Middle of Somewhere Series Box Set

by Roan Parrish

  “Is that it, Rafe? You want to fix me? You always said you wanted to be like Javier. Is that what you’re doing? You want to be my sponsor? Turn me into someone you can point at and say, ‘I did that’?”

  Rafe hisses and I know I’m so far over the line I can’t even see it. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window. I’m spitting mad but my face is white.

  Rafe steps right up to me and he’s shaking, his quiet words cutting deeper than any yell.

  “Don’t talk about him,” he says, and for the first time, I can see the man he might have been. Dangerous, menacing, cold. I can see him choose to control himself, but it’s clear he could’ve gone the other way.

  I wish he would. I wish he would hit me, shove me, do anything to me. Anything would be better than this distance, this cold. He’s looking at me like we don’t even know each other.

  “You,” he says, “are lying to yourself if you think you’re living in the world. You’re barely making it through. You know what you want but you’re too scared to go after it. You think being gay is what makes you weak?” He shakes his head, and there’s pity in his face. “Living a lie when you don’t have to. Acting like you’re the only one affected by your decisions. Those are the things that make you weak. It’s just fear.”

  Something shifts in Rafe’s face. He lets go of something, or… or maybe he just doesn’t care anymore.

  “You know what you’re really scared of, though? You’re afraid of what will happen once you don’t have a secret to hide behind anymore. Once you’re just you. Strip away your fear and what’s left? I don’t think you even know.”

  My heart is beating so hard that I feel like I’m going to pass out. I know now that I’ve been waiting for this moment since I realized how much I wanted him. The moment when he figured out what a waste of time it is for him to be with me because I’m fucking nothing.

  “Fuck you,” I bite out, the response automatic.

  Rafe nods once, like he wasn’t expecting anything more, and it hits me like a sonic boom. His total dismissal. But when he walks out—when he leaves me standing in the middle of my immaculate living room feeling like the fucking walls are coming down and the blackness beyond them is swallowing me whole—the sound of the door shutting behind him is almost silent.

  10

  Chapter 10

  Work is just like it was yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. And I don’t care anymore.

  I try to lose myself in the vehicles. Distract myself by picturing their beautiful circulatory systems. The way each piece has a job to do. How every system is necessary to keep things running smoothly. But I’m just going through the motions. Waiting for something that might snap me out of this fog. Everything Brian, Sam, and Pop say pisses me off, and I’ve been walking around with my fists clenched in a constant state of readiness to fight during the two weeks since Rafe walked out my door. I feel like I’m sixteen again.

  This morning I woke from smothering dreams, still half drunk, the sheets twisted and sticking to me with sweat, and I dragged myself up to run. The sidewalks were cracked, the remains of the snowfall a few days ago hiding dangerous uneven patches that can turn an ankle. I felt heavy, my legs useless like in dreams where I’m being chased—as if the pavement is quicksand, sucking my feet down no matter how hard I try to propel myself forward. I cut over to the track behind my old high school, shut down three years ago in budget cuts. The track’s just dirt now, really, but I didn’t trust myself to pay attention running around the neighborhood.

  I zoned out as I ran, but the second I stopped, everything slammed back into me like the nasty return of punching bag when your head’s turned. My legs were shaky and weak, my stomach roiling, and my ears numb with cold.

  All of that was nothing compared to the fishhook of pain lodged somewhere between my chest and my stomach, throbbing with each beat of my stupid, pathetic heart.

  As I come through the door of the garage with a second cup of coffee—an attempt to wake up after almost melting a mess of wiring with the soldering iron—Sam nearly slams into me and the mug falls, shattering on the cement, splatters of coffee mixing with oil, paint, and grease.

  “What the hell,” I mutter.

  “Pop!” Sam yells, his voice panicked like I’ve never heard it. “Call 911. Call 911 now!”

  I bolt toward the office as Luther grabs the phone. On the floor of the office strewn with paperwork lies Pop, one hand clutching at his chest, the other clawing at Sam’s arm. He’s covered in sweat. His face is gray and terrified.

  The only time I’ve seen him look so lost is after Mom died. When he wandered through the house like a child, picking things up and putting them down as if, maybe, she wasn’t gone, but simply misplaced.

  “They’re on their way,” Luther calls.

  My heart races like I’m still running. “Pop?” I croak out, and I sink down next to him. He mouths my name but no sound comes out.

  Before I can figure out what we should do next, paramedics are pushing us out of the way. Pop loses consciousness before they get him out of the office.

  “What—what—Colin, what happened? Pop?” Brian runs up to the shop as the paramedics are putting Pop in the ambulance, late as usual. “What’s wrong with him?”

  I remember that edge of panic to Brian’s voice. I remember it from when Mom died and Brian came home from school to find Pop crying in the kitchen.

  But I can’t talk to Brian. It’s taking every bit of energy to drag air into my lungs. Luther pushes Sam into the ambulance with Pop, but they can’t take us all.

  “I’ll drive you.” Luther grabs Brian’s arm with one hand and mine with the other and puts us in his truck. This too is familiar. Luther was there, especially those last few weeks when Pop was with Mom in the hospital most days.

  The ride to the hospital is a blur of Brian crying and Luther talking and traffic lights changing and horns honking, and then we’re in the waiting area. Brian’s chewing on his lip, his knee bouncing and his head swiveling every time someone walks by. Sam is slumped in his chair, eyes straight ahead, cradling his cell phone. Luther is half watching us and half watching the nurses’ station.

  It’s too bright and too quiet and too loud to feel anything.

  We’re probably getting motor oil and grease on the waiting room. Mom never let Pop sit on the couch without changing his clothes and taking a shower. She insisted that oil still managed to get on things even when he did. The price of loving a mechanic, she always said, smiling.

  I close my eyes, trying to picture her. Trying to remember how she smelled. I know her perfume was some kind of rose—her favorite flower—but I can’t conjure it. There’s only sweat and oil and stale recycled air.

  Ten minutes later it’s over.

  Pop’s dead.

  A heart attack, the doctor says.

  I don’t remember getting back to Pop’s. Luther must’ve driven us, but I don’t know how long ago. Sam is a robot as he makes arrangements with Vic, a guy from the neighborhood we’ve known forever whose cousin runs a funeral parlor. Luther makes a bunch of other calls. I don’t know.

  “We have to call Dan,” Sam says tiredly.

  “I gotta go home. Gotta feed the cat,” I mumble, stumbling to my feet. I hold up my cell phone to say they can call me if they need me.

  “You have a cat?” Sam’s saying as the door closes.

  When I get home, I try to call Shelby over, wanting to drop my face into her fur and hug her to me like a stuffed animal. She lets Rafe cuddle her like that sometimes. She comes close, but when I try and grab her, she swipes at me, claws raising red lines on my hand. It doesn’t hurt enough, so I try again. She thinks we’re playing and rolls over onto her back. I rub her belly. She always likes it for five seconds before she attacks. She claws lines of heat down my forearm with her back feet and latches on to my wrist with her teeth. When I try and lift my hand away, she comes off the floor with it, wrapped around my arm. When she gets tired
of playing, my forearm is crisscrossed with scratch marks oozing blood, but I don’t feel any better.

  I pull myself up, looking at my stinging arm. Picture Pop’s arm as he clutched at his failing heart, lying on the floor of the business he built, staring up at me like I could help him. I can’t even help myself.

  My interactions with Pop in the last month? I didn’t say one word more than absolutely necessary. Didn’t stick around one second longer than I had to. Didn’t pay attention to anything but my own work. I can barely swallow around the guilt clogging my throat.

  The first gulp of bourbon trails fire behind my breastbone, the second warms my stomach, and the third goes down like water. So does the rest of the glass.

  I’m exhausted but I can’t be still or I start to focus on my breathing, on how my stomach is a whirlpool.

  Shelby’s scratches weren’t enough to ease the pressure. In the bathroom, careful not to look in the mirror, as always, I turn on the shower so the bathroom fills with steam.

  The razor blade parts my skin easily, blood welling, then dripping down my chest. Every cut sends a rush of heat through me, relaxing my stomach a bit, making my breaths come easier, as if I can draw in oxygen through them like gills. It’s been a while.

  Under the hot water, my head starts to swim. I hardly notice what’s happening until I’m gasping for air on the floor of the shower, sobs turning me inside out.

  Any recognizable feeling is so far out of reach that it may as well be a distant star I’m clawing at as I spiral through the vastness of space.

  I wander from room to room, picking things up and putting them down again because there’s nothing that can help. Finally, I crawl into bed with the bourbon and put up the hood on my sweatshirt. The heat’s up high but I can’t stop shaking.

  The bourbon hits me all at once and the room is spinning. Distantly, I register that Shelby has jumped onto the bed and curled up on Rafe’s pillow. On the pillow Rafe always uses, I mean. It doesn’t smell like him anymore. I checked.

  But Shelby’s sense of smell is stronger than mine. Maybe she can still find a trace of him in the fabric.

  I wake up to my phone ringing in the other room. I have no idea how long I’ve been out. Everything is dark, but it’s because my hood’s over my face, which is damp with tears or spit or the condensation of breathing into the fabric. I know if I try to get up to get my phone I’ll puke, so I pull the covers tight around me and slip away again.

  The next time I wake up, it’s to Brian shaking me. My head feels like it’s splitting apart, and my stomach gives a warning heave when Brian jostles my shoulder. I groan and bat his hand away.

  “You okay?” Brian asks, his voice rough. I try and pull the covers back over my head, but he doesn’t let me.

  “Come on,” he says and holds out a hand. He looks wrecked. “You’ll feel better if you puke.”

  I groan at the word, but I know he’s right. I’m sweating bullets and my mouth is so dry I can barely swallow, but I stick my finger down my throat and vomit what feels like acid until there’s nothing left in my stomach. I move to brush my teeth, but when I catch sight of the bloody razor sitting on the sink next to the soap, my stomach heaves again. I must’ve been really out of it to leave it there.

  When I stagger out of the bathroom, Brian passes me a beer and I sip it until my stomach settles.

  “I was calling you all day yesterday and you didn’t answer.”

  He kneels and holds out a hand to Shelby, who comes and sniffs him delicately. Then she rubs her head against his fist and sits to let him pet her, rubbing her face against his knee.

  “God damn it, Shelby,” I say under my breath.

  “What?” Brian asks, looking up at me as he scratches Shelby between her shoulder blades, making her purr and lean into him. I actually start to fucking tear up because the damn cat likes everyone better than me. Then she makes a sound that I haven’t heard before, like she’s whining.

  “Nothing, man,” I say. “Gimme a sec.”

  I change out of my sweats, shocked to see it’s ten in the morning. Oh fuck. Brian said he called me all day yesterday. That means I passed out hard. Lost a whole day. Missed both of Shelby’s feedings.

  “Shit.” I hurry into the kitchen and tip food into Shelby’s bowl. At the sound, she comes galloping into the kitchen and shoves her face in the bowl.

  “I’m sorry, Shelby,” I whisper. “Fuck, I’m so sorry.”

  I reach out a shaky hand to pet her, but she twists away.

  “Sorry,” I murmur again and tip a little bit of extra food into her dish.

  “Um, did you call Dan?” I ask.

  Brian looks sheepish. “I forgot. Sam called him yesterday. He’s driving. Should be here tonight. So, um, do you want to come back to the house? I just thought, you know, we could hang together or whatever.”

  No. I absolutely don’t want to go to Pop’s house when Pop’s not there anymore. But I’m afraid of what I might do if I stay here alone, so I grab my coat and my keys and follow Brian to his car. I look at my phone to see ten missed calls from Brian, but what I’m really looking for is the call from Rafe that isn’t there.

  The desire that hits me is a physical ache so strong I wrap my arms around myself to try and contain it. I want to see Rafe. I want to see Rafe more than I want anything at this moment.

  Sam, Brian, and I slump in the living room in the same configuration as always, the television droning in the background a prop so we don’t have to talk. After a couple of beers, I feel better. After a couple more, I feel worse. Liza brings some food over, but everything tastes like sand.

  Another beer and I actually close my eyes and make a wish as I snap the pop tab off my beer. I wish that Rafe would, somehow, walk through the door. I want the weight of his hands on my shoulders, the pressure of his arms around me, the smell of his hair as it falls around my face.

  But when someone does walk through the door, it’s the last person I want to see.

  Daniel. And he has someone with him.

  The second Daniel says “Hey” and his eyes land on me, I’m slammed by a combination of fury and jealousy so potent it takes my breath away.

  “Um, this is Rex,” Daniel says tentatively. The guy with him is handsome in a rugged kind of way, and is sticking close enough to Daniel that he could reach out and touch him at any moment. Daniel leans against the wall and looks at us, as if he doesn’t even want to get close enough to sit on the furniture.

  “Um, so what the fuck happened?” he asks. “Was Dad sick?”

  I think back on all the times that Pop disappeared for hours during the middle of the day. The way he went to bed really early on Thanksgiving. I thought he was just drunk, but maybe… was he dying this whole time and I didn’t even notice?

  “If he was, he didn’t say so,” Sam says.

  “I don’t think he went to a doctor or anything,” Brian adds, looking at me for confirmation.

  “So, he just dropped dead all of a sudden?” Daniel snaps, like he’s talking about a stranger. “Can you please tell me what happened?” He directs this to Sam, like Brian and I know nothing. My heart rate is kicking up and my skin is buzzing. As usual, Daniel sets me on edge with barely a word. He cares more about hearing the story than he even does that Pop’s dead.

  I can hear the tears in Sam’s voice as he explains.

  “Shit,” Daniel breathes. “So, the doctors said it was a heart attack? What else did they say?”

  What does he want from us? Pop’s dead. We’ll never see him again and Daniel wants to show up and play I’m-smarter-than-you, as usual.

  “Are you a fucking medical doctor now, too?” I say.

  “No.” Daniel’s voice is shaking like it always does when he’s upset. “I just want to know what happened.”

  “We’re having the funeral tomorrow,” Liza interrupts before I can tell Daniel to go fuck himself.

  “Jesus, that’s fast,” Daniel says, frowning.

  Sam exp
lains that Vic got us an in at his cousin’s funeral parlor. He always was the most patient with Daniel’s need to know every fucking detail about every fucking thing.

  “Seriously, Sam?” Daniel says scornfully. “Vic’s a fucking slimeball.” He always used to say Vic was so stupid he couldn’t believe he hadn’t died in traffic yet. Never mind that Vic’s cousin was the one who buried Mom, letting Pop pay him in trade because he couldn’t afford anything else.

  “Just because you don’t like him…,” Brian chimes in.

  “Dude, he’s a criminal. Come on,” Daniel scoffs, like we’re all idiots.

  I think of Rafe telling me how scared he was when he got out of prison that no one would ever want him. That no one would give him a chance because of their stereotypes and fears about people who’d been in prison.

  “Well, you weren’t here to make other arrangements,” I tell Daniel. “So we took care of it. If you’re too good to go to the funeral because you don’t approve of Vic, then that’s your fucking business.” The words come out like knives.

  “Of course I’m going to the funeral. What can I do to help?”

  “Nothing,” Sam says. “It’s taken care of. It’ll be a graveside service. Luther called people for us, but some of Pop’s friends can’t make it, so we decided we’d have a party at the shop the next day. You know, a wake or whatever.”

  “Okay,” Daniel says. “Well, I’m sorry I wasn’t here, but I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  And now he’s just going to walk out the door. With the way Rex is looking at him, Daniel is probably in for a peaceful night of sweet cuddling or passionate sex—whichever he wants. Because Daniel always gets what he wants. It’s always been that way. He was the baby. Mom doted on him. Pop protected him like he never did me. And Daniel never gave a crap. He did whatever he wanted and damn the consequences.

  “Not like you ever gave a shit about him anyway,” I mutter.