Chapter Text
Slowly, the darkness lifted.
Joe could feel his brain thumping on the inside of his skull, begging to be released like a caged animal. A distinct smell filled the air—bacon, maybe. Eggs and ground coffee. The light, musky smell of laundry soap and sweat. He was in bed.
His bed?
Had to have been.
His and Nicky’s bed in . . . where were they now? Not Malta. Mexico. Yes, on a mission in Mexico to eradicate a cartel that kept resurfacing like cockroaches. Still, their bed at the safe house in Mexico was no bed at all, more of a cot stuffed with chicken feathers.
A low moan rumbled through Joe’s throat. His head felt like someone had taken a rail spike to it. There had been bullets whizzing past his head, the pop, pop, pop of fresh rounds being fired at all angles. But then . . .
“Joe, wake up!”
Nicolo’s voice screaming over gunfire. Joe had heard it as he fell to the ground, a mushroom cloud of pain exploding in his head. And then darkness, an old and true friend he was tired of being familiar with.
“Yusuf, destati!”
A door squeaked open from across the room. Joe slowly opened his eyes and his body tensed with fear as someone climbed frantically onto the bed. Not Nicky. Not Andy or Nile or Booker. Someone small and wild and—
“Baba, wake up!”
Joe jumped as a pillow smacked against his side. He turned over, startled, and fell off the bed with a yelp. When he landed on the floor, he touched a hand to his head and raised his eyes to the bedside.
A little girl, at least seven or eight, with black hair and large brown eyes peered down at him. She giggled and pulled the collar of her pink pajama top up over her lips to hide her smile.
Joe stared, bewildered. This was not the safe house in Mexico.
“Hello,” was all he could say.
The little girl tugged her shirt from her chin and erupted in a fit of laughter. “You fell!” She toppled over onto the pillows and howled with delight. To her, it was the funniest damn thing since the chicken had crossed the road.
Joe scrunched his face. What. The fuck. He looked around the room, a completely foreign place that was something out of a Good Housekeeping catalogue. This room had cream-colored walls and mahogany furniture, crimson bedspreads and venetian blinds. Early morning sunlight streamed through the window, giving the room a warm, comforting glow.
And still, the child laughed.
“What’s going on?” Joe pulled himself to his knees by gripping the end-table. The clock on the nightstand read 7:15 am. He studied the room. It was nice. Clean. Completely unfamiliar.
“Baba, didja hurt yourself?” the little girl asked, her giggling subsiding.
Baba?
Joe’s eyes darted to the child. Obviously she was confused. Obviously Joe had come back from death for the umpteenth time and had been kidnapped by the cartel. This was some sort of new psychological torture. Maybe he had been hypnotized. Maybe they had drugged him.
And yet Joe didn’t feel hungover in the least.
“Amira?” a voice called from outside the room.
Joe instinctively reached for a gun on the nightstand but only found a college textbook titled The World of Jesus. For the first time since his stint in the Crusades, Joe felt powerless.
The little girl flounced off the bed and ran to the door. She opened it loudly and scuttled down the hall, yelling, “He’s awake, he’s awake!”
Joe stood on shaking legs, his head swaying from the pain that jabbed the right side of his skull. He ran a hand through his hair and felt a small lump where he was sure he had been shot. How did he end up here, and how the hell was he in flannel pajama bottoms—?
Joe looked at his left hand. A gold wedding band shimmered on his ring finger.
What. The fuck.
Joe felt the blood drain from his face. Married? How the hell could he have been married? He leaned forward, his unstable legs threatening to give out. This wasn’t happening. This was all a dream, a hallucination. Or maybe . . .
Joe’s legs nearly gave out at his next thought: maybe you finally died.
“Yusuf, destati!”
Joe could still hear his beloved’s voice ringing in his ears. A bullet had struck him, that much was sure. And the darkness, that came next. But he never dreamed before coming back to life, never had a glimpse of the other side or even a white light to reach for.
But this new place—this dream or afterlife or whatever—felt too real. The smells were too sharp. The sun was too bright and vibrant. The darling little girl with black curls was far too fleshed out to be anything other than a living person.
Joe peered through the blinds and was met with a brick wall across an alley. It didn’t look like Mexico. It may have been Paris or Rome or Dubai but the alley left little to guess on. Joe exited the room and slowly made his way down the hall, trailing his hand along the wall for support. Whether all this was a dream or some enemy’s elaborate trick, he had to find out.
Joe stopped dead in his tracks. His lips parted as he looked at a picture on the wall in a black frame, one of himself holding a baby in a small blanket. Another picture was next to it, this time with him and a toddler at the park. The last photo drew the air out of Joe’s lungs completely—him sitting on a park bench with that little girl named Amira on his lap.
“Joe?”
Yusuf swung his head to the voice. It was familiar, too familiar. Whoever it was, the man was in the kitchen, the smell of breakfast growing stronger with every step Joe took.
As he reached the end of the hall, Joe saw that he was in a warehouse loft, the kind rich yuppies lived in. Large square windows overlooked more buildings outside. There was a faint sound of traffic a few stories below on the street. The living area of the loft had leather couches, Persian rugs that Joe recognized from his countless travels in the Middle East, and bookshelves against the wall stacked with hundreds of thick, leather-bound volumes. It was spacious and modern. It reminded Joe of their flat in Amsterdam.
Joe turned right and entered the open kitchen next to the living room.
A man in a blue button-down shirt and khakis stood over a stove with his back to Joe, eggs sizzling. The man turned with a spatula in hand. A gold band shone on his ring finger.
“N-Nicolo?”
It was him. There was something different about Nicky, something more clean-cut and fresh and unburdened about him. But there was no mistaking his shaggy brown hair, blue eyes, and that mole on the right side of his face that Joe had kissed a million times. Nicky flashed Joe a quick smile and turned back to the eggs.
“Buongiorno, amore.”
Joe walked towards Nicky as though he had never used his legs before. Maybe he wasn’t dreaming. Maybe the gang had picked him up and brought him to a different safe house and it had just taken him longer than usual to come back to life.
Yeah. Maybe.
“Nicky . . . what’s happening?” Joe said. His voice was barely a whisper.
Nicky turned the heat down on the stove and slid the scrambled eggs onto a plate. “I know,” he said, his back to Joe, “I’m running late, but I wanted to be a good husband and make my family breakfast before work.”
Family? Work?
Whose family was Nicky talking about? Joe looked around the kitchen and saw two plates set at the table. The child was nowhere to be seen. He looked at the wedding band on his hand again.
“I don’t under—”
“Amira Francesca,” Nicky called, dumping the dirty pan in the sink, “sbrigati, per favore!”
Joe heard the pitter-patter of the child’s feet scampering down the hall. She brushed past him and skidded to the table.
“I’m here, I’m here!”
Joe looked at the girl, then at Nicky. “Whose kid is that?” he asked.
Nicky carried the plate of eggs and turkey bacon to the table and set it in the middle of the arrangement. “Si, lo so,” he said, “I don’t know where she gets her energy from.” Nicky pushed the little girl’s chair closer to the table and kissed the top of her head. “You, amore, are the queen of procrastination.”
“What’s that?” the child asked, reaching for a bacon strip.
“It means you’re gonna be late for school if you don’t eat.” Nicky buzzed around the kitchen, picking up papers and manila folders and stuffing them in a messenger bag.
All the while, Joe remained rooted to his spot, watching the scene as though it were a movie. He felt like a bystander, an audience member in a playhouse where the fourth wall had been broken. Nicky finally took notice of Joe’s silence and stopped mid-hustle.
“Hey. You okay?”
Joe looked at Nicky, mouth open as he tried to breathe normally. “Nicky, what’s happening?”
“What do you mean?”
“Baba fell off the bed,” Amira chimed from the table.
“N-no, I . . .” Joe sighed, frustrated, and touched the side of his head. “Mexico. Juarez. We were surrounded—”
“Whoa, whoa,” Nicky said, holding his hands up. “Slow down. What’re you talking about?”
“My head. I fell and . . .”
“Si.” Nicky nodded. “One of your students got too eager and landed a punch to your head.”
Joe crinkled his eyebrows. “What?”
“Last night. Your intermediate Krav Maga class. You don’t remember?”
Joe’s head swam. He looked at the little girl, who was watching him curiously. This all felt like a nightmare, a bad dream where nothing he was saying was right. “No, I—we were with Andy and Nile and—”
“That was Wednesday. Drinks at The Dubliner.” Nicky looked at Joe, his face growing even more concerned. “Nile’s going-away party for her second tour in Afghanistan, remember?”
“B-but—” Joe let out a strangled breath. No. This wasn’t right.
“Are you okay, caro?” Nicky reached out and placed his hand on Yusuf’s cheek.
For how fast Joe’s heart sped out of control, for how scared and stupefied and utterly exhausted he was, Joe found himself leaning into the comforting touch and closing his eyes tightly. At least this was familiar. At least this was one thing that hadn’t changed.
“I’m dreaming,” Joe whispered. “Wake up, wake up . . .”
Nicky removed his hand and went to the coffee pot on the island counter. He poured a mug and handed it to Joe. “Coffee helps.” He studied the man. “Why don’t I call the center and tell them you won’t be coming in to work today?”
Joe looked at the coffee, then at his . . . his Nicky. Same ocean eyes, same nose and ears and perfect mouth, with only a scruffy beard to tarnish the image Joe had of him since waking up. He grasped the mug, letting his hand warm around it. Nicky leaned in and kissed Joe’s cheek.
Remembering they weren’t alone, Joe suddenly felt self-conscious as he looked over at the little girl. She was watching them—no, she was watching him, picking at her eggs and turkey bacon with a crinkle between her eyebrows. It was the same type of crinkle Joe knew he must have been sporting right now.
“Merda, I’m very late,” Nicky said, fluttering around the kitchen again. He turned to Joe as he zippered his bag shut. “Andy’s picking Amira up from school today, but do you think you can send her off?” He looked at his watch and mumbled, “My students are gonna kill me.”
Students. Joe thought of the textbook on the nightstand and reasoned that this Nicky, whatever reality they were in, was a professor of religion. He could almost laugh. A priest in one life and a religious educator in another. No matter where Nicky went, it seemed God followed.
Joe set his mug of coffee on the island counter and doubled over, laughing. He put a hand over his face as his body heaved with chuckles. Booker always said that crazy people laughed at inappropriate times. Was this what it was like going crazy? Was everything now a figment of his imagination, a psychedelic trip he hadn’t had time to pack for?
“Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Nicky said, grabbing his coat from the rack by the door.
Joe straightened and waved his hand in the air, willing his laughter to subside. “This is all just . . .” He paused, looking around the room again at the concerned faces. The little girl had stopped eating. Nicky turned the collar of his jacket down and eyed Joe suspiciously.
Oh, God. This was serious.
“I think I need to sit down.” Joe made his way to the table and sat opposite of Amira.
“Are you okay, baby?” Nicky asked, approaching him with his messenger bag in hand. “Should we see a doctor?”
“Maybe . . . maybe I need to lie down again—”
“I can call Andy and have her bring Amira to school, if you want,” Nicky said.
“I, uh . . .” Joe drew a shaky breath. He glanced at the little girl, who was looking at him as though he might turn into a bug and fly away. Joe looked up at Nicky’s worried face, the man’s mouth turned downwards and his eyes dim with concern. The last thing he wanted was to cause a panic when he didn’t even know where he was or how he got here. “I’m okay,” he breathed, “I’ll be okay.”
“You sure?”
Joe nodded at his beloved and forced a weak smile.
Nicky kept his gaze on Joe for a beat longer, then pulled his bag over his shoulder. “Okay,” he said. “Call me if you need me.” He leaned in and planted a light kiss on Joe’s lips. Nicky moved around the table and kissed Amira three times quickly on the cheek. The child giggled. “Be good, amore.”
“Bye, Papa,” Amira said.
Joe looked at her. The word sounded strange to him; he had never heard anyone refer to his lover in that way. Nicky left with a wave and closed the door behind him, leaving Joe alone at the table with the child.
Yusuf slumped back in his chair and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hands. The smell of breakfast teased him, but he wasn’t hungry. Joe groaned. He wished he could wake up. He wished he knew what was going on, how he had gotten here, why they were having eggs and turkey bacon instead of shakshuka with mint tea.
“You’re not my baba.”
Joe dropped his hands and blinked at the small voice across the table. Amira was looking at him, her large eyes bulging with tears. She had abandoned her food, sitting back in her chair as though Joe might reach out and grab her. She looked at him like he was a complete stranger.
Fear gripped Joe’s heart. “What did you say?” he asked.
Amira shook her head. “You’re not my baba.”