Page 44 of Constantly Cotton
Cotton frowned. “Are you going to be able to sleep like that? I mean, with one eye open?”
Jason’s shoulder ached or he would have shrugged. “Have been for almost fourteen years now,” he said softly.
Cotton’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me.” And with that he stalked out of the room and knocked, politely, on Lee’s door. Jason didn’t hear the resulting conversation, but in a moment, Lee hustled back into the bedroom, giving Jason a bemused look.
“I’ll be taking this until the security detail can have it,” he said, sounding penitent. “You can’t get better if you can’t sleep.”
Jason nodded, equally bemused, and Cotton opened both doors for Lee so he could set up the monitor in his room. Cotton returned to the bedroom, shut the light off one final time, and shivered his way into bed with Jason.
Jason rolled over and pulled him tight, that full-body human contact soothing nerves wrought fine with exhaustion. “Why’d you do that?” he mumbled, mourning because Cotton was here, he was willing, and Jason had at least one more day of recovery before he could do anything about that.
“Because you can’t sleep if you’re always on alert,” Cotton said, with the practicality of someone who knew.
“You’re right.” Jason yawned. “How’d you guess?”
Cotton let out an unhappy little sigh, and down under the covers, Jason could feel the motion of restless feet. With a grunt he used one of his feet to trap Cotton’s, and it was Cotton’s turn to grunt.
“When I was living on the streets,” he said after a moment, “you had to be alert or you’d get robbed or raped or worse.”
Ah. “How’d you end up there?” Jason asked, wondering if this was going to be the moment Cotton told him.
“Same way everyone else does—dammit!” He’d obviously felt Jason’s foot pressing against his shifting ankle.
“You’re the one who keeps trying to evade me,” Jason muttered.
“I’m tired!”
“So am I! Just talk to me like you trust me and I’ll let you sleep!”
“Okay, fine.” Cotton rolled over and scowled at him. “My parents kicked me out when they found me having sex with my boyfriend in my bedroom. Happy?”
“No. That’s terrible. I mean, was it the sex or was it the gay or—”
“It was all of it,” Cotton muttered. “But it’s not even the worst thing.”
Jason tried to study him in the darkness, but he’d closed the door to the hallway, and the tiny window in this room looked out into a moonless night. There wasn’t enough ambience to see.
“What could be worse than that?” he asked gently, putting a hand on Cotton’s hip.
“The worst thing was I was seventeen and my boyfriend was twenty. They tried to charge him with rape, which it totally wasn’t. When I refused to participate in pressing charges—in fact, when I told the ADA that I’d seducedhim—they gave me the choice of either living at home and following through or they’d kick me out.”
Jason closed his eyes. “Oh, baby.”
“Don’t call me that,” Cotton told him, voice choked and muffled. “I don’t deserve it. It ruined his life, you understand? I showed up at his house, thinking, ‘Hey, we can move in together, and I’ll get a job and put myself through school,’ and he’d spent two weeks in custody with the threat of being a registered sex offender hanging over his head. He didn’t want a fucking thing to do with me, and I don’t blame him. I had friends who put me up on their couches for a little while, but word got around, and parents thought I was some sort of pervert and…. God. Soon I was living in shelters, and I got pretty much everything I’d brought with me stolen in the first day. I swear to God, I turned my first trick to get out of the rain. He sprung for the hotel room, and I asked to use the shower, and….” Cotton’s voice had grown sharp and angry, charged with bitterness in a way Jason had never heard from him before. But now it softened a little. “He washed my clothes and bought me new ones while I was trying to shower a week’s worth of grime off. He bought me dinner and let me stay in the hotel when it was over, and… and he wasn’t mean. Or entitled. Just lonely. He became a regular. Once a week. Same time, same place. It kept me sane, really, knowing that once a week I could pretend I had a home.”
Jason’s eyes burned. “I’d say ‘good’ or ‘I’m glad,’ but I’m so sad you had to deal with that.”
“Wasn’t the worst thing to happen to me there,” Cotton said lowly. “I….”
Jason nudged his restless feet with his toe, letting him know that the truth was okay between them.
“The guy… the guy I couldn’t do the scene with. He was a decent kid, you know? But he looked…. God, he could have been the little brother of a guy I knew when I was turning tricks. Basic bland white-guy looks—sandy hair, hazel eyes, square chin—not bad-looking, you know? Didn’tlooklike a monster.”
“Oh no.” Jason’s stomach dropped. He knew what was coming. How could he not? A teenaged boy turning tricks with no backup? “How many times?” he asked.
“Four,” Cotton said, voice breaking. “He knew my corner. He’d show up, and I’d tell him no, and he’d drag me to the car and then dump me out when it was done. Never used a fucking rubber, never used lube. God. My regular—the nice guy—picked me up once afterward and spent the whole night with me in the shower as I cried. Sweet guy, you know? In his forties, but I was of age. I…. God. After John took me to the flophouse, I asked if I could go back and tell the guy goodbye. John did it for me. I guess the guy gave him money. John used it to start a bank account so I could keep the money myself. It’s so weird. So weird. Like, there was the absolute worst of the world there on the street, ready to ream me up the fuckin’ ass, but there was a sweet guy who only wanted company, and there was John who was strung out but trying to be a decent guy. I never knew who I was going to get.” He let out a little sigh. “That’s why I liked porn, I guess. They had, like, a list of items to perform, and you did each item until the other guy went ‘Yes, that! Do that more!’ It was, like, put in the quarter, get out the attaboy. I… I gotta tell you, I wasreallyready for some attaboys by then, you know?”
Jason rubbed Cotton’s shins with his toes. “I get it,” he said softly, suddenly too tired to keep his eyes open. “Cotton?”
