone down on the ground close by so I could tend to the man with both of my hands.
Cursing quietly, I tore off my pristine suit coat that even my dad would have approved of and pressed it against the fallen man’s laceration near his temple. “I called 911. It’s going to be okay,” I told him in a soothing voice, not sure if he heard me with how dazed he appeared.
Footfalls sounded—the mobster approached.
I opened my mouth to ask about the attacker, but unmistakable pops sounded from inside the hotel, making me hover over the man beside me. Hollers followed in the gun’s wake, and my heart rate went from rapid to frantic.
Mafia Dude’s head whipped back the way we’d come. “Shit! I have family inside. Are you okay to stay with him?”
What the fuck?
Gulping, I nodded, watching him sprint away. Had those actually beenrealgunshots? Maybe it had been a car backfiring—
The man in front of me groaned, and I turned back around. “Help will be here soon,” I tried to assure him.
Remembering the call I hadn’t ended, I glanced at my cell on the road beside me. It remained active. I grabbed it up in my free hand and hurriedly explained what I’d heard from inside the hotel while glancing around us. What if another masked person or someone with a gun in hand headed our way? Sirens rose in the distance before I’d even finished telling the operator what had gone down.
Setting my cell aside again, I gave the wounded man my full attention once more.
