Then from last night, “Colin, it’s Daniel. Look, I’m mad at you, but I still want to talk to you, okay? I want to know what the fuck’s going on with you. Why were you so horrified when you found out I was gay? Because I know you weren’t faking that. You wanted to kill Buddy when you found us together. I just want to know why. Please call me back, okay?”
Rafe sinks down next to me. “What’s up?”
“I think… I think he really didn’t tell them.”
“Daniel?”
I nod.
“What did he say?”
“He’s mad. He, um, he doesn’t get why I was upset he’s gay since I—” I shake my head and drop the phone onto the end table. Rafe takes my hand in his and kisses my palm.
“I just…,” I start, but I can’t pull my thoughts together. I play Daniel’s messages over again in my mind. He sounded genuine. Not pissy, just… hurt. “I just don’t get why he cares, I guess. He hasn’t cared about my opinion since we were kids.”
“Are you sure?” Rafe asks in that way where he makes me really, really think about it.
And I just don’t know.
Rafe’s kiss tastes like cinnamon.
“So, listen,” he says, handing me a bowl of cereal. He runs a hand through his hair. “My mom.” He looks up sheepishly. “She’ll kill me if I don’t show up for Christmas.”
I must look as confused as I feel because Rafe says, “It’s the day after tomorrow.”
“Oh. Shit, man, you should’ve said something.”
Rafe sits back down next to me, and Shelby, who has been staring out at the ocean, mesmerized, starts eyeing my cereal from her place on the floor.
“I am saying something,” he says, turning me to face him. “I’d rather be with you than watch the monsters tear into their presents and then complain about what they didn’t get.”
I didn’t even think about Christmas. Christmas without Pop… that’s… I can’t imagine what we’d do. The idea of going back to Philly and sitting in that house with Brian and Sam, watching sports and getting drunk while we… I don’t know what we’d do. We never did much for Christmas anyway.
One year, when Daniel was ten or eleven, he asked Pop if we could get a tree and make Christmas cookies. It sounded kind of nice. Not that any of us would’ve known how to make cookies. But a tree seemed okay. Pop looked so pissed. And guilty. I could tell what he was thinking. That he took care of us—cooked and gave us money for clothes and shit—and Daniel was pointing out this way that he’d failed as a father. I couldn’t stand the look on Pop’s face, like he was worried he was doing everything wrong, so I just laid into Daniel, telling him only girls baked Christmas cookies and trees were for snotty Rittenhouse shitheads who have nothing better to do than sit around and stare at them.
Daniel’s face fell, then his lip started to quiver, then his eyebrows wrinkled, and he walked away before he started to cry. Pop clapped me on the shoulder in thanks and Daniel never mentioned anything about Christmas again.
Rafe’s looking at me, concerned.
“You’d be welcome at Gabriela’s,” he says.
I shake my head. The last thing I want is to meet Rafe’s family when I feel like this.
“I just… I know I said I’d meet them, but I’d be lousy company right now,” I say.
“I understand. Another time.”
“I—do you think…? Never mind.”
“What?”
“Could I maybe… stay here? Over Christmas? I just don’t think I can handle my brothers right now.”
A flicker of fear passes over Rafe’s face, and I know he’s thinking about the other morning in the ocean. But he takes a deep breath and nods.
“Yeah, you could do that. I don’t like to think of you alone on Christmas, though.”
I bump his shoulder with mine. “I don’t care about Christmas. I’ll be fine.”
I RUN
until my legs shake, then sink down into the cold sand and look out at the water. It smells clean and wet, and the waves drown out my panting breaths. It’s like running along the edge of the world. Mostly, it’s the sound I like. The way it covers things up. My shitty breathing and my stupid thoughts.
There’s this one thought that’s rattling around, though. This one thought that the waves can’t quite drown out. It was there when I woke up a few days ago. Rafe’s arms were around me, his face tucked into the crook of my neck, and I was too comfortable to move. I stared out at the sun rising over the water and it was just… there.
I’m free.
I’d almost fallen back asleep when Rafe shifted in his sleep, pulling me to him like a stuffed animal. He fumbled for my hand and held on and I just smiled. I didn’t have to get up and go to work. Didn’t have to pretend anything with anyone. Didn’t have to worry about how to act because Rafe already liked me, god help him.
I fell back asleep pretty soon after that, but over the next few days, it kept popping up.
Now, without Rafe to pay attention to, it’s back.
I’m free.
Pop is dead and I feel shitty about it, but also, for the first time, I think… maybe things could really be different. Maybe there’s a chance
I
could be different. Feel different.
Back at the house, I pick up my phone to check the time and see an unplayed voice mail from last night.
“Colin,” Daniel says, and he sounds freaked. “I have this memory. At least, I think it is. I’m not totally sure it really happened, but… if it did…. It’s—it was a snow day at school and I came home early. You were in bed, drunk, and I remember Dad’s pills, for his back. Anyway, I remember a lot of them, Colin, and I just. I wanted to make sure—I wanted to see if…. Look, just don’t do anything fucking stupid, all right, you asshole? Because I…. Just, please be okay. Okay?”
My heart races. Pop’s pills. Buddy…. I know the day he’s talking about, though I’d almost forgotten about it until now.
It was the first time. Well, no. I’m not sure I was really trying that time. Mostly, I just wanted the screaming in my head to go away and the only times it did was when I was blaring music, lifting weights until I couldn’t think, or out of my mind wasted. That day, music hadn’t helped and I lifted until my arms gave out, but it was all still there. I drank as much of Pop’s rum as I thought I could get away with, but that didn’t help either. I found his pills in the medicine cabinet. He’d slipped a disc a few months before, but he stopped taking them because he said they made him feel like he was going to piss himself.
I don’t know if I meant to or not, but once I’d taken the first handful, I climbed into bed and the bottle was just out of reach. I couldn’t make myself move enough to grab it, just fell into a dreamless oblivion where things were okay because there was only blackness. I remember Daniel hovering over me, but that’s about all. He just did that sometimes.
“WHAT IF
it’s an emergency?” Rafe asks. He brought his mother’s tamales and stories of her arguing with Luz about letting Cam hang out with boys back with him last night.
We’re walking down the beach at sunset—Rafe’s idea—and I’ve just ignored a third call from Daniel. I guess I shouldn’t have texted him to tell him I’m alive after all. But he sounded so scared in his message.
“I’m never the one Daniel would call if he had an emergency. Besides, he’s in Michigan.”
Rafe just raises his eyebrows at me, but he gets distracted by the sunset. He seems to have kind of a thing for them.
After dinner, I get Rafe to watch
Cabin in the Woods
with me. He got it at the video store before he went back to Philly and clearly didn’t think he’d have to watch it. He’s holding Shelby in front of his face to block the movie and then pretending like he’s just playing with her.
“You can turn it off,” I tell him finally. “I’ve seen it. I mean, thanks for getting it for me and everything, but you don’t have to watch.”
“Shit’ll give me nightmares,” he mutters, but he doesn’t turn it off.
WHEN I
get out of the shower the next morning, Rafe’s sitting on the side of the bed looking guilty as hell. I freeze.
“What?”
“Um.” He cuts his eyes to the bedside table, but the only things that’re there are my phone and a half-empty glass of water.
“Dude, you’re freaking me out,” I tell him. “What’s going on?”
“I talked to your brother last night. Daniel.”
“What? Why?”
“He called at one in the morning, babe, and I just—I was worried. He obviously really wanted to get in touch with you.”
“So?”
Rafe reaches out a hand and pulls me to stand between his knees. “He’s in Philly. Staying with his friend Ginger. He says he’s in town until the day after tomorrow and he’d really like to see you. Talk.”
Rafe strokes up and down my sides, then settles his hands on my hips, looking up at me. “He didn’t….”
“What?”
“He didn’t know where you live.”
“Why would he need to know where I live?” I lean away from Rafe, but he grabs my ass and pulls me toward him, pressing his chin to my chest and looking up at me.
“Rafe,” I warn.
He sighs. “I told him he should come to your house tomorrow evening so you two could talk.”
“What the hell?” I pull away from him, and this time he lets me. Out the window, the ocean pulls itself against the sand again and again like always.
Then Rafe’s arms come around me from behind. He rubs his lips against my hair and it drags through his stubble. I should really cut it.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
A simple question but it seems impossible to answer—like a row of dominos I’ll knock over if I touch one. That I’ve always thought of Philly as home, but the idea of going back makes my heart race and sweat prickle under my arms. That work is the one thing that’s always been a constant in my life, and now it’s gone. Or different, anyway. That I don’t know how we’ll keep the shop going without Pop. Will one of us take over as the boss? Do we just go on with it like nothing’s changed? Or could we take the opportunity to make some changes? Jesus, what kind of a son thinks of his father’s death as a chance to make business decisions? But it’s not about the business. Not really. It’s the future.
Brian and Sam were horrified when I brought up the idea of taking on different kinds of clients. But was that them, or was it just because they didn’t think Pop would like it? Will they feel different now? I don’t know. I don’t even know how they are. I hope Brian hasn’t been sitting around Pop’s house all alone. I guess it’s his house now. Shit, is the house paid off? I don’t know. Does Brian know? He helped pay the bills, but I don’t know if he had anything to do with the mortgage. I should ask Sam. But should I—
Rafe spins me around by my shoulders and cups my face so he can see my eyes.
“Tell me what’s going on,” he says, tapping my temple.
I open my mouth, not sure what’s going to come out. “I don’t want to leave.”
Rafe nods. “I know. You needed to escape for a while—have space to deal with some things.” He runs his thumbs over my eyebrows and cheekbones. “I’ve liked escaping with you,” he says softly. “But it’s not real. You know that. The real test is whether this feeling can exist side by side with your life.” He rubs my shoulders, his voice serious. “You have to ask yourself what you want your life to look like.”
I snort out a laugh because he sounds like some kind of shitty self-actualization guru.
“I don’t even know what that means,” I say. It comes out mocking and short.
But Rafe seems dead serious.
“It means there’s nothing noble about handing the reins of your life over to someone else, Colin,” he says. He doesn’t raise his voice, but there’s an edge to it that he gets when he’s trying not to snap at me. “You have a chance now, you know? To do something different if that’s what you want. To have a different life.”
A nervous laugh escapes even though my lips are pressed tight together, and I shake my head. It’s kind of like he read my mind.
“Don’t laugh at me,” Rafe says, voice intense. “You think it’s stupid to reinvent yourself? You know what my life would’ve looked like if I’d taken the one that people were willing to hand me?”
Now he’s worked himself up. He starts pacing, long legs eating up the sand-colored carpet. It’s like he’s hardly even talking to me anymore. He speaks quickly, the words bitten off and full of anger and loathing I’ve rarely heard from him.
“I was a fucking convict. A criminal. I would’ve had a minimum-wage job at some shitty fast-food joint. I would’ve gotten bored, or thought I could make a little more than minimum wage, so I would’ve started bartending at some thug bar. Little by little I would’ve gotten so used to seeing people smashed or high, that my sobriety would’ve felt like too much work. I’d have gone back to using, and when the money I made at the bar wasn’t enough, I’d’ve fallen back in with the guys I used to run with. Doing favors. Enforcing debts. I would’ve been right back where I started, only worse, because there wouldn’t have been any second chances. If I’d gotten picked up, I would’ve gone to prison for ten years, or fifteen. When I got out, I’d have been a fucking middle-aged loser. Too old to be useful to the gangs or the bars or any-fucking-one. Too hard to be of any use to my family, even if they
had
wanted anything to do with me. My nieces and nephew would’ve grown up thinking I was a worthless loser. My sisters wouldn’t have even mentioned my name. My mother—”
He shakes his head, takes a deep breath, and sinks down onto the side of the bed, looking out at the ocean.
“But that’s not what happened,” he says like he’s trying to soothe himself with the truth of it. “That’s not what happened because I met Javi. Because I woke up that first morning after I got out and I thought,
Hey, idiot: no one is going to give you anything good. If you want it, you’re going to have to make it happen
. And yeah, because I was so scared of ending up like my fucking father that I wanted to do anything not to abandon my family and run away to something that felt easier.”
He takes a deep breath and looks at me. “That’s where you are, babe. It’s the morning after you got out. You have some decisions to make. And I know it’s hard and it’s scary as hell, but… the morning after you get out… well, not deciding to make a decision is the same as making the decision not to change your life. Not to take responsibility for what happens next.”