by Roan Parrish
In all the slow parts, I’m mostly aware of Rafe. Leaning forward at things that catch his attention. Leaning back and relaxing into the couch. Sometimes he’ll look over at me, almost like he’s checking to make sure I’m still there. I don’t know if it’s because it’s loose or because of the no-shampoo thing, but his hair has dried wavier than usual and I have the strangest urge to touch it, to push it back from his forehead and neck.
I’ve been so relaxed all evening, but then Russell Crowe’s character, Maximus, is stabbed by a coward. And even though he keeps fighting, there’s nothing he can do. I know he’s going to die, and for some reason, I hate it. Yeah, okay, Maximus was a warrior, but war is different—people know they might die and they do it anyway, and these warriors seem to welcome a death in battle. But Maximus didn’t want to hurt anyone in the arena. He just wanted to be left alone on his farm with his wife and kid, but they made him hurt people and then killed him because he was a threat that they created.
I hate it and my stupid fucking breathing thing starts. I hadn’t even noticed it was gone until this second. I sit up very straight, trying to breathe deeply and evenly, but once I’m aware of it, it’s too late. It’s all I can think about.
The movie ends and even though they make it look happy—like Maximus is getting what he wants and being reunited with his family—everyone knows that’s bullshit. The dead are just dead and you never see them again. Hell, at least people remember Maximus. I’ve never done anything more memorable than fixing someone’s damn transmission. If I died tomorrow, no one would remember me and no one would care except Pop, Brian, and Sam.
Rafe’s not like that. I bet if he died tomorrow, tons of people would remember him. I mean, all those kids at the Youth Alliance would definitely care. They all seemed crazy about him.
The music in the closing credits is incredibly fucking depressing.
“Hey.” A tentative hand on the back of my neck startles me and I pull away. “What brought that on?”
“Brought what on?” I breathe as quietly as I can, taking shallow sips of air.
“That change in your breathing?”
“Dude,” I say, trying to play it off, “are you listening to me breathe? Sounds like you’re the one with the problem.”
“Mmhmm,” he says, like he’s humoring me.
No one’s ever noticed it before. Okay, so usually it happens when I’m alone, when I have time to think. But it’s definitely happened while I was watching TV with Sam, Brian, and Pop, and none of them ever noticed a thing.
“Um, it’s getting a little late,” I say. As if I’ll be able to sleep anyway. “And I have to work in the morning, so.”
I go to open the door, but before I can, he steps right up next to me, and then that warm hand is back on my neck and he’s so close I can smell my soap, and damn, why does it smell so much better on him?
He leans toward me, and for one panicky second I think… I don’t know what I think. I can feel his breath on my face and see the thick spread of his eyelashes.
“You don’t have to talk to me,” he says, voice low and calm. “But don’t think for one second that I buy your bullshit.” One side of his mouth tenses in what I’m learning is his version of a knowing smile. “And don’t think I don’t know exactly what’s going on here.”
He leans a fraction of an inch closer and strokes my throat with his thumb. I hear my gasp before I’m aware it’s happening.
“Good night, Colin. I’ll see you on Saturday.” He opens the door, then turns back to me. “Sweet dreams.”
“God fucking—mmmf.” I cradle my right hand, looking around for a cloth and finding none. I dart into the office for some paper towel before I bleed all over the concrete.
“Colin!” Sam’s followed me into the office. “Are you okay?”
It’s not so deep that I need stitches, I don’t think, but it’s bleeding pretty good. It’s the third time in two days that I’ve hurt myself because I wasn’t paying attention. The third time since Rafe left my house the other night after his mysterious pronouncement and goddamned perfect face.
“Jesus, what’s got you so distracted, bro?” Sam asks, his brow furrowed. “You’ve been wandering around like a fucking space cadet all day.”
“Nothing, man. Just an accident.”
“Are you sure? Is it okay? Do you need me to get Pop?” He looks down at my hand. God knows Pop’s bandaged up enough of us over the years to know when it’s bad.
“Nah, I’m fine. I’m almost done anyway.”
I tape the paper towel over my hand and go back to Mrs. Wilson’s truck. She’s only got a broken drive belt, so it shouldn’t take too long to finish. That is, if I can get my head out of my ass long enough to avoid chopping a finger off.
“You’re bleeding all over Mrs. Wilson’s belt, you knucklehead. Get out of there!”
Pop jerks me up by the shoulder and grabs my hand.
“You idiot—did you even clean that?”
“It’s fine, Pop.”
“It’s not fine. Get out of here and take care of it.”
He looks disgusted with my stupidity, but with Pop that disgust is always mixed with a little bit of pride that I’m dedicated enough to my work—well, to his garage—that I’d stay.
I’ve been putting off this moment because I know Pop’ll be mad, but now I’m right down to the wire so I figure I may as well do it while he can see I’m dedicated.
“Uh, hey, Pop, listen. I need to take Saturdays off for a while.”
He gapes at me.
“You’re telling me this on a Thursday afternoon? What’s wrong with you?” The disgust is back, and this time it’s not mixed with anything. “That’s not how we do things, Colin.”
His nostrils are flared the way they usually are when he’s talking to Brian about his incompetence or when Daniel says things that make him sound like a sissy.
“Well,” I try and explain, “I talked to Luther and he says he could use the extra—”
“Do you run this garage, Colin?”
His voice is ice-cold. This is don’t-cross-me territory that I don’t usually stumble into.
“No, sir.” I drop my gaze to the floor. Pop and I have the same boots. The toes are pocked down to the steel and stained with oil from years of repairs. He’s come so close to me that they’re almost touching.
“Do you make the schedule here?”
I shake my head. “No, sir.”
“You want Saturdays off?”
I don’t say anything, swallowing against a lump in my throat that threatens to cut off my oxygen.
“Sure, son. Take Saturdays off.”
His voice is deceptively silky and would sound friendly to someone who didn’t know him. I jerk my head up to look at him.
“In fact, why don’t you take tomorrow off, too?”
My stomach clenches. “No, I—”
“Do you make the schedule?” There are razor blades beneath the silk.
“No, sir.” It comes out as a whisper.
He nods once. “I don’t want to see you tomorrow.”
I ease the Beretta into the Youth Alliance parking lot, wincing as it practically bottoms out on the half curb, just as it has on every dip and bump on the drive over. Frankly, I’m lucky it started at all.
I feel fucking rough.
Yesterday was a misery. When my alarm went off, I started getting ready for work as usual, until my brain woke up and I remembered that Pop kicked my ass out. I hadn’t had a weekday off in… I can’t even remember, and I had no idea what to do with myself.
I did laundry, scrubbed the kitchen floor and behind the refrigerator, scoured the grout in the shower, and cleaned the toilet tank. I rerolled my socks tighter so they took up less space in the drawer, rearranged my shirts by color, and lined up my shoes with military precision.
Shelby started rocketing around my bedroom like a furry missile trying to get at my shoelaces, so I took one out of my boot and let her chase it all ove
r the apartment. I wiggled my fingers for her the way I saw Rafe do and she worked herself up into a frenzy, finally launching herself off the ground and grabbing my left hand in her mouth, front paws anchoring it there and back paws raking my forearm as she scrabbled frantically to dig in and bite down.
When I ripped my hand away, there were bright red lines standing out on my arm and scrape marks from her teeth on my hand. Once I got over being startled, I enjoyed the pain—sharp, stinging evidence of what happens when you give something the chance to get a good hit in. By the time she got bored and scampered away to lick herself in the middle of the couch, my forearm and hand were a mess of bright red scratches and welts.
I ran until I was exhausted and then lifted weights until my cut hand throbbed and my muscles gave out and the dumbbell dropped to the floor with a reverberating thud I could feel in my knees.
By the time Brian called after work, I’d done a thousand sit-ups and taken two showers.
“Dude, what the hell?”
I knew the second I heard his voice that I shouldn’t have answered because the fire of fury had slid over me, and there was no way to combat it except with ice.
“What the hell, what?”
“Um. Well, you’re… you weren’t here.”
Yeah, no fucking shit, idiot. “Yeah, Pop told me to fuck off.”
“Why?”
“I don’t fucking know, Brian. Ask Pop.”
“Oh. Um, are you coming in tomorrow?”
“Nope.”
All I wanted was for Brian to hang up and leave me alone before I said something to really hurt him. When I feel like that, there’s nothing I can do. I can’t be nice; I can’t chat; I can’t even end the conversation. There is only one way out: to clench my jaw and my fists until it ends on its own, a wall of ice between me and anything that might delay that end.
“Um. Monday?”
“Yep.”
“So, uh, do you want to hang out? The game’s on.”
“Nope.”
I was physically incapable of getting more than one word out—like my whole body’s energy worked and worked and worked and all that cranked out was one syllable.
“Oh. Okay, no problem,” he stammered. “It’s just Florida State anyway, so it probably won’t be that good.” He paused awkwardly. “I mean, not like you can’t watch the game without me. You probably will. So. Okay.” He floundered on the end of the line and it was my fault because I’m a shitty brother and basically an asshole. But I couldn’t muster another word. “So, then, I guess I’ll see you tomorr—or, I mean, Monday.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Okay, well, bye, bro.”
I hung up, relieved to have him off the line, and immediately wished he were there so I wasn’t alone.
By ten, I was three whiskeys down, and for some stupid reason, I put that fucking gladiator movie on again. I just really liked the soundtrack—score—whatever you call it. I was feeling the whiskey more than I usually would have because I hadn’t eaten anything but cereal when I woke up. But something about my exhausting workout and how hungry I was combined to make my breathing not so bad, so I was afraid to eat. Except then I went to take a piss and saw blackness at the edges of my vision, so I ate a sandwich, cursing each bite that seemed to soak up the warm, tipsy feeling.
I woke up twisted in the covers with a wicked headache and a very disgruntled cat half buried under the blanket, her fur mussed.
Now, my stomach is tight and my breathing is jerky. I think maybe I really should’ve listened to Pop and gotten stitches, too, because the cut on my hand is throbbing with every heartbeat. I made it worse holding the weights yesterday—tore it open and slapped a bandage on it so I didn’t have to look.
I press on Shelby’s scratches through the rough flannel of my shirt to remind me they’re there. To remind me that anything can turn on you in a second. Mostly, I’m just glad for the distraction of the workshop. Another day alone in my house and I don’t know what the fuck I would’ve done.
Before I even get inside, Rafe is striding toward me across the parking lot.
“Hey,” he says, and he seems genuinely glad to see me.
“Morning.” My voice comes out as a croak, and Rafe leans closer.
“What’s going on?”
“Not much.”
“You look like shit.”
“Wow, thanks, dude. You really know how to brighten a guy’s day.”
Rafe steps closer, crowding me against the Beretta. “Are you sick?”
“Nah, I’m fine. Just didn’t sleep too well.”
“What happened to your hand?” He takes my right wrist in his hand like he has every fucking right in the world to touch me, and what is that about?
“Oh, you know. Occupational hazard.” I clear my throat. “So, I brought this guy.” I thump the roof of the Beretta.
Rafe grabs my left hand where it rests on the roof of the car. “Another occupational hazard?”
He’s looking at Shelby’s scratches. Then he starts to trace them up from my hand to my arm and I pull away.
“Colin. Are you okay to do this right now?” He puts his hands on my shoulders and it feels strangely good to have all that warm attention focused on me. Different than Brian grilling me.
“Yeah, course.”
“The kids are really excited, so if you’re not up to giving it your full attention, I don’t want to bring them out here.”
And damn, that stings. Of course he’s not concerned about me. He’s worried that I’m going to hurt his kids like I hurt everyone else I fucking come in contact with.
“No, man, I’m fine, really. I’ll be good. Scout’s honor.” I hold up a salute. Rafe frowns, looking me over. I slug him in the shoulder. “Dude, no worries. It’ll be great. Get the kids.”
His eyes are fixed on the smile I’ve plastered on my face, and he raises an eyebrow like he’s going to call me on it but then just claps me on the back and goes inside, leaving me to set up my tools and search out his lingering smell.
“Yo, yo, yo, Colin,” Carlos says, the first one out the door. “How’s it hanging, my man?” He tries to execute a complicated handshake, but since I don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to do, we just kind of end up flopping our hands against each other’s.
“How’s it going?” I ask, and Carlos grins at me, like he thought I might ignore him or something.
“Oh, you know, you know, not bad.”
It’s still a few minutes before eleven, so the kids are chatting and goofing off. DeShawn is back, polite and quiet, wearing all white again, and so are the twins—Sammi and Tynesha, I correct myself. Pretty girl isn’t back—guess she wasn’t impressed with me—but the rest are, and there are a few new kids who Rafe introduces. I forget their names immediately, as usual.
“Hey, Ricky,” I say, waving to her even though she barely seems to notice I’m there.
“Hi,” she says, flicking her eyes to me for a second, then looking away.
Last out of the gate is the kid in all black who was into Harry Potter. Rafe called him Anders. He’s clutching his violin case in hand. When he gets closer, the first thing I notice is that his expression looks different than it did last week. Then he looked… I dunno… sweet and happy, even if he was shy. Now, his expression is shuttered, distant, like he’s thinking hard about something. And if he reminded me of Daniel before, with his dreaminess and his little-kid enthusiasm for some weird book, now I can see it quite clearly.
Today, he looks like Daniel did after kids at school started picking on him—after we started teasing him more, moving from the typical brother ribbing to giving him shit because we thought it was girly that he wanted us to read to him and would sometimes absently pull on our mother’s too-large robe if he got cold. But most of all, after he realized that he didn’t have anything in common with us anymore.
He’d come into the garage sometimes when he was twelve or thirteen—around the time it became clear he was just… different than
us—and he’d look around like he was spooked. Like he wanted to hang out but was afraid we wouldn’t let him.
“Let’s welcome Colin back,” Rafe says to the kids. “And let’s wish Anders a belated happy birthday.”
“A be-what now?” says Carlos.
“Belated. Late. It was Anders’ seventeenth birthday yesterday.” Jesus, I thought the kid was fourteen or fifteen, he’s so small.
“Well, why didn’t you just say that, Conan?” says Carlos, his joy at fucking with Rafe clear in his expression.
“You got a problem with my vocabulary, Carlito?” Rafe says, his consonants crisp and mock fierceness in his voice.
“Nope.” Carlos grins, and I get the feeling they do this often.
Various versions of Happy birthday issue from the group, including a lingering kiss on his cheek from Mikal—who’s wearing a sweatshirt with a glittery unicorn on it that says “I even shit rainbows”—which makes Anders blush.
I start by taking them on a tour of the Beretta’s ruination, explaining why the owner decided to scrap it. The kids are pretty into it, especially when I assure them that they’re going to get to actually work on the car, but none of them approach when I ask them where they want to start.
I thought Ricky might step up, but she’s like a ghost today, hovering at the edge of the group, her white-blonde hair in her face so I can barely even tell if she’s looking at the car. She stands with her ankles crossed like a messed-up ballerina and her arms around her skinny chest like she’s a twist the wind could just pick up. There’s something about her—how she’s absent and focused at the same time? I don’t know.
She doesn’t seem fake. I envy her.
“So could you fix anything on a car?” one of the twins asks—well, even if they’re not twins, I can’t tell which is which.
“Well, almost anything on a car can be fixed. But some things are so expensive that it’d cost more to have them fixed than to buy another car.”
“But, like, if we tried to fix stuff on this car and we messed it up, could you fix it?” She looks anxious.
“How about this: I can fix almost anything. But I promise that if you do something to this car that I can’t fix, it’s still fine.”