June 26, 2015

"I don't care. I'm not having some stranger wash my underwear."

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and resisted the urge to beat my head against the cabinet in front of me. I took one last swig of coffee and put the cup in the sink. I had been telling Julio more about Rangeman and my life during those years. I had no intentions of living in the building this time, but wanted to live close enough that Ella could still be our housekeeper and do her work at the office. That's when I learned Julio was vehemently against the idea of a housekeeper, and we'd spent the last twenty minutes arguing about it.

"She isn't a stranger. Ella worked for me six years before I died. She's trustworthy and hardworking," I said. "If you really care that much about someone touching your underwear, then do your own laundry."

"I don't like the idea of someone in our house when we aren't there," he said as he packed his lunch for work. "I'm surprised you do. You're so goddamned private you barely tell me things. I can't believe you let some woman just wander around your apartment when you weren't there so she could snoop through your drawers and find out what kind of condoms you used."

"Ella bought my condoms."

I thought Julio's eyes might fall out of his head. "Are you fucking for real? No fucking way. You let someone else buy our lube, and I'll kill you."

I really needed to get out of the apartment. "Fine, she won't do your laundry, and she won't buy things we deem too personal. Can she clean the house? Change our sheets? Make dinner for us?"

"No. We're not having anyone in our house when we aren't there," Julio said with a tone of finality. "We can clean our own house, do our own laundry and shopping, and make our own food the way we do now. Just because you get rich doesn't mean things have to change."

"I'll be busy, Julio," I said firmly. "Do you think I'm going to have time to cook dinner and do laundry when I'm working to open offices in different states? Or that I want to do that stuff when I am home instead of spending time with you? And what about when we have kids? What about a nanny? Or would you rather send our kids to daycare?"

"No nanny or daycare. I'll quit working and take care of them until they start school. Then I'll go back to work."

"You love your job."

"You think I'm going to love it more than our kids?" he asked incredulously. "Are you gonna love your job more than me or our kids?"

I pinched the bridge of my nose before grabbing my bottle of water and headed toward the door. "You're being ridiculous. I'm going to work." I heard him muttering under his breath as I left the apartment.

I drove towards downtown Columbus trying to push my annoyance aside. My job with Trinity had ended in April when they lost their contract to do security for the hospital and as one of the newest hires I'd been let go. I had already been butting heads with the manager because he didn't like that I was doing my own side work, so it wasn't surprising that I was on the chopping block. I had pointed out that I offered services that Trinity didn't, so I wasn't competing with them. Now that I no longer worked there, I had no problem competing with them. My work at RiverCity had given me connections, and thanks to my previous life I knew how to better market myself.

Manoso Security Group was located on the fourth floor of a seven-story building less than a mile from RiverCity Bail Bonds. It was a five-room office with reception area, two private offices, a bathroom, and a break room. I had the front office and the other office was an open work space for anyone who needed it. Business had grown enough to expand the office into the space next door. I was just waiting for the current tenant to leave at the end of the month for the building manager to get started with the modifications.

Matt Harper from my old unit was back to civilian life and working for me while he finished his Computer Science degree. He planned to specialize in cybersecurity, and I intended to put him in an IT role once he was ready. Matt's wife Kim was serving as a receptionist and helped with the occasional job where a woman's presence was beneficial. I had a dozen other men who worked as independent contractors. We were currently offering bond enforcement, personal protection, security assessments and consultations, and in-person commercial security. We had three commercial contracts and had a steady flow of short-term jobs and consultations in addition to bond enforcement. Once the office expansion was complete, I would bring more people on board so I could push into the residential security market and start offering our own systems.

"Good morning," Kim said when I arrived. "I was just about to call you that your eight o'clock had to reschedule for Tuesday. But I've got the changes to the bid for the school contract ready for you to review. We had a few inquiries come through the website that I'm calling today for more information. And Elliott sent over several FTAs."

Elliott had been so impressed with my work that we now did all the bond enforcement work for RiverCity. She would email the files over to us and I would assign the cases based on availability. She had sent over seven files, and I sorted through them based on location and charges. One armed robbery, two DUIs, one rape, two public intoxication, and one vandalism. I assigned the armed robbery and vandalism to Cash Bingham because they were both in Harris County, where he had once served as a Sheriff's deputy. Kendrick Jones was assigned the vandalism and two public intoxications. I would take care of the remaining DUI and the rape case.

The Muscogee County School District had recently announced they would be taking bids for a new security provider after the current provider had gone through some changes and was no longer wanting to continue the job. Bids were being accepted through the end of June, reviewed in July and August, and the contract would start in January once the current provider's contract ended. I had spent a month researching the district, the current provider, school security protocols, best practices, and creating a plan that would be attractive to the district. Getting this contract would be a huge boost. It would get me off the ground sooner in Trenton, and if I could manage to secure another large contract that I'd failed to get last time, I would be able to own my company without the need for an investor.

After reviewing the bid proposal and giving Kim the greenlight to send it to the district administration office, I flipped through my FTA files. Caroline Lewis was a 21-year-old college student who had been arrested for driving through a local park with a BAC of .13 on St. Patrick's Day. She had additional charges of destruction of public property after she damaged two park benches and a picnic table. She lived in a house near the Columbus State University campus and was currently out of school for the summer. She had a part-time job at a tanning salon two miles from her house.

Roger Palowski was a 56-year-old married father of four who had been arrested for raping a customer in March. He had broken into her house the day after completing work for her and waited in her bedroom until she came home from work. She managed to get away from him and stabbed him with a pair of scissors before she was able to call 911. He was now unemployed and living with his mother after his wife filed for divorce. I decided to get Palowski out of the way first, just in case he decided to fight me. I figured an unemployed guy living with his mother was likely still in bed and that would give me an advantage, though I wouldn't mind kicking his ass. I had no sympathy for a rapist.

I was halfway to Palowski's house thinking about his case when something else clicked in my head. Julio's resistance to a housekeeper wasn't truly the idea of someone snooping around our house or washing his underwear. It was the fear of someone waiting for him in his personal space. That was how the abuse started for him in juvenile detention. After multiple fights, the supervisor of the unit had put Julio in a private room to 'protect him' from the other bigger boys. What the room didn't protect him from was the supervisor himself. Julio had come back to his room that first night after dinner and found the man waiting for him. That had been the beginning of six months of sexual abuse that Julio never told anyone about because the man had convinced him no one would believe a juvenile delinquent and it would just result in him staying longer. He'd never told anyone until he confided in me our junior year. We hadn't talked about our abuse in years, and sometimes I forgot that Julio didn't have as much distance from it as I did.

Resolved to apologize tonight when I got home, I put my focus back onto Palowski and had been unlucky to catch him half-asleep when I knocked on his door, so he hadn't resisted and robbed me of the chance to kick his ass. The police station was busy when we arrived, so we had been forced to wait almost twenty minutes to talk to the desk sergeant. The television in the corner caught my attention.

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE NOW LEGAL IN ALL 50 STATES.

The ruling had just been announced and people on the screen were cheering and hugging one another, waving rainbow flags and holding signs that said things like Love is love. I had known the ruling would be soon because there had been talk of it on the news but hadn't remembered the exact date. I thought back to Julio and our argument that morning and felt even worse than before. He had been eager to see the ruling happen so we could get married wherever and whenever we wanted. And I had started out the day annoyed that he didn't want to make my life more convenient and failed to consider why he hated the idea of someone he didn't know in our home.

It was almost noon by the time I had Caroline Lewis checked in with the desk clerk. She had been easy to find and had cried the whole way there, saying she was afraid of going to jail and worrying about what the DUI would mean for her future. I tried to reassure her that people fucked up all the time and usually it wasn't the end of the world, especially if she kept herself on the right path moving forward. It didn't help the tears, and I had gladly handed her over before she flooded my car. I drove straight from the police station to Pediatric Rehabilitation of Columbus. Julio's lunch was always from twelve to one and since the employee break room was currently being renovated, he would be eating in his car.

I pulled into a parking spot four cars away from Julio. He was eating his lunch and listening to a podcast when I knocked on the passenger side window. He startled and hit the button to unlock the door when he realized it was me.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, hitting pause on the podcast as I climbed in.

"I came to apologize for this morning. I didn't consider why someone in our house would bother you. I should have, and I'm sorry I didn't. Sometimes I forget that you haven't had as much time to deal with stuff as I have."

Julio grimaced and looked away, frowning down at his salad. "I hate it," he said. "It's pathetic. I should be over it by now. I'm not a fucking kid anymore. I was in the Army for God's sake."

"It isn't pathetic," I assured him. "I was hypervigilant in my last life. I still am, but mostly out of habit and training. I didn't go anywhere without a gun and a knife. I didn't list my real address on my driver's license until I moved into my office building. I always sat with my back against a wall. And on more than one occasion I didn't hire someone to work for me despite them being well-qualified because they reminded me of the boys who raped me."

"But you aren't like that now."

"That's because I've had twenty extra years to deal with it."

Julio ate some more salad and stared out the front window while he chewed. "I know you trust her, and it'll be fine. I'll try to get to know her."

"Babe, I'm not going to force this on you. I'd rather have to clean the house and do my own laundry than have you worried about who's going to be in our house when you get home."

Julio gave me a grateful look. "I'll still get to know her, and I'll tell you if I'm okay with it."

"Sounds like a plan. Did you hear the news?"

Julio nodded. "I got a push alert, but I was still pissed off, so I wasn't very excited."

"Are you too pissed off to get married in Vegas this weekend?"

"Is this a proposal?" he asked with a grin.

"I guess it is."

He put a hand on the back of my head and pulled me in for a kiss. "Yes, I'll marry you," he whispered.

June 27, 2015

We had been looking up flights and hotels in Julio's car when Jenny had texted us to see if we'd heard the news. Julio suggested we invite them to go with us to be our witnesses, and thirty-six hours later the four of us were eating at a Japanese restaurant in the Bellagio. We had gotten married two hours earlier in a nearby wedding chapel. Jenny had sobbed even though we just opted for the sign & go that didn't include exchanging vows or pictures. Naturally, Julio had made an inappropriate joke over the fact that the wedding package cost us $69.

"I can't believe we've known you for two-and-a-half years and are just now finding out that your first names are Mohammed and Ricardo," Mike said.

"Only the government calls us by those names," Julio informed her. "Mine isn't too bad, but sometimes it causes the TSA to give me the side-eye. At least I'm not named after an I Love Lucy character."

"Ricardo is a family name," I told them. "My brother should have been Ricardo, but my great-grandfather died while my mother was pregnant, and she decided she wanted to name my brother after him. Ricardo Emilio didn't sound good to her, so she told my father Ricardo would have to wait for the next boy."

"Will you carry on the tradition if you have any boys?" Jenny asked.

"Hell no," Julio and I said in unison, causing them to laugh.

"Speaking of your brother, are you ready for the wedding?" Mike asked.

"I'm not," Julio said before I could speak. "I don't know why we're going."

"Because he's my brother and he asked me to be his best man. He's been supportive of us, so I don't mind going for him. You don't have to go if you don't want to."

"And leave you to those fucking wolves? I don't think so," Julio said. "You had to deal with their shit on your own when you told them about us. I'm not letting you do it alone again."

"The only time I'll see anyone not supportive is at the rehearsal and the wedding. I figure they'll be on their best behavior because either Lucy will kill them for ruining her wedding or my grandmother will kill them for being mean to me."

I heard Julio mutter what sounded like assholes under his breath before he ate another piece of sushi. We were leaving on Thursday to fly to Newark where we would have dinner with my siblings and their spouses that night, followed by the rehearsal on Friday, and the wedding on Saturday. We would leave on Sunday to go home.

"I hope it goes well and you don't have to extend your stay for anyone's funeral," Jenny said.

I hoped so too. I wouldn't admit it even to Julio, but I was nervous about going. It would be the first time I was in the same room as my parents in almost four years. Grandma would be there, and I knew she wouldn't hesitate to put anyone in their place, but I was trying to lay low. I wanted to be supportive of my brother and watch him get married, not take attention away from him and Lucy. I'd been his best man in my last life too, but this time around I had told him I'd do it as long as I didn't have to give a speech. I wasn't the best public speaker anyway and had no desire to do it when a few dozen people in the crowd thought I was a disgrace to our family.

Mike and Jenny opted to stop at the restaurant bar after dinner and we headed up to our room. Julio opened our door with the keycard and turned to me. "Do you want me to carry you over the threshold?"

"You couldn't carry me if you wanted to," I said as I headed into the room. "I outweigh you by thirty pounds."

Julio closed the door behind us and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to see what he wanted, but was surprised as he bent down, grabbed me around the legs, and put me over his shoulder. He carried me three feet to the bed, where he not-so-gently put me down.

"What were you saying?" he asked breathlessly.

I couldn't help but laugh. "I'm sorry I doubted you."

All four of us were bleary-eyed when we met up in the lobby the next day to check out. Julio and I were tired from a night spent thoroughly consummating our marriage and Mike and Jenny were hungover from too much sake. We caught a shuttle to the airport and didn't talk much until we had gotten through security and were at the designated terminal for our flight.

"I feel a little better now," Jenny said after we finished our food. "I've always heard hangovers after thirty are worse, but I didn't believe it. Now I do."

"God, this sucks," Mike said. "I'm never drinking again. You guys have the right idea."

"Sometimes when the urge to drink is too strong, I smoke a cigarette," Julio said. "That helps take the edge off. I'm gonna add this memory to my list of coping skills. Hangovers are a bitch, and you two look like death."

"If I die on the plane, just leave me there. Let the airline take care of moving me," Mike told Jenny before burying his head in his arms. "Ugh."

Once we were in the air over Nevada, I brought up the wedding again.

"They're having an open bar at the reception," I told Julio. "Are you sure you want to go? I don't want you to be miserable all night."

"I'll be fine," he insisted. "I'll have a full pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Grandma will be there, and she'd keep me accountable if I started to cave. But I won't. Stop worrying."

He was twisting the new white gold band around his left ring finger. Julio hated rings. When he was small, he had gotten a ring stuck on his finger so tightly it had needed to be cut off. He didn't even like to loop a finger through his keyrings, yet when we went to Vegas, he insisted we buy wedding bands.

"You don't have to wear it."

"I said I want to," he said shortly. "Would you stop worrying so much? If I don't want to do something, I won't do it."

I knew that wasn't true. There were plenty of things he had done and would do that he didn't like because he loved me. But there was no arguing with him about it, so I let the subject drop.

"We should have gotten a prenup," he whispered a while later. "You're gonna be a rich guy one day. I could decide to leave you and take half your shit."

"If you leave me, you may as well take all of it because I'll be fucking useless."

Julio chuckled and laced his fingers through mine. "Did you and Stephanie have one?" he asked.

I nodded. "All assets and debts acquired prior to marriage belonged to the individual. She would have no ownership in my business and therefore no division of business assets in a divorce. Any personal assets and debts acquired during the marriage would be split fifty-fifty."

"How did she take it?"

"She was fine with it. She understood that it wasn't a sign that I didn't trust her or that I doubted our relationship, but I employed a lot of people who relied on the work to pay their mortgages and feed their kids. It would have been reckless to risk their livelihoods in case we had a messy divorce."

Julio looked pensive. "I know your business is just getting off the ground right now, but someday it'll be bigger, and you'll employ all those people. Shouldn't you do the same thing with me?"

I shook my head. "I didn't have any doubts about marrying her, and I felt confident that we would have a long, happy life together. But there was always something in the back of my mind telling me to be careful. She had been married once before and he cheated on her six months into it. She was furious and the divorce lasted longer than the marriage because she fought him over every piece of furniture in the house. So I knew she was capable of being spiteful and petty when hurt by the man she married. I'd also seen her break up with Morelli too many times because she didn't want to work on things. I didn't think we'd have that issue, but I wanted to be prepared just in case."

Julio raised an eyebrow. "You don't think I can be spiteful and petty if I'm hurt?"

"That isn't who you are. You get mad, you get quiet, but you're always willing to work it out. I know you love me as much as I love you, and that we always have each other's back."

Julio squeezed my hand and leaned closer. "I never thought I'd say this, but I'm glad you got murdered."

I suppressed a laugh. "Can't say I ever expected to agree with a statement like that, but so am I."

The three days leading up to our trip to Newark passed quicker than I would have liked. I had three meetings with potential new commercial accounts, conducted two security consultations, picked up four more FTAs, and spent several hours with Matt working on the design for our new systems. The building manager told me on the first that the tenants next door had moved out and they would start on the renovations. It would be October before we would move into the space, but I didn't mind. What we had was working out for the time being, and if needed people could use the break room to work.

"Call me if something major happens," I told Matt on the phone as we climbed into our rental car. "I'll take care of anything non-urgent when I get back."

"It'll be fine. Enjoy your brother's wedding. Your family will be glad to see you, especially since you just got married," he said.

I didn't comment on that. "See you Monday."

"Last chance to back out," Julio said as we drove away from the Newark airport. "We can always say you got sick on the way to the hotel and needed an appendectomy or something."

"I'm saving that for a rainy day. It'll be fine."

"I wish Mariana and Eduardo were coming. I won't really know anyone besides you and Grandma."

"They've never been close to Emilio. And it's probably for the best that Mariana is in Miami. She has only talked to my mother a few times in the last four years, and it usually ended in an argument."

"Is that why Grandma is staying at Celia's?" Julio asked, unphased by the New Jersey drivers. He was from Chicago after all.

"Mostly it's because of Grandma Rosa. Mom and Dad would keep their mouths shut, but Rosa won't, and it would get ugly. She has always been jealous of how close I am to Grandma Isabela despite living with her for the first fourteen years of my life."

"I'd love to see a fight between your grandmothers," Julio said wistfully. "Grandma breaking a chair over Rosa's head." He laughed at the mental image. "That'd be sweet."

I tried hard not to smile. I almost succeeded. "Maybe Grandma Rosa will open her mouth at the wedding, and you'll get your wish."

The wedding was being held at an estate in West Orange, and we had opted to stay in a hotel closer to the venue than to my family in Newark. We weren't visiting anyone except at the planned events over the next three days. I was taking Julio down to Trenton on Friday before the rehearsal to show him around the city that would become our home next year.

We were having dinner tonight with my siblings and their spouses at Emilio's restaurant in Newark. As much as I loved my siblings, I wasn't looking forward to it, though I couldn't quite put my finger on why.