Middle of Somewhere Series Box Set

by Roan Parrish

  I swallow hard at the last two.

  “What does ‘AOTA’ mean?”

  “Huh?” Daniel says, pulling something out of the fridge. “Oh. All of the above.”

  I lean against the counter, and Daniel puts out an apple and some cheese.

  “Can I eat this?”

  I nod, frowning.

  “Um,” he says, sounding nervous again, “so… you can just go in order if you want….”

  He gets out a plate and a knife and proceeds to cut the apple and the cheese into perfectly uniform slices and pile the slices on the plate, which he offers to me, looking pleased with himself for a second. But I definitely can’t eat anything. Why always so cruel?

  “Soooo?” he says.

  “I don’t understand,” I say, sitting down carefully. I put the paper in the middle of the table and point to number three. “How did I make your life miserable? You didn’t want anything to do with me—with any of us. You were never around. You… were ashamed of us. I don’t… I mean, you didn’t care…. You thought we were losers and you were so much smarter….”

  “That’s not true,” Daniel says furiously. “You guys never wanted me around because you thought I was a pansy—your word. All you ever cared about was cars and sports, and the second that I wasn’t good at that stuff or didn’t want to do it, you totally wrote me off, like if I wasn’t just like you, I was fucking worthless!”

  “But you were good at that stuff. You were good with cars and you were great at track. You just decided you didn’t want to do them because they were too… you know, not classy enough for you.”

  Daniel jerks in his seat, then runs a hand through his hair, messing it up. “I only ran track because I thought Pop might pay attention to me for, like, a second if I did a sport. Not that it worked. He thought track was for sissies. So I quit. I didn’t like it, anyway. And I never thought I was smarter than anyone. I just wanted to learn shit and you guys acted like I fucking betrayed you or something.”

  We sit in silence, Daniel pushing the slices of apple around on the plate, me looking anywhere but him.

  “Was it just…?” He looks down at his untouched food. “Was it just because I’m gay that you hated me?”

  “We didn’t hate you,” I scoff.

  “I’m talking about you,” he says softly. “You… hated me. Hate me? I just—I don’t remember exactly when it started, but I… I… we weren’t always like that. I—when I was little, you let me hang out sometimes. When you’d be listening to the radio. And I thought, you know, like, you thought I was okay. But then….” He shakes his head. “Then you hated me. So. Was it the gay thing? Or was it just… me?”

  “I… I… I….”

  Daniel shakes his head and makes a sandwich with apple and cheese. He only takes one bite before he puts the food down again and squirms.

  I don’t know what to say. The story he’s telling… it’s like someone summarizing a movie you saw but hitting only the points you barely noticed. Daniel has his arms wrapped around himself again. It reminds me of Ricky and the way she pulls herself tight, shoulder blades spreading like wings.

  “Uh, so how long have you and Rafe been together?” he asks finally.

  “Since October, I guess. Around then.”

  “How’d you meet?”

  “Oh, well. I’ve been helping him out at this place he works. For kids. I’ve been teaching them shit about cars.”

  “Really? That’s cool,” Daniel says. “Where at?”

  “The Youth Alliance, in Northern Liberties.”

  “The queer youth program? Seriously?”

  “You’ve heard of it?”

  He nods.

  I miss the kids. It’s been weeks since I’ve seen them. I wonder how they are. If they think I forgot about them.

  “There’s a kid there that reminds me of you,” I say. Only Anders isn’t there anymore. I wonder how things are going for him.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, he just… he’s kind of scrawny and he’s really into Harry Potter. Anyway, it just reminds me of how you were when you were a kid. Always wanting people to read to you and stuff.”

  “Yeah, and then Brian would rip up my library books.”

  I swallow hard. I don’t remember that.

  Daniel shakes his head. “I don’t get it, man. So, when I told you I was gay, you punched me in the stomach so hard I puked and told me that I shouldn’t ever admit it. But now you volunteer at a queer youth center and you’re all fond of these kids and shit?”

  My head is spinning. “I didn’t tell you not to admit it—I just… I didn’t want you to be… gay… because I didn’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

  “Why did you think something bad would happen to me?”

  “You were with fucking Buddy and he’s…. And I—you were so little and I didn’t think…. I just wanted to make sure you could take care of yourself.”

  Daniel’s looking at me like I’m speaking another language. He opens his mouth to say something, but I cut him off.

  “That’s why I taught you to fight in the first place. It’s why I tested you sometimes. You know? To make sure that if you needed to, you could protect yourself. That’s all.”

  “I was sixteen. I wasn’t a little kid,” Daniel says, but he sounds like he’s choosing his words carefully.

  “You were little. And he was—” Fuck! I don’t want to talk about this. “Anyway, you just did whatever you wanted and you didn’t care how much Pop sacrificed to take care of us.”

  “Uh. What?”

  I don’t say anything. I want this to be over. I want to go back to the moment Rafe told me he thought I should talk with Daniel—all warm chest and strong arms—and I want to tell him to shove it.

  “Colin, seriously, what the hell? What do you mean, Pop sacrificed? What do you think he sacrificed?”

  Daniel’s biting his lip, and he looks pale against the bright red of his sweater and the near-black of his hair. It’s only a little darker than Brian’s and Sam’s, his skin only a little lighter, but with his green eyes, the contrast is a lot more noticeable.

  “He was a fucking fall-down mess after Mom died.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Daniel says.

  “You don’t know. You were a kid. You didn’t have a clue.”

  “I know he drank himself to sleep every night for months. I know the school counselor had to call him because I showed up in the same dirty clothes for weeks and the kids wouldn’t sit next to me because they said I stank. I know Sam ordered pizza every day for so long we practically puked at the smell of it. I know Pop cried every time Cindy Lauper’s ‘Time After Time’ came on the radio even though he didn’t want anyone to see. And I know after a year or so he got his shit together but he was never the same. What I don’t know is what the hell you think I could’ve done about it.”

  I had forgotten about that Cindy Lauper song.

  “You just—” I shake my head and start cleaning the floor around Shelby’s food and water dishes. It gets dirty so quickly. “You didn’t have to make his life harder! That’s what I’m saying. He barely kept it all together and you were right there showing him all the ways he was failing. All the ways he wasn’t good enough. And then you tell him you’re gay—”

  “I made his life harder?” Daniel stands up, hands on the table. “So you’re saying, what, that because he lost his wife, I should have done whatever he wanted for the rest of my life in an attempt to make him feel better? To make him feel like he succeeded at being a parent even without Mom? That is so intensely fucked, Colin! And in case you somehow missed it, he didn’t succeed. He was a shitty father! He was cruel and petty and he made me feel like a worthless piece of garbage all the time.”

  “Yeah, right!” I stalk toward Daniel. “He babied you so hard. He never did that shit with me. If I’d pulled half the shit you did—”

  “Babied me! What shit did I pull? You’re insane! All I did—all I ever fucking did—was tiptoe arou
nd you all so I could get my homework done and get out of the house without a slap or a punch or having you look at me like I was disgusting.”

  “You were disgusting!” I yell in his face. “Prancing around like you were better than everyone. Like you didn’t care about your responsibility to our family. Like all you wanted was to get as far away from us as possible and live your perfect fucking life with your perfect fucking boyfriend and never see us again!”

  Daniel blinks quickly, his green eyes huge and his face pale. I can hear every swallow he takes.

  “What family?” he says softly. “What family is it that you think I had, brother? You and Brian and Sam, Dad, you were a family. You loved him. I know that. And you all had your cars and your sports and your beer. What the fuck did you want from me? I wasn’t part of that. Any time I even tried—if I asked how your day was, if I asked how the shop was—you made it clear you didn’t want me to be a part of your family. My family died the day Mom died, and you blame me for trying to be honest about who I was? There was nothing for me at home, but you think I should’ve pretended to like it there? Lied about what I wanted? About who I wanted it with? I didn’t even care about telling Dad and you guys that I was gay. I only did it because you saw me with Buddy and I knew that if I didn’t tell them before you did, then you would present it in the most disgusting way possible.”

  “No! I would never have told Pop because I knew it would break his fucking heart to have a—”

  Daniel takes a step toward me, his arms wrapped around himself.

  “To have a what? To have a faggot for a son?” His voice is eerily calm. “Well, I guess you’d know.”

  Heat rises in my face and my breathing goes bad. I keep trying to swallow the lump in my throat, but it won’t go down.

  “You can’t even say it, can you? You can’t even look me in the eyes and say you’re gay.” He shakes his head. “Jesus Christ, Colin,” he says, his mocking voice crawling deep into my gut, “does he have that much power over you?”

  I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. This is not how this was supposed to go. This is not how this was supposed to go at all.

  “Shit,” Daniel says softly. He backs away a step and looks at me. “Shit, he does, doesn’t he? And he always did,” he goes on, like he’s talking to himself. “Jesus, you were talking about yourself, weren’t you? That’s what you did. You played the role of the son you knew he wanted because you thought you could make it okay for him. That you could make him feel like he was an okay parent even without Mom….”

  I’m concentrating on my breathing, pretending Rafe is here, his hand on the back of my neck helping me breathe in and out, in and out.

  Daniel’s muttering to himself and pacing, his mismatched socks crisscrossing my spotless kitchen floor.

  “And then when I—fuck, you knew you were gay, didn’t you? All that time. And after you saw how Dad reacted to me, there was no way you could….” He’s chewing on his lip, looking at me through the hair falling in his face every time he runs a nervous hand through it.

  Jesus, that hand through his hair is just like Rafe.

  “Are you okay?” Daniel asks. He’s standing a step away from me, his hand hovering near me like he’s afraid to touch me. My breaths are so short it’s making black dots shimmer in the edges of my vision. “Shit, Colin? Do you wanna sit down or something?” I shake my head.

  The doorbell rings and a second later I see Rafe’s shoes walk into the kitchen. They’re the same beat-up Pumas he was wearing when we came back from the beach this morning, so he didn’t even go home and change. I joked when he left that we should have some secret signal like they do in the movies in case I wanted him to come interrupt my conversation with Daniel. Only I wasn’t actually joking. And like always, I guess he could tell.

  “He’s—I’m—we were—and—I don’t know what’s wrong,” Daniel says, and he sounds like a little kid again.

  Rafe doesn’t say anything to Daniel, just steps right in front of me and pulls my arms around his waist, crushing me to him.

  “Okay,” he says in my ear. “You’re okay.” He rubs a palm up and down my spine, holding me tight against him with the other hand. I try and time my breathing to the expansion of his rib cage. I breathe in his smell and imagine his hair spreading out around me, veiling us both in our own little world.

  Little by little, my breathing normalizes and the black spots recede from my vision. Rafe’s hand is cradling the back of my neck and my face is buried in his jacket.

  The second I realize I’m okay, though, the mortification hits. Because Daniel just saw me a hundred percent lose it. I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing I could just hide in Rafe forever, then open them and see Daniel’s feet, one navy blue sock and one black, hovering a couple feet away.

  I pull away from Rafe, my eyes still on the floor, then look up at Daniel quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid. He has one hand at his mouth, chewing on his thumbnail, and the other wrapped around his stomach. He looks scared, the way he used to.

  “Are you okay?” Daniel’s voice breaks on every word.

  I nod and look down. An awkward silence settles over the kitchen until Rafe clears his throat.

  “I don’t want to interrupt,” he says, “but I brought dinner.”

  Daniel’s looking at Rafe very strangely, head cocked and eyes slightly narrowed.

  “I, um.” He gestures to the apple and cheese sitting untouched on the kitchen table. The apple has started to go slightly brown and the cheese has gone slimy. It looks disgusting.

  “I’ll just grab it from the car.”

  Daniel and I look at each other, and his expression of terror at prolonging this get-together mirrors my feelings so perfectly that I almost laugh.

  “I’m not really hungry,” I say to the floor.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Daniel says quickly, but then his stomach gives a loud growl. He squeezes his arm around it even tighter and rolls his eyes at himself.

  Rafe chuckles and Daniel’s head jerks up.

  “I’ll be right back,” he says again, looking between Daniel and me.

  Daniel perches tentatively on the edge of the counter. “I didn’t know you got panic attacks,” he says softly.

  “Well, you don’t really know anything about me,” I snap, but it comes out sounding a hell of a lot milder than I intended.

  “Yeah. You’re right,” Daniel says. “We don’t know each other at all, do we? I don’t know Brian or Sam either. And I sure as hell didn’t know Dad.”

  “Me either,” I say softly.

  Daniel snorts. I shake my head and close my eyes again.

  “Wait, what do you mean?”

  The adrenaline from a few minutes ago has drained away, leaving me exhausted. I can feel a headache coming on.

  “Well, he didn’t really know me, did he? So I don’t know how he would’ve felt about me if he did.”

  “He didn’t….” Daniel fumbles around for words.

  “I don’t even know if he would’ve loved me if he knew who I was, okay!”

  Daniel swallows hard. “You mean because you saw how he didn’t love me once he knew I was gay.”

  Shit. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “No, I know.” He’s fiddling with something in his pocket and rubbing a hand over his chest absently.

  After a minute of awkward silence, Rafe comes back in and lays out food from the Greek place I like down the street.

  “Oh shit, this is so good,” Daniel says with his mouth full. “My—um, Rex, my—um, he loves to cook.”

  “Your boyfriend?” Rafe asks.

  Daniel nods, but he gets this doofy look on his face like he’s a thousand miles away, and he rubs his chest again.

  “So, Daniel,” Rafe begins politely, and I can tell he’s about to initiate some kind of getting-to-know-you chatter, but Daniel interrupts him.

  “We’re—I’m—we’re moving in together,” he blurts out, looking at me. “Oh, sorry,” he says to Rafe, r
ealizing he interrupted. Rafe just smiles at him and shakes his head. “He asked me. At Christmas,” Daniel says softly, nervously fiddling with his fork. Then he shakes his head as if he’s irritated with himself for saying it.

  I don’t know what to say. I kind of hated Rex on sight, but, you know, there were extenuating circumstances.

  “Congratulations,” Rafe says once it’s clear I’m not going to respond.

  “Thanks,” Daniel mutters, clearly embarrassed at the attention even though he’s the one who brought it up.

  Daniel and I both shove food in our faces for a minute to avoid talking, and Rafe looks between us, saying nothing.

  Rafe puts his hand on my thigh under the table and squeezes. Daniel stares into space as he eats, his mind clearly on something else.

  “Wait,” he says after a while, eyebrows wrinkled in confusion, “I was little and he was… what?”

  “What?” I say.

  “Buddy McKenzie. You said you were worried something would happen to me because I was little and he… what?”

  “What? Nothing. He was an asshole. And way too old for you.”

  “I thought he was your friend?”

  “No.” I put my fork down, my appetite gone.

  “But… wasn’t he?”

  “No. Well, once.”

  “I just don’t understand—”

  “Look, I thought he was hurting you, okay? What else is there to understand?”

  Every muscle in my body is rigid, and I’m vaguely aware of Rafe tensing beside me. He can always tell when something’s wrong.

  “But, I mean, I was….” Daniel blushes. “You know, I was the one… going down on him, so—”

  “Yeah, so I saw,” I bite off.

  “So… okay, so then, why—”

  “How did I know you wanted to do that? That he didn’t manipulate you into it!” I put my hand over my mouth as Daniel’s eyes narrow.

  “I don’t…. Wait, did that… happen to you?” Daniel asks. “Oh shit. Did that happen to you with Buddy? Is that why you weren’t friends anymore?”

  I forgot this about Daniel. The way he takes little pieces of what you say and fills in the blanks to make whole stories. It’s why I never used to want to answer him when he’d ask me about my day or try to get me to talk about shit. Because I knew that in his head, he was weaving it all together and getting more out of it than I ever intended to let on.