Undeniably In Denial

As it turned out, Reese, Jason, Ianto and Ash were staying at the same hotel all of us models were at and it was just down the street a bit from the place Karma’s show was at, so we decided to walk home from there. I didn’t say this out loud (I think Reese caught on anyways, because his arm was around my shoulders protectively almost the whole time) but I was kind of freaked about walking down the streets at night. It just worried me, because the guy that shot Jared, well, I've seen him, and he’s a scary, scary man. My biggest fear is that he’s got some buddies out there and they know about all of us at the shoot. Especially the people like Quincy and Adelaide who aren’t even gay or bisexual or anything of the sort. I felt safer with Reese’s arm around me, not really because it was there, but because he was there, walking next to me.

“So he told me to get on the floor and pick it up, and I told him to get on the floor and suck it. He left me alone after that,” Jason explained, finishing a story about something completely irrelevant to anything. “It was so weird.”

“Jason, has the thought ever crossed your mind that not everybody wants to suck your dick?” I asked, laughing at him. It seems as if Jason hadn’t lost any of his cockiness over the years.

“Oh, ha, ha, Mr. Model,”

“I know, I'm just so fucking funny, aren’t I?”

“Do I detect a bit of sarcasm there?” Reese asked, looking down at me (he somehow got taller than me over the years, instead of the couple of inches shorter that he used to be).

“That you do, Reese, that you do,”

Everyone else was laughing at the three of us all that time, and none of us were really paying attention to where we were at until Ash ran into a parked car. We were walking on the sidewalk until then, but there was a no sidewalk where we stopped; we were under the canopy of the hotel and Ash had walked straight into a car that was stopped to drop somebody off. Luckily, nobody was in or around the car to see, except for us six, so he wasn’t too terribly embarrassed.

“I did not just do that,” he laughed, holding his hands out to the car in defense, as if it was going to attack him. “That did not happen. Not at all.”

“Ah, but Ash,” Reese started, laughing at his friend’s denial. “It did happen. It very much so happened.”

“Sh!” he fake shushed. “Nobody needs to know that.”



Jared’s funeral was back in his home town in Minnesota and was in two days, so my manager canceled the last of my shoots for me. I was going back to England for the night and then heading out for the States the next morning. I'd land in Minnesota, go to the funeral, and then go back home to New Jersey to visit with my family for a week or so.

At the airport, I had everybody I was close with there to see me off; Rina, Reese, Jason (I was actually pretty surprised he came), Rina’s boyfriend (and my friend) Aiden, and then Quincy (who turned out to also be a model; that busy boy). I was glad to have those five with me, because it was hard enough by itself, having to leave and go to this funeral.

“So how long are you going to be staying with your ‘rents?” Rina asked me after giving me a really long hug.

“I don’t know; it all depends. But it’ll probably be only a week or two. Maybe three,”

“You’re going back to Jersey after the funeral?” Reese asked.

“Yea, I haven’t seen my folks in a while and I figured that while I'm there, I might as well drop in and stay for a bit,”

“They still live on Marrietta Lane?” he asked, surprising me by remembering where they live.

“Same house, yea,”

“You still have you’re little hideaway in the attic?”

“Most of the stuff is still up there, but it’s probably really super dusty. I haven’t been up there since I left, four years ago. I kind of miss it,”

“Just like we’re going to miss you when you leave,” Aiden added, speaking up for once. He’s usually a very quiet person, kind of like how Reese described Ianto as; quiet but mischievous. I think that’s why Rina likes him so much; so they can be evil together.

“Yea, but I'll be back,” I said, switching my backpack to my right shoulder before my left one gave out.

“Not if I can help it,” a menacing voice with a French accent said from behind us. From then on, it was as if things went in slow motion, just like they do in movies. I spun around and came face to face with a scary looking guy holding a gun, pointing it at my chest. He was a yard or so away, and I could tell he was friends with Jared’s shooter, because he had the same tattoo of a black bird holding a baseball bat on his arm. It must have been some sort of gang symbol or something, because that sure isn’t too common of a tattoo. I was too shocked to move, even as the guy was about to pull the trigger. The next thing I know, I'm falling out of the bullet path, onto the ground, and I hear someone hiss in pain. A body landed on top of me and I saw that it was Reese, but he was clutching his right shoulder.

He took a bullet for me!

I was stunned by that, but when I heard another shot ring, I looked up and became even more stunned. The guy had shot at Jason too! Rina got there first though, when she pushed the guy from behind. Jason still got hit (and I think he was too focused on me and Reese, because he was staring at us and didn’t even realize he had a gun pointed at him) but the bullet only grazed his leg. He grabbed his leg and almost fell over, catching himself on Quincy’s elbow. Amongst all this mess, security guards were called and before the creep could do any more damage, they had him in handcuffs and were hauling him off as he struggled against it. As soon as they took him away, things stopped going so slow.

Reese had rolled to the side and sat up, holding his wounded shoulder, wincing at the pressure.

“Reese, if you weren’t injured right now, I would whack you one real good!”

“What? Why?” he gasped.

“Because you didn’t have to do that,”

“What else was I going to do? Let you get shot and watch you die? There was no way I could do that!”

“But you could have died!”

“I didn’t though,”

“You might,”

“Camron, I got hit in the shoulder; nowhere near vital organs,”

“You could bleed to death,” I pointed out.

“Not if I keep pressure on this and go to the hospital where they’ll fix me up. You’re just determined to kill me off somehow aren’t you?”

“Of course not! I don’t know what I’d do if you died. You and Jared both within the same week would be absolutely unbearable!”

“Relax, I was only kidding,” he laughed, and then cringed at the pain that caused his shoulder.

“You’re shot and you’re joking about dying? Way to go, you fuck-tard. See, this is why I would whack you one if you weren’t wounded. I swear, sometimes you seem like the biggest idiot I know,”

“Ah, but I'm the one that skipped two years of school and graduated high school early,” he said, smirking evilly at me.

“Oh, just shove it,” I laughed, standing up and offering my hand to Reese so he could get up too. He took it, but caught himself on me when he almost fell back down from what looked like a dizzy spell. “You okay?”

“Yea, just blood rushing to…well, where ever it rushes to when it makes you dizzy,”

Babies were crying, kids were screaming, and everyone else was freaking out, but we were still able to gather everyone up and support the injured half of Karma as we made our way towards and exit. Sirens were heard and an ambulance pulled up to the curb outside the airport, with police cars in tow. An officer got out of one of the cars and sprinted up to us all, asking something in French. Just as I was about to speak up and say that we didn’t speak French, Jason stuttered out a little something, trying to remember the language as he did so. The man nodded and said something else, waving us towards the ambulance.

“What did he say?”

“He asked how many were injured and the ages of them,” Jason said, looking over his shoulder. “And then he said to take us to the health-mobile.”

“He didn’t actually say ‘health-mobile’, did he?”

“Of course not, Quincy, you silly goose,” he chuckled.

“Yea, I'm the silly one,” our new friend said, his voice loaded with sarcasm. “Are you sure they haven’t put you on any pain meds yet?”