by J. M. Snyder
I was right. Nothing.
A storage room of sorts, unlit and dusty. Unable to contain myself any longer, I hiked down the front of my shorts and came right there, a thin discharge like skim milk that beaded in the grass. Relief coursed through me like a sigh. “Well?” Stephen and Ray asked when I finally got myself together again and raced out to where they waited.
I laughed, delighted. “Not a damn thing, like I said.” I feigned a punch at Ray and hit his upper arm hard enough to redden the skin when he flinched. Then, climbing onto my bike, I shouted out, “Race you guys home!”
That day comes back now as bright as the summer sun and I almost stagger beneath the weight of sudden shame at jerking off by the basement window. It’s Dan who keeps me from stumbling, his hand strong in mine, his presence a promise that I’ll make it through today with him by my side.
Chapter 51: My Brother
Outside, the front lawn looks more like a parking lot than ever—people mill around the cars trying to figure out who’s driving what and who’s riding where. Everyone’s dressed nicely, from the youngest child to the oldest adult, sweaters and dresses and suits and slacks replacing the easy attire of the weekend, the t-shirts and jeans I’ve grown used to seeing these past few days. A couple boys toss around a football until they’re scolded, and a handful of girls in long, dark dresses stand clumped together with plastic purses hanging from their shoulders, giggling when their brothers and cousins get yelled at. Doug pulls at his tie, uncomfortable, but when Dan and I step out onto the porch, he says something to Kenny that causes them both to look at our car and laugh.
“Hey Mike!” Kenny calls out—he starts to mime a blowjob, his tongue poking out one cheek comically, until Neeshi tugs hard on the collar of his ironed shirt and he mumbles an insincere, “Sorry.” Behind me, Caitlin laughs, and I’m struck with a sense of a carnival atmosphere, a gathering at a tailgate party or barbeque, not a group of relatives off to a funeral for one of their own. Nervous energy, I tell myself. We’re just coping any way we can.
I start down the steps and Dan falls in behind me, his feet an eerie echo of my own as we come down off the porch. “Where is this place again?” he asks, taking my elbow.
“Not far,” I tell him. “I can drive, if you want.”
As he digs in his front pocket for the keys, he frowns at me, concerned. “You sure?”
“Dan, I can drive.” His frown deepens and instantly I regret my tone. Softening my voice, I assure him, “I’m fine, babe. Keys?”
Almost reluctantly, he hands them over. I close my fingers around his and don’t let go when he tries to pull away. For a moment longer his frown lingers. Then he sees my smile and laughs. “I guess I can let you drive just this once,” he teases.
“You’re too kind,” I say, grinning, “since it is my car.”
His arm slips around my waist and his next step presses him against me, his body settling into mine with an easy familiarity that’s developed between us over the past ten months we’ve been lovers. It’s a feeling I don’t ever want to lose, it strengthens me, keeps me putting one foot in front of the other, wakes me up in the morning and drifts me off to sleep at night. It’s the only thing I really need to help me get through this thing called life.
At the car, I unlock the passenger side door and hold it open so Dan can slip inside, but Caitlin gets there first. “If I call shotgun, do I get it?” she asks, though she must know the answer—she moves the seat forward to climb into the back without waiting for a reply.
The minute she sits down, a half dozen kids rush the car, vying for the coveted spot beside her. Emily, the oldest, knocks another girl aside and flips her hair over her shoulder, out of her face. “I’m riding with them,” she declares. Inside the car, Caitlin glares at me balefully. I can’t help but grin.
Once Emily’s inside, Dan starts to move his seat back into position when Trevor pushes between us. “Me too,” he says, jumping onto the seat. Emily sticks her foot up to keep him from crawling into the back, and he shrieks in childish anger. “Me too,” he insists. “Michael, tell her—”
“Emily,” I sigh. I’m already wondering if I can possibly take someone else’s car instead. Maybe Dan and I could ride with one of my aunts? Hell, even my parents are preferable to this.
Before I can suggest it, though, Uncle Tommy’s wife Debbie is there, smiling apologetically as she slips by me to catch Trevor around the waist. “Come on, big boy,” she coos, plucking him from the car. He kicks and grabs at the door, screams in protest, suddenly violent in his anger. “He has a car seat,” Debbie explains with a wan smile. I pry Trevor’s tiny hands from where they’ve latched onto the door frame and he snaps at me, his eyes wide and uncompromising behind his glasses. “Trevor, you have to ride with Mommy. You have your own seat—”
“I want to ride with Caitlin!” he shouts. From the back seat, my sister cringes and Emily wears a smug look that reads, I’m riding with her and you’re not, so there. Are we this bad? I wonder. I don’t have to look around to know that everyone has stopped whatever it was they were doing just to watch us. Oblivious to the scene he’s causing, Trevor continues to shriek, “No! No no no!”
His mother sighs. “Trevor, please—”
Ducking beneath the child’s kicking feet, I lean into the car, exasperated and more than a little embarrassed. Over his cries, I ask Caitlin, “Can you ride with him, or something?” I just want his tantrum to end, is that asking too much here? And my mother is upset because I’m not having children? Who the hell could put up with one of these?
Caitlin huffs and punches the back of the seat as I pull it forward again to give her room to get out. “I’m already strapped in,” she starts.
Trevor howls in my ear, his hands in my sweater to keep his mom from moving too far away—each step she takes pulls me with them, and I feel like I’m struggling to hold my ground as I cling to the seat. With great, hiccupping breaths, the boy cries out, “Cat! Wanna ride, Cat!” Over and over and over, this kid’s all worked up now and won’t—or can’t—stop. “Cat!”
“Je-sus,” she mutters, fumbling with the buckle of her seat belt. Before I can ask her again, she surges forward and pushes her way out of the car. “Quit your bitching, kid. I’m gonna sit with you, just shut the hell up already, will you?”
Despite the bitterness in her voice, Trevor listens. He draws in a deep breath and holds it, his eyes watery prisms behind his glasses as he stares at Caitlin. “Ride with me?” he asks, not daring to hope.
When she nods, disgusted, he wriggles in his mother’s arms until she puts him down. Then he takes my sister’s hand and tries to get into my car again. “Not this one,” she sighs. I have a feeling that after today, my mom’s only chance for grandkids will be Ray, heaven forbid. “We’ll ride in yours, how’s that?”
Ignoring her, Trevor climbs halfway onto the passenger seat and smacks Emily’s foot, still between the seats. “I’ve got her now,” he taunts.
“Cause you’re a crappy crybaby,” Emily replies. She kicks his arm, setting him off again. “Mom! Tell him to leave me alone!”
As Debbie and Caitlin drag the screeching boy from the car, Dan turns his back on them, brushing my arm with his elbow to get my attention. In a low, intimate voice, he murmurs, “Is it too late to call this whole thing off?”
I laugh and touch his stomach, my hand flat against his silky shirt, the hint of muscle beneath my palm. “I know, right?”
“I’m riding with you, Trevor!” Caitlin yells, shaking our cousin’s arm in an attempt to quiet him. “Shit, stop crying, will you? I’m riding in your goddamn car already so just shut the hell up.”
Beside her, Debbie frowns at my sister’s language, but when Trevor listens, she grins, relieved. “Caitlin, thank you,” she says. “You don’t know how much this means to him. He’s really taken with you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The complement is waved aside as Caitlin starts forward, jerking Trevor so he’ll follow. He trails be
hind, hitching his breath with each step like an oversized pair of pants that won’t stay up around his waist. “Which car is yours again?”
I look over the remaining children—some have trailed off after Caitlin, a tiny entourage of groupies all hoping to squeeze into the other car with her, and who am I kidding? When I was that age, I would’ve loved a back-talking, gum-smacking, quick cussing cousin like Cat, full of attitude, the epitome of cool in a child’s eyes. Someone they secretly envied, someone they would never dare to be. Even now I can see the conflict in Emily’s eyes, the desire to tag along behind my sister warring with the reluctance to share her with her little brother. Twice she starts to get out of the car, and twice she throws herself back against the seat, unsure. “We can take what, two more?” I ask Dan. “Three? We should get going.”
Dan takes control of the situation, just as I hoped he would. Clapping his hands, he shouts out, in a voice that would make any commanding officer proud, “Are we leaving here sometime today or not?” The half-dozen kids still lingering by the car snap to attention, nodding eagerly, and a few of the boys who left return—they like Dan. Who doesn’t? My mother, I think to myself, but maybe that will change. At least she’s giving him a chance, so there is hope. When each small face is turned to him, Dan holds up three fingers and says, “We can take two more. Pick—”
One of the little girls giggles, a cutie with dark red hair and thick freckles covering her face. “That’s three,” she points out.
Dan frowns and tries again. Two fingers this time, and he tells them, “Okay, so we can take three of you?”
My heart swells with their laughter—I never imagined he’d be this playful around kids. While he negotiates the seating arrangements, I cross in front of the car, already lost in thought. My mom should see him like this, then she’ll fall for him. Further proof that Evie would’ve loved him, I know it. And who’s to say maybe there won’t be grandkids down the road? Years from now, of course, after I’m through with school and he’s out of the military, when we’ve been together for so long that every breath I take without him by my side just doesn’t seem right, when we’re married, maybe then we can discuss something like adoption. True, I could do without the screaming and carrying on, but the easy way he teases my young cousins brings out a whole new side to him, another facet beyond the soldier, a hint at the man inside whom I so dearly love—
“What’s the problem here?” Ray asks, cutting into my daydream.
I stop at the side-view mirror on the driver’s side and look up to find my brother leaning against the door, arms folded defiantly in front of his chest. “You’re late,” I tell him. With one hand, I try to shoo him aside so I can get into the car, but he ignores the gesture. “Show’s over, Ray. The problem’s solved. Move along.”
“What happened?” he persists. Caitlin’s already gone, Trevor’s crying has stopped, the car shakes as four kids climb into the back seat, four, even though I know we can’t safely fit more than two but it appears that Dan’s a sucker for a child’s smile, same as Evie was—none in the front seat, though, I’m drawing the line there. I don’t want any of them in his lap when I’m trying to drive, and I sure as hell don’t want to reach over for his hand and find little fingers in its place. I don’t have to look at the time to know that we’re already running behind, and now Ray wants to know what was holding us up. As if he didn’t hear Trevor throwing a fit. As if he couldn’t look over here and see what the fuck was going on in the first place.
“It’s over with, okay?” I tell him, my voice terse, my words short. This time I don’t wave him aside, this time I place a hand on his arm and try to pull him off the door but he doesn’t budge. “Ray, it was nothing. Come on, we’re going to be late.”
“Mom wanted to know,” he mutters, as if that’s going to make me change my mind. “I personally don’t give a shit what the kid was screeching about. All I know is we’re already late and it’s your fault. Stop pushing me.”
“It’s not—” I sigh. There’s no use arguing with someone like him. Rubbing at my temples, which have begun to hurt again as if haunted by the ghost of my early morning headache, I take a deep breath and, with deliberate care, ask, “Can you move already?”
“Can you answer my question?” Ray retorts.
What question would that be? I almost ask, but I bite the smart-ass comment back. “I told you, it’s over. There’s nothing to see.” When he doesn’t move, I push his shoulder gently and joke, “If we’re late now, it’ll be your fault.”
He jerks away from me and, with a quickness that he must’ve learned from our sister, shoves me hard into the side of the car. “Ray,” I start, barely getting my arms up in front of me before he does it a second time. The side-view mirror slams into my hip, snapping on its spring as I’m pushed back against the car. “What the fuck’s your problem?” I want to know.
Without a reply, he hits me again, his palms flat against my chest. I push him away, a move that surprises him, and he staggers back a step before he snarls at me. “I’m not fighting with you,” I say, smoothing down my sweater. Remembering his earlier comment, I suggest, “Maybe you should be the one to take something to calm your ass down. What the hell’s gotten into you?”
“Michael,” he growls, and he hunkers into himself like a quarterback about to rush the line. I have a brief second of bright clarity where I think about stepping aside to let him ram his fool head into the side of my car, even though I know I could grapple with him, bring him to the ground, I’m stronger than he is, I know it—
And then Dan is there, in front of me like a shield, one staying hand on Ray’s shoulder, keeping him at bay. I have to reach out to touch my lover‘s back just to assure myself that he’s real. “What’s going on here?” he asks, his voice dangerously low.
Ray looks past him at me, still bristling. “Babe,” I sigh, relieved. Part of me would love to see Dan kick my brother’s sorry ass, just because he’s pulling something at a time like this. But I know that if anything happens out here under the watchful eyes of my relatives, it will just be ammunition for my mom against my lover, she’ll never let him live it down. And it wouldn’t even be his fault, but that hasn’t stopped her blind anger before. So I tug at his shirt to pull him to me, putting much needed distance between him and Ray, and I murmur, “Everything’s cool. He was just leaving—”
I don’t have to see Dan’s face to know he doesn’t believe that one. “You must have a death wish,” he purrs, his voice deceptively soft, “or you’re incredibly stupid, one of the two. I’m not sure which yet.” I close my eyes, I don’t want to see this—my body hums with sudden fear as Dan continues. “But I know you couldn’t have possibly forgotten what we talked about last night. Do you want to push me, Ray? Is that it? Do you want to see just how far I let it go before pushing back?”
“Dan,” I whisper. Please, I beg silently. Not here, please God, not here.
He ignores me. “I don’t talk to hear my own voice,” Dan says, speaking so no one will overhear. When I open my eyes, he has the collar of Ray’s shirt fisted in his hand, and my brother has been dragged close to us, his face next to Dan’s as if they’re gossiping like housewives. Over my lover’s shoulder, Ray glares at me, anger and embarrassment mingled together in one hateful gaze. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” Dan assures him. A tug on his collar shifts Ray’s eyes to him. “I will hurt you, Ray, if I have to. Being his brother doesn’t mean shit to me. Michael’s all I care about here, got that? And I’m going to do everything I can to make sure nothing happens to him. Nothing hurts him, nothing bothers him, nothing at all.” My lover turns as if to whisper in my brother’s ear, and I catch a glimpse of a chilling smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m a soldier, Ray. Trained to protect those I love. To fight for what’s mine. You might want to keep that in mind, next time you’re looking for trouble.”
I rub my hand up his back, hoping to diffuse the tension coiled between his shoulders. “Dan
,” I whisper again. Ray’s eyes flicker but don’t manage to break free from the prison of my lover’s gaze, he can’t look away, he doesn’t dare. “Please.”
At first I’m not sure if he’ll listen. He just stares at my brother, willing him to keep going, practically begging for a fight. But then I feel tight muscles relax beneath my hand and the fingers curled in Ray’s collar loosen. Almost tenderly, Dan smoothes down the bunched fabric. “Are we clear on this?” he asks. He speaks quietly, the way he always does. Someone who didn’t know him better might miss the implied threat that runs under his words like an electric current through water—you can’t see it but it’s there, deadly and just waiting for you to make the mistake of stepping into the stream. And like electricity, there are no second chances. Dan only tells you once. For most people, that’s enough.
Ray’s slower than most, though—he always has been. But this close he can see Dan isn’t kidding. It’s in the set of his jaw, the gleam in his eyes. These aren’t idle threats but sure bets of what will happen if he crosses Dan again, he can read that guarantee in the soldier’s mask that stares him down. Finally he drops his gaze and takes a step back. Beneath his breath, he mumbles, “Sir, yes sir.”
Dan tenses at the slight, but Ray turns and stalks off. When my lover starts after him, I hold him back. “That was rude,” he declares, loud enough for Ray to overhear.
Rubbing his arm, I admit, “I know.” With a faint smile, I add, “Ray isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.”
The sardonic look Dan gives me makes me laugh. “Oh really? I hadn’t noticed.”