Read Online A Love Like Blood by Victor Yates - Free Book Online

jeans sag revealing the top of his fleshy bottom. His skin down there is smooth and buttery. I could slip my hand in his pocket and yank his jeans to his knees, but I can’t; Father could be outside. My hands sweat. His skin color lightens under the harsh kitchen lights.
    Brett steps one foot at a time down the concrete stairs into the dank smelling basement. Our basement resembles a bomb shelter from the slabs of concrete. No signs of life exist here, except spider webs. I find myself fixated, staring at the curve of his backside. Then, I notice his work boots. The boots are the same color as two rampant leopards with hungry tongues on the Somali coat of arms. The spotted animals support the light blue shield that has a white star in the center. The shield is the same color as the Somali flag. Below the shield, a golden ribbon drapes itself around two crossed spears and two crossed palm fronds. Everything for me floats back to my grandfather’s country. And, back to practicing formal worship as a child, while wearing a Patron Saint Christopher pendant. Father nearly decapitated me tucking the necklace under my shirt the second he saw it. My upbringing has wedged me between rosary beads and Islamic prayer beads; and azuki beans mixed with butter and sugar on Monday and black beans and rice on Friday. And, I am stuck between his expectation of who I should be and my fear of who I am. However, every time I convince myself he is to blame for me feeling stuck, I cannot explain why not telling him I like men is easier than telling him and dealing with whatever happens.
    At the bottom of the stairs, Brett asks, “Besides photography, do you have any other talents I should know about.”
    â€œNone I can share with a neighbor.”
    â€œTell me now or I’ll push you to the ground and bounce on you until you do.”
    â€œJust kidding.”
    â€œI’m not.”
    We laugh at the joke and then, neither of us knows what to do; at least I assume he does not know because I am unsure. I shove my hands in my pocket, and he copies me. After a while, he steps closer, so close that the space between us prepares to collapse. I walk around him to hold onto the moment longer. A change occurs in the room, and we do not acknowledge either’s excitement. But it is there between our legs. Hiding it is unnecessary at this point.
    Yanking my shirt out of my pants, Brett laughs, and says, “please keep it out.”
    Polo shirts, creased khakis, sometimes rolled up at the bottom, and brown loafers, are my everyday uniform, schoolboy realness, real enough to blend in. “You need to loosen up a little. Did I offend you?” He opens his arms out to cling to this moment longer. Both of his arms wrap around me, pressing my chest into his chest. It is an embrace between two men comfortable with their closeness and trying to become even closer. Our lips almost touch as his face slides across mine as we separate.
    â€œLook up there,” he says, standing under the stairs. “There’s a crack,”
    The crack that he points to is a pencil-thin line, the length of the moving truck Father rented.
    â€œIt’s causing some buildup. I can tell your dad I can start tomorrow.”
    â€œDon’t. Let me,” I say while constructing a lie to get out of shooting the wedding booked in Detroit tomorrow night.

Chapter 14
    D aredevil cliff divers lured tourists away from Europe to Acapulco in the 70’s. Young men in Speedos stretched out their arms to swan dive off a dizzying cliff plunging into shallow water. They transformed into acrobatic fish-eating birds. Wide-eyed onlookers held their breaths. A divers’ miscalculation meant life or death. For the divers, it was freeing, seeing the world from above; the way seabirds view the world. It was dream-like. They awoke underwater; that is how one local described it.
    Two years ago, in 1996, Father snatched up an assignment shooting a festival in