I was just finishing eating when Riker shuffled down the hallway and dropped into the chair next to me. His hair was all mussed up from sleep and he barely looked awake as he dropped his head down onto the table. I inched my chair closer to his so that I could wrap an arm around his back.
“You’re adorable,” I whispered to him with a smile.
“Tired,” he mumbled and leaned until he was resting solidly against my chest and risking falling out of his chair. He rarely woke up easily.
I kissed his temple and offered him breakfast. That worked. Riker woke up enough then to sit up on his own so that I could slip away and cook. Somehow when I was done cooking and he finished eating it, he ended up curled back up against me in the chair. He was still slightly drowsy. He jerked awake though when his phone started ringing.
I reached for his phone where it sat on the table. “It’s your dad,” I said after glancing at the caller ID.
He groaned a little but took the phone anyway and answered. He was still curled up against me. He had his forehead resting against my heart, one hand clutching my arm and the other holding the phone to his ear as he tried to hold a conversation tucked in like that.
I tried not to eavesdrop, but really if he didn’t want me to hear any of it he would’ve moved. So, I didn’t really feel bad listening to his dad worry about whether or not we were both taking things well, or whether or not we would both be safe, seeing as how some supporters had already started acting like absolute trash. Riker just kept assuring him everything was fine though and eventually he asked about Thanksgiving. Whether or not I would be joining.
Riker looked up at me questioningly. We had talked about it once before but never came to a decision, and I had been thinking about it ever since. I didn’t really have a reason not to go, even if it was guaranteed to be the obligatory awkward first dinner with the family. Besides, it would be nice to not be alone for Thanksgiving.
“Sure,” I mouthed at him.
He ducked his head back down with a smile and told his father. When he hung up some time later he looked at the time on his phone then up at me. “You didn’t go to class,” he said and I knew it wasn’t a question.
“No, no I needed a day,” I said.
“Oh, okay. Are you okay?” he asked.
“Better.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I chuckled a little at that and carded my fingers through his hair. He hated emotional talks. The fact he was offering made me love him even more. But I didn’t want to talk about it yet, not today. Today, I needed to pretend nothing happened. I needed to just be with him.
“Nah, not right now. I’ll let you know when.”
“Okay.”
Later, we dragged ourselves out grocery shopping. We lounged around and watched our favorite movies. I only briefly thought about how I should’ve been in class, about the work I would need to make up and the notes I’d have to track down from classmates later. That could be important again tomorrow, when I needed more distraction, and when the initial shock and uproar had died down from everyone else.
There was still a lingering sense of panic, of hurt. A tightness in my chest that I knew wouldn’t go away until I was sure my whole world wasn’t about to implode, and that wouldn’t happen until well into the new administration. I’d just have to deal with it for now. I’d deal with the fear and the uncertainty because I had to. I had to keep living my life. I had to fight. I didn’t survive and get past everything back then to give into it all now. Not now that I finally had happiness back in my life.
Riker latched onto my back and nosed at my hair. It tickled. I giggled and held onto his arms, which were looped around my waist. He had been extra clingy today. Whether that was for my sake or his I didn’t know, but I wasn’t complaining. It was nice. It was keeping me grounded for the most part.
“Alright Ri, I can’t cook you dinner if you’re gonna play monkey.”
“What else am I gonna do?” It wasn’t a whine, but it was reluctant.
“I don’t know, but start by letting go of me and sit down.”
“Can I help?” he asked, as he let go of me in favor of bouncing on his feet.
“You can open packages and hand me things.”
“I’m not five,” he complained.
“You’re not competent in the kitchen, either,” I countered.
He didn’t protest further. He was pouting a little, and I had to catch him in a kiss to get rid of it.
“Okay, Romeo, okay,” he said and pushed away from me with a smile to grab the ingredients I needed. We had a good system going. It was kind of fun cooking together, usually he just watched. Maybe I’d have to let him help more often.
“You’re smiling,” he said as I started to put food onto our plates.
I froze and looked at him, “What?”
“You’re smiling. It’s the first time today,” he said.
I smiled at him again, “You make me happy, my prince, thanks for that.”
He smiled back at me, absolutely ecstatic, and said, “My pleasure, Romeo.”
Chapter 13 - Riker
February 27th, 1999
Dad walked out to his car carrying me. He had been carrying me around all day since I realized he was leaving again. Every time he tried to put me down I screamed and cried. It wasn’t fair. He was always leaving, and every time he did I fought desperately to make him stay, even though I never won.
“No, don’t go, daddy, don’t go!”
“I’ll be back, Riker. I always come back to you, don’t I?”
“Don’t care. Want you to stay,” I said as I started crying again.
“It’s my job, Riker. I can’t take care of you if I don’t do my job.”
“I don’t care! Don’t go! Please don’t go!”
“I love you, kiddo, and if I could I’d stay home with you every day, but I can’t. You know I can’t. I gotta go, little buddy. I’m sorry.” I held on as tight as I could, but Dad was stronger. He kissed the top of my head then passed me off to Mom. She took me in her arms and I continued to cry and scream for him. I didn’t want him to go. He always left. It wasn’t fair. I only stopped screaming once his car was out of sight, but I didn’t stop crying.
“Shh, Riker. He’ll be back in a few days. And you can talk to him tonight on the phone.”
“Want him now!” I wailed.
“I know, I know you do, but he’s got to work. Come on, baby, please calm down. You know how this goes. He’ll be home before you know it. You’ll play with your toys and go to school a couple of times, and he’ll be back. He won’t be gone as long as he normally is this time. Please, stop crying.”
I shook my head and kept sobbing into her shoulder. She sighed, placed a hand on my head, and carried me back into the house. I cried for half an hour. She tried to sooth me the whole time, but it was worthless. She knew it would be, nothing ever soothed me after he left. I just ran out of tears eventually.
“Rike, baby, you want some juice?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want anything. I just wanted Daddy.
“Can you take a few sips for me, anyway? You’re probably thirsty and you don’t even realize it. Please?” She held my cup out to me. I took it and sipped a couple times before thrusting it back to her.
“Alright, let me put you down so you can go play with your toys.”
“No,” I said and tightened my hold.
“Come on Riker, we can’t do this today. Jordan’s going to be here soon to watch you and I have to get ready to go.”
“Stay home, Mommy,” I pleaded.
“I would if I could, baby, but Ashley needs me to go with her tonight. But Jordan will be here with you, you love Jordan.”
I pouted at her. She kissed my forehead. “Let’s find Dino for you and you can play in your room for a bit.” A few minutes later, despite my protests, I was sitting in the middle of my room clutching Dino. I didn’t want to play. I wanted somebody to hold me. Maybe Ashley would.
I stood back up and walked over to her room. The door was open and she was sitting at her desk. I walked over and tugged on her arm.
“Hey Riker,” she said looking down at me, “you okay?”
I shook my head, “Can I sit wif you?”
“Sorry Rike, I need to study some more before I leave. I’ll give you a hug though.”
I frowned but held my arms out. She smiled at me and got out of her chair to kneel and hug me.
“Where you going, Ashley?” I asked.
“I’ve got a competition tonight.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, you’d be bored if you went.” She ruffled my hair. “Go play buddy.”
I walked back to my room sadly. I missed Daddy. He would’ve sat with me. I picked Dino back up and searched through my chests and closets until I found my whale and my rabbit and sat back on the floor with them. They wouldn’t leave me.
I wanted to cry some more sitting there. Daddy wasn’t going to be there to read me my bedtime story or to tuck me in. Neither was Mommy. I buried my face in my stuffed animals. It wasn’t fair. Why’d he have to leave?
“Riker! Jordan’s here.” I stood up and walked downstairs. My animals clutched tightly to my chest. Hugging Ashley right inside the front door was Jordan. Mom knelt down in front of me and hugged me again. “Be good tonight okay. I love you. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Ashley said goodbye to me, kissed Jordan, then they left. I looked up at Jordan, squeezing my animals even tighter, my bottom lip out and trembling. He knelt down in front of me and smiled sadly.
“Hey, Munchkin, you missing your dad?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered quietly.
“You want me to hold you?” he asked.
I nodded eagerly and he pulled me into his arms and stood up with me.
“Who you got here with Dino?”
“Bunny and Shamu,” I said.
“Ah, well, why don’t the five of us go sit down and watch a movie? I’ll put Peter Pan on for you.”
“Okay,” I said and laid my head on his shoulder
Chapter 14 - Kit
November 20th, 2016
“We aren’t going to wake your parents up by coming in this late, are we?” I asked.
“Nah, they sleep through everything. As long as we aren’t screaming, we’re good. You’re not planning on screaming, are you?” he asked.
“Only if the house is somehow a hundred times bigger than you led me to believe.”
He chuckled and said, “It’s not a mansion, Kit.”
“I know, a good thing too. I’m too tired to marvel at a mansion.”
“You could’ve let me drive,” he pointed out not for the first time.
I just tilted my head in an acknowledging manner that didn’t commit my thoughts on the matter in any direction. Letting Riker drive probably would’ve been a good idea, but the truth was—and I would never admit this to him—I enjoyed driving him because I loved seeing him curl up, or lounge in one of his dozens of different positions he naturally slipped into whenever he was in the passenger seat. For some reason he never sat normally in a chair, I wasn’t even sure he knew why, but without fail every time no matter what seat he was in he arranged himself into a more relaxed position.
I loved how he always had some story to tell me while I drove and how he always told it with his hands as well as his voice, even though I could only catch glimpses out of the corner of my eyes. I smiled every time he accidentally fell asleep and laughed every time he got fed up with the radio commercials and sulked for however long it took for the music to start playing again. Driving with Riker as a passenger had become one of my favorite forms of entertainment.
“Turn left up here,” he said pointing at the upcoming turn into a neighborhood that I knew only by its name. As I turned in, it crossed my mind that I had never imagined I would ever step foot inside a neighborhood of this caliber. I followed his directions until I was pulling into a driveway. There was a three car garage and then another space of driveway off to the side that didn’t block the garage at all. At Riker’s instruction, I parked there.
I really was too tired to marvel at the outside of the house, or the inside as he took both of our bags and my hand and led me through the house. As he pulled me up the stairs and towards his room, however, I did manage to register the pictures on the wall.
“Oh my god, look at you!” I said pausing in front of a group of pictures and smiling.
“Oh no, let’s not,” Riker tried to tug me away from the pictures but I stood firm.
“You’re so cute! Oh my god, you still use that same pout.”
He sighed and draped his arms over my shoulders, and leaned against my back. “It’s my secret weapon.”
The picture was one of him when he was six, or right around that age, in a soccer uniform and pouting at the camera. His father was standing behind him, hands on his shoulders and smiling.
“Why were you so upset?” I asked.
“I didn’t want to be there, let alone taking the picture. I hate that picture, but they won’t take it down.”
“Why do you hate it?”
“It makes me look like I was a petulant little brat,” he answered.
“It makes you look adorable,” I gazed across to the next picture and smiled even wider, “What about this one?”
“That one depends on my mood. Usually, I think it’s funny, but sometimes I think it’s embarrassing. A bit of both right now.”
It was one of those one-in-a-thousand photos. Someone had gotten lucky and snapped a picture at just the right half of a second without knowing. Riker was a little older in it, nine maybe ten. He looked like he had been trying to kick the ball but slipped instead. The picture had captured the moment he was falling backwards, but the ball had just successfully left his foot as well, and his face had the realization that he was about to hit the deck.
The third picture gave me a little cause for the smile to falter. It was sixteen year old Riker, in his old Red Hills High soccer uniform, a teammate on either side of him. Their arms were around each other, they were all smiling, they each had a medal around their neck and Riker was holding a trophy. It was all a very happy scene, except for one small detail. Riker had a black eye, and it wasn’t one that looked like it could’ve happened that day. It was at least a couple days old in that picture.
“Mom hates that one. Dad doesn’t like it either, but I always liked it, so he put it up,” Riker explained.
“I’m not sure I don’t hate it,” I admitted.
He kissed the side of my neck. “That was my last game with Red Hills. We won everything that year. That’s Max and Carson, we had played together since we were eight. A lot of the other guys on the team too, we had all been together since at least age twelve. We had grown up together. Most of them didn’t care when I came out, the few that did got over it pretty quickly. Playing with all of them, was different from any other team I’ve played with. We all understood each other so well, we never had a dull moment. It was a family, not a team. The parents moved me to Oakley prep after that game. Soccer wasn’t the same there.”
“The Parents.” That was what he referred to them as whenever he wasn’t particularly happy or accepting of a joint decision on their part. There was also a hint of sadness and regret in his voice as he said it. I assumed it was because he had no control over that turning point of his life. I wanted to turn around and hug him, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the picture.
“You talk to any of them still?” I asked.
“Yeah, those two I talk to pretty regularly, a lot of the others I still see a few times a year. We get together over the summer and some of the holidays to play a pick-up game at the park. I think I might like those pick-up games more than actual ones,” he said.
That made me feel a little better, knowing that he hadn’t completely lost all that joy and all those friends because Red Hills had been a cruel place. Still though.
“You can as
k if you want. I don’t mind,” he said
I leaned back into him a little more. “What happened?”
“Shoved into a locker three days before that game. My eye nailed the lock. I got lucky, the swelling had just gone down that morning otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to play. You can’t see it obviously, but there’s also some bruising on the left side of my chest from a kick I took after I hit the locker and fell to the floor. Nobody on the team knew about it otherwise they wouldn’t have let me on the field, and mom definitely didn’t know about it. To this day she still doesn’t.”
I wanted to say that most people would’ve considered themselves lucky their eye wasn’t permanently damaged, not because the swelling had gone down that fast, but instead I said “What about your dad?”
“I didn’t think he knew about it beforehand, but turns out he did. When we finally got home after the celebrations and everything I was hurting pretty bad. I had been tackled a few times and landed right on that spot on my side. Dad cornered me in my room with ice and painkillers. Told me he was proud of me, but lectured me about hiding things like that and how I could’ve gotten seriously hurt if I got hit too hard or in the wrong way right there. Could’ve broken my ribs or punctured a lung or who knows what. Apparently, he had caught me guarding my chest the first day when I didn’t think anyone was home. He was just waiting for me to mention it, but he couldn’t wait anymore after that game.”
“You are insanely ridiculous you know that right?” I said.
“Yes. I wasn’t going to miss that game though, not for anything. I’d do it all again, too. That picture, I know it’s jarring and hard to take, but for me it’s something entirely different. That’s one of my favorite memories, that night and this picture captures that, but it’s also a reminder that people tried to hurt me, keep me down, make me feel lesser, but it didn’t work. I still came out on top. I was still happy.”
He Loves Him Page 5
