by Kaje Harper
Mr. L’s expression still made me feel like he was holding something back, but he nodded. “That’d be good.”
I grabbed down mugs from where they’d always lived, and filled the kettle. Opened the cupboard over the stove and got down the little French press, like I’d done years before. It might take me some time to show I’d been born new that morning. I was going to try, though.
Chapter 6
Adam
I heard a tap on my bedroom door as I got ready for bed that night. I hurried to open it, thinking it would be Donnie, but instead Dad stood there biting his lip. “Can I come in?”
“Um. Sure.” Donnie probably wouldn’t pick this minute to come across the hall. It might be wishful thinking that he’d come to my room at all. I pulled the door wide.
Dad stepped past me and sat heavily on the bed. I leaned against the desk. It felt weird, like someone rolled back time, except our positions were reversed. He used to come in and stand here, and look at me until I confessed whatever dumb thing I’d done that day. I wondered if he had something to confess now.
After a moment of silence, he said, “How do you feel, seeing Donnie again?” I must’ve glanced across the hall because he said, “Don’t worry. He’s out walking his dog.”
“Okay.” I turned that into an answer. “I feel okay.”
“Come on, Adam, this is me, your old dad, asking. I know how bad it was after he went to prison. When he never answered a single one of your letters.”
“Yeah, it was. But I got over that.”
“And what about Chris?”
“Huh?” I wasn’t sure why he was bringing up my last boyfriend. “They never met.”
“No, I mean, are you still upset about Chris finding someone else?”
“I never was, not really.” I shrugged. “We were good together but not great. He and Latasha are on fire, love at first sight. I’m happy for him.”
“You split up just about eight months ago.”
“What’re you saying?”
“I don’t know.” Dad rubbed his forehead. “Donnie got out over six months ago. Did you expect to see him? Why’s he here now?”
“Maybe he got lonely. It is almost Christmas. And how do you know when he got out?”
“I kept track. Didn’t you?”
When Donnie had first come up for parole, I was hoping hard that he’d get out and maybe get in touch. But I’d checked, and he’d been denied. He still wasn’t answering my letters after years of sending them, and I didn’t know what was going on with him inside there. For my sanity, I decided to just… stop. Stop stalking him and go on with my life. But somewhere in the back of my head I think I was still waiting, and that even could be why it never worked out with Steve or Chris.
I was surprised Dad had kept track of Donnie longer than I did. “Did Mom ask you to watch over him?” She’d worried a lot about Donnie, even when she was dying.
“Not exactly. I was being careful.”
“You never trusted him,” I said slowly, tasting the truth of that.
“I’d trust him with my dog, my wife, or my baby. There’s not a mean bone in him. But I don’t entirely trust him with my car, my money, or you.”
“I trust him with all of those. I always have.”
“Yeah, well, you’re hardly objective, are you?”
“Mom did, too.”
Dad sighed. “Your mother had a huge heart. When she loved someone, there was no limit to it.”
“What do you have against Donnie? He worked for you and Mom off and on for years. He was in and out of this house. If he was going to steal or cheat or damage things, he had tons of time.”
“Sheriff Conyers told us a lot about Donnie. He came by several times during those years, asking questions, checking up on him. There’s stuff you never knew.”
I pushed up off the desk. Dad never knew some stuff, too. Like, Donnie had this friend Maria, from one of the foster homes. Conyers busted her for shoplifting when she was fourteen, and offered to let her trade a blow job for a ride home without being charged. She told Donnie, but wouldn’t let him do anything about it. Wouldn’t let him tell anyone but me. Donnie deliberately did stuff that got on Conyers’ last nerve for a reason, even though he paid for it in the end.
But Dad had been so sad for so long, I didn’t want to bring up that kind of ugliness. “Conyers hated Donnie. He was a bastard about it, too.”
“He wasn’t making up Donnie’s record.”
“No. But he made it all worse.”
“He also didn’t invent the trouble Donnie got you into.”
I couldn’t help a laugh. The trouble was one of the things I’d loved about Donnie back then. He took care of me, but he didn’t shelter me like everyone else seemed to. We’d done some crazy stuff, and yeah, stupid stuff, a hundred things I’d never have dared on my own. I felt so free and brave around Donnie.
Dad frowned. “It’s not funny. That night wasn’t the first time he’d driven drunk. I’m sure of that.”
I was too. All us kids partied and drank and then drove at some point, well, most did. Donnie never let me, always taking the wheel himself if I’d had any beer. And yeah, that wasn’t funny, looking back. But Donnie’s driving skills never deserted him. I fully believed him about who’d run the light that night. Dad was kind of a black-and-white guy, though. “Then why are you letting him stay now?”
Dad’s shoulders slumped. “I owe him. At least a few nights of a safe place to stay.”
“Huh?”
There was a thumping up the stairs, and Donnie stepped into the doorway. “Hey, Mr. L, is it okay if Willow sleeps in the downstairs bathroom? I figure there’s not much she can wreck down there if she pees or chews.”
Dad straightened. “Sure. That’s fine.”
Donnie looked back and forth between us. “Sorry. I’m interrupting.”
Some part of me that was mad at Dad came out with, “Dad was just telling me why he thinks he owes you a place to stay.”
Donnie said, “Nah. Really. No way you guys owe me anything.”
Dad met Donnie’s eyes. “I kind of do. You remember the judge set your bail at fifty thousand dollars?”
“Yeah. It was crazy.” He snorted. “Conyers convinced her I had nothing to keep me from running if I got out.” He flicked a quick look at me. “Although if Adam had died, it might’ve been true.”
“Well, Laura wanted to pay a bondsman to post your bail anyway, to get you out till your trial. But Nate and I talked it over, and we dragged our feet finding the money. It would’ve cost us five thousand for the bond, and we were looking at Adam’s hospital costs, with more coming because Laura had just been diagnosed, too.”
“I never asked—”
Dad waved a hand. “Laura asked me to do it. She really wanted to get you out. If it’d been Adam in there, we’d have paid it in a heartbeat. But Conyers said you’d be convicted, so I kept telling her I was working on it, until the day Conyers told us you were going to plead guilty. I’m sorry.”
“Jesus fuck.” Donnie smacked the door frame with a flat palm. “You didn’t owe me that! Five grand? Not then. Not now. If you’d offered that money, I’d have said keep it for Adam.”
“You were Adam’s boyfriend, almost family to Laura, and just a kid, locked up.”
“I was eighteen. Hadn’t been a kid for a while. And I survived. You don’t owe me shit for that.”
I asked, “How different would it have been for you, if you’d got out on bail right away?”
“It—” He faltered, but then said steadily. “Conyers was right. I was fucked. No witnesses, since Nate said he didn’t recall. I was going down. So a few more weeks outside wasn’t worth that. Nothing that could’ve changed was worth five grand to your family.”
Dad pushed up off the bed. “Either way, Laura would have my head if I didn’t make you welcome now. So, welcome back, Donnie. Stay a while. Till you’re on your feet.” He headed for the door, and Donnie stepped aside to le
t him past.
“Come on in and close the door,” I said.
“I shouldn’t.”
“Yeah, you should.” I went and dropped onto the bed, patting the space beside me. I’d been waiting a full day to talk to him. Six hours working side by side in the store, and we’d said nothing more personal than these snowman ornaments look like crap. “I won’t touch you, if you don’t want.”
Maybe that came out a bit snarky, because he flushed and ducked his head. “I might want it too much.”
“That’s a problem?”
“Yeah. It is. ’Cause you don’t know me now. It’s not like it was.”
“No. I’m twenty-three, not sixteen, for one thing.” I took pity on him and pointed at the chair. “You can sit there, if you’re scared to sit on the bed.” Well, maybe not too much pity.
He eased down onto the desk chair, sitting stiff upright with his hands in his lap, twisting his fingers over each other. Before I could find an opening line, he said, “How’ve you been, Adam? You, um, look real good.”
“I’m fine. Excellent, even. Amazing.”
“No, I really want to know.”
“Did you read any of the letters I sent you?”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t.”
That stung, because I’d put a lot of thought and a few tears into them. But I guess it’d helped me to write them, even if he never saw the words. “Okay.”
“I read a couple of your mom’s. So I’d know you made it okay.”
“It took a while. You know I would’ve come to see you in court, if I could. I’d have said something, told the judge—”
He flicked his fingers at me. “Nah. It wouldn’t have helped. I was glad you didn’t see.” He stared down at his feet.
For a moment, my thoughts got all tangled up in regrets. He was different, all right. He’d always burned hot and bright, and now it was like his fire was locked way down deep, under iron covers.
He said, “You went to college?”
“Yeah. On schedule, even. I missed some school, but I finished the year. Graduated.” He was supposed to have been there at my side, and I’d missed him with a fierce ache all that long day. I pushed the memory away. “Went to UND Fargo. Got my undergrad. Started graduate school.”
“Really? You always were too smart for your own fucking good. Studying what?”
“Social work.”
He frowned. “What d’you want to study that crap for?”
“How many times did you tell me your social worker didn’t have time to do more than stick her head in the door? What if you’d had someone who’d bothered to check the kitchen and see you were living on cold cereal? What if Maria had someone she trusted to tell what Conyers had done?”
“So? You gonna save the world?”
“No. Maybe a kid or two.”
“Huh. I’d never have figured you for a do-gooder. No, that’s not right. You always were, but I figured you’d be studying to be a doctor, or, like, oceanography or something.”
“I get seasick, and I never want to see the inside of another hospital.”
“Fuck you. Something like that. Sciency.”
“People are interesting. I did my undergrad in Psych, but I don’t want to do counseling. This is a chance to be useful.”
“Do I gotta be guilty because I made you go into that? Like you’re trying to make up for how I turned out?”
I’d had therapy after the crash, and it had helped me not take responsibility for Donnie’s choices. I just said, “Nope. My choice. I’m a big boy.”
He met my eyes. I knew I wasn’t imagining the heat in his gaze, but then he blinked and shut it down.
I rotated my hips and said, “And I’ve learned some new motion.” Just to get that flash again, because while he always liked my size, Donnie’s kind of small, and he used to say “It’s not the meat, it’s the motion,” while fucking me crazy.
He couldn’t stop a little huff of breath that was probably trying to be a laugh. “So, are you working for the government now?”
“I have a year left on my degree. Took time off to help Dad and Nate out with the business.” Saying that tweaked my heart, because it was tangled with Mom’s death. But Donnie was what counted here and now. “What about you? Do you have plans? You could still go to college, maybe. I bet there’s scholarships.”
“I got my GED inside. I’m done with school. You know it was never my thing.”
He’d never let it be his thing, though he was smart enough. Always said he’d try to get into college just to keep an eye on me, but I knew he’d wanted it more than he would admit. Still, six years was six years. “So, a job? Are you going to stick around?” Are you going to smash my heart again? Not one of the guys I’d gone out with had made me feel the way Donnie still did just by looking at me from behind an over-decorated Christmas tree.
“I don’t know.” He stood and went to stare out the window at our back yard. “I wasn’t coming here at all. I was heading to the West coast. Somewhere warmer and queer-friendly. And then here I was getting off the bus in fucking Tallbridge.”
“Dad and Nate could use a hand with the store for a while. Our temp guys are down south till spring, and I’m going back to school in January.” I hoped. I thought maybe if I left, Dad would have to get his act together and quit checking out. Nate couldn’t run the place alone. Donnie could be back-up in case Dad didn’t come out of his fog.
“No offense, but I’m not going to work for Nate and your father. Not after the holiday rush is over.”
“Somewhere else then?”
“I don’t recall any jobs in this town. Specially for an ex-con.”
“Well then, why come back?” I stood up, too. “If you don’t even plan to try?”
He hunched without turning. “I guess I needed to see you were really okay.”
I walked up behind him, clearing my throat so he’d know I was there. He was bulkier than he used to be, wider than me, but I wrapped my arms around him, enveloping him as best I could. After a first jolt of surprise, he didn’t try to get loose. I leaned forward to lay my cheek against his hair. “I’m doing better now you’re here.”
“That’s good, then.” He raised a hand to press my arm in against his chest.
I wanted to say so much, but none of it mattered as much as just being close to him, feeling him alive and breathing. The smell of his skin was enough to make my body come alert with old memories. Still, the way he stood tense, not leaning into me, told me not to push it. I looked over his shoulder and realized he hadn’t been staring at the dark yard in the window. All the glass showed was the reflection of my lighted room, a mix of the old and the new, framed pictures, ghosts of memories, and now us, with my new height letting my face show beside his. We stood that way for a long time.
Eventually I said, “Remember when we were the Dick Bandits?”
He snorted and he relaxed a fraction. “That was mostly you.”
“Only because no one would suspect goody-two-shoes me.” We’d spent a week putting up masking-tape dick ornaments all around the school. “Anyway, you helped make them.”
“It was your plan.”
“You ran interference.” I had to laugh. We’d been in assembly and a teacher had asked, “What else does the school holiday display need?” Gordy Johnson said, “Dicks! Big dicks!” I’m sure it was supposed to be one of those jokes thirteen-year-olds told to each other, but Gordy had Asperger’s, and he said it way too loud and right at the teacher. She got offended and yelled until he was white in the face, and then she gave him a ton of detention. We decided it wasn’t fair. So for the next week, a bunch of dicks made of red, white, and green masking tape kept appearing all around the school.
“I did do the principal’s office.” Donnie squeezed my arm.
“And up over the front doors.”
“You made the best ones, though,” Donnie said. “The balls kept falling off mine.”
“I pay close attention to dicks.
”
“I paid attention to dicks first.”
“I handle them better.”
He bumped my hip with his ass, then he quieted but felt more relaxed in my arms.
Eventually, I brushed his hair with my lips and let go. Stepped back. “I missed you a hell of a lot, Donnie Kagan, but I’m going to let you decide if this is just a long goodbye or a new hello.”
“I need to sleep on that.”
“Whatever you need.” Was it pushing too much to hint? “I don’t lock my door. And the one blessing of the winter schedule is I don’t have to get up and go in early.”
“Willow will need walking early.”
“Well, that’s your problem, dude. But after you get up at the asscrack of dawn and take care of your dog, you’ll know where to find me. Otherwise, I head down to breakfast around eight.”
He laughed and turned. For a moment I thought he was going to really kiss me, but he just walked past me and opened the door. “G’night.”
“Night.” I waited until he went across the hall and closed himself in his room before shutting my door.
Still not the passionate reunion I dreamed of. But I had hopes, high hopes. No, that damned song was not going to be an earworm. I stripped down, attached earbuds to my phone, and lay down to the music of Deathcab for Cutie. I had a feeling sleep would be a long time coming.
Chapter 7
Donnie
I came to with a jolt, like usual. Listened carefully with my eyes closed, holding still, breathing easy. The room was silent. No other breath sounds, no one moving, no hint of anyone else nearby. Waking up alone was the best thing ever.
I almost snuggled in for some more shut-eye, but I remembered I had a dog. And that this room might be sanctuary, but the house beyond? Not so much. Between Nate and Mr. L both apparently hating my guts, and Adam clearly having other plans for that bit of my anatomy, I needed to be awake. Coffee. I needed caffeine to jump start my brain.
I rolled out of bed. My clothes from last night would have to do. I pulled them on, got my wallet out from under the mattress, stuck it in my pocket, and headed downstairs in sock feet, sneakers in my hand. Adam’s door was closed. Not likely he was awake, but I walked extra soft going past anyway.