Clickbait

by E. J. Russell

  Gideon squeezed her arm. “It was only love.”

  Ruth’s shoulders trembled, and she took a deep breath. “Seventeen stitches. He wouldn’t take anything for the pain afterward. I left to get his discharge paperwork, and when I returned, he’d washed the drywall dust off his face and slicked his hair back. I think he practically dunked himself in the sink to clean up, and how he did it with only one hand, I’ll never know.” Her face crumpled, and Gideon lunged to wrap an arm around her shoulders. “Now I really will never know.”

  Alex walked in, his face closed and locked up tight. Gideon waffled, unsure whether to stay with Ruth or comfort Alex, but Alex removed the need for a decision: he crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “He’s asleep.”

  Ruth pushed her doctored cider away and stood up. “I’ll sit with him for a while. Why don’t you all—” her voice broke “—have some pie.” She stumbled out of the room.

  “I’ll go,” Toshiko said, her voice as matter-of-fact as ever. “Please tell Ruth I’ll contact her later with the pertinent information.”

  A wavery smile curved Lindsay’s lips. “Thank you for coming, Tosh.” God. Henning family manners trump even shock and grief.

  Toshiko tilted her head, clearly about to announce that thanks were unnecessary, but she stunned Gideon yet again with unexpected—for Toshiko—effusiveness. “You’re welcome. Thank you for inviting me.”

  She left the room, and Lindsay followed, those all-consuming manners apparently requiring that guests have a personal escort out of the house.

  Gideon approached Alex, who was propping up the wall like an apprentice Atlas with the world—the world of this family anyway—squarely on his shoulders. Gideon ached with the need to share that load, or at least lighten it a little.

  “Guess psychiatrists aren’t kidding when they say the holidays are stressful.”

  “Don’t,” Alex said between clenched teeth. “Don’t pretend this isn’t a fucking disaster.”

  “I wasn’t trying to.” Gideon wanted to touch Alex. Soothe both of them with the warmth of a handclasp, the solace of a hug, but Alex’s grim face thrust him back a step as effectively as a shove.

  “I just found out my dad set the house on fire. My mom lied about it. Hid it from me.”

  “Oh God, Alex—”

  “Know what I was doing when he almost burned down our home? Do you?”

  Gideon blinked, his chest tightening. “No.”

  “I was fucking you.”

  “If you want to be literal about it, there was no—”

  “Jesus. For once in your life, shut up. Just shut the fuck up.” Alex pushed off the wall and paced the kitchen from refrigerator to table. “Nothing touches you. You let it roll off. Make a joke. Walk away and leave the shit for some other poor bastard to clean up.”

  “Alex.” Gideon was breathless, as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. Maybe he deserved it, but he never imagined Alex would be the one to deliver the blow. “I admit I’ve had a few issues with commitment in the past, but—”

  “You’re all about presentation. About how things look, not how things are. Well, fuck presentation.” He spread his arms, palms out, head thrown back. “This is my family. This whole bag of shit. You wanted to be a part of a Henning tradition and you got it. Happy now?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean it’s been a rough day for all of us. Naturally we’re all a tad on edge, but we’ll work things out.”

  “How? No matter how you try to dress us up, with all your checklists and fancy cooking and pretty dishes, we’re all broken underneath.”

  The raw hurt and anger in Alex’s tone sent Gideon’s belly into a free-fall tumble. “Alex, that’s not true. You’re strong. Your mom, your sister. Besides, you know my history. I’m the last person who’d expect a perfect Hallmark family.”

  “Oh yeah.” Alex’s laugh held a bitter edge. “I remember. You like contrast too.” He pointed at Gideon. “Smooth and smart.” Pointed at himself. “Rough and stupid. You were right the first time. Like should stick with like.”

  The panic that skated under Gideon’s skin urged him to find something, anything, to prove he’d changed. That he didn’t believe that crap any longer, but all his words deserted him. “I—”

  “You want contrast?” Chest heaving, Alex pointed to the turkey on its platter, brown and perfect and aromatic. “That’s what you want. But this—this is what we are.” Alex picked up the bird and heaved it across the kitchen. It thudded against the cabinet under the sink and flopped onto the floor, skin split and legs askew. Alex’s shoulders shook as he stared at his greasy hands. “There you go. Contrast. Now get out.”

  Geekspeak: Lorem Ipsum

  Definition: Placeholder text, used to mock-up web page layout, typography, and other design elements.

  Alex strode across the backyard and dumped the battered remains of the turkey in the trash bin on top of the pies and potatoes and rolls and marshmallow zombies. He slammed the lid down on every last reminder of how he’d failed his family, and wished for the old aluminum drums of his childhood. The clang of metal on metal would be a hell of a lot more satisfying than the scrape of plastic.

  Dude, haven’t you destroyed enough today?

  He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and leaned against the corner of the garage. The wind from earlier had died, making way for a heavy fog that had grayed out the fading daylight and added damp to the already chill air.

  Alex caught a thread of laughter from a neighbor’s house, a distant shout from kids trying to squeeze a few more minutes outdoors before they had to surrender to the end of the day. The noise was distorted, as if the fog muffled sound as well as sight. Those kids could be anywhere. Or nowhere.

  Is this what it was like for his dad? Nothing but shifting gray mist, the occasional flash of clarity warped by lack of context, as likely to be false as true?

  Not that he was much better off. Lately, his life had been nothing but a shitload of unconnected bits, puzzle pieces that he’d tried like hell to put together in a way that made sense. He slammed his fist on the top of the garbage bin as he passed. He’d given Gideon shit for trying to pretty things up, but here he was, clearing away the wreckage of the day and trying to make everything seem neat and normal.

  Never gonna happen. Time he faced facts: this might be their normal, but it was a hell of a long way from neat, and even further from pretty.

  For a little while, when he’d been with Gideon, he’d forgotten. And that, right there, was the danger. Because he could never forget. Not if he wanted to be the man his family needed. The man his father had taught him to be.

  He walked back into the kitchen and sniffed the air. No smells remained of turkey or pie or marshmallows. Nothing but lemon-scented cleaner and coffee. He’d wiped the slate as clean as it was ever going to be.

  He sat down and propped his elbows on the kitchen table, head in his hands. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there before his mom padded in. She squeezed his shoulder, and he pressed his own hand on top of hers.

  “Mom, I’m so sorry. This was a stupid idea. I should never have let Gideon—”

  “Stop. It wasn’t your fault. Not yours and not Gideon’s.” She sat across from him and set a little bundle of papers on the table. “If it was anyone’s, it was mine.”

  “Yours? Bullsh—” He broke off when her eyebrow quirked.

  “Yes. Mine. We need to talk about your father, but before we do, we need to talk about you.”

  His shoulders tensed at the steel in her tone. “Me.” He gestured at the sanitized kitchen, where only a few hours ago, they’d all been so stupidly happy. “You mean because of the . . . the . . . thing.”

  “It wasn’t a ‘thing,’ Alex. You practically exploded.”

  “You didn’t see—”

  “I heard. I saw the aftermath, too—the wreck of Gideon’s efforts, a
nd the look on his face when he ran out of here. This was the most devastating six-month breakdown you’ve ever had.”

  Alex crossed his arms and scowled at the edge of the table. “You’re the one who told me to decompress. Didn’t help.”

  “It didn’t help because you didn’t actually do it. And as long as you think our family problems rest solely on your shoulders, any little setback will feel like your own failure.”

  “I don’t call what happened today a little setback. We let Dad get hold of a knife, for God’s sake. He could have hurt Lin.”

  “Alex, Lin is already hurting.” He opened his mouth to respond, but she held up her hand. “Yes. I agree. It was a wake-up call, but not for the reason you think.”

  “I think I need to take better care of you. I can’t be selfish anymore. Put myself ahead of you and Lin and Dad.”

  She folded her hands on top of the papers. “What about Gideon?”

  “What about him?”

  “You’re putting him behind all of us. He doesn’t deserve to feel like this is his fault.”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “Really? Have you asked him?”

  “Not going there, Mom. I gave it a shot, the way you asked, and it went to shit.”

  She didn’t call him on his language; either she was devastated too or so pissed at him that she didn’t trust herself to speak. That hadn’t happened since he was sixteen.

  “The Thanksgiving dinner, opening our house to people other than the immediate family, you dating Gideon—they might have correlated with your father’s outburst, but they weren’t the cause.”

  “Don’t say that just to make me feel better.”

  “It’s the truth. Your father didn’t have that reaction because you were happy—he had that reaction because he has a degenerative disease. We’ve put this off as long as we could, but it’s time now. He needs more care than we can give him.”

  She rifled through the papers, pulled out a colorful pamphlet, and laid it on the table. He frowned at the discreet lettering on the front.

  “The Beeches Long-Term Care? This isn’t the place Aunt Ivy found.” He opened the trifold brochure. “This place has genuine windows.”

  “Toshiko recommended it. It’s affiliated with both OHSU and the lab where she works.”

  Alex read the list of services and patient room amenities on the back. “Mom, we could barely afford that hellhole of Aunt Ivy’s. No way can we afford this place, unless we sell both houses and I work 24-7.” He slid the brochure back across the table.

  She placed it on top of the other papers, tapping the edges until the stack was perfectly aligned. “You’d think so. But this is actually less expensive.”

  “Bullshit, and no, I won’t mind my language.”

  Ruth closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with the three middle fingers of each hand, the Lord, give me strength gesture Alex remembered well from his wild teen years.

  “There’s a—a grant. It covers most of the costs for patients who are accepted.”

  “‘Accepted’? What is this, some experimental crap?”

  “The patients have to be recommended as appropriate for the program and level of care. Based on Toshiko’s assessment, the Beeches is willing to take your father. They’ve got a spot open now, but the window is closing on it.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Alex scowled. “There’s got to be a catch. I don’t want to—”

  “Alex. When it comes down to it, the decision is not yours. It’s not your sister’s. It’s not even mine.” She ran her thumb along the edge of the brochure. “When your father was first diagnosed, he—he signed an advanced directive.”

  “A what?”

  “An affidavit of how he wanted his care to be handled in the event he wasn’t able to make the decision himself. And this is what he wanted.”

  “The Beeches?”

  She half smiled. “No, of course not. But like always, he wanted to make sure we were all safe. If he realized he’d almost hurt Lindsay? It would kill him.” Ruth reached across the table, both palms up, and Alex took her hands. “He said if the time came when he didn’t know us, he didn’t want to stay in the house anymore. He wanted it to be our home, not a prison. I’ve put it off because I hated our only option, but with this?” She shrugged. “I can’t deny his wishes any longer. We have to let him go.”

  Alex thought about his father, increasingly bewildered in his own personal fog. He sighed. “I hate to think of him alone.”

  “He’ll be less alone than he is here. He’ll have staff around him, other residents, and we can visit as often as we like.”

  “Have you mentioned this to Lin?”

  She pressed her lips together. “No.”

  “She’s not going to take it well.”

  “I realize that. But it’s not—”

  “Her decision. Right.” He squeezed his mom’s hands. “I’ll break it to her.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Mom. At least let me do this much for you, okay? I’ll do it.” He sighed again. “But not today.” Today he was fucking done.

  Gideon drove around for hours, hunched over the wheel of the MINI, hands gripping the steering wheel as if it were the only thing that was keeping him tied to the earth, as if gravity had failed and if he didn’t hold on tight, he’d fall up, down, sideways. Like the time he’d been on an old metal play structure and hadn’t seen the hole in the floor; only his hold on the bars had kept him from falling through to the ground. Or when he’d missed the last stair in the dark.

  If he’d needed anything to tell him he’d been right to shun Thanksgiving, right to stick to his two-date maximum, right to keep his crunchy outer shell firmly in place, today was it.

  His life was back to normal. He ought to go out and celebrate, right? This awful project would be over on Monday, and he could bill the Luddite and get paid. Hana K’s Bar and Bistro offered bottomless margaritas for the holiday, so why not squeeze the last anemic blood out of his credit cards and get totally fricking toasted?

  Except when he got home, he couldn’t muster up the energy to get off the couch. Couldn’t even pick up the remote and tune in to one of the many lame holiday specials peppered with more door-buster commercials than plot.

  In a way, he identified with those pathetic shows—all brittle, artificial presentation, no content. Maybe he only deserved someone as superficial as Jared or, God, Travis Beatty. What did he have to offer a man like Alex?

  Would Alex ever forgive him? Don’t count on it. Alex had made his feelings clear, had thrown up the fortress around his family, with the infidel siege force—including Gideon—on the outside. Or maybe he’d chucked Gideon in the moat with the other monsters.

  As he was debating the merits of rolling onto his side to stare at the wall, the door opened and Lindsay walked in.

  Gideon sat up and backed into the corner of the sofa, suddenly remembering her threat to evict him if things between him and Alex went south. They couldn’t have gone much souther than they did.

  But the look on her face . . . God, the poor little boo-boo. She can evict me later. He scrambled off the sofa and ran over to give her a hug.

  “Oh my darling girl. It’s been a day from hell for you too, hasn’t it?”

  She nodded against his shoulder, her breath hitching in an unmistakable sob. “You were right.”

  “Of course. I’m always right.” He kissed the top of her head. “About what?”

  “Thanksgiving sucks.”

  As much as Gideon loved to have his opinions validated, this one didn’t give him a single smidge of satisfaction. Because this time I truly wanted to be wrong.

  “I can’t even be in the house with him now. He doesn’t mind Alex because he thinks he’s some guy from a job, and he doesn’t freak over Mom anymore since she started wearing her scrubs.” She pulled back and gazed up at him, hope lightening her expression. “Maybe that’s why he got so upset today. She wasn’t wearing scrubs. I�
�ll bet that’s it. If we—”

  “Darling.” Gideon smoothed back her hair. “He got upset because he’s sick.”

  “It’s not fair. It’s so not fair. I just—” Her chin trembled, and those big baby blues brimmed with tears. “I just . . . I want to hug him again, even if he doesn’t hug me back.”

  “I know.” He drew her over to the sofa and urged her to sit, handed over her comfort pillow, then draped an arm across her shoulders.

  She hugged the pillow and leaned into him. “Toshiko can get closer to him than I can. She was supposed to make him better, not take my place.”

  “Honey-child, she didn’t take anyone’s place. Think about Tosh. She’s . . . I don’t know, neutral, like the ground prong on an electrical plug. There’s no relationship to color their interaction. No neurons misfiring that tell him he should know something about her that he doesn’t. And if he doesn’t remember her from one time to the next? Doesn’t matter, because she’ll present exactly the same as the last time. Maybe the only thing he associates with her is relief. She doesn’t ask anything of him. She simply . . . is.”

  “It’s that . . . It used to be me, you know? When I was little, he always looked for me as soon as he walked in the door after work. He’d call, ‘Where’s my little girl?’” Her voice wobbled at the last words, the same ones Ned had thrown at her today, but for an entirely different reason.

  “Know what? I think it’s a Kill Bill night. Volumes One and Two.”

  She sniffed and peered up at him like one of those big-eyed kittens in a Keane painting. “Really? But you like The Princess Bride when you’re sad.”

  He shuddered. “No.” So not in the mood for twu wuv tonight.

  “Star Trek, then. One of the reboots. Chris Pine—”

  “No Star Trek tonight.”

  Whereas two weeks ago, he’d have leaped at the chance to ogle Chris Pine and Benedict Cumberbatch, today he couldn’t muster up anything more than a meh at the thought. No gorgeous, brown skin. No soulful, dark eyes. As things stood now, he had as much chance of having Alex wrapped around him again as he did of making out with Zachary Quinto.