Marie Sexton - Between Sinners And Saints by Marie Sexton Read Free Book Online Page B

shrugged. “They split up—not because of that, but because they were young and stupid and couldn’t keep their dicks in their pants. But fifteen years later, Owen found out the guy had taken a bottle of Valium with a giant vodka chaser.”
“He killed himself?”
Zeke finally threw back his shot. “Can you blame him?” he asked as he handed Levi his empty glass.
More customers came up, and Zeke and Levi went back to work. As Levi poured shots and mixed drinks, he contemplated what Zeke had said.
He’d considered HIV, but it had never occurred to him Jaime’s problem might be an emotional issue. It changed everything. If Jaime had merely been playing hard to get, or if he was just shy, or even if it was because he had a boyfriend, Levi would have persisted. He would have looked at it as a game. But if it was something like Zeke had described, it was definitely not a game. And the more Levi thought about the fear and the near panic he’d seen on Jaime’s face, the more he thought Zeke might be on the right track.
He wasn’t going to mess with that. After all, he liked finding guys to fuck, but he did want them to be willing. And he didn’t want to have to tiptoe through an emotional minefield to do it. He knew he was sometimes an asshole, but he wasn’t so far gone he’d intentionally fuck with somebody who was troubled like that. It was one thing to be selfish. It was another altogether to be malicious.
Max elbowed him in the ribs, interrupting his thoughts. He nodded toward the end of the bar where a man was standing. He was watching Levi, a question in his eyes. Levi’d been with him before, although he couldn’t remember if it had been last weekend or the one before. Or both. “I got the bar,” Max said. “You go have fun.”
Which was exactly what Levi did. He didn’t think about Jaime again for the rest of the night.
He didn’t think about him again until the following day, when Ruth called.
“Hey, Leviticus!” she said with her customary cheer. “How’s life?”
“Good.” But he was hesitant. He could tell by the tone of her voice she was calling to ask him for something.
“Dad turns sixty this year.” Their father’s birthday was early in September, but Levi hadn’t thought about his exact age. “It falls on the Friday before Labor Day, and we’ve decided to throw him a party.” Levi tried not to moan as he began to anticipate where the conversation was headed. “Can you get the weekend off?”
“I don’t know, Ruth.” Part of him knew he should go, but visits to his family never ended well.
“Everybody else will be there, Levi. And I know he and Mom would love to see you.”
“So they can lecture me, pray for me, and tell me how wrong my life is?”
“Levi, they love you.”
“Fine. They love me, but they never hear a word I say. They’re so goddamn sure they know what’s right, they don’t care whether it’s what I want or not.”
She sighed with obvious frustration. “Will you think about it, at least? Is it really too much to ask?”
He didn’t want to argue with her, and so, in the spirit of contrition, he said, “I’ll consider it.”
“Good.” She was obviously annoyed, though, and they fell into an awkward silence.
Now it was Levi’s turn to sigh. The truth was, sometimes he missed his family. But he missed the family he’d had years ago before his sexual orientation had come between them. He missed the parents who’d loved him and raised him. He missed the brothers who teased him and Ruth, who babied him, and even Rachel, who sometimes drove him nuts.
The family he found when he visited now was a completely different story.
“How’s the pain?” Ruth asked, interrupting his thoughts. “Did you find a massage therapist?”
“I did. And Jackson was right: it did help.”
“Why do I hear a ‘but’ coming?”
“I kind of got kicked out.”
“Leviticus Walton Binder, what did you do?”
Leave it to Ruth to pull out the full-name thing, as his mother had