DM Me When You Land novel · Chapter 2 of 6

Chapter 2: Room 614

They meet in a hotel lobby with pastelitos and pirulines, spend a day of nerves and touches, and share one kiss at the door that Pachas makes him wait on until tomorrow.

Pachas had told himself he would be calm.

He had rehearsed it in the truck the whole drive up the Turnpike, three hours of orange groves and billboards for alligator farms.

He would stand in the lobby, he would say hello like a normal adult, and he would shake the man's hand.

Then the elevator doors opened, and a boy in a gray hoodie stepped out holding a white pastry box against his chest.

It was ninety-four degrees outside.

The hoodie went up to his chin.

He had dark curls that stuck out under a black cap, thin gold-rimmed glasses, and brown skin gone a little pink at the cheekbones.

He was not tall.

His eyes were the color of café con leche, and they landed on Pachas and stopped.

"Pachas?" he said.

He didn't need to say anything else.

The voice went through Pachas.

"Apollo."

"It's Dariel," the boy said, too fast. "My name, I mean. In the, you know. Real life. Dariel Valdés."

"Leandro Briceño."

"Leandro." Apollo tried it on his tongue, and Pachas felt it in his spine. "That's a good name. It sounds like a soap opera."

"The guys on my crew would be thrilled."

They stood there.

Around them a hundred strangers in cosplay and lanyards pushed past.

Somewhere a man dressed as a giant mushroom was arguing with a hotel clerk.

Pachas had planned to shake his hand.

He opened his arms instead.

Apollo stepped into them.

He smelled like sunscreen and sugar and the inside of a car.

His head fit under Pachas's chin.

For a second neither of them said a word.

"Okay," Apollo mumbled into his shirt. "You're so big. You didn't say you were big."

"You didn't say you were cute."

"I'm not cute."

"I'm the one who can see you, chamo."

Apollo laughed, a short helpless sound, and pulled back with his glasses crooked.

"I brought you something," he said, and shoved the pastry box at him. "Pastelitos. Guava and cheese. I made them at six this morning, from my abuela's recipe."

"You cook?"

"I panic-bake. I was so nervous I made forty." He winced. "I'm so sorry, there are way too many."

"Forty."

"Forty-one. One burned."

Pachas lifted the lid, breathed in butter and guava, and something in his chest gave way.

"I brought you something too," he said, and dug into his bag.

He held out a fat plastic bag of pirulines, the thin chocolate wafer sticks he had been hiding from the guys at work for a week.

Apollo took them in both hands.

"Wait. Are these the ones from the videos? Where you said nobody in Miami sells them right?"

"One little shop in Doral does."

"You drove me candy."

"I drove you candy. And I'm going to watch you eat all of it."

"Okay," Apollo said, very quietly.

They checked in.

They dropped the bags in room 614.

It had two double beds with a nightstand between them and a long window full of palm trees and a billboard for a water park.

Apollo stood in the middle of the carpet and looked at the beds.

Then he looked at Pachas.

He looked away just as quickly, and a flush crawled up from his collar.

Pachas had spent two years learning exactly how Apollo sounded when he wanted something.

Now he understood that he was looking at the same moment from the inside.

"Hoodie," Pachas said. "Take it off."

"It's cold."

"It's ninety-four degrees."

"The air conditioning is aggressive."

"Apollo."

It came out low.

Apollo's lashes dropped, and his fingers went to the hem, and he pulled the thing over his head with an awkward tug.

Underneath he was lean and soft at the stomach, in a faded white tee.

A thin gold chain hung in the notch of his throat.

There was a small silver ring in the top of his left ear.

Pachas wanted to put his mouth on it so badly his hand shook.

"Good," he said instead.

Apollo made a sound that he clearly hadn't meant to make.

They did the convention, because they had said they would.

They played the tournament cabinet in the retro hall.

Apollo beat him twice at a fighting game while Pachas shouted in Spanish at the screen.

They ate cold pizza on a stairwell.

At every turn Pachas found a reason to put a hand on the small of Apollo's back, steering him through crowds.

Every time, Apollo leaned into the touch.

Pachas kept count.

A dozen times.

By six in the evening they had met half their static in person.

There was the Ohio healer, a bearded Texan who played the damage dealer, and a quiet girl from Tampa.

The Texan caught Pachas by the arm near the vending machines and grinned.

"You two finally meeting is the best thing to happen at this con."

"We're friends."

"Man, you've been friends so loud on voice chat that a girl in the channel had to turn her volume down." He held up his phone. "Anyway, we're renting a villa in Kissimmee tomorrow night. Pool, speakers, a whole thing. You're both coming."

"I'll ask him."

"Somebody's bringing molly, fair warning. Nobody has to. I just don't like surprises."

Pachas nodded, and filed it away.

That night they walked back to 614 through the hot, wet dark of International Drive, past the neon and the helicopter rides.

At the room door Apollo stopped with his keycard half out.

"Leandro."

"Yes."

"When you said you'd be patient for a day."

"Yes."

"It's been a day."

Pachas leaned a shoulder on the doorframe and looked down at him.

Apollo's pulse was beating in his throat, right above the gold chain.

"Is it?" Pachas said.

"Since the call. Since, like, twenty-two hours."

"You counted."

"Don't make me say it."

"Say it."

Apollo took a breath that shook.

"I want you to stop being patient."

Pachas put a hand flat on the door beside Apollo's head.

He leaned in until their noses almost touched, and he smelled sugar again, and the faint salt of the day.

"Not yet," he said.

Apollo's mouth fell open.

"Tomorrow night," Pachas said. "Everybody in the world is going to be there, music on, strangers everywhere, and I want to take you home from it knowing you chose me over all of it."

"I already chose you."

"Then you'll choose me again."

He kissed him.

It was only one kiss.

It was slow and hard and it went on until Apollo's hands were fisted in his shirt.

A small broken noise came out of the boy's throat.

Pachas drew back, held him by the jaw, and thumbed the corner of his mouth.

"Sleep, Apollo."

"You're the worst person I have ever met."

"Say that again tomorrow."

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