Raze

by Roan Parrish

  I nodded.

  “Of course. Let’s talk about it soon.”

  Johi beamed.

  “For real?”

  “You thought I was bluffing?”

  “I thought…maybe you wanted me to do more work for a bartender’s tips.”

  “Nope.”

  “Thanks, Huey. Thanks a lot.”

  * * *

  —

  Upstairs, Felix was working on his diorama. At some point in the last few days he’d settled on an idea after bouncing around to a new one every hour, and now that he was working on it, his focus was intent. He looked up when I came in and smiled softly.

  When I walked behind him, he leaned back against me and I slid my hand over his shoulder and down his chest to feel the steady thump of his heart.

  I put two springs and a coil of wire from the hardware store on the table in front of him.

  He tipped his head back to look up at me.

  “How’d you know I needed those?” he asked with surprise.

  “You were muttering about it this morning.”

  “Huh. I was?”

  He pulled at me, trying to get me closer. I dropped to my knees, worried he’d try to pull me into his lap if I didn’t. He wrapped his arms around me in a cuddly hug.

  “Thanks,” he said, voice muffled by my neck.

  “Sure.” I stroked the back of his neck and felt the world melt away.

  Later, when we were having dinner, I remembered he’d had a FaceTime date with Sofia after work.

  “How’s your sister?”

  He grinned.

  “She’s good. Man, is she into Coco. I swear, half of what she said was like, ‘Coco thinks this and Coco said that.’ Pretty awesome, ’cuz now I can tease her forever too.”

  “Too?”

  He grumbled something indecipherable.

  “Huh?”

  “She teases me ’cuz she says I do that about you.”

  He blushed, and warmth flowed through me at the idea of Felix repeating things about me to his sister.

  “Aw, do you like me, sweetheart?” I teased.

  “No way, you like me,” he snipped.

  “Actually, I seem to remember you asking me out.”

  “Well, whatever, you like me more,” he said, sticking his tongue out.

  “Probably,” I said.

  It was the truth. Once I’d stopped trying to fight the idea that I did have feelings for Felix, the enormity of those feelings became clear.

  His teasing expression slid away.

  “Hey, no.” He grabbed my hand. “I was just messing around.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t really think that you like me more, do you?”

  “I love you,” I said.

  “And I love you.”

  I nodded and tried to smile, but Felix slid out of his chair and onto my lap, like he always did when he wanted to talk seriously and didn’t want me to be able to leave or look away from him. I liked it, even if I wouldn’t admit it. I settled my hands on his hips with a sigh.

  “I love you,” he said.

  I tipped my forehead to rest against his.

  “I love you,” I told him, more breath than sound.

  “We both love each other. There’s no math involved.”

  “No math,” I echoed.

  He leaned in and kissed me softly, and like always, his sweetness struck me hard.

  “Good, ’cuz I hate math. Listen, I wanted to ask you…Next week, it’s my little brother’s play. Would you want to maybe come with me? To New Brunswick?”

  I went very still. New Brunswick meant Felix’s mother, and probably more of his siblings. People didn’t warm to me quickly. They found me intimidating, standoffish, awkward, scary. Add to that how much older I was than Felix. Would Felix’s mother take one look at me with her son and hate me? What about the rest of his family? Family. Not a good idea. But that’s what we were supposed to do, right? Merge our lives together. Not that Felix would ever meet my father. Would he want to?

  “Dane?” Felix stroked my cheek. “Baby, are you frozen? Need me to let you think for a bit?”

  “You want me to meet your family?”

  Felix ducked his head, then nodded.

  “I just thought it would be…like a together-ish thing to do. A…boyfriend thing?” He made a face. “Sorry, that was so dorky.”

  I nodded in agreement and kissed him.

  “Yes, it’s dorky, or yes, you wanna come?”

  “Both.”

  His eyes sparkled and he grinned.

  “Yay. Okay, I’ll tell my mom.”

  I forced myself to relax. Felix climbed off my lap clumsily and went back to his own seat.

  “Dane.”

  “Huh?”

  Felix was looking at me like maybe he’d been saying my name for a while.

  “We don’t have to.”

  “Have to what?”

  “You’re freaking out. About meeting my mom, my family. I don’t want you to do it if you don’t want to.”

  “No, it’s fine. I want to.”

  He nodded, but he didn’t seem convinced. He looked at me for a while longer and I felt like he was fighting with himself. Then he said, “Why don’t you ever talk about your dad?”

  Predictably, he’d hit on exactly the thing I least wanted to talk about.

  “We don’t talk much. I don’t go back to Virginia.” Felix waited, and after a little while I sighed and added, “He doesn’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Anything. I never told him. About any of it. The drugs, losing my scholarship, my recovery. I…He doesn’t know.”

  Felix gaped.

  “But how? What did you talk about?”

  “We don’t. Didn’t. Not often.”

  It was usually just, Hi, How are you, Yes sir, and How’s the boat? Occasionally when I’d still been playing ball, he’d ask how a game went. But I doubted he even had any idea what position I played. We’d barely spoken when I lived in his house, orbiting one another like silent moons, so we certainly hadn’t had anything to talk about once I left.

  “But—but…” Felix went on. “Didn’t you have to make amends to people?”

  “Yeah, but I never hurt my father when I was using. Hardly even talked to him. Didn’t have amends to make.”

  Felix narrowed his eyes at me like he didn’t understand. Then, in a voice so gentle I could tell he was trying hard to temper whatever he was thinking, he said, “Don’t you think it hurt him to not know his son?”

  I sucked in a breath that caught in my throat. It was such a sweet, incredibly Felix thought. But I was fairly certain it didn’t apply here.

  “I—I’m sorry, I—”

  “Never thought of it that way,” I said, which was also the truth.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell him?”

  “We really never had a relationship after my mother died. I know that’s hard to understand since you tell your mom everything.”

  I elbowed him gently and he rolled his eyes, but then nodded.

  “After my mom died, my dad couldn’t do anything. He walked and ate and went to work. But he was this blank, empty…shell. If I didn’t clean the house, it didn’t get cleaned. Didn’t go to the store; there were only frozen dinners and stuff he’d get at the gas station. Once, I broke the sink in the bathroom. Leaned too hard and it came out of the wall. My dad just stared at it like he couldn’t figure out what to do. It just stayed broken. I was fourteen. I couldn’t hire anyone. And he just…didn’t do anything.”

  “He was the parent,” Felix said, as if that meant something. “He was supposed to protect you
, supposed to take care of you, not the other way around.”

  I shrugged.

  “He couldn’t.”

  We sat with that for a while.

  “But…but if you’d told him when you had stopped using, wouldn’t he have been proud of you? For doing something so difficult? You’ve worked so hard.”

  I squeezed his shoulder in thanks. He wanted so much for my father to be proud of me—and him wanting it for me was almost enough.

  * * *

  —

  We took the train to Felix’s mother’s house in New Brunswick on Thursday afternoon. Felix kept darting glances at me like he wondered if I would be stricken with some kind of parental allergy symptoms at any moment.

  “Oh, shit, I almost forgot,” Felix said, thankfully interrupting his monitoring of my mental state. “I went by the museum yesterday to see Sue.” Felix had told me about the woman who’d talked him down after our fight. “I can report that she’s one hundred percent a real person. I promised her I’d give her an update.” He winked at me.

  “Yeah? What’d you say?”

  “Nice things about you.”

  He smiled and bumped my shoulder with his. I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.

  “Anyway, she has this niece she’s really close to and her niece can’t find a job. Any chance there’s anything at the bar for her?”

  “I’ll ask Johi. I promoted her.”

  “Aw, that’s awesome—I love Johi.”

  “Yeah, it’s part of an idea I had.”

  The idea was only half-formed, and I wasn’t sure it was a good one. I hadn’t intended to mention it yet. But Felix was looking at me with that expression that meant he wanted to listen to me. It undid me.

  “Working at the bar was good for a while because it was something to do at night, when things were…” I reminded myself that I was trying to tell Felix things now. “When things were worst. It felt safer to keep busy during those times.”

  Felix nodded and slid his hand into mine.

  “Nights are worst for a lot of people. A lot of addicts. And bars are open late. I was thinking of having more…activities. Still being open the same times, but having, I dunno, game nights or book clubs. And letting Johi come up with some fancy, nonalcoholic drinks—”

  “Mocktails.”

  “That what the kids are calling them these days?”

  Felix shot me a look.

  “You know that’s what they’re called, you grouch.”

  I did know.

  “It could be one night a week, or a few. I haven’t really thought it through yet,” I said.

  “That’s a great idea,” said Felix. “Sobar nights. Get it?”

  The idea glowed like an ember and Felix’s approval gave it oxygen.

  Felix never shot down ideas. Sometimes he asked questions. Sometimes he edited. But possibility excited him. The promise of something that might materialize. I still wasn’t sure whether the idea would work, but his response made telling him things feel better than telling them to anyone else.

  I kissed him on the cheek.

  “I get it.”

  * * *

  —

  The cab we’d taken from the train station pulled up to a sagging two-story attached house with peeling green paint and broken gutters.

  “Mom!” Felix hollered as he ran up the front steps.

  I trailed after him.

  Maya Rainey was small, about Sofia’s size, with the same glossy, wavy dark hair as her children, and her brown eyes were keen.

  “My baby!” she said loudly, opening her arms to Felix.

  He hugged her tight, and I stood as still as possible, as if this might let me escape scrutiny.

  “Come in, come in,” she said, tugging Felix inside.

  I took a deep breath and followed, and when I closed the door behind me, Felix nudged me forward.

  “Mom, this is Dane Hughes.”

  I fixed my face into as nonthreatening an expression as I could.

  “Nice to meet you, Ms. Rainey.”

  I shook her hand firmly, and the corner of her mouth quirked into a smile so reminiscent of Felix’s that I found myself smiling back.

  “Welcome, Dane. Call me Maya.”

  She turned to Felix.

  “Sofia’s bringing Coco with her.”

  “Huh? Sofia’s coming here?”

  “You didn’t talk? She said she was going to call you.”

  Felix fished out his phone and peered at it, but Maya continued.

  “Apparently that nice drummer—what’s his name? Evan?”

  “Ethan.”

  “Right. Apparently he’s got some kind of horrible stomach thing and they cancelled tomorrow night’s show. That means they have tonight and tomorrow night off, so Sof wanted to come. She said she was going to invite Coco.”

  “Hunh,” Felix said, placing a slightly mocking hand to his heart. “Rock star Coco Swift at Chez Rainey. Will wonders never cease.”

  Maya laughed, then she and Felix fell into animated conversation. I hoped they had a lot to catch up on so they wouldn’t include me. I was bordering on a tension headache and above all, I didn’t want to go frozen, as Felix called it, and make a bad impression on Maya. I concentrated on slowly unlocking my jaw muscles, tuning out until Felix grabbed my hand and said, “Come on.”

  I followed him upstairs with our bags. Apparently we were staying in his old room and Coco and Sofia were staying in Sofia’s old room. The wall going up the stairs held pictures of the Raineys from the time Felix was a baby. There was a picture of a much younger Maya holding him. Maya was looking off to the side, but Felix was staring directly at the camera, with a corona of brown curls and a bubbly smile that made his eyes sparkle. He was an adorable baby.

  “You look just the same.”

  He peered at the picture.

  “What? No way.”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s me and Sof.” He pointed at a picture of them each sitting on the low branches of a tree in a park. They looked like they were six or seven. Sofia was looking at the camera and Felix was looking at Sofia. His hand was behind her like he was making sure she didn’t fall.

  “That’s Adrian and Ramona, when they were in high school.”

  He pointed to another picture. Adrian looked fifteen or sixteen and had short, spiky hair bleached blond and sunglasses on top of his head. He was giving a thumbs-down to the camera and frowning exaggeratedly. Ramona, a year younger, was standing behind him, hands planted on her hips, glaring.

  “And Lucas. That’s from a few years ago.” Lucas looked taller than any of the others, and his hair was lighter brown and curlier. He was smiling at the camera and holding a pineapple with a face drawn on it.

  At the top of the stairs was a group shot that looked recent. The kids all had their arms around each other and were leaning toward Maya, who was sitting in a chair in front of them, blowing out candles on a cake. Everyone was smiling.

  It made my chest ache.

  “That was my mom’s birthday two years ago.”

  The brown hallway carpet was patchy and worn, and the door to Felix’s bedroom creaked ominously. The walls were yellowish, and there were posters and pictures torn from magazines taped haphazardly over them. A double bed and desk sat against the far wall and two bunk beds were against the near. Felix dropped his backpack on the floor next to the double bed and fell backward onto it with his arms outstretched. It let out an ungodly scream.

  “Home, sweet home.” He winked at me and tried to pull me down on top of him. I resisted, legitimately concerned I might break the bed.

  But when Felix looked up at me with those big eyes and said, “C’mere,” I let him tug me down. T
he bed sank threateningly but Felix didn’t seem worried, and I guessed he’d know better than me. Besides, when he wrapped his arms around me and cuddled me into a hug, I couldn’t really do anything but relax against him and press a kiss to his neck.

  “My brother under there somewhere?” a voice said at the door, and I jerked my head to see a real-life version of the boy in the picture, years older, standing in the doorway, staring at me with a wry smile.

  There was no dignified way to roll myself off Felix and back onto my feet, so I did the best I could.

  “Hey, Lucas,” Felix said, climbing out of the bed too.

  He hugged his brother, who was a few inches taller than him and had a gawkiness that suggested he might grow a few more.

  “This is Dane. Dane, Lucas.”

  I held out my hand and Lucas shook it, giving me a look that seemed appropriately skeptical, given he’d found me on top of his brother just moments before.

  “Good to meet you.”

  “Yeah, you too,” he said. “Hope you let Felix be on top sometimes. I’d hate to lose him in a freak sex accident.”

  He delivered it with such a dry, deadpan tone that it took me a moment to realize he was joking.

  “He’s always exactly where he wants to be,” I said, equally deadpan.

  Fortunately, Felix laughed.

  “Is Adrian coming?”

  “Yeah, he’s working, but he’ll be here in a bit. Ramona’s staying over too. Think she’ll want to stay in here with us or in the rock star room?”

  He winked. Apparently news traveled fast in the Rainey family.

  “Can’t believe Coco Swift’s gonna be in my house. She’s wicked hot.” He screwed up his face. “Can’t believe she’s dating my sister instead of me.”

  “You’re not staying in here,” Felix said.

  “It’s my room, bro. Where do you think I’m sleeping?”

  “Couch.”

  “Come on!”

  “Listen,” Felix said, leaning in close to Lucas. “Dane’s really, really loud.”

  I snorted and decided I’d let them figure it out.

  “I’m going to see if your mom needs help,” I told Felix.