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“Come on.”
“No.” There was an edge to his voice, sounding so unlike him. Yet nothing of what he’d just shared sounded like the Anthony I knew.
“Well, are you two still in touch?” Jay asked.
“I haven’t spoken with him in four months.”
“Unbelievable.” Jay shook his head and leaned back in his seat. “He’s even more manipulative than I thought.”
I took a breath and let the air slowly leave my body. My muscles felt tense, my nerves edgy. I put my hand on Anthony’s shoulder. “I’m sorry your first time went down like that.”
Anthony shrugged with his eyes downcast. “It wasn’t that bad. I mean, it was good in parts, but it would have been better if we had stopped there instead of… never mind.”
Seeing the hurt on his face made me feel something I never felt before toward Chris—disgust. It was like tasting a new flavor for the first time, and it tasted rotten.
“So, what about you?” Anthony asked Jay, seeming relieved to pass the focus to somebody else. “What was your beef about?”
Jay’s dark eyes moved from Anthony to me. “I don’t think you’ll want to hear it.”
“Try me,” I said and leaned back in my seat. “I won’t be any more shocked than I already am.”
Jay scanned the room, looking jittery. There was no one sitting around us, and the entire place seemed to be heading for a close.
More than a minute passed before Jay finally blurted, “Chris is the reason I went to prison.”
I frowned at that crazy statement. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what I said.”
“Are you talking about how he didn’t want to represent you in court?” Crime wasn’t his field of expertise, so it hadn’t made sense for him to take on the case.
“It’s not about the trial; it’s about what happened before that. This whole secret importation of electronics wasn’t my idea. Mister Success needed to prove to the suits at his firm that he wasn’t some common nobody, and with Melissa’s crazy spending, he wasn’t saving much. You know how he can be about money.”
I silently nodded. Chris was an orphan and never had money until much later in life when he was adopted at a surprisingly older age. He didn’t like to talk about those years, and even when he and I used to be inseparable, I knew better than to push him for information. Being from such a background made Melissa’s dad hate him at first, so Chris had to work like crazy to climb up the corporate ladder. I remembered being impressed with how quickly he was gaining wealth a few years back, and yes, it was close to the time Jay had started with his importing gig.
“It might have been his idea,” I said, “but it’syouwho did all the work. You can’t blame him for having a dumb idea if you were the one who executed it.”
Jay stared at me with anger in his eyes. “It wasn’t like that,” he said. “He was involved every step of the way. He knew how to work around customs in a way that kept us under the radar and left us plenty of money after every sale. All I needed to do was find the right people to sell the products to. You know Chris has a way of pressing the right buttons to get what he wants. ‘You want to keep fixing cars for the rest of your life, Jay, or do you want to make something of yourself?’ Damn right I wanted to have more money in my pockets, and I also wanted to believe Chris knew what the hell he was talking about.”
He took a deep breath to compose himself. “For about two years the business ran well—until we got caught. Or rather,Igot caught after Chris made a technical mistake that raised attention to what we were doing. Chris came to see me after my arrest, cried his eyes out and promised to get me the best lawyer he knew. All I needed to do was keep my mouth shut about his involvement and pretend to be the brain of the operation. You guys know me; I don’t have the skills to pull off an operation like that alone.”
“You should have said no,” Anthony said quietly, not meeting Jay’s eyes.
“That was when he and Melissa had the twins,” I said. “When you went to trial, they were just a few months old.”
Jay nodded, his eyes tired. “Dragging him down as well wouldn’t have kept me out of prison—probably—and it wasn’t Melissa and the twins who needed to suffer because of our stupid mistake.”
We remained silent for a while, each with his own thoughts. I didn’t question Jay’s story because you could tell when someone was being completely honest and not holding anything back. I knew that Chris wasn’t perfect, but tonight I found out the man who was once close to me as a brother possessed dark and egocentric sides. I had been completely oblivious to the bad blood running in our group.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Jay asked me.
“What? Nothing.”
“You seem upset,” Anthony said. “I shouldn’t have told you about what happened between me and him. I don’t want to sabotage your friendship.”
“The only thing you should have done differently is to tell me sooner. You keep holding things like that inside and you’ll explode.” I was being harsh on him, but I knew how long he’d kept the truth about his sexuality hidden.
Jay leaned forward, arms on the table. “Seems to me we’re all fed up with Chris’s behavior, aren’t we, boys?”
