by TJ Klune
He pressed a wet cloth against my eye. I blinked against it as the pressure increased. His grip on my chin tightened, and I was having trouble breathing.
“There,” he said quietly. “How’s that?”
I blinked again, and though it still burned, it was better than it’d been.
Which meant, of course, that my vision cleared enough for me to see he was standing close.
Very close.
“So good,” I breathed.
His lips quirked. “Yeah? Think you’ll need that spaceship still?
I coughed as I took a step back. His hand dropped from my face. “Yes. No. Uh. Thanks.” I looked through the sliding door over his shoulder. Sandy and Paul were standing with the others at the grill. They had abandoned me, the traitors.
“Your makeup is a little smudged,” Jeremy said, squinting at my face.
Great. Fantastic. Between my bloodshot eye and smeared mascara, I probably looked like I’d been crying. Wonderful. This was going so well.
“I’ll fix it later,” I muttered as I turned back toward the sink.
Instead of being an asshole like the others, he stood next to me, holding up the hand towel. “You wash, I’ll dry?”
“That’s what the dishwasher is for. I’m just scrubbing the gunk off before putting them in.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but there’s something about doing the dishes that’s… I don’t know. Calming, I guess. I used to do it with my mom.”
That… was unexpected. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought about that. Of course Jeremy had a mother, but given Charlie’s relationship with Robert, it hadn’t crossed my mind. I didn’t know if Robert was bisexual or pan or what, but something had to have happened. “You would think chores are calming.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I suppose I would.”
Was it my place to ask? We were friends, right? I put another plate into the soapy water as I tried to figure out how to broach the subject. I needed to be polite. I needed to be empathetic. I could do this. “You have a mom?”
Goddammit.
“I did,” he said as if I hadn’t just asked the most ridiculous question. “She was pretty great. She was a teacher. Middle school.”
Past tense. She was pretty great. She was a teacher. Made sense, since she didn’t seem to be around. “Oh. I’m… sorry.”
“For what?” he asked.
I scrubbed the plate, refusing to look at him. “She’s not here anymore, right?”
“She’s not. She died when I was eight. Aneurysm. Here one moment, gone the next. It was fast, and she didn’t suffer. Or so I was told. Like a light burning out.”
“That… sucks.” Jesus Christ, how the hell did I forget how to be human? “I mean, you were so young and all.”
“I was,” he agreed. “And it did suck for a long time. But I had Dad, and he took care of me after.”
I hesitated. “I didn’t know he was married. Did he come out after, or…?”
Jeremy snorted. “No. Dad’s always been… Dad. And they weren’t married. He was her best friend. He’s not my real father.”
I looked over at him, shocked. “What?”
He took the plate from my hands, running it under the tap before starting to dry it. “I didn’t tell you this?”
“No,” I said slowly. “I think I would have remembered.”
“Oh,” he said. “It’s not… I don’t know. I guess it’s been so long that I don’t really think about it. My mom, I do. I think about her all the time. She was this light.” He smiled as he set the plate on the stack I started on the counter. “Fierce and bright and funny. I was an accident, and her boyfriend wanted her to get an abortion. She didn’t. He left. She used to tell me that I couldn’t be mad at him for that. He made his choice. They were young. She was angry, but she never let it transfer to me. I met him once.” He shook his head. “It was enough.”
“Robert adopted you?” I glanced out the window and saw Charlie standing next to Robert, who was still seated. Charlie had a hand on his shoulder, and Robert had reached up to entwine their fingers.
Jeremy nodded. “Right away. Mom made it clear in her will that she wanted him to be my guardian in the event something happened to her. He’d… always been there. I knew he wasn’t my father. I wished all the time that he could be. I asked them why they didn’t get married. Why they couldn’t be together. He lived with us, and we were happiest when it was the three of us. Mom told me that they couldn’t get married, that she and Robert didn’t love each other like that. That it was more than romantic love and she’d explain when I got older.”
“And you were okay with it?”
He looked chagrined. “Not at first. I thought they were being stupid. It would be so easy. It wasn’t until Robert sat me down when I was eleven that I understood.” He sighed. “There wasn’t any question of who I’d be with after she died. We stayed in the same house. It was hard at first, because she was everywhere. In the walls, in the kitchen. I was convinced for years that she was a ghost and that she was watching over the both of us. It made things easier. Dumb, right?”
“I don’t think it is,” I said quietly. “Maybe she was.”
He glanced at me before looking back down at the sink. “Maybe. But Robert never let me drown in my grief. Looking back, I could see how his own grief was sharp and loud, but he fought it back so he could focus on me.” He splashed his hands in the water. “A couple of years after she died, I told him since he’d adopted me, he was my dad, and I was going to call him that.”
“Whoa,” I breathed. “Dude. That’s awesome.”
Jeremy chuckled. “I thought so too. I figured he would try and fight me on it.”
“He didn’t, though,” I said, sure of it.
“No,” he said. “He didn’t. He cried. Which made me cry, thinking I’d done something wrong. But then he said that he wanted nothing more. And from that day on, he wasn’t just Robert. He was my dad.”
“A good one too.”
“The best, really. He gave up a lot for me. I was… clingy. I suppose that happens when a kid loses their parent when they’re young. I didn’t like being too far away from him for years, sure that he was going to go away like she did. It wasn’t until I got ready to go to college that we had our first real fight. He wanted me to go out and see the world. I wanted to stay local so I could keep an eye on him.”
“What did you do?”
Jeremy nodded toward the stack of dirty dishes. I picked up another plate and began scrubbing it.
“We compromised,” he said. “I would give it two years at an out-of-state school. If I didn’t like it, I’d transfer to the U of A. How do you think I did?”
I thought for a moment. “You lasted a semester.”
He grinned. “Close. Two. And I didn’t tell him I was coming back until I showed up at the front door, a backpack slung over my shoulder. I told him in no uncertain terms that I was old enough to make my own decisions. He rolled his eyes and let me in the house without saying a word.”
“And you’ve lived together all this time?” I didn’t know how I felt about that.
“Oh god no,” Jeremy said with a laugh. “We would have killed each other. I moved out after I graduated. Lived my own life, made my own mistakes.” He made a face. “Many, many mistakes. He was in a car accident a few years ago and shattered his hip. I moved back in then to keep an eye on him, much to his annoyance. It works for us. We’re different people now. I’m there because it’s the best for both of us. I needed him when I was a kid, and he needed me after he was hurt.”
“And you stayed.”
“Yeah,” he said, taking another plate from me. “I did. It’s…. We don’t really have any other family. Dad had a sister, but she died back in 2001. And I never knew Mom’s family. They didn’t really want anything to do with her after she got pregnant.”
“Assholes,” I muttered.
“Maybe. But even though we only had each other, we made it work. We didn’t have
a dishwasher at that house, so every night, she and I would stand at the sink, washing the dishes. She was busy, and I was busy being a kid, so it was something for just the two of us.” He bumped my shoulder. “We have a dishwasher at the house, and it gets used. But sometimes I wash the dishes by hand. It’s a memory, you know? Something small and personal, and it helps me remember her.”
I looked down at my hands in the water. It was lukewarm, and the soap was bubbling across the surface. “I don’t have many of those.”
I felt him freeze next to me. Then, “Memories?”
I grimaced. “That sounds ridiculous, I know. I mean, I remember things, but it’s not… they’re not good memories. Not like you have.”
His voice was harder when he said, “Your fosters weren’t good people?”
I was surprised until I remembered our first meeting at Phoenix House. I’d told him I’d been in foster care. “They weren’t bad people. They just… I think the best way to describe them would be apathetic. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t bad. It just was.”
“I’m sorry.”
I arched an eyebrow at him as I tossed his own words back. “For what?”
“That they weren’t better people. You didn’t deserve that.”
“How do you know?”
“I know you,” he said, and my skin felt like it was thrumming. “And even if I didn’t, you were still a child. No kid deserves indifference. Especially those who are vulnerable. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be bigender in a household like that.”
That old chip on my shoulder returned in full force. I didn’t mean for it to, but I hated the sympathy in his voice. “I wasn’t vulnerable,” I snapped at him. “I could take care of myself.”
“Hey,” he said, eyes widening. “Whoa, I didn’t mean—of course you could, Kori. But you were a child. You shouldn’t have had to. That’s the whole point of parenting, to make sure your kid doesn’t suffer. A parent is supposed to keep their child safe.”
I breathed out through my nose, trying to push away my irritation. He didn’t deserve it. “They didn’t hurt me. Not like you’re thinking. I wasn’t exactly the most levelheaded person.”
“Apathy can hurt just as much as a fist,” he said quietly. “Just because it’s not physical doesn’t mean it was okay.”
“I know that. But it’s not—look. It sucked. I know that. But I made myself into who I am, and that’s all that matters.”
“You did a pretty good job of it too, if you ask me.”
I groaned. “Why are you so nice all the time? It makes it too damn hard to be mad at you.”
“Pretty great, right?”
“Asshole,” I muttered, but then I bumped his shoulder back to show him I didn’t mean it. It was dangerous, this. But I couldn’t find it in me to care. I wasn’t lying when I’d said that I liked who I was. But I was liking where I was even more, and that should have scared the crap out of me. It did, somewhat. But it was faint. Maybe washing the dishes was calming. That didn’t mean I was going to do it at home.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Are you going to psychoanalyze me, Professor?”
“Nah. I’ve already pretty much got you figured out.”
Oh boy. I scrubbed the next plate as hard as I could, even though it was practically clean. “This should be good, then. Go for it.”
“Do you still talk to your fosters at all?”
Softball question. I had this. “No. I don’t even think they know I came back to Tucson. It was a clean break when I turned eighteen, right about the time the state stopped sending them the monthly check for their services for me. Funny how that works.”
“Have you ever thought about contacting them again?”
I squinted at him. “Why would I?”
“To see if anything’s changed. People grow.”
“They do. But I’m happy with what I’ve got. No, I haven’t contacted them, but they never contacted me either. My phone number didn’t change for a few years, but I didn’t even get a text at Christmas. It’s not… it isn’t the big deal you’ve probably made out in your head. They weren’t your mom. They weren’t Robert. They were people whose house I lived in until I could legally go out on my own. I worked my ass off, got scholarships, and never looked back. And I don’t regret any part of it.”
“Why did you come back? I’m happy you did,” he added quickly, like he thought I was going to bite his head off again. “But Tucson doesn’t seem to hold the best memories for you. And Dartmouth is a great school.”
“It is,” I agreed. “And I did okay there. But it wasn’t home.” I nodded toward the window. “I chose to do grad school here because I already had a family waiting for me. We may not be related, but they’re my family, for better or worse. I met Sandy when I was seventeen, and before I knew it, I was part of the Austers. I spent more time here in my senior year than I did at the fosters’. They came to my graduation and made signs and cheered for me. They told me I was important. I may have had apathy at home, but I had a family here.” I winced. “Holy shit, that sounded terrible. Jesus Christ. I swear I’m not normally this maudlin.”
Jeremy snorted. “I don’t know. That sounds all right with me.”
“Yeah, well, you should know that they already want to keep you. So I hope you meant that. You’re pretty much stuck with us.”
I felt him looking at me, but I studiously stared down at the sink.
“There are worse things, I suppose.”
I struggled to keep my composure. He sounded so fucking earnest about it. “You say that now. Wait until Nana wants to paddle you. Because she will. And there will be nothing you can do about it.”
He laughed.
Hearing him happy made me want to make him laugh again and again. “You don’t think I’m being serious,” I told him. “But I am.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it. She’s intense.” He sobered as he glanced at me. “And tell me to shut up at any time. I don’t want to make things weird for you.”
“But….”
“But…,” he said slowly. He looked down at the sink, and just like that, I knew what he was going to ask. “Have you ever thought….” He shook his head.
I took pity on him. “About looking up my real parents?”
He was shocked. “How did you know I was going to ask that?”
“Figured.”
He frowned. “I’m not trying to be nosy, I just… I don’t know. I guess I like hearing about you.”
It would not do to shove my entire head into dirty dishwater. Jesus Christ, he had to know how that sounded. “No,” I said as evenly as possible.
He hesitated. “Why? Don’t you want to know where you came from?” He sighed as he glanced out the window at my people. “Or maybe it doesn’t matter.”
“Maybe.” And I made a decision then. To tell him something that only a few people knew about, something I’d kept to myself for the longest time. It felt so easy, so natural that I could tell him this, and I wondered when I’d become so comfortable with him. “On my eighteenth birthday, my fosters didn’t throw a party. No one wished me a happy birthday. It was just another day to them. Not to Sandy and Paul. They picked me up after school and took me shopping and made a fuss about me. It was… nice. Having them do that for me.” I took a deep breath. “But my fosters did get me a present. It was an envelope with my name on it sitting on the kitchen table. There was a sticky note attached. My foster mother had written it. It said, ‘Here is all the information we were given about your parents.’ And that was it. That was all it said.”
“Christ,” Jeremy said, sounding aghast. “What the hell?”
I scowled down at the sink. “It was par for the course with them. I didn’t… it’s whatever.”
“What did it say?”
“I don’t know. I never opened it.”
“What?”
Yeah, that was the reaction I expected. And though I didn’t need for him to understand, I wanted him to
. “Look. Some people in my position probably would have done something different. You see stories all the time about people reuniting with their parents years down the road after being given up for adoption. And it’s… good, for them. That they did that. That they wanted that. They found where they came from and got answers to the questions they always wanted to ask. But that’s not me. It’s not what I wanted. And those reunions always seemed so fucking harsh to me, because how do you reconcile why you were given up in the first place? People give up their children for all sorts of reasons, but the why of it was never something I was interested in. I know there are people in my position who want to know where they came from, to get a sense of who they are, and to find out if they have a family out there in the world.” I nodded toward the backyard. “I have my family right there. And I know who I am. Maybe that will change one day and I’ll want to see what was inside that envelope, but today? Now? I don’t need it.”
Jeremy swallowed with an audible click. “So it’s never been opened?”
I shook my head. “No, it has. I gave it to a doctor I went to in New Hampshire so he could see if there was any medical history he needed to be aware of. I also shared it with my therapist, though I told her I didn’t want to know what was inside. But other than that? No.”
Jeremy was quiet for a long moment. I didn’t look at him because I didn’t want to see what I was sure was an expression of pity. I was surprised when he finally spoke. “You’re one of the bravest people I know.”
I looked up at him. There was no pity on his face. Instead, it was something akin to awe. “It’s not a big deal—”
“Just… take the compliment, okay? Because I don’t know that I’ve meant anything more. You astound me, in all the best ways.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing at all.
We stood shoulder to shoulder as we did the rest of the dishes.
Chapter 11: Armageddon
IT HAPPENED in the middle of July.
We saw it coming, though it was still unbelievable. We had hope. We believed that it wouldn’t happen, that people were smarter than that, that they actually gave a shit about us, regardless of political ideologies.