AUTHOR'S NOTE: All right, here goes that second preview I promised you guys. This is going to be a Jarlos story, so it's definitely something new to me as far as writing BTR slash is concerned, but I'm excited. This one and "Expressing My Love" will be continued starting in June, and they'll be written together! I hope you guys enjoy the first chapter!

BLAZE THE NIGHT

- 1 -

Guys Like You

"So, you think your mom will notice that the cake is missing?"

"Notice? Please. She probably has the entire police department out looking for it."

James and Kerry giggled infectiously as they both scarfed down pieces of German chocolate cake and washed it down with a bottle of vodka. For James, though, this was so much more than just eating cake. It was devouring all of the stupid things he hated about his life. The expectations. The unwritten rules. The goals and dreams that had been cherry-picked for him ever since he was a kid.

Fuck that, he thought, and he stuffed another piece into his mouth.

James Diamond, the 19-year-old son of cosmetics empress Brooke Diamond, and his best friend in the whole world, Kerry Miller, sat on the floor of his darkened living room. His living room. Six months previously, James had convinced his mother to let him move out of the big house and into the guest house on the other side of the pool. Best decision of his life.

"You think she'll check in here?" Kerry asked. She reached over and pulled the curtains back just a little to see across to the main house, where a birthday party was being held.

"Of course not! And risk showing all her rich and perfect friends that her son isn't as rich and perfect as their sons? Not a chance."

"True that," Kerry replied. "Never mind the fact that you've fucked quite a few of those rich and perfect sons."

"True that. Maybe you and I should get naked so that if she does come here, she'll think we were having sex. That should make up for stealing the cake, right?"

They giggled again, and Kerry casually rest her hand on his crotch. This was totally the type of thing that only a pair of friends like them could do. Whatever would be awkward for others would be perfectly fine for them.

"So," Kerry began, finishing the vodka bottle, "how old is ol' Cam-Cam turning, anyway?"

"Cameron is 27 years old today," James sighed, rolling his eyes. "But he doesn't look a day over 25."

"Jeez!" Kerry marveled. "Brooke Diamond gets older, her boyfriends keep getting younger."

"Heh."

"Please, tell me you've 'accidentally' walked in on him in the shower at least once. I have to know how big his dick is."

A sneaky, suspicious smile formed on James's face as he stared into the space between them. "At least eight inches. Uncut."

Kerry was nearly speechless. "Damn. Some bitches have all the luck."

"Tell me about it."

They sat quietly for a while, letting the sounds of Talk That Talk envelope them and get into their pulses. This seemed to be becoming the norm for them. Junk food, booze, and music in the darkness as they moped about what they thought were depressing lives. The thought was enough to make them even more depressed, so the cycle would just continue.

"I'm gonna miss this," Kerry said somberly.

"Miss what?" James asked.

"This! You."

James shook his head. "I'm going to college, Kerry. I'm not dying."

"You might as well be dying!" Kerry exclaimed. They'd had this conversation a billion times already, but she'd never truly gotten over it. "You're going to UCLA, way on the other side of town, and you'll get new friends and you'll do new things and you'll never have time for me. That's always how it happens."

"I won't forget about you, Kerry, jeez! How could I ever forget about my best friend?"

"I don't know," she replied, looking down and trying to believe him. "Just promise me you won't change, okay?"

"You know I won't."

They got silent again. The thought of going off to university to be some kind of college guy was almost enough to make James sick. He'd managed to convince his mother to let him take a year off after graduating from high school, but he knew he couldn't keep pushing his luck. Brooke Diamond had plans, and many of those plans revolved around her one and only child.

"I don't even want to fuckin' go," he whined. "I don't want to run a fuckin' cosmetics company. I don't want to be a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher or anything...I just want to be young and hot for the rest of my life." He threw his head back onto the sofa behind him and closed his eyes.

Kerry nodded in sympathy. "And rich."

"No!" James shot back seriously. "Not that word."

"Oh, please, Diamond Jim."

"Don't call me that!" he yelled. "And don't call me rich."

"But look around, jackass! You are!"

The guest house was studded with the finest of furniture, and its walls wore the finest of paint. The entire place was elegant, and it screamed "rich," but that word was possibly the dirtiest word a person could ever call James Diamond. It conjured up images of himself wearing one of those cashmere sweaters with his hair slicked back, voting Republican and showing up at the front door to ask fathers if he could take their daughters out on dates. The kind of guy who was really a creep underneath all of the fakeness, but no one noticed or cared because as long as he pretended to be a gentleman in front of everyone, it was okay.

"Don't call me that," James repeated, this time pleading more than demanding.

"Oh, all right," Kerry gave in, giving his arm a slight jab. "You're not a rich kid at all. You're just a high maintenance pretty boy who likes to wear expensive clothes."

"I can deal with that."

"Right. And I'll miss you."

James just shook his head again. "Sure."

Rihanna started crooning about how we all want love as Kerry stood up and began to dance around like a ghost. James's eyes slowly went from her to the window, where he could still see the party going on. That so wasn't him...that scene, that atmosphere. He wanted nothing to do with it, but it seemed to be his destiny, and he didn't know how to get away from it all.

"I'm gonna prove everybody wrong one day," he vowed aloud. "I'm not gonna end up like some of these guys. Married to someone I hate, fucking the pool boy on the side and paying him an assload of money to keep quiet, going to a job I hate...snorting crack off the bathroom floor every night. That's not gonna be me."

"And how will you change that, Diamond Jim?"

"I don't know. I do not know."

Kerry stopped dancing behind him and eyed the back of his head as he drooped down. He was so sad, and she wanted to do anything she could do to cheer him up. She fell down on her knees behind him and put her arms on his shoulders. "Let's go get some pot," she whispered.

For a split second, James was totally going to protest, but then something in him told him to go for it. "Yes," he said, the smile returning to his face. "Yes, let's do that."

"Yes!" Kerry screamed. "I know a guy who sells it in Pomegranate Point."

"Pomegranate Point?" James asked as he got up to his feet. "Wasn't there like...a double-murder or something there a few weeks ago?"

"Yeah. So?"

"I'm not going to Pomegranate Point!"

"Oh come on, James! Quit being a pussy!"

"I'm not being a pussy," he said, taking their cake plates to the kitchen sink. "I just like living. Besides, it's like an hour away!"

Kerry's bubble was burst. She knew she'd never go by herself, and she really, really wanted to smoke, so her happiness for the night depended on whether or not she could get her best friend to man up. "If you don't come with me, you might as well go back in there with your rich mother and her rich boyfriend and their rich friends, rich boy!"

James dropped the plates into the sink and looked at her with a devious eye. "Oh, you bitch," he said. "You bitch. You wanna go get some pot from Pomegranate Point? Let's go get some pot from Pomegranate Point."

"Yes!"

"Why am I not surprised that you don't know where you're going?" James asked, his arm resting on the door as Kerry's Pontiac G6 crept through the streets of one of LA's worst neighborhoods. "My prettiness doesn't do well in areas like this."

"Hush," she replied, trying to navigate the maze-like streets. "I can put your ass out on the corner right now and sell you for a thousand bucks a blowjob, so please, keep on bitching if you dare."

"Well, if we don't find this dude's house in ten minutes, I want to go back home," James announced. Honestly, a bag of subpar pot was really not worth this much trouble, and he was getting sleepy.

They turned down a dark street, and James was immediately confronted with things he didn't want to see. There was a gang of teenagers scraping the sidewalk with their feet, and even a hooker, but they weren't the problem for him. No, it was the rows of worn-down houses and beat-up cars in the driveways. As much as James wanted to believe that the "rich" society life was not where he belonged, any time he had to see how the other half lived, all he wanted to do was run back home to his gated community, lock himself in his fancy guest house, turn up his massive stereo system, climb into his bed, get under his Egyptian cotton sheets, and fall asleep. He hated that part of himself.

"I think he lives a few houses down, so we're almost there," Kerry assured him. When he didn't answer, she turned to him and once again caught that glimpse of sad James that always had a way of reminding her that she did indeed have a heart. She reached over to rub his shoulder. "It's gonna be all right, Jamie," she said, but just as he turned to smile at her...

BANG!

Kerry's car smashed into the back of another car, shaking both she and James up, but neither one was hurt. Kerry shook a little pain out of her head. "What the fuck!" she yelled, punching the steering wheel.

"You smashed into that car!" James yelled. "Do you think they're all right?"

"I don't know, but I'm about to give this bitch or bastard a nice kick in the vag or balls," Kerry steamed as she threw open her door. "He backed into me."

"Kerry, no!" James yelled. "You don't know what kind of person that is!"

He wanted to just go back home and forget about the whole thing, but Kerry was already out the car and walking to the other one, a 90s-era Camry with chipped paint and some missing hubcaps.

"Hey, dumbass!" Kerry called out when she reached the driver's side door. She began to bang on the window until the driver got out.

"Kerry!" James warned. He was now behind her. He was prepared to protect her, but not ready to die, so he kept his distance.

"Who are you calling a dumbass, you skank?" the other driver yelled as he got out. "Watch where the hell you're driving, and maybe you won't wreck into people's shit!"

"Me wreck into you?" Kerry asked in disbelief. "You backed into me!"

The other driver seemed tired and weary, but his temper seemed to be escalating. He cast a glance at James, who immediately turned away in embarrassment.

"I have a lawyer, you little twerp. Even if it is my fault, we'll find a way to make it yours," Kerry told him.

"Oh, really?" the other driver replied, his dark Latin eyes getting darker.

"Yeah, so the best thing for you to do is to get in that hunk of junk you got there and start haulin' it away."

The other driver suddenly looked helpless. Maybe he knew all too well how a situation like this would turn out. White girl in a fancy car in a bad neighborhood up against a Latino guy. The police would never believe that it was her fault.

He turned to James. "You were in the car with her! It was her fault, wasn't it?"

"Umm..." James responded, not sure what to say. Damn right it was Kerry's fault. She'd turned her eyes away from the road to comfort him, so clearly she hadn't been paying attention to where she was going. But she was his best friend, and he couldn't just side with this random guy.

"Look..." he began, trying to come up with the best solution for everyone. "Um...look, we can forget about the whole thing if you just sell us some pot. You get something, and we get something, and it's over with."

The other driver's eyes went extremely wide, and then he became extremely angry. "Great! Just great! You rich white people are all the same! You think just because I'm Latino, I must sell drugs! Look at this fucking car! Do you think this is the type of car a drug dealer drives? Screw you, rich boy! Screw both of you!"

"Oh, honey, we're not racist," Kerry told him condescendingly. "Classist? Yes. But never racist."

"I don't care," the other driver replied. "I don't care. You get what you want. You drive like a maniac because you're out scanning for drugs, and you crash into my car, but you win. There you go."

He began to get back into his car, but James pleaded for him to listen. "No, listen! I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed you were a-"

But the door slammed, and the engine revved up. The crusty little car drove off, the back bumper a breath away from falling off.

"You know he had the damn drugs," Kerry said as she and James went back to her car. "He just didn't want to sell us any because I smashed up his little Piece-of-Shit-mobile."

"Shut up, Kerry," James scolded, not wanting to hear anymore of her mess.

"And now you want to go home."

"Yes."

They got into the car and slammed their doors. Kerry turned the engine on and they whizzed down to the end of the street and were back on the highway in no time. The ride home was quiet except for Britney singing about a criminal, Beyonce doing her countdown, Adele setting fire to the rain, and some random boy band swearing up and down that the music sounds better with whoever happened to be listening to the radio at that moment.

The whole time, James was feeling conflicted. Was this really going to be his life? Sneaking off to do "bad" things, using his inherited money and power to escape the consequences, and then running home to his big, comfortable house, where he got whatever he wanted? As long as he kept up the pretense that he was a good, decent kid around his mom's friends, everything would be fine. But that was exactly the type of guy he never wanted to become.

He thought about the poor guy they'd crashed into. Probably a nice guy, a good kid...probably a hard worker who was just a victim of circumstance. And to make matters worse, he now had to deal with a busted bumper. James felt like shit for assuming he was a drug dealer, and he wished he could just go back and apologize, just make it clear that he wasn't one of "those" people, that he wasn't judgmental and that he was NOT a rich boy.

Kerry could easily get the hint that James was not in the mood for any more fun tonight, so she dropped him off with an apologetic look on her face. He gave her a smile to let her know that everything would be fine, and she left. The party was winding down just enough for his mother to pop into the guest house once James was all settled in.

"James Diamond, where in the hell have you been?" she asked in a hushed tone, as if any decibel louder would have been akin to playing their conversation on a speaker for everyone to hear.

James was just about to get into bed, but he tiredly slumped down on the edge to listen to whatever she had to say. "We went out for something to eat."

"Oh, and the cake you stole wasn't enough?" she asked him vindictively. "You better be lucky Cameron is so charming that we were able to convince everyone that there wasn't a cake because he didn't want one."

"Cameron is so charming," James mocked. "So, so charming. Just like Michael was, and Aaron, and Donovan, and Kevin, and all the rest."

Brooke raised an eyebrow. "I don't know what in the hell has been getting into you lately, but you better start thinking about making some changes. Once you're off to UCLA, I don't know if I'm going to care about what you do anymore."

"Please don't."

Brooke, left with nothing else to say, just shot him a death stare and left.

James crawled into his bed and hid under the sheets, just like he knew he would on this night. He felt disgusting. Here he was, a total screw-up, a total mess, a spoiled rich kid with no sense of responsibility at all, with no direction in his life, lying in this big bed, surrounded by all the things he'd ever wanted. While that poor guy in the bad neighborhood was probably struggling to sleep on a hard mattress in a hot room in a tiny house with not so much as two nickels to rub together.

No one so pretty should have to live like that, James thought to himself as he turned over and drifted off to sleep.

James had no idea why he was doing it or what he intended to prove or gain or whatever. He just knew he had to do it.

His car slowly crept along Southfork Street, one of the main residential streets in Pomegranate Point. It was one o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, and it was screaming hot, so there was no reason for anyone to be outside, but still, James was terrified of ending up in the middle of any kind of gang fire or, really, he was just scared of being seen.

His hand was ready to throw the car into reverse and turn around at any minute, but he committed himself to doing this once he saw what he was looking for. The poor guy - damn, he needed to know the guy's name, if only to stop referring to him in his head as "the poor guy" - was outside in his driveway, washing his car, broken bumper and all. Part of James wanted to turn and go back home, but part of him needed to do this, and that part was bigger, so he pulled up on the side of the road next to the poor guy's house and turned his car off.

James sat for a second, observing the poor guy as he scrubbed the passenger's side door with a soapy sponge. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of mesh trunks and flip flops. His tan skin was flawless, utterly and completely without blemish, and the muscles it encased were smooth and modest, but impressive just the same. His dark hair was wet, and it was clear that he'd probably soaked himself with the hose before getting started with the car. His shorts fit him very snugly, and the shape of his firm, round bottom was unmistakable under the fabric.

James shook himself out of his fixation.

Just apologize, offer to pay whatever it costs to fix the car, and leave, he told himself.

He got out of the car and began to approach the poor guy, who didn't seem to hear him coming.

"Hey," James called to him, but the poor guy never responded. He just kept scrubbing the side of the car.

"Hey!" James called again, raising his voice a little, but still, no answer. "I know you hear me!" There was no music playing, and all the guy was doing was rubbing the side of the car. No excuses for why he wasn't answering.

"Okay, whatever," James said, getting pissed. "I just wanted to come back and apologize for last night, but whatever. You're an asshole, so goodbye."

Just as he started to leave, the poor guy got up from the ground. "I didn't think you'd care about a drug dealer's feelings."

"Dude," James shot back, turning to face him. "I just said I apologize, okay? You're not a drug dealer, and I'm stupid for assuming you were, okay? And if you need help to get the car fixed, I'll help you."

It was all James could do to not stare directly at the poor guy's pecs and his little brown nipples. He knew how things were in neighborhoods like this, with guys like this. If his eyes lingered for just one extra second, he could find himself being stuffed in a trunk and left to die.

The guy eyed James's car. Yep, the stereotypical rich boy car, a Dodge Charger. He eyed James, who was wearing a vintage tank top, cut off denim shorts, Ray Band sunglasses, and several wristbands. Typical. Just plain typical.

"I don't need your help," the poor guy finally answered, full of pride. He waited a beat, then he added, "But I accept your apology." Even though he couldn't see James's eyes behind the shades, he smiled, hoping to God that James would smile in return.

For a split second, James didn't know what to do, but he couldn't stop himself from smiling, too. "Good," he said, and he could feel a little flutter in his stomach.

"I'm Carlos," the guy said, extending his soapy hand for a shake.

"James."

"Nice to meet you, James," Carlos said sincerely. "Most guys like you, when they come through here, just get what they want and then they leave."

"Yeah, well I'm not like most guys."

"I can tell."

They stood in an awkward silence for a second. James just couldn't keep his eyes off of Carlos's incredibly hot body, but he had to try, and he had to remember his sole purpose for even being here in the first place.

"Look, why don't you just let me take care of the bumper for you?" James offered again. "It won't cost much, I'm sure, and it was my friend's fault."

"I said I can handle it," Carlos reiterated.

James nodded.

"But at least you can finally admit that it was her fault and not mine."

"Uh yeah," James said. "Sorry about that."

"It's no problem."

Awkwardness. James was ready to get back into his Orange County comfort zone, but at the same time, he couldn't shake the feeling that he should stick around for a few minutes, if only to make his offer once more.

Carlos was impressed and truly amused that this rich boy had come all the way into the hood just to apologize, and maybe he would have invited this rich boy to hang around for a while, just to sit and talk and cool off in the hot summer sun, but he knew how rich boys were, and he wasn't interested in anyone's pity.

"I don't want to keep you," he said, motioning to James's car. "If you have somewhere you need to be..."

"Oh," James let out, Carlos's words breaking into his admiration. "Uh...yeah. Bye," he said as he began to walk back to his car. Of course, he had nowhere in particular to be and nothing special to do, and he didn't really want this to end so abruptly. Maybe he and this Carlos guy could have gotten to know each other better. Maybe they could have been friends. Maybe, right? But James knew how guys from the hood were, and he knew that their worlds were way too different for them to be friends.

"Bye," Carlos called after him. He prepared to get back to washing his car, but just as James turned away from him, he called out, "Don't be a stranger."

"Huh?"

"There aren't a lot of people who would have done what you did today. Not a lot of guys like you. I want to keep you around."

James was surprised by Carlos's kind words, and he sorta chuckled and smiled at the same time. "Thanks," he said. "Uh...hopefully I'll see you around."

And as he got back into his car and started the engine, even though he was more than ready to high tail it back to the glitzy world of fame and fortune that he both hated and loved, he knew that he'd taken something with him from this visit, and that something was going to grow.

Meanwhile, as Carlos scrubbed and rubbed and made his car look as decent as he could, he couldn't keep the grin off of his face. That guy had come back for him, just to apologize...that guy had probably thought about him all throughout the night...and that guy was too sweet and adorable for words.

NOTE: Be sure to let me know what you think in the reviews! Your thoughts may affect the story. As far as "Fragments" is concerned, I hope to get back to that one very soon. As I've whined and whined about for the last few months, this semester has been EXTREMELY demanding, and I really don't have any free time left over for writing. It's starting to wind down, though, so hopefully I'll have more time. Thanks to everyone who reads my stuff! You guys are the best!