Her Night With Santa by Adriana Herrera

More Bonus Content: Caught Looking: Chapter 1

Tuesday

Yariel

“What the fuck?” I asked into the stillness of my bedroom as I ran a hand over my fade. Even with my eyes closed I could tell I’d forgotten to pull down the black-out shades, which meant my twenty-fifth floor apartment was probably flooded with Brooklyn waterfront sunshine.

I was still half-sleep, but even in my semi-conscious state I knew something was off. For a second I panicked, thinking I’d missed morning PT, but then remembered we were still in the off-season. No, whatever it was had nothing to do with my job as a shortstop for the Brooklyn Bombers. My head wasn’t pounding so it wasn’t a hangover, although from how fucking dry my mouth felt, drinking had definitely happened.

“Shit,” I moaned as I gingerly prodded a sore spot on my collarbone…and that’s when it all came back to me.

Hatuey. I’d slept with…Hatuey.

“Coño.” I croaked, squeezing my eyes tight for a few seconds, not ready to find my best friend lying naked next to me. Not after what felt like an entire lifetime of restraint and careful control only to blow it all up in one night. I didn’t dare turn around, not wanting to see the horror when he opened his eyes and realized what we’d done.

I took a couple of breaths, fighting down the anger at myself for letting this happen. I tried to remember that acting pissed with him would only make things more difficult—and they were bad enough. But when I finally opened one eye and turned around, I realized shit was way worse than I imagined.

He was gone.

“Fuck.” I sat up, with a million scary thoughts running through my head as I quickly ran through the events of last night. Hatuey coming over upset about another dating app shit show. The two of us gaming and talking over a couple of beers and then the question, that damn question. The one I knew I should’ve ignored—that I fucking knew would end in disaster.

My stomach churned as the panic rose in my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut again, and as if my mind were one of those old-school movie reels, I saw Hatuey’s wide mouth, his generous lips open just enough to give me a peek of his tongue, as he leaned in to kiss me.

Nope, not going there.

Last night had to go back to where all my thoughts about Hatuey and sex went: to the vault. The vault that kept my ill-advised obsession with my straight friend on lock. The vault that kept me from losing the most important person in my life because I could not keep my dick in order. I squeezed that motherfucker on the head for good measure, because he was not running the show this morning like he had last night.

I wasn’t some lovesick teenager—I was a grown fucking man. I would fix this. I would make this all go away like I had for the last ten years.

As soon as I figured out where the hell Hatuey’d gone.

After throwing on some underwear, I ran a hand over my belly and almost threw up when I felt the dry patch right over my groin…come. Come from when I’d fucked my best friend last night. “Mierda. Mierda. Mierda.” I breathed out so close to losing it.

He must be freaking out. I had been a fucking monster last night too. My stomach roiled at the memory of the things I’d said. It was a side of me Hatuey had never seen in all the years we’d been friends, one that I’d worked very hard to keep under control. Feeling more worried with every passing second, I hurried to the bathroom hoping and dreading I’d find him there.

Nothing.

“Hat? Donde tu estas?” I called as I walked from room to room, until I’d run out of places to look. And with every step the fear I’d ruined things with the most important person in my life wound me up until I was hardly able to breathe. The skin on my face felt tight, stretched on the bone. My heart raced as I walked back to the bedroom, wondering what could be going through his head. I hated this feeling, and it was all my fault. I let this happen, and I had to be the one to make things go back to how they were.

I glanced around the room, looking for some evidence that he’d really been here, some hysterical, desperate part of me hoping I’d imagined the whole thing. That the moment I’d dreamed about for so long and had told myself a thousand times could be never happen, actually hadn’t. Then I spotted the glass on my side of the bed, full of water. Next to it a packet of Vitamin C and two ibuprofen tablets. And right under the pills was a little sheet of paper he’d probably ripped off the magnetized pad stuck to my fridge. He’d left them, because they hadn’t been there last night.

Hatuey left those for me. To make sure I didn’t feel like shit this morning. And he’d left me a message too. I pressed a fist to my chest as I looked at the scrap of paper that quite possibly held the few words that would upend my life. Where my best friend probably wrote he was never talking to me again, freaked out about what we’d done. After what I’d let happen.

I stumbled back feeling once again out of breath, tightening my fists to keep them from shaking.

None of this was supposed to be happening. Hatuey was my friend, my Day One, my resting place, but not my lover. Never my lover. That had always been clear and I had never—but for one foolish second almost ten years ago—crossed that boundary. But last night I’d barreled through all those firmly set barriers and fucked with every one of the rules.

I couldn’t even really blame it on alcohol. I’d just wanted him. Like I had since the moment I’d laid eyes on him when we were both fourteen years old and I was the new kid in school. The kid whose parents sent him to Santo Domingo to live with and aunt when our part of the Bronx got so hot they were afraid I’d end up hurt or caught up in the wrong crowd.

I’d been scared shitless walking into that building, a fancy private international high school my parents could’ve never afforded in the States, but could pay for in the DR. I was paralyzed as I stepped on to gleaming marble floors and watched rows of kids in every shade of brown walking around in pristine uniforms, Ferragamo loafers and Cartier watches. It was like some kind of Dominican version of Gossip Girl. They all passed me and whispered when they saw my Air Force 1s or got close enough to look at my cornrows and Yankees hoodie.

“Un Dominican York.” That’s what they called me. A Dominican from New York.

Someone who didn’t belong in DR high society, where blackness was diluted by using words like canela to describe brown skin. As if using the word for cinnamon instead of the actual color would somehow bury the African roots deep enough to make them disappear. It was a world I was never meant to fit into…until Hatuey. His was the first real smile I’d seen that morning—it felt to me like it had been the first one I’d seen since I left my family’s apartment in Castle Hill— and my body even then didn’t know what to do with the full impact of Hatuey Sanchez’s smile.

The boy with the dark brown eyes and unruly curls. He was the sun of that school. Every girl wanted to be his. Every boy wanted him as a friend. And from the first moment we met, to the confusion of everyone, we became inseparable. Me from the other side of the bridge, him from the oldest part of Santo Domingo where the families could trace their ancestry back to Madre España. Two different worlds, but it didn’t matter, because Hatuey wanted me around, and I couldn’t stay away. He was slim and cocky, and even back then, a good six inches shorter than me, but the moment I saw him my entire existence tilted on its axis.

And that had been us for ten years and counting. Because other than a second-long drunken moment the night of our high school graduation, I had never blurred the lines.

I stood there, paralyzed, angry at the fear I felt slithering up my spine. I was certain that note on my dresser had the words that would rip him out my life. The phone skittered on the top of the table, making me jump. As soon as I saw a notification flashing on the screen, I gritted my teeth fighting off a wave of nausea. I ignored it and kept my focus on the note. I fucking hated feeling this rattled. If Hatuey were here he’d say it was because my control freak ways turned me into a monster the moment anything in my life seemed out of order. But he wasn’t here and that was the fucking issue.

Had to go deal with a work thing. One of the rookies needed an interpreter last minute. Take the ibuprofen and go back to bed. Everything’s fine.

I read it twice, not sure what to think, fixating on the squiggles at the end of the note that were supposed to be a smiley face. Did he really have to go or was this his way of avoiding having to deal with me this morning?

Hatuey was the interpreter program coordinator for the Brooklyn Bombers but as far as I knew, it wasn’t usually the kind of job that involved field emergencies. Him leaving before seven a.m. even on a weekday wasn’t the norm, and I had to wonder if this was just an excuse for him to get some space.

I let out a shaky breath as my head swam. Images of last night, of the way he’d responded to me. They way he’d moaned with pleasure as I ran my tongue over every inch of skin I’d spent the last ten years fantasizing about. The way his body felt under my hands. The way they itched to have him there again.

My phone rang this time, which meant it was one of the five people who I was always available for. I walked back to the bed and sat as I looked at the screen and realized Hatuey had left me half a dozen messages and tried to call me about the same amount of times. But he wasn’t calling me now. It was Monserrat, one-third of the threesome that had gotten me through high school, college and most of the last few years in the majors.

I accepted the call, bracing for whatever jokes she had, certain Hatuey had already told her what happened. It wasn’t like I’d ever told anyone about my crush, but Monsi had made enough comments over the years that I was pretty certain meant she had an inkling about my feelings for my best friend.

But when I accepted the call, the typical half-sneering, half-bored tone Monsi usually used was completely gone. “Are you okay, friend?”

I flopped heavily onto the massive headboard of my gigantic bed, not sure what to make of Monserrat’s serious tone.

I closed my eyes, breathing through my nose, all the words on the tip of my tongue. Wanting to tell this to someone. But getting into a decade of my self-made baggage with Hatuey was not going to help. I needed things to go back to normal. Where Hatuey was my friend and I didn’t risk destroying our relationship by breaking rules I’d promised to keep ten years ago.

I’d seen plenty of people ruin things by crossing lines. Sex was messy, which was why it was madness to do this with the one person in my life who was always steady. Why would I open us both up to complications that could mess up the one thing I could not lose?

So I did what had always worked before—I shoved my feelings for Hatuey way down and acted like they weren’t trying to claw up my throat. “I’m fine.”

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Click here to preorder Caught Looking (release date: Feb. 1, 2021).