Hot Sauce (Suncoast Society #26)(15)

Chapter Six


After recovering from dealing with Facebook, Vanessa forced herself to eat a little something and did several more pointless chores that were nothing but a delay tactic on her part.

Around eight that evening, she settled on the couch again with Tony’s laptop and Carlo. Much to her relief, she’d discovered her brother had kept a Google spreadsheet with all his passwords. When she’d recovered his e-mail password via his phone, she was able to log into his account.

There, in the list, a notation for an account at a site called FetLife.

She suspected that had something to do with what she’d learned from reading his journal.

Do I really want to do this?

Finally, her personal hesitation was outweighed by the fact that her brother had a life apart from her and their family. Friends she had no idea existed. And if their positions were reversed, she’d want someone to notify those friends so they didn’t think she’d just dropped off the face of the planet.

His login name for the site was Basco_SRQ. She smiled, knowing why he’d picked that. He’d been born with a cast-iron stomach and titanium taste buds.

His nickname growing up—which she’d bestowed upon him—was Tabasco, shortened to Basco.

While she and her parents had preferred mild food, Tony would readily slather his with hot sauce. She now had eight different bottles of the stuff in her fridge and she couldn’t bear to throw them out yet, even though she would never use them.

When she logged into the site, it took her a moment to orient herself. On his profile there was a list of events he’d marked himself as going to, including one this coming Friday night, a shibari class, whatever that was.

Clicking on it showed it was a class on bondage ropework, which jogged her memory. Yes, some of the erotic romance books on her Kindle involved BDSM, but she wouldn’t consider herself an expert in it.

Far from it.

According to the RSVP list, he was friends with twenty-one of the people listed as going and ten of the people listed as maybes. The venue was a place called Venture, in Sarasota. A quick search of the address listed for the location showed it was in an industrial complex just east of I-75.

Hmm.

She hadn’t liked the idea of posting a notification on Facebook, but it was the only way she could get the word out to the largest number of people. Had it been practical, she would have personally notified everyone on his friends list about his passing.

Unfortunately, logistics made that impossible.

Here, too, it would be impossible. He had over eight hundred friends. Surely not all of them were real-life friends.

I could go on Friday.

It had been billed as a beginner’s class. When she looked a little more closely, she thought she spotted something familiar on one of his friend’s avatars. She clicked on the person’s icon.

Yep. If that wasn’t Jenny’s “necklace” that she always wore, Vanessa would eat Tony’s damn laptop. The distinctive heart-shaped locket on her friend’s necklace always caught Vanessa’s eye. There wasn’t a face shot of the person, just them wearing the necklace, but the user’s ID was listed as SRQtango_girl.

It couldn’t be a coincidence that her friend also enjoyed ballroom dancing with her boyfriend, and had the exact same necklace.

Vanessa picked up her phone and called her.

Jenny answered. “Hey, sweetie. I was just about to text you. How you doing?”

“Tell me about FetLife,” Vanessa responded without hesitation. She didn’t want her friend to have time to come up with a gentle lie. She wanted to catch her off-guard, take her totally by surprise, and get the absolute truth.

Jenny hesitated for a moment before she replied. “Um, what?”

“I’m looking at his FetLife account,” Vanessa said. “On his laptop. Tony. I read his journal, too. I know he was into BDSM and he was bi. It’s okay. I’m not upset, but I need to know about this.”

Vanessa swallowed back the tears that threatened to erupt and forced herself to stay pragmatic. “I want to notify his friends. All of his friends. So please, tell me about this.”

After a resigned sigh, Jenny did.

When her friend finished blowing Vanessa’s mind, Jenny asked, “Are you really okay?”

“I am,” she quietly said. “It explains a lot, really. It makes sense. I just wish he’d felt comfortable enough coming out to me.”

“He didn’t want to worry you.”

“So he denied that part of himself.”

“Well, not really. He just kept it hidden from you and your parents. He still went to events and played with people. He didn’t want to stress you out and add worries to your plate.”

Vanessa felt guilty that her brother hadn’t thought he could open up to her about this. To the end he’d still been her big brother, looking after her to the exclusion of himself.

“It wouldn’t have stressed me out,” she said.

“I can’t speak to anything other than what he told me,” Jenny gently said. “He loved you so, so much. I don’t think it was because he thought you’d disown him. He was worried about you. He didn’t want you worrying about him.”

“So are you still going to this thing on Friday night?”

“What?”