Chapter 2: Red Tinsel
The nod was a small, sharp movement in the dark. It wasn’t an agreement to anything specific, but it was a crack in the door. Xairo’s breath caught. A stupid, hopeful warmth spread through his chest, clashing with the tequila’s sluggish current.
He fumbled for the door handle. The sound of the mechanism was too loud. “Okay. Cool.”
“Cool,” Kayden echoed, the word flat. He still hadn’t looked away.
Xairo got out, the night air a slap. He leaned down to look back through the open door, one hand braced on the roof of the car. The dome light painted Kayden’s face in a sickly yellow wash. “So I’ll… text you or something?”
“You don’t have my number.”
“I’ll get it.”
“From who?”
“Isaac maybe. Or I’ll ask Ricardo.”
A muscle twitched in Kayden’s jaw. “Don’t ask Ricardo.”
The command was quiet, final. It laid another piece of the truth between them. This wasn’t something for cousins, for teammates, for anyone else. Xairo straightened up, the message received. “Right. Okay.”
He shut the door, the solid thunk sealing him into the quiet street. The car didn’t move. Xairo stood on the curb, watching. He could see the faint outline of Kayden’s hands on the wheel. He forced his feet to move, walking up the path to his uncle’s rusty screen door. He heard the engine rev, a soft growl, and then the sound of tires slowly rolling away.
He didn’t look back.
The week passed in a blur of routine that felt suddenly suffocating. Practice was a drumbeat of shouted drills, the smack of the ball against his instep, Isaac’s constant, easy chatter. Xairo functioned on autopilot. He scored in a scrimmage. He laughed at the right times in the locker room. He nodded along as Mateo talked about a girl from his philosophy class, his smile feeling painted on.
He thought about the nod. He replayed the car’s interior smell, the dashboard glow on Kayden’s cross. He heard Hector’s voice. Eye-fucking him.
“You’re somewhere else, man,” Isaac said, knocking his shoulder as they walked to the parking lot after Thursday’s practice. The sun was a brutal orange behind the hills.
“Just tired.”
“Bull. You’ve been quiet since the party. Something happen?”
Xairo’s pulse jumped. “What? No. It was just a party.”
Isaac squinted at him, his loyalty wrestling with his distrust for lies. “You left with Kaminsky, right?”
“Montreal drove the Diaz twins. Kayden drove me.” Saying his name aloud felt like dropping a stone into a still pond.
“Kayden? The bass guy?” Isaac’s steps slowed. “Hector’s cousin?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.” Isaac processed this. His expression was open, searching. “He’s cool, I guess. Quiet. Hector’s a piece of work, though.”
“Tell me about it.”
They reached Isaac’s dented Civic. “You know you can talk to me, right?” Isaac said, his tone shifting from curious to serious. “About anything.”
The offer was a lifeline. Xairo looked at his best friend’s earnest face and felt a surge of guilt. He wanted to grab it. The words I think I like him bubbled up, acidic and terrifying. But they stuck in his throat, choked by a lifetime of listening. “I know,” he managed. “It’s nothing. Just, you know… family stuff with my uncle.”
It was a weak excuse. Isaac’s eyes told him he knew it was weak. But he accepted it, because that’s what friends do. He nodded, clapping Xairo on the back. “Alright. Call me if you need to vent. We still on for burgers tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
He watched Isaac drive away. The silence that followed was oppressive. He pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering over the screen. He didn’t have the number. He had a nod. He opened a text thread with Ricardo, from two years ago about a pickup game. His thumbs were clumsy.
Hey. It’s Xairo. You got Kayden’s number?
He stared at the words. He remembered Kayden’s quiet command. Don’t ask Ricardo. He deleted the message. The screen went dark, reflecting his own uncertain face.
He needed another way.
The music store was on a tired strip of downtown, sandwiched between a pawn shop and a check-cashing place. The bell above the door jingled with a sickly sound. The air inside was thick with dust and the faint, oily smell of polished wood.
Xairo had never been in here. He felt immediately out of place. Rows of guitars hung like dormant animals on the walls. A bored-looking employee with dyed black hair glanced up from behind the counter, then went back to his phone.
And there, in the back near the soundproof lesson rooms, was Kayden. He was crouched in front of a display of pedal boards, a coiled cable in his hand. He wore a faded band t-shirt, the fabric stretching across his shoulders. He was alone.
Xairo’s mouth went dry. This was a stupid idea. A coincidental, unbelievable idea. He committed to it anyway, walking down the narrow aisle toward the amplifiers, pretending to examine a price tag.
He felt Kayden’s gaze before he saw it. He looked up. Kayden was now standing, the cable dangling from his fingers. His expression was pure, unvarnished surprise. It smoothed over into careful neutrality within a second.
“Xairo.”
“Hey.” Xairo shoved his hands in his pockets. “Just, uh. Looking around.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. Something.” He took a step closer. The store was empty except for the clerk. “My cousin wants to learn guitar.”
Kayden’s eyes stayed on him, unwavering. “You don’t have a cousin.”
The lie evaporated instantly. Xairo felt a flush creep up his neck. He held the gaze. “No. I don’t.”
The silence stretched. The clerk’s phone game played a tinny tune. Kayden looked down at the cable in his hand, then back at Xairo. “How’d you know I’d be here?”
“Isaac mentioned your cousin works here. Ricardo. I figured you might be around.” It was partly true. He’d dug for the information casually, a spy in his own life.
“Ricardo’s in the back on break.” Kayden said it like a warning, a delineation of territory.
“I didn’t ask him for your number.”
“I know you didn’t.”
Another step. They were close enough now that Xairo could see the faint scar through his eyebrow, the darker flecks in his brown eyes. The air between them felt charged, like before a summer storm. All the noise from the street faded.
“So you just came to look at guitars.” Kayden’s voice was low.
“I came to see you.”
There it was. No tequila to blame. No party chaos to hide in. Just the fluorescent hum of the music store and the bald, dangerous truth.
Kayden absorbed the words. He didn’t smile. He didn’t flinch. He studied Xairo’s face as if reading a difficult sheet of music. “Why?”
Xairo’s prepared phrases vanished. All he had was the raw, aching truth he’d been carrying since the backyard, since the car. “Because I can’t stop thinking about it. About you playing. About the car. About you telling Hector to leave it.”
He saw Kayden’s throat move as he swallowed. His knuckles were white around the cable. “That’s just being decent.”
“It wasn’t just that.” Xairo’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You looked at me.”
For a long moment, Kayden said nothing. The clerk laughed at something on his phone. Then, Kayden spoke, his words so quiet they were almost lost in the room’s ambience. “This is a bad idea, Xairo.”
The use of his full name sent a shiver through him. It was an acknowledgment of gravity. “Why?”
“You know why. Your whole life is at that college. With your team. My family… Hector.” He said his cousin’s name like a curse. “This isn’t some secret that stays fun. It becomes a thing. A problem people see.”
“I don’t care.” The words felt reckless, thrilling.
“You say that now.” Kayden’s eyes were fierce, intense. “You won’t say it when they start talking. And they will. You think Hector was bad at the party? That’s just him being himself on a Tuesday.”
Xairo’s heart hammered against his ribs. The fear was there, a cold knot in his stomach. But looking at Kayden, so close, so painfully real, the want was louder. “What if I’m willing to find out?”
Kayden stared at him, conflict warring in his expression. The careful control was slipping. Xairo could see it in the tight line of his mouth, the rapid rise and fall of his chest. He was weighing it. The risk. The possibility.
The door to the back room swung open. “Kay, you find that—oh.” Ricardo stopped short, his eyes landing on Xairo. His friendly customer-service mask slid into place, but his eyes were sharply alert. “Xairo. Hey. What’s up?”
The spell shattered. The space between them now felt like a canyon. Kayden took a deliberate step back, turning slightly toward his cousin. “He was just asking about beginner guitars,” Kayden said, his voice perfectly normal, detached.
“Yeah,” Xairo echoed, the lie tasting like ash. “For a friend.”
Ricardo’s gaze flicked between them, missing nothing. The air was thick with everything unsaid. “Right. Well, the starter packs are over here.” He gestured to the opposite wall, his tone cordial but deliberate.
It was a dismissal. Xairo felt the momentum of the moment crash and dissolve. He’d had his answer, in Kayden’s eyes, in the tension between them. And now it was being tucked away, hidden behind cousinly protocol.
“Thanks,” Xairo muttered. He didn’t look at Kayden again. He followed Ricardo to a rack of boxed beginner kits, his mind screaming. He heard the jingle of the bell as Kayden moved toward the front of the store, the quiet murmur of his voice to the clerk.
Five minutes later, after a hollow conversation about string gauges he didn’t understand, Xairo left the store empty-handed. The late afternoon sun was blinding.
His phone buzzed in his pocket halfway to his car. A new message, from an unknown number.
Tonight. 9pm. The parking lot behind the old cineplex. Tell no one.
Chapter 2 continued
The old cineplex parking lot was a graveyard of cracked asphalt and dead shopping carts. A single, flickering sodium light buzzed like an angry insect over the boarded-up ticket booth, throwing long, distorted shadows. Xairo killed the engine of his uncle’s pickup at 8:58 PM, the silence afterwards thick enough to chew.
He hadn’t told Isaac. The lie of omission sat in his gut like a cold stone. He watched the shadows for movement, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
Every creak of the truck’s suspension, every distant horn from the freeway, made his pulse jump. This was stupid. Reckless. Everything Kayden had warned him about. He almost started the engine again. Then headlights swept across the potholed lot.
An older, boxy Honda Civic rolled in, quiet and dark. It parked three spaces away, facing the same direction. The lights went out. The driver’s door opened.
Kayden got out, a dark hoodie pulled up against the evening chill. He didn’t look at Xairo’s truck. He just leaned against the hood of his own car, arms crossed, staring at the ruins of the old marquee.
Xairo’s mouth was dry. He forced himself to move, the truck door groaning as he shoved it open. The sound echoed in the empty lot. He walked over, the gravel crunching under his sneakers. Kayden didn’t turn.
“Hey.”
Kayden glanced at him, then back at the marquee. His profile was sharp in the bad light. “You came.”
“You texted.” Xairo stopped a few feet away, unsure where to put his hands. He jammed them in his jacket pockets.
A long silence stretched, filled only by the hum of the light. It wasn’t like the music store. There was no pretense here, no Ricardo to perform for. This was just the two of them and a canyon of things unsaid.
“This is where the kids from my church used to hang out,” Kayden said finally, his voice flat. “Smoking, drinking, trying to feel each other up in the back row. Before it shut down.”
“Sounds… fun.”
“It was boring.” Kayden pushed off the car and turned to face him. The hood shadowed his eyes. “But it was safe. Everyone was the same. Knew the rules.”
Xairo understood. This lot wasn’t safe. Coming here broke every rule they’d been given. “Why did you ask me here, then?”
Kayden was quiet for so long Xairo thought he wouldn’t answer. He shifted, and the flickering yellow light caught a faint, shimmering strand in his dark hair. A thin, red ribbon of sparkle.
“What kinda guy puts glitter in his hair?” Xairo heard himself ask, the words out before he could filter them.
Kayden’s hand went up self-consciously, fingers brushing the spot. He looked caught. “It’s called tinsel. My little sister told me it would match my outfit, so I just let her put it on me.” He dropped his hand but didn’t move away.
Xairo reached out, his movement hesitant. He gently tugged at the strand of red tinsel in Kayden’s hair. It was softer than he expected. Kayden didn’t move away from Xairo, he allowed him to continue touching his hair, to continue to stay here in his cold car’s shadow.
“It’s distracting.” Xairo let go of his hair, but his head was still turned towards Kayden’s. He could see the rapid flutter of a pulse in his neck.
“You good?” Kayden asked again, the question no longer genuine. He didn’t want to know if the boy in his passenger seat was good.
“Yeah, I’m good. We good.” Xairo said, his voice low.
“If you don’t get out then we won’t be.” Kayden replied, his words a shaky echo of that night in the car, but his feet were planted.
“I’m just waiting.” Xairo admitted. He wasn’t sure what for. A sign. A rejection. Something to make the swirling in his chest make sense.
Kayden didn’t say anything, and for some reason, those three words compelled him to do something he wouldn’t have done otherwise. Kayden closed his eyes, closing the distance between them with a kiss.
It wasn’t soft. It was a collision—all the pent-up tension from the party, the car, the music store, crashing into a single, desperate point of contact. Xairo’s eyes shut as he kissed him back, allowing himself to breathe in the lavender fragrance of his soap and feel the softness of his lips, a shocking contrast to the hard press of his body.
His hands came up, one gripping Kayden’s hoodie at the waist, the other tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck, the stupid, beautiful tinsel wrapping around his fingers. Kayden made a sound against his mouth, a half-swallowed gasp, and then his arms were around Xairo’s shoulders, pulling him closer until there was no space left, just the heat between them and the cold metal of the car at their backs.
It was nothing like the quick, confusing kisses Xairo had stolen in darkened hallways with girls from school. This was an anchor line in a storm. This was a question finally answered with a body, not words.
They broke apart, breathing ragged, foreheads touching. Kayden’s eyes were wide, dark pools in the shadow of his hood.
“Xairo,” he whispered, just a breath of sound.
And then he kissed him again, slower this time, more certain. Xairo felt the world narrow to this: the taste of him, the solid weight of his hands sliding under Xairo’s jacket, the way his own heart hammered against his ribs like it wanted to break free.
When they finally separated, the silence of the lot rushed back in, but it was different now. Charged. Crackling. Kayden leaned back against the car, running a hand over his face, his breath puffing white in the cool air.
“So,” Xairo said, his own voice rough. “That happened.”
A faint, disbelieving laugh escaped Kayden. “Yeah. It did.”
They stood there, looking at each other in the buzzing yellow light. The fear was still there, a cold undercurrent beneath the warmth blooming in Xairo’s chest. But it was smaller now. Drowned out by the memory of Kayden’s mouth on his.
“Now what?” Xairo asked.
Kayden looked at him, really looked at him, his gaze tracing over Xairo’s face like he was memorizing it. He reached out and carefully plucked the strand of red tinsel from where it had transferred to Xairo’s jacket. “Now,” he said, his voice steadier than Xairo felt, “I drive home. And you drive home. And we don’t tell anyone.”
He said it gently, but the finality of it was a cold splash. The real world, with its Ricardos and Hectors and Isaacs, came crashing back in.
“And then?” Xairo pressed, needing more, needing a thread to hold onto.
Kayden pocketed the tinsel. He pushed away from the car, opening his door. The interior light came on, a brief, blinding square in the dark. “I don’t know,” he said, and he sounded tired. Tired of the rules, tired of the hiding. “I’ll… I’ll text you.”
It was the same thing Xairo had said on his uncle’s porch. A flimsy promise. But it was all they had.
Xairo watched him get in, start the engine. The Honda’s headlights cut on, illuminating the forgotten shopping carts and weeds pushing through the asphalt. He didn’t wave as Kayden pulled away. He just stood there, the ghost of the kiss still burning on his lips, the scent of lavender clinging to his clothes.
He got back in his truck. The silence was absolute. He stared at the space where Kayden’s car had been. I’ll text you. He started the engine, the rumble foreign in his ears.
As he drove out of the lot, his phone buzzed once in the cupholder. He didn’t look. He drove the familiar streets towards his uncle’s silent house, the flickering cinema light fading in his rearview mirror, a single, dying star in a sea of mundane darkness.