The next morning, same as before, four am on the dot rolls around and in walks in Kal, I already had his coffee ready to go and already had his order on hand to give Nikolas as I got myself a cup of coffee and walked over as he sat down in the booth. Today’s suit being silver on cobalt brocade, black shirt and mirror polished black shoes, white vest, dark teal tie with a shell pin at the knot and similar things, a black crocodile skin overcoat, silver watch, his auburn hair is always tied back in knots, buns, braids or tails, today being a messy bun on the base of his skull.

“Something wrong?” I asked as I sat down his coffee and sat across from him, he laughed.

“Nah, its just been a very, very long day.” He said as he looked towards me, a kind and extremely pointed look in my direction that I didn’t realize had some blush rising in my cheeks. “A few of my employees have been…having a little trouble with some clients and their contacts. We always do the contracts with half the pay up front and the other half upon completion, like…most contracted work. They are being…stingy and trying to make it as smaller cut on the down-payment so they can try to get the work for less money.”

“How do you handle something like that?”

“I tell the clients they work by how we do our contracts or they have someone else do their contract somewhere else.”

“That’s a bit…cut and dry, no?”

“You kind of have to in my profession.”

“At least you don’t need a customer service voice”

“That is true. But I was meaning to ask, Anthony…are you free tomorrow?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just…curious: I enjoy talking to you and was curious if I could buy you lunch and maybe show you around my part of town a little.”

“I…I’m not gay, Kal.” I said quietly, he laughed.

“What, just because I am a gay guy and want to get lunch with you, does not mean I am flirting, you’re my friend and I am concerned about if you’re eating and sleeping right, so I want to treat you to some decent food.” He said with a soft shrug.

“I’m sorry if I insulted you”

“You didn’t, don’t worry, I get that a lot, people thinking my kindness if flirting. So?”

“Sure” I said nodding a bit.

I don’t know why I said sure to his offer, I watched Kal walk out of the diner before I saw a very, very expensive looking sportscar drive past, black and red, decked out in chrome. I looked down towards my hands before back towards the car living sight. I’ve only ever been in relationships with women, I’ve only ever seen myself in relationships with women and things of that sort, I have never had anything close to a romantic thought about a guy. I know that Kal said he wasn’t flirting with me, but there was just something to the way he spoke to me: he kept eye-contact, despite the two of us being the only people in here aside from Nikolas in the other room, he leaned forward a bit so he could speak quieter and he was a very…contact heavy person, there were moments where he would reach out and just touch my arm or hand when talking, there were a couple of instances where his feet accidently touched my legs, but he just seemed to not be bothered by contact.

As I got home, I looked at myself in the mirror of the bathroom: I’m petite, barely past five feet tall, I’m super tan because I’m Hispanic, plus I love sunbathing and being outside, covered in freckles to an extreme amount, black hair that was shaved close to the sides of my head and the back with the rest just pushed backwards to the nape of my neck, I wear glasses, my front teeth have a gap in them, my nails are usually painted to stop me from biting them, but that just changed to them being painted, but chipped to no end, I don’t dress super nicely and I don’t wear that huge of jewelry, usually very simple pieces and weirdly enough, my eyes don’t match: my right eye is my mother’s deep bronze/brown hazel tone, but my left eye is like nobody else in my family, my left eye is a piercing icy pale blue, barely blue, probably closer to a silvery gray or white than blue. I don’t have super manly features to my face or person, I always wear lots of thick layers of clothing and boots. Kal dresses so…nicely, his hair is such a unique color being that wine red color, those bright molten gold eyes and flawless sickly pale skin, he was everything I wasn’t. You’d never think he was gay looking at him.

I took a long shower before I buried myself in my bed, covering and wrapping the bedding around me in a cocoon because of how cold it was in the apartment as I buried my face into the pillows to try to get warm, but it was difficult.

The moment I fell asleep, I gasped as I found myself on the surface of the ocean, the waves raging and a storm churning above me before some sort of creature just burst out of the water and grabbed me taking me off the detritus I was clinging to and just dove…pulling me deeper and deeper and deeper into the water no matter how much I trashed or fought whatever was holding me, I couldn’t feel or see anything holding me, even when I reached to where I felt the creature grabbing me, there was nothing, but water, however it still kept pulling me deeper and deeper into the water.

I gasped loudly as my vision in the dream faded to black as I drowned and shot up in my bed, my phone screaming at me with my alarm as I turned it off and grabbed my glasses. I was in a cold sweat, my entire body shaking and weak, my head pounding and my mind churning with nothing, but tv static.

“Why…is it always…drowning?” I asked burying my face in my hands and pulling my knees nearly up to my chest.