Middle of Somewhere Series Box Set

by Roan Parrish

  He shakes his head and shrugs for real, like he hopes it’ll have the same effect. When he meets my gaze, he looks ashamed.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry. You can count on me. You can.”

  It sounds hollow even to me, and Rafe’s face makes my heart sink because I can see how much he wants it to be true and how much he doesn’t believe me.

  “I’m not sure I can do this.” Rafe’s voice is the shocked whisper of someone confessing a secret he has only just now realized.

  My heart starts to pound so hard it makes me light-headed.

  Rafe puts his hand over his mouth.

  “Oh god,” he murmurs. He sinks down to the floor, looking up at me, his hand still over his mouth. “Oh god, I’m not sure I can do this.”

  “Rafe, no,” I say, kneeling in front of him.

  He’s trembling, his eyes wide.

  “Rafe?” I put a hand on his shoulder. His eyes have gone distant, like he doesn’t even see me.

  “I want you all the time,” he says. “I would do anything for you. But—” He bites his lip and shakes his head. “—but if I have to worry that every time something is hard, you’ll…. And if I don’t even have…. Oh god. Colin….”

  Rafe’s eyes are wild. Desperate. I’ve never seen him like this before, and a kind of panic I’ve never felt before rises in me. It’s huge. And instead of feeling like darkness, like sticky tar, it’s just need—need that I can’t let go. While I’m used to the darkness, I don’t know what to do about needing someone. About a yearning for something beyond myself so strong that it wants to push out through my skin. He’s there on the floor and everything in me is sparking toward him, like a live wire, desperate for a ground.

  “Rafe.” I hardly recognize my voice. His eyes snap to mine. “Please. Please, just tell me what happened.” I have this idea that if only I can get him talking, then this won’t be happening. If I can figure out what the problem is, then I can solve it. Like a leaky valve or a cruddy engine. He won’t leave me. He won’t give up on us.

  “It’s all over,” he whispers. “I just didn’t expect it all at once.”

  “Tell me!”

  “I failed all of them. And Javi. He trusted me, but everyone else…. They think I’m trash. Just a fucking criminal. I should’ve known. I can’t… I can’t believe I thought they actually had faith in me.”

  “Who? What happened? Please.”

  When he doesn’t answer me, I straddle him and put my hands on his shoulders, forcing him to look at me. He looks surprised to find me so close.

  I lean in and kiss him, just a soft touch of our lips, and his eyes flutter closed. I kiss his cheeks and his chin.

  “What happened?”

  He squeezes his eyes shut, his hands settling on my hips automatically. I’m dead fucking sober now.

  “Youth Alliance has a board of directors. They don’t really do much day to day, but they’re in charge of grant writing and the budget for programming and salaries, and writing press releases or providing info to other groups who do similar work. And they’re in charge of keeping records for all of the kids and the staff and volunteers at YA.”

  “Okay,” I say, not understanding the problem. Rafe’s shoulders slump.

  “Javi hired the original people who worked there. The board came later, once YA grew. After it became a 501(c)(3). A nonprofit,” he explains at my blank look. “Javi hired me long before there was a board or any official process for hiring. I started out volunteering, then just kind of segued into working there part-time. They needed all the help they could get. The board knows me, of course, but I’ve never been involved with them. When Javi died and I started, you know, doing more, we didn’t really talk about it. Things were crazy and I was the one who knew the kids, knew how everything worked because I’d always been with Javi. Nothing was official. We were just trying to… keep it all together.

  “But today,” he says, “Carly, the board representative, called me and asked if I’d have a meeting with them. They found out that I’m a… that I have a record.”

  “They didn’t know?”

  “Javi didn’t put it in my file. They do background checks on everyone now, but since I’d already been there…. In my file Javi’d written that he knew me from church.” Rafe snorts. “And they all trusted Javi, so no one questioned it, I guess. After he died, they were just glad someone knew what needed to be done.”

  “So, why did they check up on you now?”

  “Anders’ father told them.” The muscle in Rafe’s jaw tightens. “After he found out Anders had been coming to YA, he looked into me. It’s public record.” He shakes his head. “He was angry. Looking for something to discredit YA. Make us look bad. And there I was. A fucking ex-con and an addict working with youth, and the board didn’t even know. Honestly, I’m lucky they didn’t call the cops on me.”

  “Oh no.”

  “I….” His voice trembles. “I just don’t know what I’ll do without them, and—”

  When I pull him against me, he’s shaking.

  “And not having you either—I—” He closes his eyes.

  “Don’t say that. Please don’t say that. I’m sorry, Rafe. I’m so sorry. I’m—fuck, I’m sorry about all of it. But you can’t—I mean, I—we—it’s—just, please, don’t.”

  Rafe leans back so he can see me. He strokes my cheek, my eyebrow, my lips. I can’t read his expression at all.

  “I… need some time to think,” he says softly, pressing his thumb to my lips.

  “Rafe, no,” I say, but his thumb makes the words sound garbled.

  He stands, pulling me to my feet.

  “Please,” I try again, “what do you mean you don’t have me? You—” But he cuts me off.

  “Colin. I need to make sure I’m doing the right thing. The right thing for me. Because I can’t go much deeper before—” He rakes his hair back, then looks at me seriously. “I thought maybe talking with Daniel might help you see how much you have to gain by being honest.”

  “I—what?”

  “I just need you to know,” he says slowly. “That it’s a lot. For me. The secrecy. If this is how it’s always going to be—a secret, a lie. It’s a lot, Colin. It’s a lot if I don’t have any hope that things might be different someday. Maybe…. It may be too much. Too much to live with and not… I just have to think. Okay?”

  My head is spinning and my stomach’s churning, but he kisses my forehead before I can say anything, and walks out the door.

  The words echo after he’s gone, though. Secret. Lie. Too much.

  They echo for a long, long time.

  14

  Chapter 14

  When I was sixteen and broke my arm, the doctor at the hospital asked me to rate the pain on a scale of zero to ten, with zero being no pain and ten being the worst pain I could imagine.

  I wanted to look tough, sure. But also I could imagine oceans of pain so vast and incalculable they tipped this to practically nothing. So I told him it was a four. He smirked at me and gave me a pain pill anyway. What was worse than the pain, though, was the fear. When I first crashed Pop’s car, all I felt was pain, and I didn’t know what it meant. Was I going to look down and see that my arm had been torn off? Once I knew it was just broken, even though it hurt the same, it didn’t feel as bad. Broken bones heal. I knew that.

  Every second since Rafe walked out my door has been a pain so different it’s shocking it can even be called the same thing. And rather than reacting like I usually do—wanting to disappear, wanting to obliterate myself—cut and punch and run and puke until there’s nothing left—now I feel like I need to do something. I’m vibrating with restless energy. I’m waiting for something and I don’t know when it will come. I’m teetering at the edge of a cliff, and a breeze from one direction or the other could end or save me.

  In an attempt to fall in the right direction for once, I went back to work right after New Year’s, desperate to get out of the house, only to fi
nd that no one had been coming in since Pop died. I don’t know what Sam’s been up to because he hasn’t called me back about the shop. Luther took the week off to go to some aunt’s house or something. Brian’s been out, mostly. He says he’s following up on bartending gigs, but he has the manic look he only gets when he’s scheming about a girl, so I assume it has something to do with Callie and her puke-cat.

  Alone in the shop, I’ve worked twelve-hour days and still wanted to do more. After I finished the repairs that had languished with Pop’s death, I cleaned up the whole shop, putting in order things that’ve been a mess for years.

  I’ve thrown away busted tools and organized good ones, shredded dozens of boxes of useless papers in Pop’s office and redone his filing system (less of a system and more of a stack, really), scrubbed every corner of the garage until the floor was clean enough to eat off of, and repainted the walls a blue-gray color that reminded me so much of the ocean outside Rafe’s beach house when I went to the paint store that I couldn’t help but buy it.

  I’ve oiled every hinge and plastered every crack. I’ve cleaned the ductwork and installed a new phone with an intercom system from the office to the shop floor. I’ve sifted through every piece of hardware and organized it all. Ball bearings separated by size; hinges, gears, cotter pins, and springs categorized by type; wire neatly bundled. Every screw, rivet, nut, washer, O-ring, and shim has a home.

  The messages start coming while I’m painting.

  I’d given Anders my phone number back when he came to the shop needing to talk. I figured in case shit went seriously wrong at home, at least he could call. He’d never used it until now, though. I’m so sorry about your dad is all he writes. Rafe must’ve told the kids.

  Before I can even write back to say thanks, another message comes through. Death effing sucks. Sorry Winchester ;) oh this is Carlos. Anders clearly gave him my number, too.

  Then: So sorry sweetie. Let me know if U need cheering up!!! xoxoxo Mikal.

  And: Condolences Colin. You don’t seem like a flower guy so I didn’t send any but I’m sorry for your loss. That one is unsigned but clearly from Mischa, echoing her parents’ country club style.

  Then, from Mikal again: DeShawn says it’s totes inappropes to text U w/o permish. Sorry bb!!! We just <3 U! xoxoxoxoxo

  The idea that I may not see them again—that without Rafe working at YA, I have no reason to be there—settles in my stomach like cement. It quickly becomes clear that Anders, DeShawn, Mikal, Carlos, and Mischa are all together because they begin to text me in a flurry of tangled responses I can’t keep up with.

  Finally, they get irritated and call me instead.

  “Dude. Dude. Yo, Winchester! Take the phone away from your ear, man, it’s Facetime.”

  I pull the phone away and see them huddled together on a perfectly made bed. The green-and-white checked blanket and bright white walls dotted with framed pictures hung on green ribbons mark it as Mischa’s room, I’m pretty sure. Carlos waves at me and grins. Mikal claps excitedly. Anders and DeShawn are still and serious, leaning against the wall. Mischa walks in the door holding a bag of apples and a box of crackers and nods at me like I’m in the room.

  Then they dive in with no preamble or pleasantries, all talking at once, and I can’t help but smile at the familiarity of them interrupting each other, elbowing each other, and nodding in approval.

  The long and the short of it is that they’re devastated Rafe got fired, have a lot of questions about his past, which I evade, and are furious with the board. Not only because of Rafe but because, they assure me, all of the board members are lame to hang around with. Then they start giving me messages to give to Rafe, and my stomach clenches when I have to tell them that I’m not sure when I’ll be able to pass them on.

  “Did you guys break up?” Mischa asks.

  God damn it. Trust teenagers to cut right to the gossip. I just shake my head, trying to come up with something.

  “Oh no!” Anders cries, sounding like he’s in pain. DeShawn turns to him immediately. “You can’t break up. You guys are, like, my OTP. If you can’t make it, there’s no hope for me!”

  He sounds genuinely upset. What the hell is an OTP?

  “Look,” I say, “the point is that I’m sure Rafe would want to hear from you, but there are, uh, protocols and things, so you’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “That’s shit, Colin,” Mikal says in a bitter voice, rolling his eyes. It might be the first time he’s called me by my name instead of “sweetie” or “boo.” It doesn’t bode well. “Let me guess. You broke up because you’re still in the closet and Rafe finally lost patience, right? Well, fucking man up and get the job done.”

  “That’s super sexist,” Mischa says.

  “It’s bullshit,” Mikal insists. “You guys are, like, like, perfect together. You’re all—” He gestures wildly. “—and he’s all—” More gestures. “—and I can’t believe you!”

  Then they’re all talking at once and there’s no way I’m wading into it. I should be pissed that I just got called out by a teenager, but I already feel so shitty and mixed-up about things with Rafe that I can’t even muster any indignation.

  As they move from the shambles of my romantic life to ranting about how they’ll force the board to hire Rafe back, it’s Anders I can’t stop looking at. His hands are clenched in his lap, his skin and hair almost ghoulishly pale against his black clothes. He’s leaning into DeShawn’s shoulder just a little, and DeShawn keeps glancing down at him.

  Watching them, I’m reminded of something Anders said when he came to the shop to see me. He talked mostly about not wanting his parents to be disappointed in him, but just before he left, he said that it helped to know maybe someone could still like you even if you couldn’t quite be totally open yet. I’d been embarrassed at the idea he was talking about me and Rafe. But now I wonder if he was thinking about DeShawn. If Anders was relieved to think that maybe they could have a chance to be something even if he didn’t out himself.

  I’m still thinking about Anders days later. I know Rafe probably wouldn’t approve, but I texted Anders the night I talked with the kids and asked him how things were with his family.

  He responded within seconds. I don’t think I can tell them. I don’t know what my dad will do.

  I was furious for him and nervous for him and I told him that was fine. That if he didn’t feel like it was okay, then it was better to protect himself. That the most important thing was making sure he was safe. He texted back a Thanx and a smiley face, and I sat on my bed and stared at my phone for hours.

  Because I already was safe. I could protect myself. Rather, there was no one in my life I needed to protect myself from. Not really. Not anymore.

  Xavier opens the door and immediately pulls me into a hug.

  “I’m so sorry about Pat, bro. So sorry.” He squeezes me, then thumps me on the back.

  “Thanks,” I mumble into his shoulder.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the funeral, man? I would’ve been there.”

  “I—well, I mean, you guys didn’t exactly get along, so I didn’t figure you’d care that much.”

  “I would’ve wanted to be there for you, you fucking idiot,” he tells me, shaking his head and gesturing me into the kitchen.

  “Oh. Sorry. Thanks. I guess I didn’t really think about it like that.”

  X rolls his eyes and sits me down on one of the stools at the bar that separates his kitchen counter from his living room.

  He grabs a beer out of the fridge and slides it in front of me.

  “Oh, um—thanks, man… but I’m not, uh—I’m taking a break for a bit.” I push the beer away with one finger even as I can taste its icy bite in the back of my throat.

  “Yeah?” X immediately takes it away from me and puts it back in the fridge. “That’s… shit, that’s good, man. Really good.” He sets a lemonade in front of me instead and takes one for himself. “It’s this lemonade from Lancaster that Ang
ela’s obsessed with. Pretty good, actually.”

  “She here?”

  “Nah, she’s out with some of her girlfriends. Oh, hey, you know who I could swear I saw the other day? Daniel.”

  “Um, yeah, he was in town. We… uh, we hung out, actually.”

  “You don’t hang out with people.” X snorts. “And you definitely don’t hang out with Daniel. What’s the deal?”

  “Well, I just… he wanted to talk about some stuff, so….”

  “I always liked Daniel.”

  I roll my eyes like I always do when he’s said this over the years. But then I stop and remind myself that I don’t have to feel that way about Daniel anymore.

  “Hey, Colin,” X says, which is weird because he almost never uses my full name. “I’m real sorry about Pat, but… you look good, bro. I mean, you look—don’t take this the wrong way, but you look better.”

  Xavier’s looking at me totally sincerely. My oldest friend. And all of a sudden, nothing makes sense. It makes no sense that I’ve lied to him all these years. That I’ve shied away from ever talking about anything real with him, since he’s obviously seen a lot of it anyway.

  “Colin! Dude, are you listening?”

  “I’m gay,” I blurt, my voice echoing wildly in Xavier’s spotless tiled kitchen.

  I take a huge sip of too-sweet lemonade and choke on it. When I can get a breath, I say, “I get if you don’t want to be my friend anymore—” but X punches me in the shoulder before I can finish my sentence. “Ow, shit!”