Chasing Death Metal Dreams by Kaje Harper Read Free Book Online Page A

you’re wearing. Finish your fucking coffee and come on.” Nate fixed him with a demanding look.
    Carlos smiled into his mug and sipped the last bit slowly, but not too slowly because a half-hour break would be all too short. He set the cup aside and stood. “Okay, where’re we going?”
    “Four doors down.” Nate led the way out of the coffee shop. “There.” He gestured.
    The store was a small consignment and thrift shop, at the other end of the mall. Nate was clearly known in the place, because the guy sitting at the counter started to get up as they entered, then just gave them a wave. Nate turned to Carlos. “So what do you need? Besides a makeover?”
    “Three shirts.” Carlos held a hand in front of Nate’s face with three fingers up and wiggled them. “One. Two. Three. Stuff that’ll work for my day job.”
    “Which is?”
    “Receptionist for a nice, suburban dentist who doesn’t want my tats showing.”
    “Any of them?” Nate’s eyes dropped to his chest, where most of the black scroll was visible.
    “Mainly these.” He held out his arms and turned them over.
    Nate reached for him, running his fingers over Carlos’s forearms. It was odd and a bit ticklish, but something about his close attention made Carlos feel warm and reluctant to pull back.
    “Nice daggers. Kind of boring lettering. The blood drops could use some three-D effects.”
    “Everyone’s a critic.” Carlos stepped away.
    “Sorry. Did you design those?”
    “Huh? No, just picked them.” While high on pot, on the theory that getting wasted would be good for my needle anxiety. It might have helped him stress out less, at the time, but it sure hadn’t done much for his judgment. He wasn’t going to disown his tats now, though. They’d served their purpose all right, making him look more butch. The blood and death parts might have been overkill, but his philosophy was no regrets . “I like them.”
    “Well, I’ve seen a lot worse.” Nate colored. “Sorry, that’s the artist in me. I kind of have a thing for lettering. Now the chest piece looks good.”
    Carlos tugged the left side of his shirt down a bit to show the word “ Boy ” in the scrollwork. He didn’t regret that one either. It had been his flag run up the mast, his flat-out statement to his tío and tía that there was no going back for him. He was a guy, not a girl, and nothing would ever change that. He’d written it in ink and pain on his skin, and thank you to the underground artist who worked on a fifteen-year-old. He wasn’t inclined to explain it either though.
    Nate just nodded. “Yeah, nice lines. But you need shirts that will hide most of that?”
    “Yup.”
    “And that don’t make you look like a corporate drone. Okay. Follow me.” Nate headed for a rack of shirts and began flipping through them. “You have that great caramel skin tone, so you can wear almost any color, but I think blue is going to be best. Or maybe autumn colors. No green though.”
    “I need something boring,” Carlos protested, as Nate pulled out a seventies yellow-and-peach stripe and held it up against him.
    “That’s too big anyway. Here, hold this.” Nate shoved a pale blue print into his hands, then a cream with a black collar.
    “Um.” He took them, rather than let the shirts fall.
    “Maybe this one” —a gray-and-silver stripe— “or this.” The next one was pink. Very pink. Carlos shoved it back at Nate.
    “No fucking way.”
    Nate grinned. “Maybe not for work.”
    “Maybe not for anything, ever. I’m not a pink person.” He’d worn enough of it, under protest, back home with Mamá and Papá. Pink skirts, pink dresses, bows in his hair, ripped out, torn, stained, hidden, in his fight for his life, his real life—
    He jolted as Nate touched his arm. “Are you okay? You zoned out on me.”
    “Yeah. Sorry.”
    “No pink. Got it.” Nate grabbed three more. “Changing room is over here.” He led the way to the back of the store.
    Carlos