Page 5 of Troubled Skies (Blue Skies #3)

In the deepest part of his heart, Ricky knew he needed his friends’ help and was grateful for it.

He’d moved out of the condo several months prior once Luis and Darius had gotten their heads out of their assess and admitted they loved each other and rented a small guest house in the backyard of some Hollywood movie guy.

Ricky wasn’t sure what his landlord actually did in the film industry, but the space was nice and totally his.

The rent wasn’t sky-high either, but that was because his landlord knocked a bit off every month in exchange for blow jobs.

Ricky would be the first to admit it wasn’t the best situation, but then again, he’d had worse, and he considered it a small price to pay to have his own place.

Both he and Grant got something out of the deal, and he didn’t have to justify his actions to anyone but himself.

Nor did anyone ask questions or offer sympathetic comfort when yet another relationship blew up in his face as they all seemed to do. End of story.

For the simple fact that he wouldn’t have to deal with Grant while his body was sore, he could put up with Luis and Darius hovering over him for a bit.

He could admit the hovering wasn’t too bad, was almost nice in a way, though letting someone take care of him made his skin crawl.

Ricky hated being dependent on anyone other than himself.

He’d learned that lesson the hard way and several times over, thank you very much.

“Hey, sweetheart?” The inquiry was accompanied by a quiet knock on the door.

“What?” Ricky snapped.

“Just wondering if you’d like something to eat. I was going to order pizza since I missed lunch today.”

Because you had to come home and take care of me, Ricky thought and shook his head at how annoyed he felt. He wasn’t a baby. He didn’t need help. He’d been handling his own shit for a long time and done a good enough job to still be standing.

“Ricky?” Another knock.

“Yeah. Fine. Sounds good.”

“Mushroom and sausage, right?”

“Right,” Ricky said, and pressed his palms against his eyelids to stem the rise of tears that threatened spill simply because Darius remembered his favorite toppings. How pathetic could he be?

“I’ll call it in and let you know when it gets here.”

“Okay,” Ricky said, and then added, “Thanks.”

“Anytime, sweetheart.”

The shadow of Darius’ feet moved away from the bottom of the door, and Ricky heard him placing the order. Then the TV turned on, and Ricky heard the opening for one of the Below Deck shows to which Darius was addicted.

Ricky waited a few minutes before he stood up and left the bathroom to change into clean sweats and join Darius on the couch.

“Thank you,” he said. “For taking care of me.”

“Anytime, hon. You know that.”

To his credit, Darius didn’t take his eyes from the TV screen, nor did he reach out to give Ricky a hug or pat his hand like Luis would have done, and Ricky appreciated that. It wasn’t until the first commercial break that Darius looked at him.

“Your flight bag’s pretty messed up,” he said quietly. “Everything got soaked, and it’s smelling kinda funky. You’ve probably got some mildew happening in there.”

“Sorry about that. I need to get a new one.” A shudder rippled through Ricky’s shoulders, and he looked toward the front door and noticed the flight bag was gone. “Where is it?”

“I took out your phone and wallet and wrapped the rest up in a trash bag. It’s outside.”

“Oh.” Ricky wasn’t sure how he felt about that. The thought of going through his bag to see if anything was salvageable turned his stomach. “My passport?” he asked.

“With your phone and wallet.” Darius nodded toward the dining room table. “I put them in a plastic bag because they smell a bit—”

“Yeah.” Ricky looked down at his hands and rubbed at the now-fading half-moon marks Sheila’s nails had left on his palms. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

With that, they turned their attention to the show and didn’t talk again until the pizza arrived. Ricky didn’t have much of an appetite, but he still polished off two slices before Darius was finished with his first.

“Hey,” Darius said as he reached for another slice. “Micah’s still in town and wanted to know if he and Jake could stop by to see you before they head back to SF.”

“Fuck, no,” Ricky said. Maybe if his body didn’t ache and his brain wasn’t springing surprise flashbacks on him, he would have considered it, but this didn’t even take any thought. “I already feel like crap, I don’t need that in my life.”

Darius chuckled. “You know it was never going to be you, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I know. I got that message loud and clear a couple of years ago. Doesn’t mean I need to have my face rubbed in it by Micah fawning all over that asshole.”

“If you change your mind…”

“I’m not going to. End of discussion.”

“I’ll let Micah know.”

Though Ricky pretended to be watching the show, he was only paying attention enough to respond with a “yeah” or a “no way” in agreement with Darius’ comments about the guests or the deck crew. The majority of his focus was on the wound that had opened up because of Micah wanting to check in on him.

His thoughts weren’t about Micah in particular.

He’d been just one guy in a long line of men who were incapable of or unwilling to reciprocate Ricky’s feelings.

Or who pretended they felt the same way and then screwed him over.

It was a depressingly long list going all the way back to high school and the football player who got Ricky to do all his homework by promising to take him to the prom then laughed in his face when Ricky got them tickets and took one of the cheerleaders instead.

And then there was Cyd because what was a good self-flagellation session without bringing up the asshole he’d thought was his soulmate and had convinced him they should move to LA together.

They’d been together for two years before Cyd cleaned out their joint bank account and ran off with a guy he’d been seeing almost the entire time.

Cyd was why Ricky had started flying after realizing he was basically stranded in LA.

He refused to go back to Seattle with his tail tucked between his legs.

His parents probably would have taken him in.

Probably. And only if Ricky agreed to keep his gay ass under wraps.

That wasn’t a door Ricky had wanted to knock on if he could help it.

So, he’d taken a job as a barista, applied to every airline he could, and gotten accepted for training just about the time he thought he was going to have to give up and contact his parents.

He’d only been flying for a year or so when he ended up flying to Sydney with a certain blond, first class attendant and former dancer turned part-time drag queen who was hopelessly in love with a guy who’d kept him dangling for twenty years.

As if pining for Micah weren’t bad enough, Ricky had gone and fallen for someone he’d thought was finally the one.

Eric had moved them into a beautiful condo in Venice Beach and always brought him flowers when he came home from his numerous business trips.

After a year, instead of the proposal he had expected, Ricky got a wake-up call in the form of Eric, his husband , and their kids showing up on one of his flights.

The cuckholding fucker hadn’t even had the decency to look ashamed, and Ricky had been too humiliated to tell anyone why he became such a prickly asshole to everyone around him.

Or why he suddenly needed to find a new and less expensive place to live, which is how he’d come to live with Luis, Darius, and Greg.

Ricky glanced over at Darius as he admitted to himself he was grateful to Micah for helping him find the place even if the spot opened up because Micah was moving to San Francisco to be with Jake.

Living with the three other flight attendants had been wonderful, and he was finally letting his guard down with them.

But then Greg had gone and fallen in love and moved to Denver, and Luis and Darius had finally admitted they loved each other, and Ricky was alone once more.

Which is why he’d gotten his ass out of the condo and found somewhere he could afford on his own.

He didn’t need to watch another relationship become a happily ever after.

Always on the outside looking in , Ricky thought. Fuck this.

“I’m going to bed. It’s been a long day.”

The look of sympathy Darius shot his way made Ricky scramble up from the couch even as his body protested the quick movement.

“See you tomorrow,” Darius said as Ricky shuffled out of the living room.

“Yeah.” Ricky paused but didn’t turn around. “Thanks for today, Dar.” Darius smiled so wide, Ricky practically heard it and cut him off before he could say anything. “I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I can.”

And then he was shuffling down the hallway before Darius could tell him he’d be welcome to stay as long as he needed to.

Ricky didn’t want to hear that shit. Not right now when he was feeling raw and needy, pissed off and achy.

He took a sleeping pill because he didn’t want to run the risk of having another nightmare that made Darius have to take care of him again.

With luck, he’d stay put in his bed all night.

The next day, after Darius left for Fix, Ricky decided to deal with his flight bag. It didn’t take long to realize the bag and everything in it was a lost cause. The outside was ruined from flame retardant and two of the wheels had melted making it impossible for the bag to roll smoothly.

When he opened the interior, the combined smells of smoke and mildew triggered a coughing fit that left Ricky clutching his ribs and breathing shallowly in an attempt to calm his body and mind.

After he could breathe again, he got a mask from the bathroom and held his breath for as long as he could while he poked around inside the bag to determine if there was anything in there he would miss.

It was nothing but shorts and T-shirts for sleeping, a pair of jeans, and a clean uniform, plus his toiletries.

There was a very expensive facial moisturizer in his kit, but Ricky figured it was a lost cause.

He zipped the flight bag up, put it back into the garbage bag, and left it on the landing.

His passport, wallet, and phone had fared slightly better.

The passport had a bit of a funky residue marring its cover and was slightly warped from getting wet, but Ricky could still use it.

His wallet would need to be replaced, but Ricky retrieved his driver’s license, credit cards, and insurance card as well as the small amount of cash he’d had.

The photos gave him a moment’s pause. They were pics of him with his parents and past boyfriends.

He tossed them all in the trash without looking at them.

His phone? That was still a mystery because it was out of juice and didn’t turn on when he pressed the button.

Ricky hooked it up to the charger in the kitchen and hoped for the best. As soon as it had enough power to turn on, he did so and was immediately bombarded by notifications of texts from his fellow attendants.

The previews showed him that they were all messages asking if he was all right, did he need anything, OMG, Ricky, tell us ur ok (that had been from Luis), whatever you need, man (from Greg), and messages from his carrier about needing to make an appointment with HR and the counselor they had assigned to him.

There was also a message from Grant that turned out to be an eviction notice when Ricky clicked into their chat stream. The reporters camped out at Grant’s house had been a huge disruption, Grant told him. He’d had to go to his house in Jackson Hole because he couldn’t work with this much chaos.

If your shit isn’t off my property by the time I get back, it’s all going to the dump. No blow job is worth this . Especially yours.

On that, Ricky could agree. Grant was a selfish prick, and at first, Ricky felt a strange sense of satisfaction at having irritated the man, then reality crashed down on him.

He was going to be homeless. Again. The thought of it filled him with dread.

It had been years since he’d lived rough, and Ricky knew he couldn’t do that again.

But he didn’t know if he could deal with having roommates right now either.

Standing in Luis and Darius’ kitchen, staring at the messages from his now ex-landlord, Ricky found that the proverbial last straw had been reached. He was done.

He picked up his passport and flipped through the pages to look at the numerous entry stamps. Even with all the places he’d visited since becoming a flight attendant, there was a lot of the world he had yet to see. His passport might be battered and a bit of a mess, but it was still valid.

For a long moment, he stared at his picture and his name: Richard Adrian Bennett.

"Richard" was his father’s name, and he’d hated being named after the man almost as much as he’d hated being called “Ricky.” The alternatives weren’t much better.

“Rich” didn’t suit him, and there was no way he was going to call himself “Dick.” So, he became Ricky by default.

An idea formed in his head as he put his passport aside and reached for his phone to check his bank balance.

Nodding at what he saw, he swiped over to the Uber app and called for a car to take him over to Grant’s.

There wasn’t much he wanted from his now former place—and fuck Grant, he was going to have to deal with throwing out whatever was left behind—but he did own a few things like the vintage metallic gold John Paul Gaultier jacket he’d found while thrifting with Luis that he wasn’t willing to lose. And he was going to need that jacket.

He didn’t know where he was going yet, but he was going to look fabulous when he got there.

He was also going to turn over a new leaf, open a new chapter of his life, and be someone different starting with his name.

Ricky was staying in LA with all the mistakes and bad relationship juju of his past. Once he got on the plane to wherever he was going, he’d use his middle name “Adrian,” and Adrian was going to have the time of his life, meet gorgeous men, and not get his heart broken.

Fuck fairy tales, Adrian was going to make his own happily ever after.