Making Promises (44 page)

Deacon asked him to schlep their takeout trash on his way up to his apartment. When he got there, he realized there was something still in the bag. It was one of the happy meal toys—a tiny stuffed bear wearing a rainbow T-shirt. Mikhail stood holding it for a moment, wondering if Parry would be there again on Monday. He kept it on his counter for all of Sunday, as he sat at the television alone in the darkened apartment, thinking about where he could be, if he’d been brave enough to keep Shane, if he’d been a good enough man to have that sort of goodness in his life.

He took the thing with him when he went to bed and put it in his box. The box was getting crowded, and he spent a moment organizing. He put a rubber band around the pictures and thought he should maybe get an album for them, like the ones Ylena had left him of her pictures. He put the souvenirs of the rest of the family in a bundle next to the pictures, with the tokens of the baby on top of them. He kept his mementos of Shane neatly stacked in the top compartments of the box.

He still had Shane’s scarf. He still wore it every day. He pulled out the little vial of oil, half gone now, and dotted a little on the brown wool, now worn comfortably soft and pilling slightly from the use. He went to sleep with it on the pillow next to him so he could smell it and dream that Shane was there.

He didn’t, though. He dreamt instead of the look on Shane’s face as he said, “I said I’m not doing it like that!” and then walked out the door and out of his life.

He woke up muttering to himself. “You couldn’t do me like that?

Just once? Just so I could hate you and I would be over this?” He spent the morning in a pissy mood, cleaning his already clean bathroom and wandering around the apartment restlessly. Now that his mother was gone, he really needed to think about getting a hobby, because work just wasn’t filling in the hours, was it?

Still, he looked forward to work. And when Benny and Parry Angel walked in again—this time escorted by Crick—he looked forward to it even more. They spent the evening at his house again, and this time Benny and Crick brought their knitting. Crick muttered something about occupational therapy for his hand and scowled at Mikhail to mention it, and Benny said, “I’m making a new scarf for Shane,” while looking pointedly at the brown one that Mikhail couldn’t seem to let go of.

“I….” He swallowed and tried to make himself say it. “I… I should probably….” Oh shit. He fought the temptation to grab the thing as it hung over his coat on the peg-board by the door and cuddle it to his chest, and Benny had shaken her head and laughed.

“Don’t hurt yourself, Mikhail. He wants you to have it.” And he had to leave it at that.

The next evening it was Jon and Amy, who brought little Lila Lisa, and he got to spend an evening watching cartoons with a bouncing baby on his lap. The evening after that it was Andrew, who said he had some shopping to do at the high-end mall in Lincoln and wanted to know if Mikhail wanted to come. The two of them spent an hour wandering the exclusive corridors of the stores and wondering where all these teenagers seemed to get such an appalling amount of disposable income before Andrew said that he’d probably be better off going to Sunrise Mall right by Mikhail’s apartment. They had something at the food court, though, and Andrew bought Benny some sort of expensive bubble bath, and they called it a night.

The evening after that was Crick alone, who could not lie for shit. He simply showed up on Mikhail’s doorstep with Chinese takeout and a
Spongebob Squarepants
DVD in his hand and looked hopeful that Mikhail wouldn’t just throw him out.

Mikhail let him in with something like resignation, and Crick made himself busy with the DVD at his television with hardly a hello.

Mikhail dished up the takeout—orange chicken and noodles, his favorite—and sat down next to Crick on the couch and handed him his bowl. Crick glowered at him, and Mikhail sighed into the silence.

“How is he?”

“He went back to work.”

“I knew that. How is he?”

“Exhausted. He came by after a shift yesterday, and he could hardly fucking move. Deacon took his keys and went and fed the animals, and your guy slept on our couch. Feel better?”

“Not even a little bit.”

Mikhail watched the first cartoon numbly, and every now and then cast a sideways look at Crick, who would chuckle under his breath on occasion. Mikhail didn’t get the humor at all, and the little yellow character on the screen was starting to annoy him.

“You left Deacon?” he said in the break between cartoons, and Crick looked at him in surprise and then in understanding.

“Dumbest fucking thing I ever did.” He held out his arm, scarred and twisted, and then flexed his fingers, straining to increase the range of motion in them. “I’ll have the scars to remind me what a dumbshit I was for the rest of my life.”

“Why did you do it?” Mikhail asked, afraid to. Deacon—Deacon who was so beautiful and so strong and so (Mikhail knew now) vulnerable.
How could you leave him?

Crick sighed. “I hate this story,” he said randomly. “Deacon tells it more often than I do. I think he’s better at it, and since he hates to tell people anything, that’s gotta tell you something about how ashamed I am that I was a part of it.”

“You do not have to,” Mikhail said. He was not good at the social lie. The disappointment was evident in his voice.

Crick snorted. “The fuck I don’t. Your big goofy cop friend is breaking his heart over you, and you need to hear it so that shit can stop.” Mikhail shrugged, like hearing that Shane was heartbroken didn’t just dig the knife in deeper, and said, “So tell it,” like he was not dying to hear.

With an impatient motion of his good hand, Crick paused the DVD

and turned to look Mikhail in the face. “Fine. Here’s the thing. My whole life, my family, they did nothing but fucking kick me to the fucking curb.

My childhood was a game of ‘Hit the Mex kid’ unless I was with Deacon and his father, and I was so sure, so goddamned sure that I’d done something to deserve it. It was like those moments with Deacon and Parish, that time spent in a family—that was stolen. So I stole the big thing. I stole Deacon’s love. And there we were, all cozy and happy, and Deacon opened his mouth to say—and get this, because it was my future on a silver platter
with
the man I’d loved since I was nine—he was going to say, ‘You can still go to school
and
we can see each other.’ I mean, perfect, right?”

Mikhail nodded his head dumbly, because Crick was talking a mile a minute and there was no room to ask any questions.

“So he gets the first part out—‘This doesn’t mean you can’t go to school’ or something close, and then I interrupt for the second part, assume he’s dumping me, and run off to join the fucking army before he can break my fucking heart.”

Mikhail blinked. “
That’s
why you joined the military?” He blinked again, trying to reconcile the sequence of events, and Crick sighed and flopped back on the couch, shaking his head.

“Yeah, don’t bother trying to put the two things together. It just doesn’t track. It was a dumbshit move, and by the time I came to my senses—and Deacon woke up from a concussion because he wrecked the truck trying to stop me from doing something stupid because the guy knows me like no one else—it was a done deal.” A done deal? Mikhail just stared at him. “And he
forgave
you?” Crick had liquid brown eyes, much like Shane’s, except every so often there was a defensive, angry hardness about them… but not now. “It was the most incredible thing anyone has ever done for me. He forgave me. He forgave himself. He had to, because I needed it. It was that simple.

I’ll die before I hurt him again.”

Mikhail sucked in a breath and nodded. Crick left eventually, but not before Mikhail decided he truly loathed that square yellow thing and his goofy pink friend. He left Mikhail with an extra pair of chopsticks and an unfamiliar tingle in his stomach.

It wasn’t until Mikhail had put the chopsticks in the treasure box that he realized what the tingle in his stomach might be.

It sort of felt like hope.

The next night, Jeff came with a jigsaw puzzle that featured a pornographic homoerotic cartoon. One of the men in it was big, broad-chested, with lots of brown hair—everywhere. Mikhail eyed the final results sourly. “Are you trying to get at something?”

“I’m hoping to make you horny enough to stop this shit. Dammit—

don’t you miss him?”

“Would you miss breathing?” Mikhail snapped. “I said horrible things. He’s better off without me.”

Jeff waved his hand and sniffed. “Honey, you say horrible things, and he’s tailor made to let them roll off his big, hairy back—”

“His back is
not
hairy!”

“Whatever. He’s forgiven you. He forgave you before you said them.

He’s just waiting for you to forgive yourself.” Jeff left a significant piece of the puzzle on the table when he left, and Mikhail rolled his eyes and put it in the box.

Benny and Amy came the next day with both of the children. It was Mikhail’s day off—they took him to the zoo and let him push the stroller and talk to the babies and hold them and show them the animals.

It was a lovely day, but Mikhail couldn’t help wondering how much better it could have been if Shane had been there. He took the map to the zoo home with him. There was only one place to put it.

The next night was Sunday, and Mikhail watched his door and listened for a knock from family until eight o’clock before he realized that no one was coming. They were all having dinner together, and he was here, alone, because he was a fucking idiot, apparently. It was not because anybody hated him the way he felt he deserved.

But nobody came to pick him up from work the night after that, either. It could have been an oversight, or it could have been the beginning of the end. The beginning of the family forgetting him—the beginning of the end of his chance to be a part of a group of people who actually gave a shit about his existence, period.

He pulled out his phone six times and then put it back and then pulled it out again and then said fuck it and took the coward’s way out and dialed Benny’s number.

“I’m just making sure the baby is all right,” he mumbled, and Benny’s rather ragged sigh told him it was probably a good guess.

“She’s fine, Mikhail—but thank you for asking. The thing is, it’s foaling season around here, and Deacon, Crick, and Andrew are all up to their armpits in afterbirth and placenta and shit. I don’t think they’ve slept in two days. Anyway, since they’re needed here, and I don’t drive… I’m sorry. I should have called you—I know we weren’t locked in stone or anything….”

“No, no, no, little one, it is all good. I was simply worried. Perhaps you and I, we should look into one of those driver’s license things, yes?” Benny’s voice suddenly perked up. “Omigod Mikhail, that’s like the best idea
ever.
I’m finally old enough, and damn, it sure would give the guys a break. Now that the place is making money, Deacon can afford the insurance—that’s why I haven’t pestered him before now, you know?

Awesome. I’ll wait until everybody recovers. But….” And now her voice dropped uncertainly, and he realized how young she really was and what an awkward position she must have been in these last few weeks. “We might not be by for the rest of the week. Don’t worry—we won’t stop visiting or anything. It’s just that we’re….”

“No worries, Benny,” he said quietly. “I understand, I think. I understand that you are not going away. Now you sound tired, and I hear Parry in the background. Go tend to your family—wish everybody well.” And then he rang off and sat down on the couch and had a full-out, no-shit revelation.

He had a family. Shane or no Shane, he had a family. And they cared. He had a network of friends, of people to turn to, and he had not driven them away.

His hands were shaking when he dialed the next number, and he thanked the gods that he got the voice mail instead of the real person.

“Shane… look. I know I was horrible. I was unforgivable. I do not expect absolution. I just cannot bear for you to live another minute and not know that I am sorry. That’s all. You need to know I’m sorry. I will be sorry forever.”

He hung up then and sat for a moment, staring at the phone in his hands. He didn’t even bother to press the heel of his hands to his eyes or to pretend they weren’t blurring and dripping—there was nobody there in the little apartment to see or to care. He got up then and walked into his bedroom and looked—just looked—at his cedar box.

It was getting full. It hit him then that most people, they didn’t keep every moment with their loved ones in a cedar box—cedar boxes got full.

Most people, they kept those moments in their hearts. Hearts got full and still made room for more memories, more concerts, more moments when someone important held your hand or hugged you or sat and watched a movie just because he or she could.

Maybe, since his cedar box was full, it was time to stop filling it with trinkets and start filling his heart with people instead.

He had just reached out a hand to pick up the little vial and smell Shane for the last time that night when the knock sounded on the door.

It was Shane, wearing his uniform and panting breathlessly from pounding up the stairs, and Mikhail could not stop his heart from leaping when the door swung open and there were those warm brown eyes, blinking earnestly at him.