Middle of Somewhere Series Box Set

by Roan Parrish

  “Close your eyes. Just relax.”

  I’m worried he’s going to leave, but he keeps his hand on my shoulder, and every time the water starts to cool a little, he lets some out and adds hot. I must doze off for a minute because when I wake up to the sound of the ocean and the sensation of water it takes Rafe’s hand sliding gently under my neck to figure out where I am.

  “Ready to get out, or you want to stay a little longer?”

  I shrug.

  “Stay right there for a few minutes.”

  I hear him moving around in the bedroom and then he’s back, holding a large towel open and helping me out of the tub. As Rafe helps me to the bed, my movements are so sluggish it feels like I’m still in the water.

  Rafe kisses me slow and liquid, his hand on my hip. If he wants to distract me with sex, I’m happy to go with it, but when I try and pull him down on top of me to deepen the kiss, he eases back, just kissing me like we have all the time in the world.

  I’m not even turned on, really. Just warm and relaxed, like after I’ve run until I can’t run anymore. Rafe lies down next to me, and I turn on my side to face him. His hair is a mess—tangled from the wind outside probably—and I work the knots out as he kisses me, leaving it soft around his face. It sticks in stubble I haven’t shaved since before the funeral.

  Rafe’s jeans and T-shirt are rough against my water-softened skin, and I tug at them. He pulls his shirt off slowly, the lamplight behind him turning his torso into a sculpture. He comes back down to me naked and kisses me deeply.

  “I love how you taste,” he says against my mouth.

  “I probably taste like spaghetti sauce.”

  He presses my shoulders back down to the mattress, and something warm and dark unspools in my gut. As long as Rafe’s in charge, I can’t fuck up.

  “Just let me touch you,” he says. “I want to.” I nod. He kisses my ear, my neck, the hollow of my throat.

  Then he has my hips tilted up and my thighs spread while I’m still lost in the feel of his tongue tracing my jaw.

  He slides fingers down the crease of my ass and around my hole, watching me, then sliding inside. Every touch of his fingers inside me makes me crave more. When he leans in and kisses my open mouth, he looks mesmerized.

  “You love this,” he says. “Me inside you. Filling you. Opening you up.”

  I can’t speak for the sudden wave of lust that washes over me when he talks like that. Says out loud the things that I could never express. Would never say. And I don’t have to say anything because he just keeps kissing my mouth and my neck, his fingers trailing fire inside me.

  Then he pulls away and my eyes fly open. “No!” I say, trying to grab his wrist.

  “I’m just getting lube,” he says, but I shake my head and pull him back. He fucks me with his fingers, and every few thrusts he curls them and pleasure slams through me. “God, you’re so beautiful like this. The way your body just lets me in. Fuck,” he groans, dropping his head onto my chest, stilling for a moment while he takes a deep breath.

  He kisses down my stomach and scrapes his teeth over my hipbone, and I curl into the sharpness of his mouth.

  Rafe buries his face in my crotch, breathing me in, kissing and sucking at the crease where my thigh meets my groin and the base of my dick. Everything feels like it’s happening in slow motion. Like every minute his mouth is on me unfolds to hours and all I can do is lie here, caught perfectly between his hot mouth and his fingers inside me.

  It should be impossible to be this relaxed and this turned on at the same time, but I keep spacing out even though I’m aware of the physical sensations.

  One night, weeks ago now, Rafe and I woke in the middle of the night and brought each other off in the dark, both half-asleep, our legs entwined and his hair in my face. I feel almost like that now. Dreamy and liquid. This time, though, Rafe’s focus is intense and everything about him is urging me to be open to him. To let him do as he pleases. It’s a heady feeling and one that still makes me cringe if I think about it.

  I let out a shaky sigh, and Rafe groans into the crease of my thigh. “I love this,” he murmurs.

  “Don’t stop,” I choke out. “Please.” Rafe licks up my dick, swirling his tongue around the head. His hair tickles my stomach, and his mouth is a tease of heat I try to chase, pressing my hips up, desperate for more contact, craning my neck to watch my erection slide between Rafe’s lips. He looks at me, hair falling around his face, dark eyes soft, and it goes right to my gut.

  Then he starts to move more quickly, and I drop back onto the bed, unable to focus on anything but his hot mouth and his fingers inside me and the bloom of pleasure that opens me up and breaks me apart. Little spasms start deep inside, where Rafe’s fingers stroke into me. Bolts of sensation zing from my balls to my dick. Then it’s huge, my entire body clenching. My mouth is locked open as the heat of orgasm washes through my groin, my belly, my thighs. Shudders of pleasure tear through me, and my ass contracts around Rafe’s fingers as I spill into his mouth.

  Rafe moans, and I feel his muscles tighten as he jerks himself off.

  Then his hand is on my cheek, his lips on mine. He whispers something but I don’t make sense of it because I’m too blitzed to think.

  Everything else has melted away. The only problem in the whole world right now is that I’m cold and I want Rafe wrapped around me.

  I try and lift my arm to pull him down, but I can’t coordinate the movement. Rafe’s thumb brushes the corners of my eyes and I can feel the moisture there.

  “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

  It feels like I’m held in a cloud, everything soft and fuzzy. But it could evaporate at any moment, leaving me in free fall.

  “Cold,” I finally get out.

  We’re lying on top of the covers, but Rafe flips the edge of the blanket from the other side of the bed over us. We lie like that for a minute, Rafe stroking my face. Loneliness shoots through me even though he’s right there, and I start to shake. Then I start to cry. Then I’m sobbing and Rafe wraps himself around me, murmuring nonsense.

  The next week passes like a dream. We wander along the beach, nap, and eat. But something’s different. I feel calm in a way I never have before. Like the moment I’m in is bearable. I don’t know how long it will last, but I’m clinging to it while it does.

  This morning when we woke up, Rafe told me my brothers have left me a bunch of voice mail messages. I didn’t notice that I hadn’t seen my phone in a while, but I guess he’s seen the calls come through.

  I try to work up the nerve to listen to the messages. I bet Sam’s going to rip me a new one for missing Pop’s wake. And I can already hear Brian’s confused voice, hurt because he doesn’t know where I am. There are dozens of missed calls from both Sam and Brian and the messages I expected, Sam sounding increasingly irritated and Brian more and more hurt.

  It never occurred to me that Rafe meant Daniel, too.

  But after Sam’s and Brian’s are two messages I didn’t expect. From Daniel.

  “Hi, Colin,” Daniel says as if he were actually talking to me instead of leaving a message. “I’m so angry with you because you cheated me out of a brother. I don’t understand why you never told me. I mean, I can think of lots of reasons, but I don’t know what yours was. No matter what it was, though, I think it sucks. I think it sucks that you let me think I was alone in this, when I wasn’t. I wasn’t, was I, Colin?”

  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?”
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  “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—