Raze

by Roan Parrish

  Mostly, I didn’t want to hear what else they’d resort to in the debate over sleeping arrangements. I found Maya in the kitchen, grabbing things out of cabinets and the refrigerator.

  “Need a hand?”

  She gave me a leisurely once-over.

  “Thanks. Usually Felix can’t stop himself from helping me.”

  “He’s, uh, negotiating with his brother.”

  She grinned, eyes crinkling like Felix’s did.

  “Smart move getting out of there. Usually they end up wrestling for it, whatever it is.”

  “Who wins?”

  She put a hand on her hip and cocked her head. Her eyes were shrewd, but not unfriendly.

  “Who do you think wins?”

  Lucas was bigger than Felix, probably stronger. But Felix had certainly been bigger for years when they were young.

  “Lucas wins because Felix never wants to hurt anyone.”

  Maya smiled at me.

  “That’s right. You can chop those for the sauce, please.” She pointed to the vegetables on the counter. “I’m making spaghetti and meatballs. Do you cook?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Another long look, then we began to work side by side. I kept waiting for her to ask me all the questions—the ones I imagined parents asked when they met their child’s partner—but she didn’t. I was sure it was just a matter of time.

  “Felix always helped me a lot, and when he was little he wanted to learn how to make meatballs. When he saw that it was ground meat balled up he was so disappointed, because he thought it was going to be like ice cream and he would scoop the balls of meat right out of the cow.”

  I barked out a laugh and Maya smiled.

  “He said he used to make spaghetti with hot dogs.”

  “Oh, God, yeah,” she groaned. “I hope I die without ever tasting that again. It was truly vile. But.” She shrugged. “Beggars can’t be choosers. My mom was a great cook, but I was never very interested in learning, so I always made whatever was easy. I always thought she’d teach my kids to cook instead, but she died when Felix was three. I remember the first time he made that hot-dog thing for the kids. I got home from work and he’d saved me a bowl with tinfoil over it. God, he was so little. He was waiting for me, so proud of himself. He watched me take a bite to make sure it was okay. I choked it down and told him he did a good job, and he smiled at me in that way he has. You know?”

  I pictured Felix’s expression when he’d asked if I wanted to go on the roller coaster and the carousel, as if my saying yes would mean everything to him. I nodded.

  “Well, after that of course I could never tell him it was disgusting. God, we ate that for years. I’m surprised his brothers and sisters didn’t riot. But then, they were pretty used to him calling the shots. You have brothers or sisters?”

  “No. Just me.”

  “Me too,” she said. “I always wished I came from a big family. Guess that’s why I made my own.”

  She handed me a pot and two cans of crushed tomatoes. I stirred them into the pot while she pan-fried the meatballs. She didn’t have Felix’s constant absent movement, but I got the same impression of a lot of energy. I supposed you needed that if you were going to raise five kids on your own.

  When the sauce was bubbling and the meatballs were resting, I asked Maya what she thought of her daughter singing with Riven.

  She shrugged one shoulder.

  “Sofia’s gonna do what Sofia’s gonna do. She’d be a rock star even if she was an insurance adjuster. I don’t worry too much about it touching her. She always asks for help if she needs it. I worry more about Felix.”

  “Because she won’t be around as much?”

  “Well, they have always been attached at the hip. But I worry more about him seeing how cruel people can be. He’s not going to like the things people say about his sister. Don’t get me wrong—Felix isn’t naive.” She paused, like she was trying to find the right word for Felix’s endearing combination of hope and sincerity. “He’s so sweet, despite everything he’s been through. Sometimes I’m amazed it still surprises him that other people aren’t as kind.”

  “He broke a photographer’s camera who came to his apartment,” I told her.

  “Did he? Good for him!” She grinned and made a fist. “So.” She leaned close. “What do you think of this Coco character? I’ve never made dinner for a rock star before.”

  “Don’t really know her,” I said, wishing I had some tidbit to give Maya in return for how kind she was being to me.

  She nodded thoughtfully and put pasta into the boiling water.

  “This will be done in ten. Mind getting the boys for me? Sofia and the rock star should be here any minute.”

  When I got back upstairs, Felix and Lucas were sitting side by side on the bottom bunk bed, heads together, looking at something on Lucas’s phone.

  “Your mom said dinner’s in ten.”

  Felix smiled at me.

  “Wanna see Lucas’s crush?”

  Lucas smacked Felix across the chest to shut him up.

  “Come on, show Dane!”

  Lucas glared at Felix and reluctantly held out his phone. On the screen was a profile shot of a stern-looking redhead with a bandanna tied around her hair. It soothed me to think that everyone could be someone’s crush.

  “You take this when she wasn’t looking?” I asked, handing the phone back.

  “What? No! It’s her Snapchat.”

  I raised an eyebrow at Felix.

  “He doesn’t know what Snapchat is,” Felix said.

  Lucas looked at me, horrified. Then he dropped back on the bed, head dangerously close to scraping the bottom of the bunk above, and sighed exaggeratedly.

  “She doesn’t know I’m alive. I tried to ask her out and she thought I was offering to get her a coffee. She said I was considerate.”

  “Is that…bad?” I asked.

  “Yeah, ’cuz considerate’s, like, the opposite of hot,” Lucas said, throwing a dramatic arm over his face.

  “Not to me it’s not,” Felix said, shooting me a look under his lashes.

  “Yeah, but you’re…”

  “What, gay?”

  Felix bristled and Lucas socked him in the arm.

  “I was gonna say old.”

  Felix flipped him off but smiled.

  “Considerate means she thinks you pay attention,” I said. “Paying attention to someone is definitely hot. It’s how you know what they want. What they like.”

  Lucas was staring at me hard.

  “Yeah?”

  I nodded.

  “Hell yeah,” Felix murmured, eyes burning into mine.

  I cleared my throat. “Probably go down to dinner.”

  Lucas was out the door like a shot, shouting, “Coming!” Felix held out a hand to me, asking me to pull him to his feet. When I did, he kept coming and pressed himself against me, winding his arms around my neck and tipping his face up to mine, begging to be kissed with his whole body.

  I kissed him hard and sweet, one hand on his back, the other cupping his jaw. His tongue brushed mine and I forgot where we were. I lifted him off his feet with one arm under his ass and slid my other hand up his spine, holding him tight. He groaned into my mouth and shivered against me.

  “Damn. I’d say get a room, but you’re in a room right now. Get a door?” Sofia, suddenly in the doorway, raised one eyebrow, and I slowly lowered Felix to his feet. Unfortunately, this involved him sliding down my body and rubbing over my interested cock. I bit my lip hard to avoid embarrassing myself in front of Felix’s sister.

  Felix, ever mature, stuck his tongue out at her before saying, “Hi!” and jumping into her arms and squeezing her tight.

 
“Omigod, dying,” Sofia groaned, and Felix let her go.

  “You didn’t tell me you were coming,” he accused. “And where’s Coco?”

  “I left you a voicemail, and she’s saying hi to mom.”

  “You just left your girlfriend with our mother, brother, and a pot of spaghetti sauce?” Felix asked, eyebrows raised. “Gutsy.”

  “She can handle herself,” Sofia said, and winked. “Shall we?” She gallantly gestured us ahead of her down the stairs.

  Lucas was already shoveling spaghetti and meatballs into his mouth at an alarming pace when we got downstairs, and he stood with his mouth still full and put his bowl in the sink.

  Coco was standing next to the oven, taking in the scene.

  “Okay, gotta get to the theater. Do not embarrass me.” He pointed accusingly at us all. Felix snorted and Sofia laughed maniacally.

  “I mean, not you of course, Coco. You could never embarrass anyone.”

  He gave her an awkward smile and she gave him a polite one back.

  Maya stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek, saying, “If you want to avoid embarrassing yourself, you might want to wipe the sauce off your face, my darling.”

  Lucas turned as red as the smear of sauce on his chin and wiped frantically at his face on his way out of the kitchen.

  Felix and Sofia’s laughter followed him out the door just as someone else entered.

  Ramona was nineteen and shy. She hugged Felix and Sofia, but just stood staring wide-eyed at Coco until Coco stepped forward and gave her a quick hug. Felix introduced me and she hardly even made eye contact. She shook my hand for a microsecond and then pulled away.

  “Hey,” Felix said, when she went to change her shirt. “She’s like that with new people. It’s not you.”

  I shrugged. I was used to it. But Felix’s warm hand on my thigh as we sat down to eat was welcome. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to a family dinner. After my mom died, when I’d still lived at home, my dad and I never ate together. I made sandwiches to take to my room or went out with the guys after practice. He ate microwavable meals in his recliner in front of the TV.

  “I really think it’d be best if we just hang out here during the play,” Coco said to Sofia.

  “No way! It’ll be fine. This is New Brunswick, not Manhattan.”

  “Sof, I promise you. This is a bad idea.”

  This was clearly the last gasp of a disagreement they’d already had. Sofia grabbed Coco’s hand and pouted at her.

  “Please? I want to show you my high school, and I’m sure Lucas will be hilariously bad in—what’s this play called again? Please?”

  Coco sighed and her eyes flickered to mine, probably because I was the only other non-Rainey, and therefore she thought maybe I didn’t have the ability to look so adorable that the world would give in to anything I asked. I raised an eyebrow to tell her I felt her pain.

  With another sigh, she relented.

  “Okay. Your family, your call. But I reserve the rights to the biggest ‘I told you so.’ ”

  Sofia grinned and kissed her.

  “Oh, you industry types and your obsession with contracts,” she teased.

  Just as we were finishing dinner, Adrian came home, shouting hello and leaving a trail of chaos in his wake.

  “You have five minutes if you wanna eat!” Maya yelled up the stairs.

  “I can eat in the car!” he yelled back.

  “If you promise not to choke!” she called.

  “He should have to promise not to puke,” Sofia said. “Remember the roast beef sandwich?”

  There was laughter and the shuffling of plates, and before anyone could tell the story of the roast beef sandwich, I found myself in Ramona’s car with her, Felix, Adrian, and Adrian’s bowl of spaghetti and meatballs. Maya took Sofia and Coco in her car.

  “Wow,” Felix said from behind me. “I’ve never seen anyone put such big balls in their mouth, bro.”

  “Not my fault your boyfriend’s balls aren’t this big,” Adrian said through a mouthful of meatball. The conversation continued in this vein with Ramona and me silent in the front until we got to the high school, a blocky brick building with a windowed entrance.

  “This was your school too?” I asked Felix.

  “Yeah. I’ve only been back for Lucas’s plays. It’s weird. This place seemed so damn big once upon a time. Now it’s just…nothing.”

  “I haven’t been back to my high school.”

  “Never?”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t set foot anywhere in Virginia since I left at eighteen except the one time I’d foolishly returned to visit my father the summer after freshman year, thinking perhaps he’d want to see me. I had no ties there anymore.

  Maya, Sofia, and Coco parked a few cars down and we all followed a stream of people inside to the theater.

  A girl did a double take at us and said to her friend, “Is that Coco freaking Swift?”

  “Yeah,” her friend scoffed. “I’m sure Coco Swift is at our school play.”

  Coco smiled blankly. She moved differently here, in a way that drew less attention to her, but at the girls’ comments I saw her shoulders tighten, muscles braced against the unpredictable. I recognized it well.

  Ten seconds later, the unpredictable arrived, just as Coco had predicted.

  “Wait, that’s Coco Swift,” a guy said. He snapped a picture with his phone. “Coco Swift!” he yelled, though she was only five feet away from him.

  She took a deep breath and said hello to him with that same absent smile she’d given Lucas in the Raineys’ kitchen. But before he could say anything else to her, a few more teenagers took pictures with their phones. Then a few more. Then they were holding their phones up, taking video of Coco and Sofia where they stood at the back of the auditorium.

  Sofia waved politely and tried to inch past the throng.

  “Hey, guys,” she said, smiling, “we’re just gonna grab some seats.”

  But the kids didn’t stop filming; the crowd just got larger. Heads turned and seats were abandoned. Tweets and posts were announced and from a phone to my left, a Riven track started to play.

  “You’re the new singer?” a blond girl asked Sofia.

  “Yup.”

  Sofia smiled at her, but the girl just held her phone up, recording.

  It felt like a scene out of an old Twilight Zone episode: zombified teenagers confronting people with screens plastered to their hands like weapons, the mediat ion working only one way.

  The crowd started to press closer, and Sofia and Coco exchanged glances. Sofia looked confused and nervous. Young. Coco just raised her eyebrows. I could practically see the “I told you so” form in the air between them.

  When a boy reached out a hand and touched Coco’s shoulder, I pushed through the ten or so people that separated us and said to Coco and Sofia, “Maybe sticking around isn’t the best idea.”

  Coco nodded immediately, but Sofia seemed like she was going to protest. Then she looked around and nodded.

  “Shit,” she said. “Shit.”

  I put an arm around each of them and walked through the crowd, bouncer expression firmly in place. The few kids who didn’t immediately move took one look at my glare and gave way.

  Maya ran outside after us and pressed her car keys into Sofia’s hand.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” she said, eyes wide. “I really didn’t think this would…Shit. Will you tell Lucas I’m really sorry?”

  She looked close to tears.

  Maya hugged her and promised to relay the message. I walked them the rest of the way to the car. Ten or twelve kids had followed us outside too, and I didn’t want them getting the license plate or anything.

  Since when had school plays go
tten so well-attended, anyway?

  “Thanks, Dane,” Sofia said at the car. She was looking at the ground. “I really didn’t…think that would happen.”

  * * *

  —

  Back inside, I found the Raineys in the back row, like they were prepared to beat a hasty exit if Sofia needed them.

  “Are they—” Maya started to ask, but then she looked around, as if seeing the crowd in a new light, and didn’t say anything more.

  “They’re fine.”

  I sat down next to Felix in what was clearly the smallest chair ever designed, and he twined his fingers through mine as the lights dimmed. Suddenly, I found myself in a situation I’d never imagined, holding hands with my boyfriend while sitting at a high school play, his family surrounding us.

  At gunpoint I couldn’t have said what the play was about or whether Lucas was a good actor. In the half-privacy of darkness, with occasional eyes turning toward us, I was solely aware of Felix’s hand in mine, the scent of his hair, and the way he’d bounce his knee and then still himself.

  When intermission came, Felix said, “We’ll be back,” and led me out of the auditorium and down a dark hallway.

  “Where are we going?”

  Felix just smiled and jogged up the stairs.

  I followed him into the dark.

  In the middle of the hallway, he paused, and scanned the row of lockers, then tugged me past a few more.

  “This was my locker.” He ran his fingers over the metal surface like it was a genie’s lamp. “I spent all of high school watching kids make out at their lockers, or turn around and have their boyfriends or girlfriends kiss them good morning or goodbye or happy birthday. But never me.”

  He turned and put his back to the metal. His expression was the deliberately flirty one that was a little self-conscious and a lot irresistible.

  “If you’d been my boyfriend in high school, would you have kissed me at my locker?” he asked me.

  I imagined Felix as he might have been in high school. Even smaller than he was now, even younger. Less sure of himself. I pictured my pimply, selfish high school self. The one who only cared about playing football so I could get a scholarship that would get me away from my father and his terrible, poisonous sadness.