Page 39 of See My Words

“You two makin’ me sick, that’s what.” Minh pretended to gag, but his eyes were soft with affection. “I have to say, I never thought I’d get to see my Scotty in love. Pretty fucking awesome.”

Rylan gaped at him. “In love?”

Minh gave a sage nod. “He’s so far gone over you, it ain’t even funny. I doubt he even recognizes it yet.”

Rylan stared at the back of Scott’s head, at his black hair ruffling in the wind, the side of his chiseled jaw, and felt a lump well up in his throat. “You, uh, you know him really well, don’t you?”

“I do.” Minh looked at him for a moment and seemed to make a decision. “Met him in a homeless shelter about, what, five years ago now? Almost six?”

Rylan caught his breath. “Homeless shelter?”

“Yeah.” Minh took one of Rylan’s hands, toying with his fingers. “I’ll never forget it. It was full summer, about 115 degrees, and some do-gooder outfit did a roundup of the usual homeless hangouts, convinced a bunch of people to go to a shelter for the night. Gave us bottles of water and little kits with baby wipes, toothbrushes, that kind of shit. A Bible verse.” He snorted.

“So you were living on the streets?”

“Yeah, for about three months by then. I was totally unprepared for how bad the summer gets when you’re living outside. It ain’t the kind of heat where you can chill out under a tree all day and wait for night to get some relief. Nope. At midnight it’s still way over 100 degrees, and even full shade don’t do shit when the air around you is that hot. People were dyin’ everywhere, of dehydration, of heat exhaustion—seemed like there was one or two every day in this park I hung out in. So even if I had to listen to a Jesus talk first, I was fuckin’ glad to go to the shelter.”

“Did Scott—work there?” Rylan asked, and Minh threw him a look full of sadness.

“No, baby. He’d been sleepin’ in an alley. Homeless just like me.”

Rylan felt tears welling up, and he dashed them away impatiently. “Fuck.”

“When he walked in,” Minh went on, “I could tell he hadn’t been on the streets that long. He didn’t have that, you know, hardness in his eyes yet, that emptiness.” He squeezed Rylan’s fingers. “Shelters can be scary places, too. But because he was young, tall, and strong, nobody fucked with him. Me, on the other hand—”

Rylan slid his arm around Minh’s shoulders. “You don’t have to talk about it, Minh.”

“No, it’s okay. I think, if you’re gonna be with Scott, it’s important for you to know this. He’s the one don’t like talking about it, and I’m not sure he ever would if left up to him.”

Rylan glanced up toward the driver’s seat, noticing Scott had slipped on his mirrored sunglasses and was nodding his head in time to some alternative rock song Rylan could barely make out over the rushing wind.

“So I was curled up on my cot, and it was the middle of the night. For hours I’d listened to a group of guys talking about ‘that flaming gaysian’ and ‘tapping that ass.’” Minh bit his lip. “I was tired, weak with hunger. I had no weapon, nothing to defend myself with.”

“What about the shelter people? I mean, the people who worked there?”

Minh shrugged. “They were nice enough, but they weren’t gonna stand guard over a huge dorm room overflowing with cots and men. I was afraid they’d throw me out if I complained, and God, I just wanted the shower and hot breakfast they promised us. So I lay there, figuring if I relaxed and breathed through it instead of fighting, maybe it wouldn’t hurt too bad.”

“Shit, Minh.” Rylan tightened his arm around him and kissed the top of his head, unable to wrap his mind around being so hungry the threat of assault took a backseat to the promise of food.

“But when they finally came for me, Scott spoke up out of nowhere and said if they touched me, he’d kill them. Those dudes were drug addicts, broken-down drunks, no match for him. I wasn’t worth it, so they slunk off, left me alone.”

Rylan blew out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “Thank Christ.”

“Yeah. He said to get some sleep, that he’d watch to make sure they didn’t come back. I slept like a baby, first time in a long time. The next day at breakfast, I asked him why he bothered defendin’ a skinny queer boy like me, a stranger. He gave me this sad smile, said I reminded him a little bit of someone.”

Now a few tears did escape, and they slid down Rylan’s cheeks, dried almost immediately by the hot wind. “We didn’t know where he was, Minh,” he choked, “me or the rest of his family and friends. He left one night and—”

Minh squeezed his hand again. “I know. He’s never really talked about what happened at home, just told me he made a choice and had to live with it.”

“Why were you on the streets?” Rylan asked, stroking his thumb over Minh’s fingers.

Minh flapped his free hand. “Oh, you know, that tired old story of boy meets man of his dreams, man promises boy the world, so boy gives up everything for him, but when their love is discovered, man acts like boy doesn’t even exist.”

Despite Minh’s offhand tone, his face was tight with remembered anguish, and Rylan didn’t try to reply, just hugged him close. Minh took a deep breath. “Enough about my epic stupidity. So after Scott saved my ass, literally, I sort of returned the favor the next night, when he forgot the number-one rule for surviving a shelter—never ever let your shit out of your sight.”

“Oh, no. What happened?”

Minh grimaced. “He took his shoes off, stuck ’em under his cot, and fell asleep. It wasn’t long before some dude tried to jack ’em, and when I saw, I raised hell. Scott woke up and almost took the guy’s head off.”