ANGEL AND JOAQUIN 3

Thursday, 11:47

Ángel didn’t sleep. Or he slept in bursts, fragments of sleep breaking against wakefulness like waves against a breakwater. By six in the morning he was already awake, staring at the ceiling of his rented flat, fingers tangled in the cold sheets where no one else had slept.

He got up. Went to the bathroom. Looked at himself in the mirror and saw it: the purplish dark circles, the split lips, the bite marks on his neck beginning to bruise like signatures. He touched his ass with his hand and still felt the emptiness, that absence that had settled into his body like a permanent tenant.

“Holy fuck,” he said aloud, and the sound of his own voice sounded like someone else’s.

He went back to bed. Picked up his phone. Opened WhatsApp and saw Joaquín’s message, sent at 3:47 in the morning:

JOAQUÍN: The offer still stands. You don’t have to answer now.

Ángel read the message twelve times. Put the phone face down on the nightstand. Got up again. Went to the kitchen. Opened the fridge and stared at it without seeing it: an expired carton of milk, two eggs, an empty beer bottle. He closed the fridge.

He sat on the sofa. The turned-off television reflected his own image back at him, a ghost sitting in the living room of a flat that had never really been his.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

And he picked up the phone.

ÁNGEL: I’ll come Saturday. Give me the address.

The answer came three minutes later.

JOAQUÍN: Calle del Río 14, ground floor B. Next to the sports center. Bring comfortable clothes and willingness. I’ll take care of the rest.

ÁNGEL: Anything else?

JOAQUÍN: Yes. Don’t eat before coming. And bring me the keys to your place.

Ángel stared at the message. The request for the keys had chilled his blood. That wasn’t just spending a week together. It was handing him the entrance to his life, the possibility that Joaquín could enter his flat whenever he wanted, even when he wasn’t there. It was a real key, the kind that opens doors. But it was also a metaphorical key, the kind that opens heads.

“Okay,” he said, and wrote a single word.

ÁNGEL: Okay.

Saturday, 09:15

Saturday dawned gray. It wasn’t raining, but the sky had that dirty-plastic texture that foretells a storm. Ángel woke up alone, as always, but this time he noticed the difference: his stomach clenched, his hands slightly trembling, his cock half-hard against his thigh.

He got up. Shower. Cold water. He wanted to be awake, he wanted to feel every cell of his body aware of what he was going to do. He dressed minimally: black jeans, white T-shirt, sneakers. A small backpack with two changes of underwear, a charger, his ID card. He put the keys to his house in a separate envelope, inside the backpack.

He didn’t have breakfast. Joaquín had said not to eat, and ...