#barry x sofia

Him and Rafe were closer than ever with their foray into commerce— selling the blocks of gold bit by bit to every big name in the game. Now they reached a point where they could rein it in and cool off a bit, especially with Shoupe breathing down Rafe's neck.

So business at Barry's consisted mostly of beer bottles and the smell of weed, Rafe finding his company to be much more enjoyable than the guys at the Country Club. He could just let Barry rattle off into one of his elaborate tales and feel his eyes glaze over, watching his former dealer through the swirling sheet of smoke. It was slow, calm...listless in the best way.

The heat also meant they sat outside a lot (the air conditioning in the trailer was busted). But Rafe liked listening to the rustle of the trees as he leaned back in the plastic lawn chair. Their indigo silhouettes were so gargantuan and infinitely dark, he often wondered how they were so quiet.

"In the evening? How long will you be gone for?" Sofia's cute little head popped up from under the thin bedsheet. It did little in covering her dips and curves that Rafe still hadn't gotten over from seeing, and she did little to hold onto any counterfeit prudery some of the Country Club girls religiously clung to.

"Errr, not sure. Don't wait up for me." He slipped on his belt, trying to remember where he'd thrown his car keys.

"Can I come with you?"

He paused at that, belt half way through the buckle, and soon his chest began to snarl, a strange tension crawling up his throat.

"It's gonna be boring Sof...trust me, you don't wanna come." He finally buckled it up, and broke his stare with the wide-eyed Sofia looking up at him with her lips in between her teeth, impish and expectant.

"Oh."

That one little sound breathed out from her sent his head spinning. Fuck. He'd disappointed her. He'd messed things up. He'd ruined it.

The bedsheets rustled as Sofia sat up, the material sticking to her skin. "It's just that I have nothing else to do today. No work, no sibling duty...nothing. I thought I'd get to spend it all with you and now you're running off?” She paused for a beat. Her voice dropped, quiet and soft, wrapping around his throat like a too tight collar. “Do you not...want me to come?"

If Rafe was a cynical son of a bitch, he’d have thought she was doing this shit on purpose. But he wasn’t. And whether he liked it or not, she was this perfect little thing in his eyes, perfumed with pretty Spanish prayers and sweetness and sex.

He suddenly felt bad. He knew that feeling she was feeling all too well— grasping for someone to put him first for once.

But the idea of these two, undefiled aspects of his life converging and spilling into each other felt scary. He'd always been voracious. He wanted to keep Sofia here, to himself— wrapped up in his bedsheet, marked with his kisses, safe and sound from everything else. And he wanted Barry and the trailer to be only his— late nights alone, a shared smoking blunt, his time endless and precious spent wasted with him.

Undefiled.

But now Sofia was asking him to put her needs first.

It's not like she didn't ask for things from him before, but her requests mostly consisted of breathy moans whispered under his body, asking him to go harder, faster, lower. And Rafe was happy to comply.

But now he was less enthused. Her needs over his own. Practically begging, with her big puppy dog eyes and pretty jut of her bottom lip.

And it made him sick.

"It's not that baby, it's just—“ he trailed off, running a sweaty palm over the back of his head.

"It's just what? All we do is stay here Rafe. Why can't I go with you? I don't like staying here by myself."

Rafe was taken aback by that. Was she not happy here? He'd seen how tiny her house was, and from the pictures she'd send of her in just her lacy, barely there underwear, posed up in front of the mirror, her bedroom seemed small too.

He'd made sure the housekeeper he hired cleaned his bedroom and en-suite every time she'd come over; he kept her favourite snacks in the refrigerator; he'd wash his T-shirts so she'd have something clean to wear…what more did she want?

"Fine," he conceded, trying to quell the worry in his gut and quiet the prickly voice in his head, "come on then, if you're that desperate."

Sofia smiled, the image radiant and piercing. She was so goddamn infectious: her laugh, her smile, that coy little face she made whenever she teased him. It consumed his body entirely.

"Yes! Master's finally letting me out of the house!" she joked, jumping out the bed to head to the bathroom.

"Oh shut up.” He grabbed her before she could escape, smiling like he was on drugs again, traipsing his sweaty hands all over her soft, naked body, as she writhed and giggled and flailed happily in his arms. He eventually let go, not before slapping her ass.

While the shower ran, Rafe pulled out his phone to text Barry.

R: I'm bringing sofia with me

And then, as an after thought...

R: Don't pull any stupid shit

The shower stopped at the same time his phone pinged with a new notification...

B: finally get 2 meet her then? things r getting serious i see

Sofia stepped out the bathroom, towel wrapped around her, giving him another smile as he sat on the foot of the bed. He smiled back easily, watching as the towel fell from her waist just as his phone dropped to the side.

Things weren't serious...were they?

What did that even mean?

He left Barry's message unanswered, not knowing what the fuck to say to it.

Barry wouldn’t care. He never ever did. About anything. Especially not Rafe.

...

The trees blurred past each other, green, brown and blue obfuscating all together in one messy smear as the car whipped past the overgrowth. Rafe was still fending off apprehension about this, but he tried to remain cool as his fingers tapped restlessly against the steering wheel.

They pulled up outside Barry's trailer, and Rafe jumped out the car, expecting Sofia to follow. But her previous eagerness, where she thrummed around like an excitable bunny rabbit hopping every which way, had completely dissolved, and she slowly exited the car, still and passive.

She'd do this, he’d noticed. With him she bubbled with a seemingly endless effervescence— all giggly and bouncy and playful. But as soon as they entered the club or a house party or some networking event, she settled like rippling water, and all she could do was cling to his offered up arm and look on warily at the crowd of faces.

"You good?" He said, turning back to her, and watched unconvinced as she nodded with a tight lipped smile.

"Yeah, just nervous, you know?"

Rafe laughed at that, low and sharp, "It's Barry. You don't need to be nervous." But as he said it, his brain regurgitated the memory of him grinning maniacally as he pressed his pink forearm against the exhaust pipe of the bike. Maybe Sofia was right to be nervous— Barry was...unpredictable.

"He's your friend. I wanna make a good first impression."

Her comment sent his mind hurtling down another direction. Why the fuck does she need to make a good impression for?

Rafe's eyes flitted down the scope of her body. He usually loved her skimpy, summery outfits—her trying to escape the heat with her thin tight tank top, cut above her navel and her worn denim shorts that dug under the round flesh of her ass. He shamelessly stared at the sweat dripping down the line of her belly button, and dusting her tits in a shiny glow. But the idea of Barry seeing her? The same Barry with his hungry eyes and licentious smile, who could be so damn shameless?

The sound of the trailer door creaked on through the warble of frogs and crickets, turning both their attention forward and forcing Rafe to swallow his jealousy down on a bitten tongue.

Sofia quickly scrambled to his side, Rafe stepping slightly forward so she was somewhat out of his view.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" Barry announced in that fake, ingratiating tone that got on his nerves. He was dressed in a red muscle tee that Rafe was sure he hadn't seen before. Did Barry dress up?

"Cut it out," he warned walking up to the trailer, Sofia following close behind.

"What— you not gonna introduce me to this pretty lil' miss? Where are your manners huh? Did daddy teach you nothin'?"

Rafe screwed his face up and starred daggers at the man— so he was gonna be a bitch about this. He knew Barry wasn't happy that he was 'letting himself get distracted'. But he thought he was over that by now.

"Hi— sorry," Sofia jumped in between the two, stepping in front of Rafe, "I'm Sofia, you must be Barry.”

His eyes gleamed black, beady and shark like, as he took her in, ignoring the way Rafe’s gaze pierced him, as if saying watch your fucking self.

“And you’d be right. Come on in, Sofia, mi casa es su casa,” Barry held the trailer door wide open for her, with a shit eating grin that made Rafe want to punch him. It wouldn’t be the first time.

And Sofia just hummed, clearly oblivious to their little conflict, and nodded her head amusedly, “¿Es así?”

“Por supuesto, mamacita.”

She giggled, turning back to face Rafe with a happy little grin, forcing him to fix his face up real quick.

Oh great, they were speaking in Spanish now.

“You drink Sofia?” Barry asked, rifling around the fridge, as Rafe walked her over to the couch.

“I do.”

“Good. That’s good— I hate a sober bitch.” Barry locked eyes with Rafe when he said that, lips bent upwards like spiked wire.

They eventually settled around the beat up coffee table, sipping at their ice cold beer. Rafe was used to the stuffy trailer by now, so he paid no heed to the sweat pooling on his brow or how his thighs stuck to the ratty leather chair.

But Sofia clearly wasn’t, with the way the heat made her squirm. Rafe wanted to slap a hand over her lap to get her to sit still because Barry still hadn’t let up, eyeing her wriggling ass over the lip of his bottle.

“So…what business do you and Rafe get up to here, then?” Sofia asked after a small sip.

Before Rafe could intercept, Barry chuckled lowly, “that’s what he be tellin’ you? He comes here for business?”

Fuck.

“Business has been slow recently. Your boy here just be comin’ out all this way to drink and smoke and chat shit.”

Rafe grimaced. Fuck Barry. He chanced a small glance at Sofia, and his stomach churned, seeing her face drop.

Snapping his gaze back on to the man, Rafe could tell Barry was surprised by her reaction— like he wanted to make her angry, not shoot her down like that.

His brown eyes watched Sofia, fixed, as her chirpy demeanour melted away into a barely concealed self-pity: her bright smile snuffed, a lingering sadness knitted across her brow and a twitchiness in her lips and nose that gave her the air of a baby bird.

Barry cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter.

“Nah but we do chat about business shit too. Things have plateaued, but we still gotta plan the next move, you know?”

“Oh,” Sofia simply said, clearly not buying it. Her eyes remained glued on the threadbare carpet as her arm slunk over herself. She was closing in.

All the while Barry seemed to lose his sleazy glint and practiced swagger, and resigned himself to just taking more moody swigs.

The AC whirred like a wheezing cat, spitting out air that doused him in an uncomfortable, dry warmth. And all Rafe could do was sit there and stew in the heat he thought he was used to, stuck between the two of them, wondering what the fuck he should do now.

Sofia suddenly shot up, the decrepit seat groaning with the shifted weight. “You know what, I should probably go. Sorry for disturbing you guys. Thanks for the drink, Barry.” Her sentences were short and clipped and said through a saccharine smile that Rafe knew was phony— he’d been with her long enough to tell when she was faking it. She stood up after setting her barely touched bottle down.

“Wait, where are you going?” Rafe asked as Barry watched the two, silent and brooding.

“I don’t live too far from here. I can walk it.”

“Why don't I drop you off?”

Sofia’s face lost the smile, only for a second, before she plastered it right back on and just shook her head, stepping over his legs to get to the door, “it’s fine. I’ll leave you guys be.”

And then she slipped out of the trailer without another word, noiseless and quick, the only sound left in her wake being the door clicking shut.

“She won’t get too far walkin’ ‘round here, lookin’ like that,” Barry said, glancing over at Rafe. His tone was cool and expression indecipherable. No remorse. No delight. No nothing.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Huh? Are you that much of a miserable piece of shit?”

Barry simply shrugged, “you’re the one who was lyin’ to her. Not me.”

“Fuck you.”

Rafe got up and followed her, slamming the trailer door shut so the old metal shook, trying to send that fucker a message.

She hadn’t gotten far. He spotted her terracotta camisole wading through the long grass. And with a couple of strides, he easily caught her.

“He was just being a dick. Let’s just go back to mine, yeah?” Rafe jumped out in front of her on the dusty path, his words breathless and barely out his throat. Stumbling to a sudden halt, so she didn’t walk face first into his wall of chest, Sofia’s trainers marked the dirt.

“Rafe…” she began, her eyebrows furrowed as if she was deciding whether or not she wanted to be be angry or upset, “look— it’s my fault for coming here uninvited. I thought it could’ve been fun, but clearly you don’t want me here.” He watched how her arms wrapped around herself, clinging to her hips as if she was cold. Yet Rafe could see the individual beads of sweat pebble on her forehead, like the sea mist that coated her whenever he took her out on the Aviara.

“No! No— That’s not true! I– I just don’t want you to feel uncomfortable…Barry— Barry’s just Barry, you get used to him.”

Sofia sighed, deep and defeated, and she looked away shaking her head so her bangs fell above her eyes.

"It's not that...ugh you don't get it Rafe."

The way she so casually dismissed him, as if he was too stupid to understand her, made Rafe itch with familiar anger he often shoved all the way down when he was with her. "Then make me get it. Sofia. You ask to come all the way here, and I listened. Now you're just running away?"

Her eye's narrowed, her arms dropping away from her body. The reaction garnered a smug satisfaction in Rafe. At least he was getting something outta her. "Are you being serious right now?"

He shrugged and gave her a lazy frown. "Yeah. I guess I am."

“I don’t care about Barry! I care about you.” Sofia suddenly exclaimed, voice high and sharp. And Rafe shut up quickly. He hadn’t heard her shout like that before; he fell into a silence, as if wandering across a chirrup of a rare bird. Sofia stepped closer, angling her chin higher like that was going to make her any taller. “What is this huh?” Her hands flitted between his chest and hers, her open palm resting on her sternum. “I thought we were having fun…things are nice— are they not?” She looked up at him, hopeful and eager and half way to desperate, her big gold eyes wide and shiny and her bottom lip quivering with unsaid words.

Despite all the bravado, she still shook with a striking fragility that made him second guess himself— every single time.

“We are!”

“Then why do you always leave me to come here?"

She was still shouting but her tone plunged into a syrupy desperation that shucked off all the pettiness from him. "So I can just lie there and warm your bed for when you come back?”

Rafe winced, a wince that contorted quickly into a grimace. He didn’t need this shit right now.

“You know that’s not true Sofia," he murmured, pinching his nose bridge.

“Yeah? How am I supposed to know that?”

“Just get in the car. I’ll drive you home.”

“I thought we were going back to yours? You don’t want to spend time with me now that I’m upset cause you know you won’t be able to fuck me?” Sofia's eyes started to water as her mouth twisted into a sneering smile.

She looked so…different. It made him stir with something he wasn’t sure he liked. Something perverse.

"You really think of me like that?"

"It's true, is it not?"

Was it?

"Get in the car. You aren't walking around here dressed like that."

"Oh please, did you forget I live out here? I can take care of myself, Rafe. Go sort out business. Sounds like you're reaaal busy." And then she pushed past him, trudging further down the dirt road, and this time, Rafe didn't follow.

…

The evening arrived with the sun still lingering in the air, the white chemtrails stuttering off into a muggy orange sky. When Rafe had entered the trailer Barry was no longer sitting on the couch; the only indication of his presence was an empty beer bottle standing beside two full ones.

Rafe didn't have the mettle to go and confront him, so he slumped onto the couch and proceeded to drink both beers. He also didn't want to think about all that shit with Sofia, so he resigned himself to a dozy, dreamless sleep, devoid of any discomfort.

"You gon' stay here all day?"

Rafe's eyes flickered open to see Barry's looming figure above. He got up with a soft groan, bringing his palms to his face and rubbing off the drowse.

"How long was I out for?"

Barry took a seat opposite him. "Couple hours."

"Shit...sorry."

They sat in silence for a while, Barry's jaw clicking as he ground his molars together, watching Rafe with a languid loll of the head.

"You make sure she got home okay?" He suddenly asked, with an airy detachment forced into his words.

Rafe's gaze shot up, "why do you care for?"

"I was just makin' conversation."

The silence returned.

Rafe leaned back into the couch, stretching out his long legs, "She doesn't live too far from here actually. And she was real mad at me so I wasn't about to drag her into the car. She'd probably start screaming and crying or some shit.”

"She live on the Cut?" Barry's dark brows furrowed, drawing two deep notches into his forehead. "I thought you said you met her at the Country Club?"

"She's a bartender."

"So she ain't a kook then?"

Rafe started to wonder why Barry cared so much? If it didn't directly benefit him, by lining his pockets or fueling his insatiable need for dirt on people, Barry never cared to ask Rafe about his personal life.

He sighed deeply, crouching forward as the leather peeled away from off his sweat soaked T-shirt, and eyed Barry down. "Nah."

"You didn't mention that."

"If I did, would you have been nicer?"

"You know I don't like those Figure 8 bitches."

Rafe let out a childish snigger, remembering Barry's laughable attempt at picking up some of the Country Club chicks at his party last month. "Cause none of them want to fuck you?"

Barry's lips thinned, his words coming out in a gritted hiss. "Cause none of ‘em wanna pay for their shit."

"Yeah well, you made her real upset Barry."

He scoffed with a bitter smile, shaking his head at Rafe. "It's never your fault is it? You think I couldn't hear y'all holler from a couple yards away?"

Rafe sobered up real quick, the memory of her staring up to him with her big eyes, all watery and enraged, so different to how she usually looked at him, re-entering his mind.

Barry chuckled, flashing him his gold tooth, "y'know, she's right. Why is it that you always leave your girl to come here and spend time with me, huh?"

Rafe burned.

"Is the sex really that bad? You gotta come drink and smoke if off? Y'know, her cute little hair-do, and those tiny little shorts— she's real sexy— like some sorta pin up girl."

Oh so he was gonna play this game now? Rafe breathed in deeply through his nose, nostrils flaring as Barry's smile grew wider and hungrier— the smile that made his ears get all red and hot. "Shut the fuck up man."

"She doesn't do it for you?"

"She's fucking amazing, and she's also mine. So cut it out, you asshole."

"Oh so you're the problem then. But you seemed to get it up juuust fine when you were all over me that night?"

Rafe's heart sank, his stomach heaving like he was suddenly yanked and wrangled and shoved into a crate of cold water.

That night. When he'd kissed Barry because he didn't want to go home. Shoving his tongue into his mouth, stumbling over the furniture and collapsing onto the couch Barry was sitting in right now. They didn't get futher than that because he'd been too chicken shit.

Rafe broke eye contact, his sleep slicked gaze settling on the familiar divot in the couch where he remembers his knees sinking into.

"I can fuck her perfectly fine. You're making fun of me, but I'm not the one still caught up on shit from three years ago."

Barry laughed, cool as ever, gaze hot and lasered. "You sure about that? Why are you still here dawg?"

Rafe didn't say anything else, his mouth twisting in a streamlined vitriol. He stood up, silent and quick, and slipped out the trailer just as the last of the sun's light dripped beneath the thicket of trees.

...

Barry hated parties on the Cut.

He hated leaving his trailer. He hated the smell of bodies too close together. He hated having to be constantly vigilant of all the shit he carried with him, because those god damn surf rats infested these houses, and when particularly desperate, they weren't below straight up taking what was his.

But he hadn't seen or spoken to Rafe coming up to a week. And his trailer was silent.

Barry also hated the quiet. It was disconcerting to him. He was used to army life— with all the hustle and bustle and soft sound of snores settling over the barracks.

So he'd grabbed some weed and thought to make a quick buck at Wally's, in an attempt to escape the incessant whirring of the broken AC that just made the silence louder.

Half an hour later, he was holed up in the shack in the garden, lounging on an old sofa Wally was meant to trash, smoking his product and listening to the steady bass and distant murmur of party goers spill in through the broken windows, yellowed from grime and moss.

He let his head loll back into the seat, and inhaled deeply, trying to forget about the shit that boy had dragged him into. Ever since Rafe nerfed the hitman, Barry was just waiting for some bad shit to come his way. You don't mess with people like that. But Rafe had a hard time grasping such a simple fact. Motherfucker. He seemed to think Barry was the biggest cat in the game; with the sharpest teeth and the mettle to actually kill his pops. That belief had helped Barry glean a lotta things from him. But now it backfired, and Barry was a sitting duck.

Maybe that's why he liked to rile Rafe up. To push his buttons and make him gnash his teeth. Because he desperately wanted a reason to let out his simmering anxiety and bubbling resentment. But despite all of it, despite the percolating capacity for violence in his ligaments, Barry preferred to slink and cower and protect his peace. He got money now. He could actually make it out. Get clean. Fix himself up.

He let the thought of a new place with a nice view allay his snarled up systems.

The door to the shack open and closed, followed by the sound of heels hitting poured out concrete, turning into soft thuds when they stepped out on to the rolled out rug. Snapping his head up, Barry was ready to jump. It wouldn't be the first time someone knocked him out for his drugs and cash.

But the figure was small, feminine, backlit by the yellowed windows, and his body sunk back into the couch plush, his arms draped across the top.

"You sell?" She asked, getting closer.

"Yeah. How much you want?"

"Wait— Barry?"

His eyes squinted past the muggy mix of darkness and wan, watery light, to make out Sofia, starring down at him, with an expression of shock and, if he was cynical (which he was), disgust.

"Well well well. We meet again then?" Barry dragged his eyes over her, taking in her maroon dress with the scooping neckline. Only for a second.

Now Rafe wasn't there, he could dial down the pervert act, which riled the guy up so bad that it was comical. Any overt act of masculinity, be it the swagger he walked with or this grizzled protectiveness, was funny to Barry because he knew how hard Rafe liked to cling to that grit. It was all one big illusion. Was Rafe angry because he knew he wouldn't do anything about it? Letting Barry drink up the image of her ass, his only reprimand being a bitter glare— and that ineptitude at looking out for his girl was somehow Barry's fault?

He wondered what Rafe would do if he took it further— let his hands do what they actually wanted. Like, for example, now, if Rafe walked in to see the girl he entered the party with was being felt up by his weed stained hands— would Rafe retaliate? Or would he watch from the ivy-sheathed cracks in the window, seething and rock hard. Sofia crossed her arms. Barry’s gaze dropped to her tits before it flickered back to her eyes, dark and wet in the light. “Oh so you’re the dealer Luis was talking about?” “Don’t sound too disappointed,” he muttered, taking another drag. “Where’s your li’l boy toy? Surprised he came out to a pogue party.”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. I haven’t heard from him in days.”

Barry raised a brow. Those two had been fucking inseparable ever since the summer started.

Sorry man, I’m meeting Sofia tonight

No can do. Sof’s at mine.

I can’t talk right now. I’m uhhh a little busy (followed by a string of giggles which made Barry burn)

“Uh okay. How much you want?”

“Half a gram.”

Barry fished out his product from his pocket whilst Sofia shuffled around awkwardly, her heels scuffing the dusty rug.

He noticed she avoided eye contact.

“Why don’t you take a seat. I’ll roll you a J.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she waited a moment, as if deciding to take him up on his offer. Then she sighed, and took a tentative stoop on the edge of the couch, pressed up against the side, far away from Barry.

“I ain’t contagious.”

“Yeah well, I know you don’t like me. Aren’t I doing you a favour?”

Barry was silent at that. He lit and handed her the joint.

“So, this is the elusive business you and Rafe get up to then?” She drawled lazily, lying back deeper into the couch as she took her first drag. “Drugs…how original.”

Barry chuckled. She was funny. “Nah. It ain’t that.”

“Then what is it?”

“Can’t say.”

Sofia’s brief slip into an airy humour dissipated at being left out of the loop. Again.

“Why d’ya look like someone pissed in your drink huh? You barely know the guy.”

“I don’t care that he sells drugs. I’ve dated dealers before. I just don’t like being…strung along. Like some idiot.”

She’s dated dealers? Like who?

Barry exhaled, eyeing her in the corner of the couch, her legs nearly folded, her thighs bare and pressed together. “He doesn’t deal. I promise you that. And whatever he’s not tellin’ you, it’s for your own good.”

“Oh yeah? Like him not telling me what you guys get up to in that trailer of yours?” Her tone was tantalising…laced with an acrid suggestion.

It made Barry seethe.

“I didn’t lie. You ever think he just wants a break from you and all your bitchin’?”

“Don’t call me a bitch.”

“Bitchin’. It’s a verb, sweetheart. I didn’t call you nothin’.”

He could tell she was trying not to smile. On the corner of her bee-stung lips, slightly parted, it was tucked away. So Barry smiled for the both of them— wide and unashamed.

She took another drag. Then the hidden smile was gone. And she was sad again. It made him stir with a rove of guilt. Only a flicker and only faintly. But guilt nonetheless. A girl like Sofia, who looked so natural with a smile, unhappiness marred her face like the red after a slap. And Barry was no woman beater.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I haven’t heard from him after that day too. Looks like he’s brushin’ both of us off.”

“Well…it’s more like I’m brushing him off.” She gave him pert little grin.

Barry chuckled out a breath of smoke, “uh huh, if ya say so. Just tell me somethin’— who’s the one doin’ the booty callin’… is it you? Or him? Cause if he’d always call you up…I don’t think you’re the one who’s gone MIA.”

She muttered, gaze darted down, fixated on the matted spot on the carpet, “You sure know how to charm your clients, don’t you?”

“I’m just just sayin’, you seem…okay—”

“—gee thanks.” She scoffed, smoke swirling out of her.

“Rafe ain’t…he ain’t what he seems like.”

“So he is gay?”

She wasn't just funny— she was a fucking comedian.

Barry’s eyebrows furrowed and mouth curved into a barely repressed smirk, “It’s true then? He can’t fuck you right, so much so you think he only likes dick?”

“No! He can. Well, it took a couple of tries for it to…you know..actually feel good. But he doesn’t seem…like, uninterested. And with the two of you being all vague and cryptic…”

“He’s into you, okay? You don’t need to worry ‘bout that." He grumbled, more bitter then he intended to sound. "And it isn’t like that between us. We’ve just known each other for years. That makes you a little…off. The longer you stick around him, the higher the chance you’ll turn like that too.”

Her face screwed up at that.

“Turn like what? A little off? What the fuck does that even mean?”

Barry just shrugged, not knowing how to explain it. Rafe Cameron was built from contradictions; they held together his bones and viscera, sticky like glue and dried blood. And when he touched you, you became stuck like him too— the walking talking contradiction.

“Confused. Angry. But you can’t fuckin’ leave. ‘Cause yeah, he’s an asshole. But he’s also like a dog. Lonely. Desperate. And if you’re a sick fuck like me…you’ll make the most outta that.”

He’d let his gaze blur, looking at the way the light played between the fractures in the window. He waited a beat, lulled into a weed induced trance, before he cocked his head towards Sofia again.

She looked fucking terrified. Her downturned eyes big and glassy. Shit. He’d freaked her out by opening his big mouth, talking about dogs and desperation like some sorta rabid church preacher. Inside thoughts, Barry. Inside fucking thoughts.

The joint continued to burn, held between her skinny fingers. It’s head smouldered, bright orange like that one bikini she wore when he’d come over to Tannyhill that day to get his payment.

She was playing in the pool by herself. Neon and skin-tight polyester. Nipples pebbling in the breeze. Rafe had grinned while they watched her from the bay window, as if he was showing her off. And Barry shamelessly drank her in. Later that night when he slept alone in his trailer, he rubbed one out to her, splashing about, dripping and drenched. He’d been agitated, annoyed that Rafe was no longer nothing. He was growing out of him. And Barry seethed. He seethed like a fucking geyser, hot and spurting, all over his hands and stomach, the image of Sofia in that flame coloured fabric, a pathetic excuse for a bikini, burned onto his retinas.

She was sat still. The joint glowed, hot and firey, as she remained inert and hazy. Her fingers slipped and the joint fell, hitting her bare leg.

Hissing, she jumped up, “shit,” brushing it away until a bright red mark stained her bronzed thigh.

Barry didn’t even think. He swiped his thumb with his tongue, wetting it with his spit, and leaned on over and brushed at the burn, rubbing gently while Sofia froze beneath his sticky touch. They stayed like that for brief and stifling moment, until Barry moved off, returning to his spot. His joint hung out his mouth, body cool and fluid, while Sofia sat stiff, looking anywhere but the red, spit stained mark on her leg.

“A sick fuck…okay.” She finally said, almost as if it was to herself and Barry wasn't meant to hear, quiet and breathed out, like a wish. She slowly turned around to face him. “How much do I owe you for the weed?”

“Consider it paid for. It’s been quiet the past couple days. I needed the conversation.”

Sofia nodded, slow and calculated, letting her hair fall over her shoulder, shrouding her face from his. “Thanks. I gotta go. My friends are probably looking for me.”

He’d heard that line of bullshit before.

“They always are, aren’t they."

And besides, he didn’t think she had any actual friends. She was either at work or with Rafe.

Well that was one thing they had in common.

Sofia got up. He noticed she didn’t wipe away his saliva; it caught the glow of the party as she stood in it’s amber spill, pooling from the festoon lights strung across the garden.

She flicked her stub onto the concrete floor, crushing the remaining embers under her heel.

And then she left, quiet as the day she slipped out the trailer. But this time, Barry was sad to see her go.

…

He left the party not too soon after, quick like a race dog, scared she would see him scamper.

Back in his trailer in no time.

He'd switched on the lamps and sat on the depressed couch, marinating in a lonely orange light.

Why the fuck was Rafe ignoring him?

He disliked this contortion of normalcy. And right now, when he was sitting like a moron, alone on a Friday night, he hated it.

Barry was supposed to be the one ignoring him. Barry was supposed to be the one calling the shots.

He'd had Rafe by the scruff of his neck but after all that shit with Ward, and now all this shit with his new bitch he'd found to play with, Barry was left not knowing where he stood.

And he was a man who liked having two feet firm on the ground.

His breath gradually started to quicken as his eyes rummaged around the room. Rafe was holed up in that big mansion of his. Safe and fucking sound like a fat little pig. With the spiked iron gate and sturdy new windows.

And here he was in his shitty little trailer waiting for the consequences of Rafe's actions to creep up on him, knocking down the rickety steel door or bashing in the thin glass.

He never should'a called the hitman. He knew it. He knew Rafe was a pussy who couldn't firm it. And now he was playing house with the only girl who'd fall for his bullshit— a desperate pogue who was a friendless loser. Just like him.

Barry got up in a huff, marching down the skinny coridoor and bursting into his room. He threw off his shirt balling it up and hurling it into the laundry basket.

The mirror he'd hung up glinted at him, his reflection bare and enraged. The veins that meandered up his wrists and arms, like twisting weeds were engorged, and his chest undulated with every every incensed breath.

He thought he was big now?

At the foot of the small mirror, winked back at him one of the tiny gems they'd hacked off the cross.

And next to it hung the crucifix pendant he couldn't bear to part ways with— a muddied dull gold, collecting dust in the corner of his room.

Barry shut the curtains with a rough tug and collapsed on to his bed.

He thought back to what he'd last said to Rafe. Reminding him of that goddamn night. Dry and salty lips. The stench of his sweet cologne that barely hid his sweat. His hard on pressing against denim.

Barry taking him in, laid on that couch with blue eyes above his recumbent body, blown out like spilled ink.

He'd been ready….Barry wasn't above messing about with the clients he found pretty. But Rafe had gone and made it weird. Like he always did. Babbling about not telling anyone, jittering with his belt like his hands were too cold.

And then, not even three months later, he went and killed the fucking Sherriff.

Barry missed what he was like before that. Malleable.

Soft.

The sliver of his flat shiny stomach white above his belt and his lanky arms, so easy to pull and push around.

Now he rivalled Barry, bursting at the seams of the shirts that used to just hang off of him.

He'd found his own Rafe. A wisp of a girl, lonely...sick.

Or had Rafe finally replaced Barry? With someone who he could pour all his affliction into. Someone who wouldn't judge him for his shit, because when you're a pogue...a bottom feeder...you eat up anything.

Even the scraps off the plates of pitiful kook boys, wiping away their leftovers right into your open, hungry mouth.

Barry tried to sleep. He didn't want to think about pretty girls who also spoke Spanish. Who he'd never have a chance with. Who were dirty like him. She had to be. Look who she was with.

And Barry definitely didn't want to think about him. His soft underbelly. Back when he'd smile. Or the way his dick felt against his thigh. When he thought Barry was the only person who'd ever tolerate him.

So he thought about something real. Threat and fear and the reality of the fucking situation.

He prayed quietly that the door wouldn't give way if they came tonight, for his money or for his head.

...

"¡No mama! ¡No me siento bien hoy!"

I don't feel well today.

She was fine. Well...physically she was fine. Her parents and boss didn't think an affliction of the heart was a worthy ailment.

But oh how she ached. She writhed internally with a gooey mix of shame, desire and desperation. And she hated herself all for it.

Rafe hadn't texted or called.

And her strange run in with Barry made her doubt flare, dousing her body in spite. She tossed around in her sheets, hot and nervous, grabbing her phone from off the window sill behind her bed.

No new messages.

She half expected him to follow after her when she started to cry. She hoped he would’ve. But he just…let her go, with tears in her eyes down the dusty path trailing up to Barry’s place.

A line had been drawn in that muddy mix of dirt and dust.

He’d chosen him over her.

Her heart twisted at the memory. But she had enough sense not to be the first to break the contactless week they’d had.

She learned her lesson from the previous names that were burned onto the lining of her heart. When she’d been so pathetic and so ready to give herself in her entirety at the chance of being loved by them that she’d lost all sense and reason.

Lost all her friends too.

Some went off to college. Some finally escaped the Cut. And the rest of them? They just stopped talking to her. Well, she stopped talking to them first. But when Sofia found herself slumped onto the shower floor, feeling like her soul had been clawed out of her body, yet another man hurting her, she wished there was someone who’d have checked up on her, regardless of how much of a bitch she’d been.

She wasn’t a bad person…right?

Sofia didn’t care about the physical reminders, be it the blossoming bruises or the nails marks on her arms and legs. Or the way everything throbbed, pulsating, white hot pain that reverberated all the way into places they’d touched.

She cared about the pain inside. The feeling that something was stolen from her, deep within her core.

She didn’t know who she was anymore.

And when Rafe had left her, crying and clearly upset, it made her think of Ryan. Sweet, sweet Ryan who’d say her feelings made him ‘uncomfortable’. She’d learned to shut up with him.

And when she found out Rafe was lying to her about what he’d been doing, it made her think of Lucas. The boy who just oozed charm, and was cheating on her behind her back for two months. She’d learned she was replaceable with him.

But Rafe wasn’t usually like that. He wasn’t like them. He’d been so different. So lovely and kind and caring and soft. He never ever hurt her. It was almost like he was afraid of doing so. She’d have to tell him to fuck her hard. The rest of them just took what they wanted and expected her to be okay with it.

But Rafe was a mess. A sweaty, nervous mess. Sofia had to hide her smile and kiss his cheek and reassure him that she was fine. That he was fine too.

It was a refreshing change of pace.

Of course the first guy who’d treated her well had all these rumours attached to his name. A murderer for a father, a violent streak in his soul…but the longer she stayed, the fainter the hearsay became. How could a guy who couldn’t even fuck properly because he was scared he was gonna hurt her, be capable of such things?

But her alma gemela was now ghosting her. Ghosting Barry too, apparently.

Maybe she still had a chance.

Sofia threw her head back into her pillow, scrunching her eyes shut at the golden streams of light that fell into her room, filtering past the lace curtains and hitting her right in the face.

A soft knock interrupted her thoughts.

Sofia sat up to see the door open, her dad hovering in the doorway.

Shit.

“Your mom said you weren’t feeling well?” He walked in. Sofia drew the bedsheet close to her.

“Yeah, my stomach really hurts. I think I just need to rest.”

Her dad loitered about the room. He had his work boots on. He should’ve left by now.

Eventually he sighed, and took a seat on the edge of her bed.

“Look Sofia, you don’t need me to be telling you this…we can’t afford for you to skip work just ‘cause you stayed out late partying.”

“I didn’t—“

“Don’t lie to me, chiquita. I heard you come in late. And I can smell the weed on you.”

His lips twisted, the skin taut with an anger she could tell he was trying to keep at bay.

Sofia shifted uncomfortably in her bed, shame pooling deep in her belly.

“What would your mother think, hmm?”

Sofia shook her head, opening her mouth to speak. But she was cut off.

“It doesn’t matter now, yeah? Sort yourself out.”

Sofia nodded, her eyes big and and lips wobbling, “yes dad.”

“And what’s this I hear about you and the Cameron boy?”

Her heart dropped like a weight in a chest, thudding and thunking in her ribcage. How the hell does he know?

What would her parents think about her being with the son of Ward Cameron? Renowned cop killer. Traitor to the poor.

“One of my buddies was doing maintenance work at the Country Club…said he didn’t know my daughter and Rafe Cameron were together.”

Sofia’s brow twitched and she suddenly wished she decided to go into work. That would’ve saved her from this conversation. She didn’t like talking with her dad on a good day. And this was far from a good day, her body already sticky with the heat, and now she burned hot with shame too, wanting nothing more to draw the cover over her head and collapse into her pillows.

“How long has this been going on, hmm?” Her dad simply asked instead, gaze hard yet warm.

“A couple months.” She mumbled.

“What is it…he just stringin’ you along like some of the other pendejos you were stupid enough to mess around with?”

There it was again.

She knew her dad thought she was a slut. But he let her ‘get around’ because she gave everything to this family. She needed an outlet. She needed an escape.

I’m sorry mija, we just can’t afford college. You should’ve worked harder for that scholarship.

I’m sorry baby, you know you can’t do that. Who’s gonna take care of the bills huh?

I’m sorry…

I’m sorry…

I’m sorry.

So if her dad found out she’d been hooking up with the Youth Pastor, getting fucked in the church store room, dressed in her Sunday best, he would turn a blind eye.

She was still his good girl.

But when she did something wrong…

Perra…mujerzuela…bitch…slut

Sofia shuddered, and thought before she answered.

“He’s my boyfriend dad. He’s serious about me.”

Her dad’s anger seemed to dilute at that, “yeah?”

Sofia chanced a smile, “yeah. We’ve been seeing each other for a while now.”

“That’s good mija. The Cameron’s— they’re very well off. It’s nice that you have someone who can…take care of you.”

So no mention of the rumours then?

“Yeah, it is nice.”

Her dad brought a hand to her head, cupping it gently, “no more missing work, okay?”

Sofia stiffened and had to slowly unclench at his touch, “okay dad.”

“Good girl.”

And then her got up and left, leaving Sofia alone in her bedroom, suffuse with sunlight and and the stifling remanats of the lies she just told.

Rafe wasn’t her boyfriend and he wasn’t serious about her— he’d been airing her for a week straight. They were nothing. He had made that much abundantly clear.

She grabbed her phone again and clicked on his name, her fingers trailing there automatically.

Nada.

She scrolled up, agitated and bored, her eyes drinking in their messages.

R: I need to see you baby

Can you come over?

S: all the staff have gone

meet me in the kitchen :)

R: Oh fuck you look so hot sof

I’m so hard rn

S: show me

i wanna see how hard i make you

The pictures. The videos. God, she was so fucking stupid.

But the thought didn’t stop her from clicking on the pics he’d sent. Of his abs, tensed and sweaty after his work out, his golden happy trail catching the light, disappearing down his low slung shorts.

Of his dick, red and swollen, glistening with pre-cum.

She lingered on the ones with his face in. So she could recall how he looked when he was under her, so pretty and so dazed…she would stroke him with just her fingers tips and he would whine like a cute little puppy.

Why couldn’t he have just fought a little harder?

She wasn’t serious. She never was!

The names burned into her myocardium…Ryan, Lucas, Sawyer…Benjamin, Colton, Elijah….they would’ve dragged her back by the forearm, forced her to stay, held her body down so her feet were rooted into the dirt.

But Rafe never touched her like that. Even when she wanted him to.

Sofia jumped out of bed.

If her dad found out she was just one of Rafe’s bitches, resigned to nudes and sneaking around in the dark, he would’ve gotten worse when he was drunk, suddenly remembering God exists, and his daughter was a whore.

She could hear it now…you think you’re so smart, baby. These boys don’t care! You need to learn to close your legs. You used to be so good, Sofia. What the hell happened, huh…?

And then she’d proceed to zone out, dissociate, float all the way up so she couldn’t hear his tirade.

She wasn’t a whore. She certainly wasn’t Rafe’s.

She just wanted to…feel good. Her friends, before they all dispersed like flies, had joked and called her a sex addict.

But it wasn’t that she was addicted to. It was never about the physical, be it pain or pleasure.

She just wanted to be wanted.

And Rafe’s eyes, so blue, like the hue of the forget-me-nots she’d pressed into her copy of the Bible, felt like that intangible thing.

She wished to soak up in that gaze of his, above her or below, syrupy and sweet and warm.

If she was wanted, that meant she was good…right?

Sofia showered quickly, getting changed into a summery dress, with her regular reeboks on.

She kissed her fingertips and grazed her mama’s statuette of the Virgin Mary, before leaving the house in a flash of pink fabric.

…

PART TWO: DON’T LET FEAR LEAD YOU

Sofia got the bus to Figure 8.

If her mama came home and saw her car wasn’t in the front garden, she’d be done for.

From there she walked all the way up the winding, sandy pathways to Tannyhill, peering through the gate.

It was locked. And Rafe’s car was gone.

She’d texted one of her colleagues at the Country Club, asking if Rafe was there. They said he was a no show. For another day in a row.

Sofia wondered where he was getting his liquor from if it wasn’t from the Yacht club. Ever since she’d been with him, she’d learned to put up with the smell of alcohol on his skin. It wasn’t hard, not when she was so accustomed to that familiar stench emanating from her father.

Her warm hand wrapped around the intricate looping lattice of black iron, her fingers tightening around the hot metal.

That lying rat.

Barry said Rafe was airing him too. And she’d believed him? How strong was the weed he gave her?

Sofia was trying to forget the way her stomach deliciously frothed as Barry swiped at her leg with his wet thumbprint, looking at her with unblinking, steady eyes. Like he knew exactly what the hell he was doing.

All the while him and Rafe were probably laughing behind her back, making fun of what a stupid bitch she was.

Sofia pulled at the gate in a rush of anger, the old iron clattering in a cacophonous jangle.

She stormed down the chalky walkway, getting the bus back to the Cut, and wasting no time yanking her bike out of the shed.

She was done feeling sorry for herself.

The ride to the trailer park was short and windswept, her bangs getting all mussed up in the hot, dry breeze.

What was her plan? She had no clue. Even if it was only for the satisfaction at being right for once, she was gonna find Rafe and finally put him behind her.

Or beg for him back.

She was still deciding on what to do.

And for Barry? She wanted to wipe that smug look off his stupid face.

Sofia shook her head as she careened down the paths that were getting greener and denser and more and more claggy, the smell of gasoline and sweet grass filling her nostrils, making her sick.

She’d finally reached the opening, where his trailer lay, all lonesome and out of sight, the scraggly live oaks creaking down from up in the sky, nestling the place in a soft pear coloured glow.

Goddamn Barry. All of this started because of him. Because he couldn’t help himself, trying to rub her face in the dirt when she’d first come here. ‘That’s what he be tellin’ you?’ In that sing-songy southern drawl of his.

She was trying to be nice. She didn’t want to be this girl who swooped in and uprooted Rafe from him life. She wanted him to like her. She wanted to be cool!

She knew how much Barry meant to Rafe— she just wanted to be included. But of course, it was just in her luck that Barry turned out to be a vindictive little bitch.

Sofia eyed the messy tails of grass, littered in deck chairs and black trash bags, for Rafe’s motorcycle. She didn’t spot it. Maybe he parked up somewhere in the woods.

She dumped her bike down on the side, hiding it in the bushes, before she made her way up to Barry’s place.

It was quiet, only the soft sound of the leaves ruffling and the wind whining could be heard, serenaded by the low warble of the crickets and frogs and the occasional twittering of a bird.

Sofia stepped quietly onto the wooden porch and peered into the grimy window. It was covered with an orange blind. She was careful not to loom over the frame, in case Rafe and Barry were in the bedroom and could see her silhouette bleed into the orange. But even though her ear was pressed against the metal exterior of the trailer, she heard nothing.

Sofia knew how…vocal Rafe was during sex. Muffled moans and groans and whimpers that sounded like a baying dog. But it was silent. At least he wasn’t fucking a drug dealer behind her back.

Sofia moved towards the door and slowly tried the handle. It was locked. So she moved around to the back of the trailer, dragging her hand across the dusty hot alloy that wrapped around the structure.

All the windows were covered by some sort of drape or throw, and most of them were locked.

Except for one which wobbled when she pushed at it, the mechanism clearly old and rusted and ready to snap off.

The trailer was still blanketed in a thick silence. No creak or groan in ear shot. Maybe Rafe wasn’t here. Maybe neither of them were. Her flat palm pushed against the window again, the metal catch even more weaker.

Maybe she could slip in. Just for a moment. Snoop around for some proof that Rafe had been here recently. Finally give her some closure. She couldn’t deal with the throbbing pain in her heart, waiting for him to call her first, ruminating on him every second of the day.

Sofia hissed a shallow breath and broke in the window.

A small giddy laugh escaped her throat.

What the fuck was she doing?

She dragged one of the cinder blocks that were haphazardly piled behind the trailer and used it to hoist herself up so she could reach the window, and slowly wade past the drapes to check if anyone was inside.

The interior was dusky and Sofia blinked through it to make heads and tails of the muggy, filtered air. It was empty.

She lifted one leg up and fed it through the window, settling on the couch that lay under. And then the other leg followed and she was inside, her heart beat stuttering like a flickering candle.

Her reeboks sunk into the soft plush, the couch clearly older than her with the way it swallowed her up right to her shins.

Sofia levelled her breath and slowly scrambled onto an even footing. The place smelled of weed and cigarettes and the citrus of cleaning solution.

The last time she was here she didn’t really focus on anything other than the two boys, desperately trying to make a good first impression.

But now she could meander about the matted carpet and judge them, not writhe under their scrutiny.

Cans of beer lined the window sills. Yellow paged books, some with coasters sticking out of them, others face down on the last read page, were strewn about the side tables and any flat surface.

Sofia tried looking for something of Rafe’s. Maybe a shirt or his keys. Her fingers felt through the garments thrown on the clothes hangar. Large boxy T-shirts and vests so unlike the crisp polos and close fitted tees Rafe preferred

She moved quickly to the bedroom.

The air was thick with the same mugginess of the living area, born from the hastily drawn curtains, too thin and littered with moth bites, making the sunlight bleed in weakly, it’s hue the dull orange of tea stains.

But Barry’s room smelled slightly different. Acrid sweat and the warmth of incense. It wasn’t all together too unpleasant and Sofia was reminded of the heat he radiated sitting beside her in Wally’s shed.

Her eyes flitted about the place, trying to stay on track.

She was here for Rafe.

No— that made her sound almost munificent. The kindly sweetheart doting on her man. She wasn’t here for Rafe, she was here to implicate him.

A bright light hit her eye. The weak sun caught something metallic and shiny, the glare prodding her pupils like a spike. She wandered over to the mirror and spotted the crucifix, and a small crystal looking thing. Like amethyst, but smooth and glossy, the colour of crushed up violets.

She didn’t take Barry for a religious man. Or a spiritual one either. Crystals were for those hippie witchy folk. Barry was neither of those things in her mind. But then again, how well did she really know the guy? She picked up the hefty gem, rubbing it with her fingers and admiring its weight.

She turned to put it back down and saw a flashing mass of colour, a blur of flesh and whiteness in the corner of her eye.

She felt the gem slip from her fingertips…

And then all she saw was black.

…

That goddamn AC.

He needed to get it fixed. But right now all he could do was run a cold bath and sit in it, the water quickly growing tepid.

Barry lay back, his limbs awkwardly angled in the small bathtub. He wondered what Rafe was doing.

At least he wasn’t doing Sofia, he thought with a bitter scoff and mean smile. Maybe now Rafe could shake off the thrill from the first girl who’d actually let him fuck her, and start focusing on their operation again.

Profits were dwindling. As was the gold. They needed a plan.

Barry needed a plan.

But Rafe didn’t seem to understand that. He was just riding the high like he always did, never checking his pocket to palm for the empty baggy.

And that fucking hitman. Barry thrashed at the water, sinking down in its cool embrace and groaning at the way it swallowed up his sunburned shoulders.

Maybe they’d forgotten about it. Did hitmen have insurance policies? Did they have to sign a liability waiver before they set off to knock someone out? Was Barry in the clear?

The thought of a guy signing a form before he committed murder brought a smile to his face, a dark chuckle bubbling from his chest.

He closed his eyes and tried to dream.

…

The fishing shack smelled like wetness and wood and something smoky Rafe couldn’t place.

He lay back in one of those shitty carp chairs his dad would lug around in the back of the truck, letting his long legs stretch out onto the pier. He basked in the shade of the damp alcove overlooking the scintillating body of green brackish water that made his nose scrunch, and thought about everything and nothing and all of it in between.

Thankfully, he’d found a cooler of beer to imbibe the time. Rafe had been coming out here and drinking away his sorrows, so to speak, as his sorrows were still very much inside him, festering, fetid and mutating. The image of his dad sitting here by himself, drinking all alone suddenly made Rafe’s insides twist, his heart swelling with an unbearable nausea.

He’d tried calling, he’d tried texting— both Sarah and his dad— but still no response. The dread encroached yet again, like the slimy edge of the water hitting up against the pier’s legs.

He took another long drowsy sip, his gaze always on the water, the chair faced away from what lay behind him. He was trying to avoid the patch of blood that had soaked into the wooden floor boards. He’d attempted to hide it, dragging a box of junk over the spot. But it was still there, splatters and drops dotted about the floor. It was the same reddish, brownish tinge that coated his arms that night. The same blood now a month later, fused to the mossy green slats.

He recalled washing his hands furiously in the Kildare County Sheriff’s office. He tried his best, but it was still there, all over his forearms, in his nails and the grooves of his fingers.

He wondered if he smeared any of it on Sofia while he was fucking her in the middle of nowhere.

She didn’t say anything when he’d asked her to stay there and wait for him over the phone, his voice raw and cracked. She just opened her car door and lingered until he dismounted his bike, before she walked over and accepted his quick and hungry kiss.

Did flecks of red get in her hair when he’d tugged at it? Did the crimson on his shirt stain her work clothes? Why didn’t she say anything? Couldn’t she smell the iron on his skin? The salt coating his cheeks?

He didn’t think about how he tasted to her…he just lapped at her mango lip balm and snorted the clammy smell of her sweat and cheap perfume.

He missed that smell. Of her after her shift, slightly undone and sweet and ready for him to undress her.

She hadn’t contacted him. And he couldn’t bring himself to talk to her. He couldn’t face her after the shit went down at Barry’s.

Their bubble had burst.

A soft hazy month of sex and pleasure, wrapped up in late night whispers, lingering touches and easy conversation, dissipated, its iridescent surface popped and lost to the ether.

He’d upset her. She’d started to ask questions.

Then why do you always leave me to come here…

He’d left her that night to go to Barry’s too.

He helped slip her underwear back on, mumbling a half hearted goodbye, and drove off on his motorcycle, down the dusty dirt roads spidering across the Cut.

He didn’t say much to Barry when he reached the trailer either. Rafe just gave him a weak nod of the head to let him know Ward was okay, ignoring the man’s twisted face and sour expression. And then he’d collapsed onto the couch and fell into a dark sleep.

Barry hadn’t texted too. He never ever called, but sometimes Rafe’s phone would buzz and there would be his name, and despite himself, Rafe would smile.

But Barry didn’t check up on Rafe this time round, after goading him out of his trailer with that smug look and those searing eyes.

You sure about that? Why are you still here dawg…

Rafe leaned forward, head in his hands. The week had been long and drawn out. He sometimes fell asleep in the fishing shack, waking up in a sticky mess of spilled beer, saliva and mosquito bites.

And he’d wished he was either at the trailer, the hushed sounds of Barry going about his day waking him up. Or in his bed, Sofia softly snoring beside him, her head under his arm.

He missed them. He missed them both.

Digging his nails into the scratchy flesh of his scalp, Rafe galvanised himself into getting up off his ass. He reached for his pocketed phone and clicked on Sofia’s name first.

He called but she didn’t answer…she always answered.

Was she still mad him? The thought made him prickle with fear.

Maybe Barry would be easier to reconcile with. There wasn’t the frills of feelings he had to dance around with him— Barry was cold and cool.

Rafe left the fishing shack, stepping around the box of junk and avoiding the blood splatters on the floor.

Cool off with Barry. Get hot with Sofia.

That was the plan.

He got in his car and drove down to the trailer, until the virescent heat haze of the fishing shack disappeared under the rolling hills of the cove.

…

The leaky faucet trickled a never ending drip feed that hit the surface of the bath water…

And Barry listened to that singular droning sound.

Singular until he heard the trailer floor groan.

Someone was in the living room.

Suddenly all his thoughts about the clerical responsibilities of the hitman industry fell through and cold dread settled in his heart, the bath water that he sat in, previously lukewarm, chilling his goose fleshed skin.

They’d fucking found him. And here was, a literal sitting duck, water and all.

The footsteps were light. Maybe there was just one of them. One vs one. That he could do.

The soft patter drifted past the bathroom door, a shadow flashing under the gap at the bottom.

The gun was in his bedroom, and it looks like they were too.

Fuck.

Barry silently got out of the bath, rivulets of water dripping down his naked and tensed body.

He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around himself, scanning the bathroom for something he could fashion as a weapon.

Slowly, he picked up the bath bridge made out of a hefty wood, and inched towards the door, opening it with a steady hand.

The floor to his bedroom creaked. He moved forward.

Shadows danced across the feathery sunlight that slipped past the blinds. Barry strode closer, his abdomen clenched, throat seized up, ready and eager. He ignored the tickling sensation of bathwater dousing his slick skin and simply tensed his knuckles until they were bleached white, like the spines of his books he’d left out in the sun.

Focus. Long quiet breaths. An even heart.

His military training kicked in like a smooth gear change, making him all alert and buzzed, hair prickled on his nape. He even had the buzzcut to match the mental state, back when he was camped out on the desert, greased with war paint and week old sweat.

The door was already ajar.

Using his elbow, his hands too busy priming the wooden slab as a weapon, he nudged open the door. And with a sure and swift foray, struck at the figure.

Hard.

And down they went, into a floraly pink heap on the floor of his bedroom.

It took a second for his brain to register the heap and slip back into some sort of a normal state, where adrenaline wasn’t pumping all over his systems.

When it did, a second or two too late, he let go of the ‘weapon’ and actually looked upon the ‘enemy’, their wails of pain sounding so…soft and shrill…like some sorta baby deer snagged by the jaws of a trap.

Peach coloured limbs— arms he noticed— stretched out onto the dark head of hair.

“Fuck,” he hissed, crouching down, realising that this wasn’t who he thought it was.

“Ow! What the hell are you doing!?”

That voice…

“Sofia?! What the fuck are you doing in my house!?”

She stilled and his blood ran cold.

Memories of the motionless dead flooded his brain.

“Look at me,” he instructed, grabbing her by the shoulders to simultaneously lift and move her to him.

Her face was twisted in pain, and her eyes shone with a light sheen of unshed tears. Not dead. Thank god.

“I— I didn’t think you were home,” she mumbled, almost like she was ashamed, and Barry suddenly felt old and embarrassed, like he was the one who’d been caught.

“Like that makes it any better. Now stay still and stop squirmin’ about. You can see alright, yeah?”

She nodded.

“Feelin’ dizzy? Light headed?”

She shook her head.

“Good.”

Barry dragged his hand softly at where she was clutching her head— where he’d hit her— to see if she was bleeding, gaze sterile yet concerned.

While Sofia stared up at him, her knees grazed his bare torso, her chin inches away from his sternum. He didn’t even deign to think about their palpable closeness, the type he imagined between the two ever since he saw her half naked in Tannyhill’s pool.

He’d just fucking bashed the girl’s head in for god’s sake.

Barry removed his hand from off her soft hair. His fingers were clean…bloodless. Thank the lord he’d opted for the bath bridge and not the cistern lid.

Grabbing a pillow from his bed, which she sat leaned against, he positioned her so that her head lay resting on it.

He got up and grabbed some clothes, suddenly remembering that he was in fact naked.

“Just stay here. I’ll uh…be back,” he mumbled, giving her one last look, sitting there so small on his messy floor, her limbs sprawled all over it, pink fabric spilled around her like a hazy pool.

He wished he’d cleaned up a bit.

She nodded, her chin tipped up at him, her throat bare and sun kissed, long and soft.

Barry broke eye contact and left the room, his fingers twisted into his shirt like the roots of the live oaks that surrounded the trailer, gnarled, impossibly tangled into the marshy ground.

…

Barry’s hands were softer than she’d imagined.

Ever since he’d twisted his wet thumb into the burn spot on her thigh, the memory of his touch danced about her brain like a nagging melody.

She focused on that sensation. Not the nibbling mortification eating away at her reddened cheeks. Or the dull pain that throbbed at the back of her head.

Sofia honed onto the only pleasurable thing about this shitty, embarrassing situation— how surprisingly hot Barry was.

Dripping wet torso. Gold chain hanging from his neck. How gentle he was when he cupped her face.

Her eyes wandered to the purple gem that lay on the floor and she had the thought to return it to its perch, but Barry entered the room before she could make a move.

He noticed her staring at it.

He was dressed now, in a T-shirt and some shorts, holding a glass of water.

Silently, he handed her the glass, nodding his head at her as if to say drink, before he bent down and picked up the gem.

“What are you doin’ Sofia?” He asked, not looking her way. “Did Rafe put you up to this?”

Sofia swallowed, suddenly feeling microscopic and silly, dressed in her stupid summer dress, knees up against her chest on the floor of a bedroom she wasn’t supposed to be in…

She wiped the water dribbling past her chin.

“No…I came here looking for Rafe. The window lock was broken. I’m sorry.”

“Me too. I guess. You may be an annoyin’ little shit, but I didn’t mean to knock you out like that. Hittin’ a woman ain’t somethin’ I do, I want you to know that.”

He rubbed his thumb across the shiny surface of the stone and put it back next to the crucifix.

“It’s okay Barry. I…I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I went over to Rafe’s and he wasn’t home. I thought you two would be here laughing at me behind my back or something. I don’t know…thanks for the water.” She felt ridiculous saying her silly, little (unsuccessful) plan out loud.

“No problem.”

God…he sounded so unaffected it made her prickle with sweat. Sofia finished as much water as she could before she reached up to place the glass on his bed side table.

“You feelin’ okay?” He asked, watching her from the corner, arms crossed and expression cool.

“Yeah.”

He took one step towards her, and then reached a hand out. “Come on then.”

She gingerly accepted, letting him hoist her up like she weighed nothing and settle her on his bed.

He paused for a moment, as if in thought, and then decided to take a seat next to her, the bed dipping with his weight, dragging her into his orbit.

The two of them were silent for a while, watching the light shift and flicker across the wood panelled walls.

“So you didn’t lie to me that day at Wally’s?” She asked after a moment, finally turning her head to look at him. He stayed staring ahead.

“About what?”

“About Rafe ignoring you too.”

“Why would I lie?”

Sofia simply shrugged. She’d thought him vindictive. She’d thought him cruel. She’d thought him and Rafe were…something else. Maybe they still were. Maybe Rafe was just stringing both of them along— not just her.

Sofia lapped at her dry lips. “You know where he is?”

“Nah.”

A sudden worry unfolded in her chest. Where the hell was Rafe if not here?

Barry reached for the drawer by his bed, pulling out a couple of pills and offered them to her, along with the rest of the water, “take these.”

“Are these free too? Or will I have to pay this time round?” She attempted to joke.

It elicited a small smile from him, but not the hearty laugh she was used to. Guess he’d given up the charmer act now that he’d seen who she really was. Not hidden by the low lights of the party, all inviting skin and shiny hair. Sofia was a messy, bitter freak.

She’d literally broken into his home. God, she wanted his bed to swallow her whole, face muffled by his comforter that smelled so much like him, and be suffocated to death.

Sofia took the pills and shut up.

What was he waiting for? She just wanted him to kick her out already so she could go home and claw at her skin.

Sofia reached a tentative hand out to his forearm, “I really am sorry, Barry. I wasn’t going to steal anything. I promise. I just wanted to find– I don’t know– some sort of proof that Rafe was here. Just so I could put him behind me.”

Her hands made him tense. She felt it in his skin. Was he disgusted by her? Sofia didn’t think she could stomach that.

“Are you mad at me?”

Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Get up and leave…she willed herself to leave. But it was almost as if she was fused to his bed, glued to it, her last tether to Rafe.

She dropped her hand from his arm.

“You know…I always wondered what you saw in Rafe. And what he saw in you, for that matter.”

Sofia frowned. His tone wasn’t even mean. Just plain. But still, she felt pricked by his comment.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean…it’s fuckin’ ridiculous. Girl like you? So goddamn peppy and smiley, all the fuckin’ time, you gotta wonder if you’re just fakin’ it. And then him…with all those rumours hangin’ about…Big Bad Rafe Cameron. You don’t care, do you?”

Sofia’s cheeks burned, turning the colour of the flowers imprinted on her dress.

“Like you don’t care that I could’a killed you just now.”

Sofia didn’t know what to say, her chest pooling with a viscous shame. He was right. She didn’t care. And she had no idea why. She told herself to leave again. But her body remained still. Leave you stupid bitch!

But all she wanted was for him to touch her again.

“Shall I drive you home?” He asked. The question surprised her.

“It’s okay. I don’t live far.”

“Or do’ya wanna stay?” Was that…an invitation?

Sofia bit her lip, studying him from the corner of her eye. He still hadn’t looked her way. “What do you want me to do?”

Barry shook his head, looking down at the carpet. The muscles in the back tensed for a moment, dark lines appearing on his red shirt. Seconds passed before he let out an acquiescing breath. “How’s your head?”

Sofia sighed, quiet and sharp, like she was disappointed. “It’s fine.”

He simply nodded. “How’s the burn?”

The sensation of his wet thumb on her thigh suddenly hit her, like a phantom push pin being screwed into her leg. The thought of him licking her instead passed through her mind, slippery and enticing, making her shudder.

“Fine.” Sofia paused, a spool of string tightening around her stomach. “Do you wanna see?”

She didn’t know if it was the head injury, or if she was just used to the default of undressing when sitting on guy’s bed, but Sofia itched to do something about the dull pain in her heart at the constant turmoil over her and Rafe…and what better way to do that than with his closest friend?

Before he even answered, her hand went to the hemline of her dress.

Barry finally looked her way, his eyes drifting down to the quivering fingers on her skirt. He sat hunched forward, his elbows on his knees, his head bowed like he was in prayer. The sunlight bled in, haloing him in gold.

He gave her a single commanding nod, not looking her in the eye.

Sofia complied, hitching her dress up to reveal the burn mark that had darkened to dull red.

But she didn’t stop there.

She slipped her skirt up higher and higher, to reveal the tanned plush of her thigh, watching as Barry’s gaze slithered up along with the shifting fabric.

His arms finally moved from off his knees, hands reaching out to her naked leg.

He brushed at the mark first, gently, almost reservedly.

But then his entire hand sunk into her skin as he felt his way up her thigh.

The room suddenly became stifling. It was already hot, but now Sofia felt the heat of his palm bleed into her already burned skin.

“You’ve forgotten ‘bout Rafe that quickly, huh?” He murmured, his fingers trailing toward the warm well of her inner thighs.

“Well, that is the point of this.” She quipped.

He dug his nails into her skin. Like he was angry at her response. Goosebumps spread across her like a sheet of ice.

“And…what would this be?”

Sofia hummed, as if in thought. “A distraction.”

He huffed at that answer.

She took the moment to mirror his action, snaking a hand up his leg.

“Don’t you have things you want to hide from too?” Her voice was low and ponderous, coming from a place of genuine curiosity. Usually by now she would’ve slapped on some seductive, cloying tone if it was some other guy— Rafe included— but she knew Barry was too shrewd for that. So she was honest. Well, as honest as she could be.

He waited a while, and she could see the gears in his head turning. He didn’t grace her with his answer, but she could read the minutiae of his muscles movements— the twitch of the jaw, the roll of his back, the strain in his throat— what was he cowering from?

“Lift your dress higher,” was all he simply said.

She listened, and slowly bared herself to him, as his palm flattened against her core, pushing her back into his bed.

…

PART THREE: THE LOVELY UNEXPECTED

The tyres rolled across the wilted grass, his new electric car noiselessly entering the opening.

Rafe parked up, taking off his sunglasses and leaving them in the cup holder, before exiting.

He missed the breeze on his face and body, the hot air of the fishing shack often fusing his clothes to his skin. So he took a moment to let the cool slew of wind— thick with the smell of moss and gasoline— feather all over him.

Barry wasn’t outside, but Rafe spotted his bike hidden under a sheet of tarp behind the wooden hut.

That meant he was still home.

Rafe didn’t bother knocking. He never did. He knew where Barry put the spare key (under the charred blue tin drum hooked to the tacky Kildare keychain) so he fished it out and let himself in.

Inside was just as silent, the wedge of light revealing an empty trailer. He waded into the undisturbed, noiseless air. Noiseless that is, until he heard the rustling coming from the bedroom.

He was still in bed? Rafe headed toward the noise.

Barry was an early bird…he couldn’t still be asleep.

As he got nearer, he realised the door was slightly open, and that’s when he started to make sense of the sounds.

The rustle of the bedsheets. The muffled moans in tandem with another. The creak of the bed frame. The disgusting murmur of kisses…

Rafe couldn’t help the blinding stab of jealousy that made him both delirious and angry. Angry at Barry for somehow betraying him. And angry at himself for being so affected by it.

Hearing him fucking someone else made the tips of his ears glow red, and a funny sensation flutter all the way in his abdomen. The physical response to it, the way he wanted to recoil and retch…what the fuck was wrong with him?

Rafe was about to storm off but paused as his ears caught something else.

Those sounds, high and breathy, almost sweet….he knew those gossamer whimpers.

“Fuck…Sofia…” Barry’s grizzled voice hummed alongside the breaths.

Motherfucker.

Rafe convulsed in a burning fit, heart twisting in his chest and stomach sinking in a sea of bile.

Sofia.

What other Sofia did that piece of shit know?

Before he could think twice, he found his hand reaching out in front of him, a separate floating entity, as it quietly pushed the door open.

He blinked away the rage that he’d already settled comfortably in and tried to see with a lucid set of eyes.

There on the bed, in a mess of limbs and material, were Barry and Sofia, clear as day, almost spotlighted by the sun pouring in from the gaps in the blinds, turning their bodies golden and translucent.

They didn’t notice him straight away, Rafe hovering in the doorway, quivering imperceptibly, and for a moment he was simply just a sick and twisted voyeur.

Barry was on top, his broad back enveloping her. Sofia’s small hands clawed at those shoulders, while she threw her head backwards, hair cascading across his pillow like a pool of dark honey. The little facets of their bodies— the muscles along Barry’s vertebrae moving like waves…the way Sofia’s hips curved so smoothly…both their profiles so sharp and dark…

There they were— together— and Rafe was reminded just how alone he really was, his isolation delineated in the details of their bodies that were no longer his.

Rafe couldn’t see where Barry’s dick pushed in and out of Sofia, her thigh hooked around his ass, like she’d do with him. But he could see how Barry fucked her, with rough and steady strokes, eliciting a slew of gasps from Sofia’s red, open mouth. He suddenly imagined being both of them, simultaneously, the thought mushrooming in his brain like a tumour.

He was unnoticed, maybe for all of three seconds, before Sofia looked and locked eyes with him.

He watched her face contest with being caught red handed and being fucked by Barry, pretty features contorting in a heady mix of pleasure and sadness that made Rafe throb.

She dug her nails into Barry’s back, like she was unable to say anything, and he followed her gaze to the doorway.

Barry’s face was different to hers. He stilled, but didn’t pull out, and stared at Rafe with a hardened, unreadable look.

That was what it took to sift himself out of his liminal haze. “You fuckin’ piece of shit,” Rafe gritted his teeth, feeling his cheeks burn and eyebrows furrow into his forehead,

Striding forward, he yanked Barry off of her by the arm, pushing him against the wall in one violent tug.

Sofia retreated from the two, turning into the smallest version of herself, gathered in a ball of her pink dress and Barry’s navy sheets.

“Back the fuck off man!” Barry yelled back. “Get the hell outta my room!”

“Your room? Get the fuck off my girl!” Rafe snapped his head toward Sofia when he said that, eyes big and wet and angry, almost pleading with Sofia.

But Sofia didn’t say a thing. She just shrunk impossibly smaller, like she was methodically making herself invisible. Say something! He internally screamed. He resented her for her silence. He resented her for betraying him. He expected this from Barry— But Sofia? She still didn’t say a word.

Rafe looked down at the bed, the sliver of Sofia’s leg visible under the tangle of covers, and Barry’s tensed abdomen heaving with laboured breaths just in front of him. It was almost as if Rafe had joined the two, one knee sinking into the mattress squaring up to Barry, while he stared back at Sofia half naked in the corner, imbricated in their coterie of limbs and flesh.

The anger dissipated all at once, leaving a bitter ringing sadness that made him want to cry.

He got up and left the room, quicker than he entered, not wanting them to see the tears.

But he knew they knew him. And he knew they had seen the incriminating shade of blue his eyes turned just as he was about to lapse into a blubbering pathetic, mess.

Rafe recalled Ward. The person he’d been fixated on the past week, thinking about him endlessly after pushing everything down. His father’s blood seeped into the slats Rafe had slept on. The same blood that he’d probably smeared all over Sofia that night.

Man up. Man up, right now.

Rafe slumped onto Barry’s couch— the one he’d avoided ever since the night of that fucking kiss— and let the tears falls, heavy and unceasing.

…

Barry pulled on his shorts and stood on the other side of the room, back towards Sofia.

He breathed in and out in a regulatory pattern, chest rising and falling erratically. Fingers reached up his sternum to tug at his chain that began to feel more and more like barbed wire as the seconds passed, an old habit whenever he felt sick with nerves.

It’s not like he had much of a moral compass, but still, his arm where Rafe had grabbed him smarted with an invisible flare up like he’d been branded by his rage.

Turning around slowly, he finally chanced a look at Sofia. She’d stayed in the same position, head drooped down, shrouded by her mussed hair.

He could go to her right now. Kiss at her cheek. Tug her out of her debilitating daze. Coax her onto her back again and pick up where they left off. A sick part of him wanted to know what she sounded like when she came. Finally live the fantasy of her in the bay windows of Tannyhill, where he wasn’t just spectating, but actually taking her as he pleased, be it in an orange bikini or a pink dress. They hadn’t gotten to that fantasy ending when Rafe had walked in on them.

But that barely-there-moral compass stopped him from approaching her.

“Sofia? You good?” He managed to muster, as his breathing returned to normal.

Someone addressing her seemed to be the spark that counteracted the inertia.

But she left his question unanswered, and instead just leaped up suddenly and dressed herself, not looking his way.

Barry also noticed the front door to his trailer hadn’t opened or shut. Which meant Rafe was still here. It seemed Sofia noticed that too, because she didn’t say a thing, her body trembling slightly like the frail wings of a starling.

“He’s more mad at me than you. It’s okay,” he whispered, nearing her.

She stepped back from him, shaking her head so her bangs fell prettily around her eyes, “you don’t know that.”

Barry tensed his jaw, eyes flashing darkly. “Oh so now you care about Big Bad Rafe Cameron?” He was being mean. He didn’t know why he was being so mean.

Sofia’s face creased in a wince, like he physically struck her. The pink dress that previously fit snugly seemed to swallow her up like sea foam.

“I’m sorry for dragging you into this,” she murmured. Her self-sacrificial tone made him blanch. He wanted to shake her by the shoulders and make her as mad as he was. But the bright eyed Sofia with a sly tongue and an impish grin was gone, leaving a subdued girl with colourless cheeks in her place.

Sofia then looked down at her bare feet, and murmured to herself, quietly, as if with the intention of concealing it from Barry, “papá tenía razón.”

Dad was right.

Barry didn’t have time to probe because she stared up at him in that moment.

“I— I’ll explain it. That I came here looking for him. It’ll be fine.”

Barry knew he didn’t have to address her streak of delusion because he could tell she didn’t even believe in what she was saying. He just reached out and fixed the thin strap of her dress that had fallen from her décolleté.

“You’ll be fine.” That was one thing he could count on.

He’d shoulder the burden of this bullshit. He’d been doing it for years with Rafe. He could handle it.

The girl in front of him clearly couldn’t.

Another sick part of him preferred that arrangement anyway— sadistically anticipating playing with Rafe’s buttons, getting him all riled up and calming him back down again.

“You’ll be fine Sofia. Calm down.”

…

Sofia stepped away from Barry and smoothed down her hair.

One less reminder for Rafe that she was getting fucked by his friend behind his back.

As she threaded her fingers through the strands, she dug at her scalp with sharp fingernails, hard enough so it hurt. God, her dad was right. She really was a good for nothing slut.

She had it good with Rafe. He was so much nicer than all the others. So much nicer.

But so was Barry.

He was acting too calm for her liking right now, so she retreated, and walked over to the hung up crucifix, dragging her hands through the knots in her hair.

Greed was a sin. But she wanted everything. She had always wanted everything. She bit the inside of her cheek and when she tasted blood, she swirled it around on her tongue like it was communion.

…

Rafe played with the yellow foam bubbling out of a tear in the couch, twisting it between his finger and thumb.

It took him a while to put a stopper in the waterworks.

When he could finally see through the slimy film of tears, he realised he couldn’t hear anymore noises emanate from the bedroom. Not even a conspiratorial buzz of whispers.

The quiet of the trailer was unbearable.

A glassy loneliness settled in his bones, after the sobering effects of the sadness seemed to fade, seeing the only two people in his life he had right now fucking him over so spectacularly. He thought he’d gotten over the loneliness thing, but here it was again, and it hurt just as much as he remembered…

Walking all alone in Tannyhill. Sitting all alone on the lunch table. Having to look at Ward’s sympathetic face Rafe knew was actually a shitty mask for disappointment…

It’s okay son, you’ll make some friends soon.

Then years later— sympathy, disappointment— all of it gave way to a cold aversion, as Rafe continued to skirt around people like a freak, never being allowed to touch or talk or take.

What else did he have?

First his dad had left him…

And now the two people who he thought he finally had for himself…

They’d left him as well.

Rafe shook his head and dried his face with the back of his hand. He stood up with a hot resolve that felt like a searing brand, and made his way to the bedroom, opening the door in one swift motion.

Inside the two of them stood on either end of the room, moderately dressed— Barry in his shorts and Sofia in her rumpled sundress. They weren’t looking at each other.

Their heads snapped to him as he entered. Sofia’s resembled a deer in the headlights, her big hazel eyes like two iridescent pennies nestled into her face, her lips caught between teeth, turning them red. While Barry watched him clinically…warily, like a snake in the grass, coffee-eyed gaze honed onto him like he was priming for attack.

Rafe cleared his throat, hoping the redness in his own eyes had diminished. He puffed out his chest and dug his heels into the matted carpet. To look threatening? Or to conjure up something akin to nerve.

“Whatever this is, between you two…” he began, voice slurred and sleazy. Like he was making fun of them.

Sofia braced herself in that way of hers, self preservation wrapped up in a pretty bow, as Barry remained unchanged, only his fists tightening at his sides.

Rafe ignored them both, and nodded his head slowly, finally sure about one thing in his life.

“Whatever it is…I want in.”

…

He can’t be serious.

That was Barry’s first thought seeing Rafe stand there amid the swirling dust motes, set ablaze between them by the flood of high noon.

Despite being the tallest and biggest one in the room, Rafe seemed to have to fight back the urge to shrink in on himself. Which made Barry smile all the more meanly. He’d brushed off the residual guilt that littered him moments earlier. Like he usually did after he’d fuck the guy over, whether it be overcharging for dope or ratting him out to the cops….or hooking up with his girl.

“You want in?” Barry parroted, with a lazy twitch of his eyes.

Here he was, after finally laying claim to Rafe’s girl, to be met with a proposition? As if this was some sorta business deal? He couldn’t help but smile.

He watched as Rafe’s Adam’s apple bobbed uncomfortably in his throat, his head that looked like it was screwed on too tight, nodding dumbly.

“And what would that entail exactly?” Barry spun his words so his tone was syrupy…slow. Teasing in that way of his.

Like this was just another one of the games he and Rafe would play, cavorting across their conversations like an invisible string.

All the while Rafe brooded silently, eyeing Barry with a muted rage that seemed to disappear beside his desperation.

He’d missed the old Rafe. Ruddy cheeks and saline eyes. Malleable and soft. And here he was, despite everything, back in his trailer, looking at Barry like he needed him.

Sofia suddenly stepped forward, a pink blur in Barry’s periphery.

“Yes…yes please,” she rasped out looking up at her partner.

Barry stepped out of the oblivion he’d carved with Rafe, and rolled his shoulders slowly, feeling like he was suddenly intruding on something intimate he wasn’t supposed to encroach upon.

It wasn’t just him that Rafe needed this time round.

Barry stepped back into the shadows cornering his room.

…

Sofia soared like her prayers had been answered.

Bless Rafe and his bleeding heart.

She’d dashed over the clothes strewn carpet and stood as close as she could next to him without breaking the unspoken barrier. The insatiable need to touch him after being deprived from it the past week bubbled up inside of her again, and it took everything not to swing her arms around his shoulders, like she usually did whenever they’d meet.

Desire underpinned each rippling breath.

“I’d like that a lot.” She murmured softly, close to a whisper, like it was just her and Rafe in the room.

When Sofia spotted him in the doorway, while she’d had her legs encircling Barry, his face was so soft and broken, she had to hide away in herself.

She’d had the dark and ugly thought that finally, maybe now, Rafe would have enough reason to hurt her, like all the others that came before him.

But he didn’t so much as lay a finger on her, grabbing Barry instead with the anger she deserved.

And now here he was requesting to be a part of it?

A boy like him could have anything he wanted, but he’d come back here, tail between his legs, asking for this?

Her and Barry made sense. She didn’t feel incongruous wrapped up in Barry’s bedsheets like she did enlaced in Rafe’s.

What Barry had told her the night of the party suddenly dawned on her as she threaded her fingers with her lover’s, making a whole lot more sense than it did sitting on that couch.

But he’s also like a dog. Lonely. Desperate. And if you’re a sick fuck like me…you’ll make the most outta that.

Rafe held her hand tightly, like a puppy responding to a call. Lonely. Desperate.

And in that moment, Sofia decided to make the most out of it. Maybe she was just as much of a sick fuck.

“Yeah?” Rafe breathed out, staring down at her with wide, star filled eyes. Sofia’s breath hitched at the guilt burgeoning inside of her.

So she did what she always did.

Distract herself— unlacing his fingers from hers, tracing them up his chest instead, to rest flat against his wavering heartbeat.

“Of course baby,” she simpered, pressing firm onto his sternum. Had he already forgotten she was just fucking his friend behind his back? Or did he just not care?

Sofia didn’t understand and had no desire to decipher Rafe’s contradictions right at this very moment. Maybe, years later, she’d look back and hit herself for not seeing how awful Rafe was— possessive, indelible, unnatural.

But right now her body just rocked with a need to push past the stagnant air consuming the room. And besides, Rafe’s request was an attractive one, her lower tummy fizzing excitedly.

Turning back to consider Barry, hand still on Rafe, she looked over to him with a plain faced urgency.

No. She didn’t care about Big Bad Rafe Cameron, because there was nothing big nor bad about him.

Her other hand reached out to Barry, his bare shoulders stalked upwards as if on the defensive. She uncurled her pinkish palm, open and inviting, the memory of his soap smelling skin still imbued into the grooves of her fingers.

“Venir. Podría ser divertido.”

Come. It could be fun.

She spoke to him honestly like before, hating when Barry saw through her. His perception was like a knife through the gaps in her ribs. So she showed him what he wanted without fight.

And he accepted her hand, his grasp steady and firm.

Sofia suddenly felt transcendent, Barry stepping closer and Rafe crowding behind.

Her father’s voice that lingered in the pockets of her memories quietened down.

She felt in control for once, her fingertips closing in on both Rafe and Barry’s hot skin.

…

Rafe didn’t understand what Sofia had said to him, but after, Barry began to approach them, in that slow prowling way of his.

His blue eyes mirrored her stare and watched as Barry neared, throat tightening into a knot.

Barry’s abs constricted and strained in the low light and Rafe took the moment to steal glimpses of the silver scars that decorated him. He had the sudden urge to trace them, like how he used to trace the flowering shape of his own bruises in the bathroom mirror.

Barry darted between him and Sofia with a dark flickery stare, no longer clinical and cold but almost…apologetic. Brown eyes warm and jaw relaxed, bordering an open mouth. He hovered on Sofia for a moment, and it was like they were speaking another language with only their eyes.

But Barry wasn’t just looking at Sofia. He was also looking at him.

“So…is it gon’ be me and you takin’ our time with this pretty lady here…” Barry paused to flit his gaze down at Sofia hungrily. “Or is it gon’ be me and you…takin’ some time with each other too?”

Long fingers danced playfully with Sofia’s, yet the tone of his words were anything but playful. He slowly brought his stare up to Rafe, with challenge and defiance. It reminded Rafe of how…angry he looked when he couldn’t pull through, scrambling off of Barry and away from the couch, in a racket of a rattling belt buckle and babble of incomprehensible murmurs.

Rafe shuffled uncomfortably at his irreverence, sweat beginning to coat the dip of his lower back. He felt like he was nineteen again, scrawny and small, sweltering under the microscope of his drug dealer’s glittering stare. Rafe tried to shake off the past and dug his heels into the ground. He bit down on his molars, in an attempt to build the same conviction his body housed, into his speech. He wasn’t the same gawky kid as before. That kid had died a long time ago.

“We can take some time with each other too, right? Sofia, you don’t mind…?”

As the words left his lips, his heart felt like it would beat right out of his chest. So much so he had to divert his attention to Sofia instead of Barry. Because that was a whole lot easier than looking into his two irascible discs.

Sofia grinned, like a geode cracking open, and he felt light and airy inside. Relief flooded him, her smile like novocaine, numbing the pain stabbing him all over the surface of his entrails.

He finally let himself breathe, Sofia’s hands rising with his chest.

Something shifted outside, the thin layer of clouds lining the sky giving way to a brilliant outpour of sun, light surging in and finally casting them all in its delicious warmth.

The three of them stood there silent, an electrical tension humming and jumping across their sun drenched skin.

The heat didn’t feel oppressive or prickling or hellish.

It felt good.

Like liquid gold that had vaporised and now they were all breathing it in.

Sofia kissed him first, standing up on her tiptoes, both hands still holding on to both boys.

He swooped down to receive her, letting go to caress her bare back. He’d missed her pliant skin, so easily pulled between his fingers like saltwater taffy.

He opened his eyes to watch Barry as he fed his tongue into Sofia’s sweet mouth. He’d missed this too— a long game of eye contact held with Barry, across smoke or secrets, and now across Sofia.

They broke apart when they ran out of air.

While Barry continued to stare at Rafe, he dropped Sofia’s hand to cup her face in another kiss, barely letting her breathe from the last.

Rafe watched the two, catching his own breath, slithering a hand down past the fabric of Sofia’s dress to knead the plush of her ass. He lapped at her saliva on his mouth, eyes glued onto their overlapping tongues, peeking from their connected lips. He was no longer an outsider in the doorway, alone and far away. He could feel both of them in that moment— Sofia’s skin getting increasingly heated from both their ministrations, and her body consequently rocking his from Barry’s forceful kiss.

She gave him all she could, before pushing him away, smiling and breathless, then stepping back, as if to say: your turn now.

Seconds that felt like minutes fell around Rafe and Barry. Neither made the first move. Not until Sofia’s soft fingertips drifted up both their throats, like velvet dragged across sandpaper, and on to their cheeks, slowly nudging them closer.

She let her hand drop when their lips were only inches apart.

Rafe had replayed this moment in his head countless times…the feel of Barry’s lips upon his own (though he wouldn’t have admitted it). But that smoke stained night, of him sprawled atop Barry on the battered couch, was something he regretted. In many ways— too chicken shit and pathetic and coked up. But now…he could fix the memory. He didn’t often get a chance at that.

Their gazes flickered between the other’s mouth and eyes, jaws clenched and pulsating. Neither dared to open their lips first, as if that was an admission of defeat.

The seconds must’ve also been unbearable to Sofia, because she touched them again, slipping her fingertips past the pink swell of their lips and hooking her middle and forefinger into their mouths. Rafe began to shape his tongue into dissent, but when her fingers entered, he shut up.

Both of them accepted her intrusion without complaint, as if agreeing to this arrangement somehow meant they had to be okay with whatever someone else did.

“Y’know if you guys can’t even kiss…then how are we supposed to do much else,” she mumbled, dragging their faces together by the teeth. Rafe swirled his tongue around her digit, tasting salt and sweetness.

He looked ahead at Barry and his dick twitched seeing his mouth open around Sofia’s fingers. Between his teeth and her small hand, Rafe could spot Barry’s tongue curl and taste her too.

Their noses brushed together and Sofia’s hand slipped out their mouths, and in a Pavlovian attempt to seek another appendage, they interlocked tongues, quickly devolving into a messy, wet kiss.

It wasn’t like the kisses he shared with Sofia.

He kissed Barry with anger and bite, not caring if it would hurt. And Barry also gnashed back with teeth, butting heads as their tongues explored the other’s mouth, prying and unromantic. It was like the first time again, but even more frenetic.

Their hands did the same. Rafe scratched at Barry’s scalp, and he winced as Barry squeezed the scruff of his neck.

Breathless, they parted and stared each other down. Rafe could see his own desperation mirrored in the dark pits of Barry’s irises, the brown easily melting into the black pupil. He’d realised just how much they’d changed over these years, yet somehow they both still kept that same look in their eyes…milky sclera consumed by a dilating need.

A gruff laugh escaped Barry’s throat, wet lips twisting in mirth, “not bad, baby boy.”

Rafe wiped his mouth, and let himself smile. He wondered if Sofia wasn’t here, would Barry be this amenable? He decided no, and then was suddenly even more grateful for her presence.

They stepped away from each other and turned to see Sofia watch them from the bed, backlit by the sunlight, like some sort of fairy or imp, lips caught in between her teeth, blood red and protruding. She’d let the straps fall from her shoulders, the hemline messily pulled up to her mid thighs, waiting for them to join her. He remembered how she looked the first time he had her…at that party, with her in the red bikini sitting on the bed. She was so fucking pretty. And so so kind. He knew he hadn’t fucked her right, but still, she cosied up against him and kissed the skin above his heart. And now she was sat in the same position, tilting her dimpled smile at them.

“See that wasn’t that hard, was it?” She teased, her eyes glossed over. She looked at Rafe first, then glanced at Barry, trailing her eyes down to the sinewy plane of his abdomen.

Rafe quickly pulled off his own shirt, matching Barry’s state of undress to vie for her attention. And the two of them sat beside her, almost caging her in with their torsos.

They both simultaneously neared their lips to hers, Sofia opening her mouth to receive them. Rafe kissed her first, on the right corner of her mouth, and Barry followed suit, sucking at the left. The sensation was strange and wet. One second he was kissing Sofia, and the next, Barry. Then all three of their tongues seemed to enmesh together in a web of saliva. It was disgustingly hot, his cock growing hard against his jeans.

A jittering hand shot to her thigh, as if to ground himself, and Barry’s hand began to tug at her zip, slowly undressing her as their tongues all overlapped, in more messy, torrid kisses.

Sofia was the first to pull back, face hot and shiny with saliva and sweat and that rosy hue which blossomed whenever she got flustered.

“I— I need a minute.” She rasped, sinking back on her hands. Her breaths were belaboured, chest rising in falling in an hypnotic rhythm.

Rafe instinctively stroked at her knuckles, looking between the swell of her breast and her face. “You okay, baby?”

She nodded, her eyes fluttering shut, splaying her cheeks in a fan of dark lashes. “Just hot.”

Barry reached out to open the window, letting in some air to cool them down, before he shucked off his shorts, leaving him in only his boxers. “You sure? We can stop if you’re not down anymore?”

Sofia suddenly sat up, bright eyes snapping open. “No! I’m fine. I just needed some air.”

Rafe let out a small laugh. She was always down to fuck. He suddenly recalled her spread out like she was now, sunk backwards on her hands, palms flat across the dusty hood of her rust coloured car, as he dragged her hips into his, frantically fucking her like there was no tomorrow. The memory made him echo with a dull sadness. He looked at her face now properly, and instinctively reached out to touch her, grazing his fingertips over her rosy cheeks. It elicited a confused, lopsided grin, as she wordlessly asked what was the matter.

“He’s right. You don’t have to do this shit ‘cause you think that’s what I want.” Rafe said quietly, meandering his forefinger through the strands of her hair.

Sofia’s eyes flickered in the light, her features flashing with worry. In that second she looked so strikingly small between the two heaving masses of their bodies, and Rafe was reminded of just how fragile she was. He used to be terrified of fucking her too rough…how the hell was she supposed to take both him and Barry?

Sofia blinked slowly and shook her head, all gentle and soft, and smoothed the worry off of her features like she was simply ironing out some wrinkles.

Beside them, Barry watched the two, quiet and still, when he suddenly became strangely concerned, “Is it your head? Fuck, maybe we shouldn’t do this.”

Rafe’s fingers dropped from her cheek, looking between them with furrowed brows. “Wait— what happened to your head?”

“Nothing.” They both said in unison, making his brows crease deeper.

Sofia then sighed airily, which felt an awful lot like a distraction, reaching around and attempting to scratch at her zipper. “Just someone please get this dress off of me.” Rafe intercepted and helped Sofia climb out of the pooled up fabric, leaving her naked on the bed laid out next to the open window. He stroked his hand over her stretched out thigh, like she was a cat being petted, lounging in the sun dapples.

With a breathy laugh, Barry settled down into the bed too, grinning like he normally did, “y’all are two crazy motherfuckers.”

Sofia laughed with him, devolving into a back and forth of jabs that Rafe smiled at, his tongue swiping the bottom of his teeth as he looked between the two, a strange mix of sadness and relief mixing in his body.

He stroked Sofia’s ticklish hair while he watched Barry glow in an animated discussion with her, staring at him slow and unashamed, like he had all the time in the world.

He’d be better. Rafe silently avowed to himself, as Sofia and Barry continued to chat casually beside him.

That’s what his dad had said to him last.

You’re a good boy. Yes. Yes you are.

Rafe had agonised over those words, sitting watching the green waters catch the light, shimmering and shifting across the welling surface.

Maybe now he could finally become that unreal person Ward would’ve loved.

“Are you both just gonna sit there and watch me or finally do something?” Sofia said, cutting through his fracturing thoughts.

Rafe shook his head with a soft smile, and drew one last swirling pattern in her auburn hair, before getting up to shimmy out his jeans.

“Since I’ve already watched you two go at it, I’m assuming I get to decide how this goes, hmm? That sounds about fair.” He joked, settling back on to the bed.

Sofia scoffed, sitting up on her elbow, while Barry simply smirked, flashing him his gold tooth.

“Nah Rafe, we ain’t just gonna suck on your dick.”

That piece of shit. Rolling his eyes, Rafe yanked a pillow at Barry’s head, which of course he dodged easily, Sofia giggling beside them as little strands of her hair danced in the breeze.

The summer noises from outside bled in from the open crack in the window— twittering birds, the nuzzling trees and the heady buzz of gnats and crickets— and Rafe lay with Sofia and Barry, the two facets of this new life there with him at the same time. He’d thought it impossible, but seeing them both co-exist, their laughs intertwining with each other, lulled something deep in his heart. As if their synchrony somehow augmented how real they were.

He wasn’t alone. There was nothing wrong with him. He could finally be good.

The memory of his family, bloody and absent, like a weeping wound from a forgotten injury, seemed to finally scab over.

New fingers explored the taut fresh whites of scar tissue, and familiar kisses bled throughout him and across him, penetrating deep.

The summer faded away outside as they continued to kiss and fuck one another in the comfort of Barry’s bedroom, coming undone around each other’s hands and bodies in a sultry haze of sweat, grass and gasoline. The sunlight oozed in too, liquid and gold, casting all three of their pretty, undulating shadows onto the orange tinged walls.

Rafe was grateful it was summer. The heat enervated. But it also renewed.

Sofia’s head lay nestled under his arm, Barry’s legs draped over his own.

He slept easy, his dreams finally bloodless.