Raze

by Roan Parrish

  She bit at her thumbnail like she had ever since she was little when she felt guilty.

  “I stayed in the fantasy and I told myself you were fine. Because you’re always fine. You’ve always been fine, my whole life. You’ve always been the strong one who rolls with anything. Who can figure out a way to fix anything.”

  “I’m not fine,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be! I should’ve seen the difference between fine-because-you-have-to-be and actually fine. I think probably I wanted to believe you were fine so I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about peacing out.”

  I nodded. “That makes sense.”

  “I’m so sorry, Felix. I fucking love you and I’m sorry I made you feel like I didn’t care. But also I really want you to, like…” Her voice was choked and tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Get a life?” I said.

  “Basically.”

  I socked her in the shoulder. “I love you too. I just miss you. I miss that feeling of being a team. Having someone to talk to at night and plan things with.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then said, “I love being a team with you, and we always will be. But…have you thought that maybe it’s not just me you want to be a team with? Not just me you wanna talk to at night and plan stuff for the future with?”

  My stomach flipped.

  “In case that was too subtle, I meant Dane,” Sofia said, winking and shoving at me. I stuck a pillow in her face.

  “I don’t think he wants that with me,” I said, shoulders slumping.

  “Why?”

  I told her about the fight, expecting sympathy, but she waved my concerns aside.

  “Look, bro, you basically told the guy he’s dead inside. You can’t both just say sorry and hug it out. You’ve gotta talk it all through.”

  I slumped onto my back on the bed. Slumping, always slumping. Even the ceiling was perfectly, spotlessly white. I bet they washed it when they steam-cleaned the carpets.

  “What if he won’t talk to me?”

  “You make him.”

  “Yeah, I’d love to see me try and make Dane do anything. He’s like six foot five and weighs three of me.”

  “Yes, Felix, because obviously what I meant was that you should challenge him to a gladiatorial match where your muscle mass and fighting prowess determine who has to share their deep, dark secrets. Idiot.”

  “Damn, I can totally see Dane as a gladiator,” I said dreamily. Thick leather straps crisscrossing his powerful chest, bands of leather straining against the girth of his biceps, his huge thighs straining as he crouched to throw a javelin…or whatever gladiators fought with. I hadn’t seen that movie in years.

  “Earth to Felix.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Look, maybe it won’t be a fun-filled conversation, but if this isn’t going to be the kind of partnership you want, wouldn’t you rather know now? Not waste any more of your time?”

  My stomach soured at the idea of not having Dane in my life anymore.

  “I guess.”

  “I’ve always been jealous of how you can express your feelings, bro.”

  I snorted.

  “No, seriously. It’s really hard and it’s really brave to be that vulnerable with someone. It’s like walking into battle with no armor and no weapons and just saying Bring it. Just be honest with him. Tell him how you feel. Try and see how he feels. Sorry it’s not more psychologically complex advice, but I think that’s all you can do.”

  “You’re right. I know you’re right.”

  “The sweetest words in the English language.” She grinned.

  We lay on the bed next to each other in silence.

  “I’m still mad at you, you know?” I said after a while.

  “I know.”

  “So,” I said, stealing her pillow. “How’s this whole rock-star thing going for ya?”

  Her eyes lit up. “You’ll have to come and see tonight.”

  * * *

  —

  My sister was a revelation. She was glorious, incandescent, impish, powerful. She was every single part of her personality all at once, each with the volume turned to ten, projected out over thousands and thousands of screaming fans. I felt like I was watching someone I had once known, a long, long time ago, who had become famous. Then I had to remind myself over and over that it was Sofia. The crowd screamed for her, sang for her, laughed with her, and cried with her.

  Before the last song, she said, “Thank you so much, Baltimore!”

  They screamed.

  “Will you help me out with something, Baltimore?” she yelled.

  They screamed.

  “My brother’s here tonight. He’s the best brother anyone could ask for, and he needs a little encouragement.”

  My heart raced and I tried to hide behind the woman in front of me, suddenly terrified Sofia might make me come up onstage or something. I reassured myself that she wouldn’t do that because she knew I’d kill her in her sleep.

  Someone yelled something near the front of the stage.

  “No, I’m not gonna tell you what he needs encouragement with—what are we, best friends?”

  “Yesyesyes!” the crowd chanted.

  She grinned, and the video monitor above the stage projected her grin a hundred times its size, like the audience was as close to her as I had been.

  “Tell my brother with me, okay? Say, ‘You can do it, Felix!’ Okay?”

  And slowly, as I stood anonymously among them, the crowd’s din coalesced into a chant.

  “You can do it, Felix! You can do it, Felix!” they chanted.

  Tears blurred my eyes.

  “You can do it, Felix,” I whispered.

  The guy standing next to me, chanting enthusiastically, grinned at me like he was happy I got with the program.

  “You can do it, Felix!” I screamed at myself as the crowd went wild.

  * * *

  —

  I let myself into Dane’s apartment with the key under the mat. I knew he’d be at the gym and then going to the market because it was Wednesday, so I figured I had enough time to make something simple for us to eat and have it ready by the time he came home. I wanted to do this face to face.

  When I stepped inside, though, Dane jumped to his feet from the floor where he’d been doing push-ups. His muscles bulged and a light sweat gleamed on his skin. His mouth dropped open when he saw me, and he looked down at himself.

  He was wearing only boxer briefs and his exposed skin was covered with a labyrinth of black words, layers faded and overwritten into meaninglessness. He wrote those things on himself for guidance and comfort; I shuddered at how much comfort he must have needed to result in that thicket of words.

  “Dane, I…I thought you’d be…I wanted to…”

  I’d spent the whole bus ride back from Baltimore planning all the things I’d say to him, all the things I’d explain. But now, faced with my boyfriend, gorgeous and harrowed and looking like the gladiator Sofia had compared him to, everything faded away except the absolute most important thing.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so, so sorry. I was horrible and everything went wrong. Can we talk?”

  Dane nodded. He pulled on the T-shirt lying on the back of the couch, but then he stood there, staring at me like he couldn’t quite believe I was there. Dark circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes, and I started to lose my nerve.

  “Are you…Can you give me just an idea of how mad you are? Like…like pretty mad, super mad, so mad you can’t even talk? Just so I know where to start.”

  He shook his head and said nothing, which seemed to support the third option.

  “Not mad,” he said finally. “I thought…I looked for
you, but…” He shook his head. “Thought maybe you were just done with me.”

  “No, no, I acted like such a dick. You have to be mad.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  At first I thought he was being argumentative, then realized he was just stating a fact.

  I launched into my prepared remarks before I could get too thrown, but somehow they didn’t come out the way I’d practiced on the bus.

  “Look, I, um. I’ve never…I don’t know how to fight. With you. And I think maybe you don’t know how to fight with me? But I met this awesome woman in the museum—well, I think I did? I’m still slightly convinced maybe she was a super-elaborate figment of my imagination? And she—the woman, I mean—took me around. And holy shit, Dane, the exhibits after hours are bananas, just so, so cool. Okay, but sorry, anyway, I was trying to say I’ve never really fought with, like, a boyfriendish person before. And I didn’t do a good job. And also that day my timing was bad, I know now. Really, really bad. And you just left, and it was like, ugh, how do we do anything? And—and—and— Anyway, my point was that I don’t know how to fight with you, but I want to learn how to fight with you. And be with you. You know?”

  Dane stepped closer to me. Close enough that I could smell his soap and detergent and the faint tang of clean sweat. He tipped my chin up so I was looking right at him.

  His eyes were tormented and he looked so tired.

  “I fight with myself all the time,” he said. “Constantly. I don’t wanna fight with you.”

  “Oh, I…”

  Standing there, looking up at him, looking into his tempestuous eyes, his broad shoulders dwarfing me, I realized something about Dane that should have been obvious to me all along.

  Dane Hughes was not fine.

  He wasn’t fine at all.

  I’d made precisely the mistake about Dane that Sofia had made about me.

  Since we first met, I’d been so caught up comparing myself to him and finding myself wanting—how strong he was, how impervious, how impressive—that I hadn’t seen what was right in front of me: he was a mess too.

  “You’re not okay,” I said, the revelation leaking out audibly. “I messed up the other day because I felt fucked up and I wanted to spend time with you because you always make me feel better. And I missed the part where you’re completely fucked up too. You just do it in, like, a workaholic, Atlas, push-ups way so people don’t notice. Right?”

  Dane blinked at me, and for a second I thought he’d laugh at how absurd I was. Maybe he’d counter, explaining that he was an adult who owned his own business and helped countless others and had famous friends and could bench-press nine million pounds, thank you very much. But then he dropped his chin and shook his head.

  “I’m not,” he said, voice sandpaper and smoke. “Not fine.”

  I stepped into his space and hugged him, pressing myself as close as I could. His arms came around me and he was big and warm, and I felt like I took a deeper breath than I had in days. He ran tentative fingers through my hair. I hated that he was tentative.

  “Fuck, I missed holding you,” he said.

  I nodded emphatically and pressed closer, determined to hold him just as hard as he was holding me.

  “Do you wanna maybe be not fine together for a bit and talk?” I asked, voice muffled against him.

  His low Okay rumbled through his chest so that I felt it before I heard it. We separated reluctantly and sat on the couch. I didn’t really know where to start.

  “I went to Baltimore to see Sofia,” I said. “I told her about how bad I’ve been feeling, like you suggested. And it helped, I think, even though she said some shit that hurt.”

  “What did she say that hurt you?” Dane asked, instantly bristling.

  Dane. Always ready to help, protect, defend. Especially when it distracted from himself. Maybe we weren’t so very different after all.

  “I’ll tell you later. But it kinda made me think maybe it’d be good to tell you? How I feel?”

  No one had ever watched me more intently.

  “I’m scared, though.”

  Dane sucked in a deep breath through his nose and when he spoke, it was like the words came from his very depths.

  “Please. Please, Felix. Give me another chance.”

  I blinked up at him.

  “I…Yeah, I…Okay, let’s talk. I mean, I’ll tell you. God, sorry, I’m so nervous.”

  My tongue felt like an unruly thing and I was sweating. He reached out and took my hand, which helped a little.

  “Okay, here goes. Shit. I really care about you,” I said. “And I don’t wanna scare you away, or seem…I don’t know, too much. But I want you. Like, all the time. This—” I gestured between us. “I know we haven’t known each other that long, but it feels real to me. Like maybe it could be…a thing.”

  I infused thing with as much gravitas as I could, since I couldn’t quite make myself use any of the real words for what I wanted.

  “A thing,” Dane echoed.

  “Um. A…” Relationship? It already was a relationship. “Partnership?” I tried. It was what I meant, but it sounded bloodless, somehow. Less romantic than what I wanted. “I don’t know. A thing, Dane! A real thing! You know what I mean!”

  “I do. It is,” he said quickly. “A real thing. For me, anyway. But I’m…”

  He ran a thick finger over the rip in the knee of my jeans. I could just feel it when his fingertip grazed the bit of exposed skin. When he spoke next, it was so soft, and so afraid.

  “I’m scared I’ll hurt you. That it won’t work and then I’ll be…worse off than I was before.”

  “How do you think you’ll hurt me?”

  He shrugged, but it seemed more like reluctance than uncertainty.

  “Like I did the other day.”

  “By leaving? By not fighting?”

  He nodded. “By being…the way I get.”

  “Frozen?”

  His eyes flew to mine.

  “That how it seems?”

  I nodded.

  His eyes went distant, like he was considering that deeply.

  “Not how it feels.”

  “How does it feel?”

  “Like so much at once that I get overloaded,” he said.

  “That’s kind of how I felt that day, too. Only it was like my feelings were really big. I think…I’ve never had someone before who I cared about this much,” I said slowly. “Besides my family, I mean, but that’s different. I’ve never had anyone I felt like I could be…vulnerable with, I guess? So the other day, it was like the first time I ever asked for something just because I wanted it. And I know I was wrong,” I assured him quickly. “But it was like, I felt like shit and I wanted you so much and you were leaving and I just…I couldn’t stand it. That’s why I acted so bad. I just couldn’t stand you not being there in that moment.”

  My heart was racing, fear and shame and hope swelling inside me like a bouquet of perfect, fragile balloons.

  “Is that…is it okay that I felt like that about you?”

  “I don’t think it’s for me to say, sweetheart. But I like it. A lot.”

  “But…” I took a deep breath. My feelings weren’t for Dane to say. He was right. “Okay. I guess maybe what I want to say is that we might both need to understand when it’s happening—that you’re overloaded and that I’m overflowing. So we can know what we need. Like, what do you need when you get overloaded?”

  “Time to think,” he said right away.

  I nodded.

  “You?” he asked. “When you’re overflowing.”

  “I think…maybe for you to touch me. Maybe tell me it’ll be okay?”

  I cringed at how babyish that sounded, but Dane nodded.

 
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, great. That’s good. Yeah. Progress. Right? I think so.”

  I bit my lip to stop myself from babbling.

  I wasn’t sure where to go from there. I wanted to tell Dane everything I was thinking about him and feeling about our potential future together, but it didn’t seem like the time, since we were hashing out our fight and our…everything.

  “Um,” I ventured. “Can we try it?”

  “Try it?”

  “Yeah, I’m a little…uh, leaky.”

  I chanced a glance up at Dane and his eyes were so open, his willingness to accept me so clear on his face that I felt myself start to actually leak. He wiped a tear from my cheek and opened his arms to me.

  “Come here,” he rumbled, and wrapped me in his arms. He rubbed my back, and I forced myself not to care if I was needy or weak because nothing had ever felt as good as hearing his low, steady voice say, “I got you, sweetheart. It’s gonna be okay.”

  I pressed even closer, like my whole body could drink in his reassurance. We stayed that way for a few minutes, and I thought I felt Dane relax a little bit too.

  “Hey,” I said, remembering suddenly. “Is your sponsee okay? The one from the other day.”

  I felt him sigh.

  “I hope he will be. But I’m not his sponsor anymore.”

  I pulled away so I could see his face.

  “What? No! I never wanted you to feel like I wanted you to stop working with sponsees! Oh no! I’m sorry! Shit, I didn’t mean—”

  “No. It wasn’t because of you. It was because of me. For me. I’ve…started to make some changes. Maybe if we’re gonna be a thing,” he said, and shot me an amused look, “we can decide on some others?”

  Joy flushed me and I smiled at him.

  We were totally a thing.

  “Changes, okay. Tell me?”