2 A.M. and the three amigos are now definitely the three drunks. Patrick and Will stumble outside. I get them in a taxi back to Patrick’s apartment in Charlestown, once he finally fessed up his address. Now I have Mikey to deal with, telling really unfunny jokes and talking gibberish. He wants to drive home, which is 28 miles south of Boston in the town of Duxbury or what people here call Deluxebury because of its grand estates, homes on hills, and somewhat snobby attitude. But I know what a trek that is after I got lost there once on my way to Plymouth, which borders it. The snow-covered roads and the fact that Duxbury’s back roads have no streetlights make the idea of Mikey driving even more unappealing. The only lights you see there on the snaking, curvy roads are from other oncoming cars.
And besides, Mikey lives with his parents, both educators, and his younger sister, a realtor. I can’t let him go home like this. I have to rescue him.
“Mikey…Mikey…focus for a second. We’re going to 7-Eleven to buy you some water. I’m going to get some water, too, okay?” I say to him outside the club, trying to be patient, logical, and reassuring. I hold his hands and I make sure he looks straight at me.
“Yeah, that’s fine, TOMmy b-b-b-boy! Damn, you’re such a cutie.” He beams his incandescent smile at me. Although he is talking to me, I sense Mikey isn’t really here with me. It’s as if another person possesses his body. He’s not the sweet and sober Mikey I met two nights ago or even the guy from last night. He has a glazed look in his eyes like one of the drunken characters I’ve seen on one of those ABC after-school specials when I was younger.
Outside the 7-Eleven, I make him drink the bottled water. Minutes later, he is still lit as the streetlight above us. Then he becomes all apologetic. Where is all this coming from?
“Tommy, I’m sooo sorry. I drank too, too much. This will never happen again. I’m so, so sorry. You are so nice to me. I don’t know how this happened. The guys kept buying me drinks,” he says, wrapping his arm around my neck, leaning in for a kiss as his words slur some more. He looks at me with his deep blue I-need-you eyes.
I look at him and take a serious tone. “You had six Coronas. It will take six hours to get that out of your system. And you drank them in two hours. You can’t drive home. I won’t let you drive home. I know you don’t know me that well but you can trust me. I’m a good guy. We’ll go back to my place, I will make you a turkey sandwich, give you more water and some Tylenol, and you can sleep this off. I promise you, nothing will happen. I just don’t want you driving home like this. You’ll feel better in the morning. Now give me your keys.”
We walk slowly to his Matrix (he drove tonight from my place) parked on Berkeley Street, around the corner from Club Café. In the passenger seat, Mikey looks at me, lifts his eyebrows like a pensive little boy, and says, “Tommy, thank you. You’re such a sweet, sweet, sweet guy. I had a good feeling about you when I first saw you. I’m so, so sorry about this.”
“Shhh. Don’t worry about it,” I say as I start the car, which has a really cool futuristic-looking dashboard with all the circular knobs and buttons. It’s so different from my bare-bones Wrangler.
“You overdrank. It happens to people sometimes. Don’t worry about it. What matters now is getting you sober and feeling better. We’ll be at my place in about fifteen minutes. Just relax. You’ll feel better tomorrow morning, I promise. Okay?”
I turn the radio on, and just by luck, I hear Olivia Newton John singing “A Little More Love,” her 1979 song on her Greatest Hits CD. I love that song and play it almost every day in the Jeep. It tends to put me in a good mood, even though the song is about a woman who can’t seem to say no to a toxic man in her life.
“And it gets me nowhere to tell you no, and it gets me nowhere to make you go…”
It’s Sunday morning and the sun slants through my red window shades, warming my face. I wake up to the aroma of bacon. I turn to my side and Mikey’s gone. I prop up in my bed and rub my eyes in circular motion to wake them up. I look around and I see Mikey walking toward me with a plate and a big grin.
He hands me the plate, which has two eggs positioned like two yellow eyes and a curved bacon strip underneath them as if it was a smile. It’s a breakfast happy face. How adorable! I smile back at the smiling plate.
In his other hand, he carries a nice tall glass of lemon-lime Gatorade.
“Cutie, I made you breakfast. I thought this smile would put a smile on your face. All you had was wheat bread, Diet Coke, and Gatorade in the refrigerator so I went to the store down the street and bought some bacon and eggs while you were sleeping,” he says, sitting beside me on the edge of my queen-sized bed and running his hands through my curly hair, which probably looks like a giant Chia Pet right about now.
“You didn’t have to do this. That is so sweet of you. No one has ever made me breakfast in bed before,” I say, breaking off a piece of the bacon with my fingers and shoving it in my mouth. I don’t like eggs or bacon but I can’t tell him that. So I fake it and just eat them up.
“Well, you were so good to me last night when I got trashed. I acted so stupid. I’m sorry if I said anything obnoxious. I wanted to thank you for taking care of me. Thank you, Tommy, or as they say in Spanish, gracias,” he says, plopping a kiss on my bacon-smeared lips.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, washing down the bacon with the Gatorade.
“Thanks to you, I feel great. The turkey sandwich and the Tylenol helped me a lot. I feel fine, cutie. So do you want to go to Providence today? It’s only a fifty-minute ride. I’ll drive!”
I couldn’t resist. I have always wanted to take a drive down to Providence, ever since I began watching the NBC show of the same name on Friday nights at 8 P.M. When I lived in Miami, it reminded me of Boston and inspired me to try my best to get hired at the Daily. Now I meet this incredibly sweet and supercute guy who wants to show me around the city I’ve always been so charmed by, at least on TV.
“Yeah, that sounds like fun but let’s go in the Jeep. Let’s give your Matrix a break for the day.”
“You got it, cutie!”
As I finish up breakfast and get out of bed, Mikey, wearing a Miami Hurricanes white T-shirt of mine and my orange boxer shorts, looks my way and holds my hand.
“You know, Tommy Perez, I like you,” he says with a gentle squeeze.
I turn to him on my bed. “I like you, too, Mr. Breakfast-in-Bed!”
Chapter 5
RICO
The blue glow of the computer lights up my bedroom. The radiator hisses like a snake in the corner. Too bad it’s not a long big hot snake. This radiator sucks. It’s just warm enough but it doesn’t get any hotter in here. I have to wear a sweatshirt and sweatpants to stay warm. And I have to sleep with two comforters on my bed. The hair dryer comes in handy to heat up the pillows and comforters before I hit the sack. A chilly draft somehow manages to leak into my side of this old crappy house. You get what you pay for.
Just another night to manhunt on Bawstonboyz.com. It’s 25 degrees outside and I’m not going out tonight. No way! Even if it’s Thursday night, the good night at Club Café. Shit, I don’t want to spend any money or gas tonight. Screw that. So this Italian Stallion is staying in the stable tonight.
I text-messaged Tommy Boy but he’s probably with his boy Mikey tonight, because I would have heard from him by now if he wanted to go out. They’ve been dating a week now and the guy got shit-faced with Tommy on their second date the other night at CC. Not cool! Tommy deserves a better second date than that. Shit, anyone does. So now, I don’t like that Mikey guy. But it’s none of my business. Tommy is too nice sometimes. If it were me, I would have dumped the dude after that second date. No one wants a sloppy drinker on his hands or sheets.
My cell is ringing. A text message from Tommy. Speak of the devil and he instant-messages you.
“Hola,