by Amy Lane
“You gotta be careful,” Maureen said softly. “Can’t take chances—Olivia’s gonna make you a grandpa. And she’s going to be right by—aren’t you excited?”
Wow. His daughter. Of course, Christiana had dealt with getting two brothers in the span of a month—but still. Maureen’s reaction to giving her childhood home over to Larx’s daughter was more than he could hope for. “You okay with that?” he asked, crossing his mental fingers.
“Peace Corps,” she said softly. “I think after graduation this year, I’m out of the nest for good.”
That hurt. “I will so miss you.” Tiff was the princess, Kirby was his sarcastic son. Maureen had always been his firefly—practically bright, whimsical, and necessary, a light in the darkness.
“Well, not for a week,” she said softly, kissing him on the forehead. “I’m here to take care of you during the day while everyone else is out.”
Oh. Aaron’s chest felt tight, but in the good way. “I don’t go home until Sunday,” he said. “But God, I’ll be glad to see you.” Then he frowned. “Where will you sleep?”
“In my room, like Olivia did before she was Mrs. Wombat.” Christiana’s chirp made Maureen laugh.
“We’re comparing fathers—it’s become our new hobby.”
“She got the best one,” he said. “Sorry.”
Maureen’s green eyes got shiny. “We told Larx, and that’s exactly what he said. We decided it was a tie.”
Aaron closed his eyes. “Somebody say something not mushy. I’m injured. Take pity.”
“Sure,” Kellan said, sitting at the foot of his bed. “Jaime broke your dog.”
Kirby chortled. “Oh my God, he so did!”
“You will explain that.” But he knew it wasn’t serious.
“So,” Kellan said, bouncing just a little—but Aaron could take it today when the day before it would have been uncomfortable. “Jaime is… well, the dog is his therapy, and that kid has needed a lot of therapy. So Jaime spends hours playing with the dog—in the snow, in the living room, on the porch. They tussle, they wrestle, they cook, they bake—you name it. And Dozer—you think he’s a dog, he can take it, right? ’Cause he’s a baby and he’s got, like, tremendous dog powers of energy, right?”
“Not so much,” Kirby said, pulling a chair out and straddling it. Christiana took Larx’s cot—still set up next to his bed—and pulled off her shoes to sit cross-legged. He felt like the queen bee at a slumber party as Kirby picked up the thread. “So, this is, like, Thursday—three days. This dog has been enduring three days of this shit, right?”
“Course,” Aaron acknowledged.
“Anyway,” Kirby continued, “Jaime got up early this morning and tore that dog up. I’m surprised Jaime could even stay awake in class, because I heard them at, like, six in the morning, and he was running circles in the backyard, and it’s still up to his thighs back there.”
“And we get down this morning,” Christiana said, hugging her knees, “and Jaime is eating his oatmeal and the dog is, like, passed out in front of the door. He’s so whipped he’s even in his dog bed, if you can believe that!”
“That’s amazing.” It was—but this story, his children, was even better. Aaron wanted them to keep talking, keep spilling their energy over him.
“Right?” Christi bobbed without moving anything but her chin. “So we set him up with food and water, and Larx rounds us all up and takes us to school, and we get home and you know what?”
“Hasn’t moved?” Aaron hazarded.
“We checked to make sure he was breathing,” Kirby said—then shuddered. “That was a bad moment. I did not want to have to tell you that poor Jaime played our dog to death. Anyway, Maureen pulled in about ten minutes later, and he didn’t even bark. Just sort of whimpered. Larx made him go outside to pee, and he did, ’cause he’s your dog and he’s good, but Jaime was, like, out in the backyard going ‘C’mon, Dozer! C’mon boy!’ and oh my God!”
“That poor dog, Dad,” Maureen added, eyes twinkling. “I never thought I’d see a dog do this.”
“What?”
“He said no!” Kellan burst out. “Jaime’s going ‘C’mon, Dozer!’ and the dog shook his head, walked up the porch, pawed at the sliding glass door, and waited until Christi let him in. Then he found his bed and just whumpf. Like he was done with this crap, right? Peace. Out.”
Aaron chuckled. “Poor Jaime.”
“No,” Christiana told him, sobering. “It was actually what he needed. Jaime’s been… I guess anxious is the word. Olivia seemed to calm him down when she was there, but she moved out last night, and I don’t think he slept at all.”
“He didn’t,” Kellan confirmed. “He’s on the floor in my room, and I got up to pee last night, and he just freaked out. I had to get down on the floor with him until he stopped shaking.”
Aw. Oh man. Kellan—what a good kid.
“That must have sucked,” Kirby said with feeling. “’Cause you still—”
“Had to pee.” Kellan nodded. “Yeah. That wasn’t comfy. I barely made it after he fell asleep. Anyway, he must have snuck up to go play with the dog this morning, because, you know—”
“No sleep,” Christi confirmed.
“So anyway,” Kirby continued, and Aaron had a moment to marvel. Larx called them his “haiku poem”—and they spoke a family language like they’d been born to it and hadn’t found it the same way Larx and Aaron had found each other.
“Anyway?” Aaron prompted.
“Yeah, anyway, the dog comes inside and Jaime’s a little sad, but he comes inside too, and he sits next to the dog. And we’re all snacking and pretending not to listen but….” Kirby’s voice dropped.
“This was sort of wonderful,” Maureen said, her voice reverent too.
“It was.” Christiana agreed. “He just starts… talking to the dog. He starts off saying he’s sorry he broke poor Dozer, and then starts talking about being broken, and how hard it is to sleep when you’re broken, and how you had to feel safe when you slept. And then he just kept going. We all just sort of sat down at the table and ate, and he just… just kept talking. And I don’t know if he knew we were listening, but his voice got lower and lower, and by the time Larx came downstairs all changed, he was… you know.”
“Asleep,” Kellan continued. “Jaime had just fallen asleep. Crashed. Next to the dog. The dog bed’s pretty big and Jaime isn’t, so they fit. Jaime just spooned the big doofus, and they slept.”
“Oh.” Damn. “Wow.” Aaron felt a little watery after that. “You’re right. That’s amazing.”
“So Jaime didn’t really break the dog,” Maureen added practically. “It’s more like the dog, you know—”
“Fixed Jaime,” Christiana finished. “It was magic.”
“Well, for right now,” Kellan said, sounding resigned. “Unless Larx says the dog can sleep in my room….”
“Knowing Dad, he’s probably already moved the pillow,” Christiana reassured him, and Kellan brightened.
“Awesome! Now I just have to….” He grimaced. “You know. Not step on the dog.”
They all laughed a little, and Aaron suddenly understood. “That’s why Larx isn’t—”
“Here,” Maureen murmured, more comforting than he could have imagined. “He couldn’t leave—he wanted to. We could all see it. But that kid was asleep on the kitchen floor, and happy. He was afraid the kid would freak out if there wasn’t someone he recognized there when he woke up.”
Aaron felt a yawn coming on then and sort of wished he could have the dog as a nap buddy too.
“Don’t worry,” Maureen said, squeezing his hand. “We’re going home soon. We just had to visit.” Her voice tightened. “I needed to see you were okay for myself.”
Aw. Mau. “Be here tomorrow?” he asked, hopeful.
“Until Larx gets off.” The kids all met eyes. “I think you’ll need to see him as much as he’ll need to see you.”
He nodded, reassured. Larx had a lot on
his plate—and he had a lot weighing down his heart.
But he still loved Aaron—that hadn’t changed.
THE EARTH BENEATH OUR FEET
WHAT LARX would forever remember about the day Aaron came home was how stilted their conversation was in the car at the beginning.
It struck him as… odd. Because talking—give and take, banter—that had never been their problem. It had, in fact, been their strength—right up until Eamon had texted Larx to Dammit tell Aaron what happened, and Larx had realized he never had any intention of doing just that.
“So, Jaime’s doing better?” Aaron asked as Larx piloted the minivan out of the parking lot. Aaron had waited impatiently to get checked out, but they’d needed to bring an oxygen tank with them in case he had problems breathing, and that had taken time.
“A little,” Larx said guardedly. “He actually spends a lot of time over at your place with Olivia and Elton. I guess they bonded, and he’s not so overwhelmed over there. But when he’s with us, he seems happier.”
“How’s Berto?”
Larx sighed. “Doing better. He’s apparently sleeping better, especially if he medicates. One of the reasons he’s so big on the marijuana medication is that he has no health insurance. I’d love to take him in to a professional, but it would pretty much financially cripple him and Jaime. Tane says he’s doing okay, though. He comes by every day after work and spends time with Jaime and the dog. He’s almost said hi to me twice.”
Aaron chuckled like he was supposed to, but Larx was aware that his voice had a hard, plastic cadence because, dammit, there was something he hadn’t told Aaron, and that was just unnatural.
“Is Mau fitting in all right?” Aaron asked, and Larx wondered if he had a checklist.
“Of course. I told you that Friday. Your daughter is brilliant and amazing—I mean, it doesn’t surprise me because she’s yours, but she’s really sort of perfect.”
“Says the father of Christiana.”
“Yeah, and the father of the pregnant basket case living in your house.”
Aaron rumbled disapprovingly. “And how’s—”
“Don’t ask,” Larx said, feeling like his hard plastic was crumbling. “I mean, she seems okay, but she still hasn’t made an appointment with a doctor, and Wombat Elton says she’s eating and opening up a little, but she was really bad for a while, and I just….” Deep breath. “You know. I’m going to worry until she gets this whole sitch in hand. She’s not better yet. Just… not.”
“And school?”
“Oh my God, you’re relentless!” Larx snapped. “Do you have, like, a list of our lives and you’re marking off checks?”
“Pull over,” Aaron snarled, and it was a good thing Larx had both hands on the wheel.
“What?”
“Pull over! There’s a turnout here—you know it!”
Larx did what Aaron said, because he was surprised, and because Aaron was mad, and because God, he’d missed Aaron putting a capper on his mouth and his anxiety and the way the whole world seemed to overwhelm him sometimes. But how right was it to ask a guy who could barely breathe to make you hold your shit together?
The minivan skidded to a halt, because it had snowed again Saturday and not much had melted since, and Larx turned to Aaron with a mix of relief and frustration.
“Why did we—”
“Kiss me.”
“Wha—”
“I can’t move—kiss me.”
Larx undid his seat belt and fiddled with the end, suddenly shy. “Aaron, we’re, you know, we have a house and a bedroom and—”
Aaron reached out and tilted his chin sideways. “And kiss me, baby. You keep trying to make everything all right, and it’s not. Kiss me, and then let’s get honest.”
Larx nodded, feeling tears threaten for the first time in days. He twisted his body, since Aaron was still healing, and turned so he could move into Aaron’s space. He paused about a foot away and tried to meet Aaron’s eyes. They’d let him bathe that day, and he smelled like his regular shampoo and only a little like hospital, but mostly like Aaron.
“Now kiss me,” Aaron whispered.
Larx nodded and closed his eyes, touching lips and tentatively sticking his tongue out to trace the seam of Aaron’s mouth.
Aaron opened for him easily, and Larx pushed inside.
His whole body went limp, like a noodle, at the sheer comfort of Aaron’s taste.
He groaned and pushed farther, breath catching as Aaron welcomed him. Aaron lifted his arms and pulled Larx closer, until their chests touched, and Larx held himself stiffly because he didn’t want to let his weight fall forward.
Aaron tightened his arms and insisted.
For a moment Larx was leaning against his broad chest again, relying on his strength. For just that moment, some of the burdens seemed to slip from his own shoulders, and he felt strong enough again—strong enough to face life, strong enough to care for his family.
Aaron was here, and he was helping Larx carry the world again, helping to bear the burden of a busy house and too many kids and grown-up responsibilities that frightened him and rendered him powerless and weak.
Larx didn’t so much pull back as fall gently out of the kiss. His body wanted more—but Aaron had another week to go, if not longer. His soul was fed, just enough for the hard plastic wall to grow softer, pliable.
To let himself be real.
“Hey,” Aaron said softly.
“Hey.” Larx leaned his forehead against Aaron’s before shifting sideways so he could rest his head on Aaron’s shoulder.
“You want to talk about it?”
Larx let out a strangled laugh. So much irony here. Larx, the communicator, trying to hold all his feelings inside. “No,” he said, then laughed some more. Aaron just ruffled his fingers through Larx’s hair.
“I can listen.”
“You’re hurt,” Larx said bitterly, and then cringed. “I mean, you don’t dump all your problems on someone in the hospital or recovering from surgery. You can’t even take a walk for another week—how do I…?” He couldn’t even finish the sentence. His throat locked up, and his neck was stiff enough to crackle.
“Eamon’s waiting for you to try to kill me with a frying pan,” Aaron told him reasonably, and Larx pulled away long enough to give him a weird look.
“Do you mean from too much oil? Because usually I’m very veggie-friendly.” He tried not to think of that one day hunting down Candace when he’d eaten meat and grease almost constantly. It had seemed like a coping mechanism—like the sugar, salt, and oil had fed his exhausted self.
“No, like she tried to take his head off with it,” Aaron said, rolling his eyes. “Because he was hurt, and she was left to deal with the house alone. And she didn’t have three… five… seven? Oh my God. You had seven kids—”
“They’re mostly grown,” Larx said weakly, because his head had been spinning since Wednesday and he hadn’t wanted to whine.
“Who cares. Seven relatives, period. But you had Olivia and Wombat Willie and Jaime, and then Mau showed up—I mean, Jaime’s sleeping on the floor, for Christ’s sake. I’d be pissed at me if I was just late from the market with all that bullshit going on—but it wasn’t just that. I was hurt, and you had to leave me to deal with that!”
Larx grunted, the touch of Aaron’s words like the touch of his tongue on a sore tooth. He knew—he knew the places that ached, but he wasn’t trying to drive a spike into them either.
“It’s like walking into a rabbit warren,” he admitted. “They just keep multiplying. It’s like, if Jaime hadn’t broke the dog—”
“Still?”
“Well, it’s not so bad after Dozer said enough that one day. But yeah—he’s still being a therapy dog, which is fine. Anyway, it’s a godsend because the dog isn’t spazzing out.” Oh wow. Was it only a week ago? A week ago Olivia had brought her problems right into Larx’s lap, and the spazzing dog had seemed like the end of the world.
Life
had a quirky little way of putting that shit into perspective.
“Are we going to keep Jaime?” Aaron wouldn’t judge—but he only knew the kid by name at this point.
“Jaime and his brother need each other,” Larx said, reluctance in his voice. “But… but I don’t know where they’ll live. Tane has brought Berto by every day to care for his….” He couldn’t help it. He smirked. “Garden. But they have to go in through the back way. We all went in and cleaned up the broken furniture and repainted the walls and used remnants to replace the carpet in the house—everyone helped, even Yoshi.”
“He hates physical labor,” Aaron said encouragingly.
“I know. He seemed to think it was a dire thing. But this morning Tane called. He said he brought Berto by again, and Tane had to go inside. Berto just sat in the car and hummed to himself.”
Aaron grunted. “Well, I guess we could rent out the bottom half of my house. I mean, I’m not crazy about growing pot in the old chicken coop or wherever, but we could do it.”
Larx looked at him, irritated and warmed at the same time. “He’d pay rent,” he said, because that had been part of the discussion. “And you’re a really nice guy—and I think he and Jaime have felt really cut off here. I think having… you know, cousins or whatever, that would make them happy. And eventually Berto might be able to get another place.”
“But it’s a painful situation, and I left you to deal with it alone,” Aaron said perceptively.
“Augh!” Larx buried his eyes against Aaron’s shoulder. The inside of the car was getting cold without the motor running, but this time, this absolute quiet time, was such a treasure, such a wonder for the two of them, that he didn’t want to start the car up. Starting the car up meant plunging back into the whirlpool again, back into the raging surf of people who seemed to need them. “It’s irrational to be angry at you!”
Aaron’s rusty chuckle warmed his stomach. “Larx—love is irrational. Teenagers are irrational. Dog therapy shouldn’t make a damned bit of sense. But it does. Don’t fight it. You’re pissed. You’re going to be pissed. About the only thing I can do about it is—”
