Helix

by Anna Martin

  “It is literally the most fucked-up thing that has ever happened. Ever.”

  “I don’t know,” Carl said. “If you’re all adults about it, then you can work it out, right?” He winced at Steve’s expression. “I’m guessing you weren’t adults about it.”

  “Not exactly,” Steve said.

  “What happened?” Brian asked. “At Mark’s house, I mean.”

  “Dylan ran out,” Steve admitted. “James ran after him. Then Mark and I got into an argument because he said some shitty stuff about Dylan. I’m so mad at him. He was repeating back to me what I told him about Dylan, all the shit that happened before I adopted him. I didn’t tell him that stuff so he could use it to attack me. Fucking bastard.”

  “Wow,” Brian said softly.

  “How did you leave it with him?” Carl asked. “With Mark, I mean.”

  “Not great.” Steve rubbed his hand over his face.

  “Shit.”

  “How serious were you?” Brian asked.

  “I don’t even know right now,” Steve said with a sigh. “I liked him a lot. He’s a good guy, really sweet and funny. And the sex is amazing. But I have no idea how we untangle all of this.”

  “Have you spoken to Dylan yet?”

  “Not yet. He won’t answer my calls. He’s at home now, though. With James, I’m guessing.”

  Carl silently topped off all their glasses with more wine.

  “What were you hoping would happen today?” Brian asked.

  “For James and Frankie—his sister—to not hate me,” he said wryly. “Maybe for them to accept that their dad was dating another man and showing them that it was okay, that I’m not some scary stepfather figure that they need to be wary of.”

  “Is their mom around?” Carl asked.

  “Jesus. Yeah. She showed up earlier. I don’t like her.”

  Carl laughed. “Oh dear.”

  “She’s been divorced from Mark for over sixteen years. There’s no love lost there. She left Mark to raise the twins on his own. I don’t think she’d get in the way of Mark having a relationship with someone, though.”

  “Do you still want to be in a relationship with him?” Brian asked.

  “Hell if I know,” Steve sighed. “I need to talk to Dylan, but I want us to be able to actually have a conversation. He’s mad at me right now, so it’s better I give him space for a while.”

  “That kid needs his own place,” Carl muttered.

  “No,” Steve said immediately. “No, he doesn’t. I don’t mind him living at home until he’s ready to move out, on his own terms. Plus, he’s saving to be able to buy his own place rather than renting. I’m okay with that.”

  “You’re both adults,” Carl countered. “He needs his own space. Hell, so do you.”

  “It’s more important to me that he has security and stability than pushing him out because that’s what other people think he needs,” Steve snapped.

  “What’s more important?” Brian asked. “Dylan’s stability and security, or your own relationship?”

  “Dylan,” Steve said. That wasn’t really a question. “Of course. I don’t even know if Dylan’s the problem right now. Or if it’s Mark. Or James. Or me. Fuck, or the combination of everything.”

  He knocked back the rest of his wine and, finding the bottle empty, went to the fridge for the pinot. He wasn’t bothered about finding a clean wineglass, just quickly swilling it under the tap to wash away the red wine residue.

  “It sounds like you need to talk to Dylan,” Brian said when Steve sat back down again. “That’s where I would start, anyway.”

  Steve nodded. “He’s really mad at me. I mentioned to Mark about his past, and Mark threw it back at me when he found out Dylan is dating James.”

  “That was a shitty thing to do,” Carl said, arching an eyebrow.

  “Oh, for sure,” Steve said. “I almost slapped him for that alone.”

  “I meant you,” Carl said, and Steve stopped short.

  Brian shook his head. “Fix things with Dylan,” he said. “Anything else can wait.”

  “Yeah.” Steve fiddled with the stem of his wineglass.

  Brian was right, he knew that. But exactly how Steve was supposed to fix anything he had no idea.

  STEVE DECIDED not to contact Mark… for now. He changed his mind about what he wanted to do a dozen times, swinging back and forth on what would be for the best. He was pretty sure whatever they had going on was well and truly over, but too much had been said, and too much was at stake with their sons, for him to ignore it forever. Steve couldn’t just bury his head in the sand, go ghost on Mark, and disappear. However much he wanted to.

  Dylan wasn’t talking to him.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true.

  Dylan had turned into a person Steve didn’t recognize. He was cold and distant, overly polite, hardly ever turning up to mealtimes, and disappearing most days before Steve was ready to leave for work. They’d become strangers, moving around each other too carefully, even the simplest actions feeling supremely awkward.

  He was a big fan of letting Dylan have his own space and not forcing Dylan to talk about things he didn’t want to talk about. Steve had learned his lesson about making Dylan confront his feelings, and he didn’t expect it to go any better now than it had when Dylan was fourteen.

  But they couldn’t keep living like this. Steve hated the distance between them.

  It was almost midnight when Dylan slipped in on Wednesday night. He came in through the garage, so normally Steve would have missed him, except he’d gotten up for a glass of water.

  Dylan stopped dead in the doorway, looking strangely guilty.

  “Hey,” Steve said cautiously.

  “Hello. I’m going to bed now. It’s late.”

  “Dylan,” Steve pleaded. “Sit down. Five minutes. Please.”

  Dylan shrugged out of his leather jacket and took a seat at the kitchen island. He kept his head down, not wanting to meet Steve’s eyes.

  “Are you drunk?” Steve asked, hating himself for asking the question.

  “I’ve had a couple of beers. But I drove home. I’m not drunk.”

  “Okay.”

  Dylan had seen firsthand the effects of drunk driving, so Steve believed him.

  “I’m sorry about what happened last weekend.”

  Dylan nodded. “Okay.”

  “I honestly never intended for you to get hurt.”

  “Well, I did,” Dylan muttered.

  “I should have asked. How are things with James?”

  Dylan glared at him so hard Steve thought for a moment he might start throwing punches. That had been bad enough when Dylan was a lanky teenager, but now… shit, it would hurt a lot more.

  “He hasn’t called me,” Dylan snapped. “He hasn’t been over. He hasn’t emailed or texted or sent me a Snapchat. He’s fucking ghosted, Steve. So thanks, but please don’t get involved in my love life again.”

  He shoved the stool back, the noise shrieking on the tiles.

  “Dylan,” Steve said, feeling helpless and worried and angry all at once. “What do you mean he hasn’t been in contact?”

  “Are you stupid?” Dylan snapped.

  “No… I just… I didn’t know,” he finished lamely.

  “Why would you? You haven’t asked.”

  Steve had almost forgotten how acidic Dylan could be when he was truly pissed off. And Dylan had had a long time to stew in his anger.

  “I guess he figured it was all too weird,” Dylan said, the fight finally going out of him as his shoulders slumped. “I don’t blame him. I just wish he’d told me instead of disappearing.”

  “Have you contacted him?”

  “Of course I have,” Dylan said. “I’ve texted him and left voicemails. He hasn’t even read them. He probably got a new number.”

  “Let me call Mark, figure this out.”

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” Dylan snarled. “I don’t need you trying to fix this and probabl
y making it worse. If James doesn’t want to be with me, that’s fine. I’ll get over it. But I don’t want my dad wading in and… fuck. No.”

  “Okay,” Steve said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I won’t interfere. I’m sorry.”

  “Are you still with Mark?” Dylan asked.

  Steve wasn’t sure how loaded that question really was.

  “I haven’t spoken to him since last weekend,” he admitted. Honesty was usually the best policy with Dylan.

  Dylan snorted. “Great. I thought at least one of us would come out of this clusterfuck with our relationship intact. I guess not.”

  “I really am sorry, Dylan.”

  Dylan shrugged. “It’s not like you did it on purpose, right? I never told you I was dating James. I wouldn’t have known who Mark was even if you’d told me about him. Maybe we should just be more honest with each other in the future.”

  “I doubt that’s going to be a problem,” Steve said. “I don’t think I’m going to dive into another relationship for a long time.”

  “Same.”

  Steve propped his chin on his hand. Not that Steve would say it aloud, but Dylan looked like shit. Apparently he really did care for Mark’s kid.

  “Whatever happens, Dylan, you’re my son. It doesn’t matter if you’re fourteen or twenty-one or forty, I’m your dad, and you’re my kid. You’re my priority. I promised you that from the first day, and it won’t ever change.”

  Dylan nodded. “I remember.” He looked down at his hands again, then back at Steve. “I’m seriously tired. I’m gonna go to bed.”

  “Okay. Good night.”

  “’Night.”

  Steve didn’t move from the kitchen table for a long, long time.

  Chapter Nineteen

  JAMES HAD never been one to hold a grudge. He was pretty mellow, didn’t get angry easily, rarely let anyone rile him up.

  But he woke on Thursday as spitting mad as he had been on Saturday, and every day since. It was still early, he’d gotten barely a few hours of sleep, and he instinctively reached for his phone on his nightstand as he did every morning before he remembered it was gone.

  It was too early, and James was too exhausted, to rage and scream. Instead he stripped off the clothes he’d slept in and stumbled to the bathroom, setting the shower to a scalding heat.

  He could just about hear Frankie stumbling around in her room. She preferred to shower in the evenings, one of those little blessings that meant sharing a bathroom with his sister wasn’t the horror show it had the potential to be.

  James boiled himself awake, scrubbing his body and hair and deciding that he wasn’t going to shave off the stubble on his cheeks. He didn’t grow much in the way of facial hair, not yet, anyway. But he was pretty sure he was going to be wandering around all day with dark bags under his eyes, and he wanted to actively court the possibly-a-hobo look.

  As was now the way of things, James completely ignored his father as he left the house, grabbing his backpack from the bottom of the stairs, and got into the family car. He didn’t say anything on the way to school either, or when they got out and went their separate ways. James knew the rift between himself and his dad was putting pressure on Frankie, and she hated it, and he’d apologized to her already. But he wasn’t going to do anything about it.

  One good thing about being on lockdown was that his homework was getting pretty great marks. In these final few months of his high school career, knowing he was keeping his grades up was something of a reassurance.

  When lunch rolled around, James got a Coke and cheese fries and found Anthony in the corner of the cafeteria.

  “How are things?” Anthony asked, looking sympathetic as James slammed down his tray.

  “They still suck.”

  “Dude,” Anthony said sympathetically.

  James actively tried not to be a terrible friend to Anthony, especially since everything that had happened before. He was now sort of maybe talking to the girl he liked, and James was determined to nod along and smile and even maybe sometimes listen to what Anthony had to say about her.

  “You’re not listening at all, are you?” Anthony said.

  “I am! She said hello to you in your geography class and asked if she could borrow a calculator.”

  Anthony scowled anyway. “You need to figure out this thing with Dylan. Have you called him?”

  “Asshole,” James said, shoving his shoulder. “You know my dad took my phone. He’s watching me literally every second of every day, so I can’t even sneak out.”

  “Have you called the garage?”

  James blinked at him. “Anthony, you’re a fucking genius; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  “Thanks—hey.” He frowned. “That was mean.”

  “I still don’t have my phone. Can you call him for me?”

  Anthony gave him an aggrieved look but complied, pulling his phone from his pocket and searching for the number to the garage.

  “Do you want to call or should I?”

  “You ask for Dylan, then pass it to me.”

  “Got it.”

  James suddenly felt awfully sick as Anthony leaned back and cradled the phone against his cheek.

  “Hi, yeah, is Dylan there please? Yeah, I can hold on.” He held the phone out to James. “Here.”

  James took the phone, nervous, and waited for what felt like an eternity before someone picked up the phone in the fishbowl time warp office.

  “Hello?”

  “Dylan, it’s Jay.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone, and James could hear Dylan breathing.

  “Dylan?”

  Then nothing. Dial tone.

  “He hung up on me,” James said, handing the phone back to Anthony.

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hang on, I’ll call him back.”

  “No! No.” James frowned.

  “He knew it was you?”

  “Yeah. Definitely.” James rubbed his hand through his hair. “Fuck, this is all so fucking fucked-up.”

  “Dude, you need to talk to him.”

  “I tried!” James exclaimed. “I literally just tried, on your freaking phone. Dude.”

  Anthony held up both his hands. “I’m just saying. He’s pissed at you. You need to figure it out.”

  “Yeah.” James sighed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you. It’s not your fault my father is an asshole.”

  Anthony huffed. “That’s okay. I know this sucks for you.”

  The bell rang, and James was infinitely grateful that he was over halfway through another day. He dumped his tray and accepted Anthony’s sympathetic slap on the back as they headed to their next class.

  THAT NIGHT, James’s dad was out with some of his friends to watch a football game, and James would totally have snuck out except he still didn’t have his phone or the keys to his truck or any way of contacting anyone.

  Instead he’d helped Frankie make a vegetable pasta casserole for dinner, which was actually okay when he’d covered it with cheese and hot sauce. When they were done clearing up, James spread his homework out over his bed and used his laptop tray to work on. After she was done with her regularly scheduled evening phone call with Luis, Frankie came and joined him. Sometimes sharing classes had its benefits.

  “What’s your answer for problem six?” James asked.

  “Point seven six percent.”

  “Fuck. Let me try again.”

  “I could be wrong,” she warned. “You know math isn’t my strongest subject.”

  “I was wrong anyway,” James grumbled.

  He pushed his hand through his hair and started to work on the problem again. After a few more minutes he got point seven six percent and decided that would have to do.

  “I really think you should talk to him,” Frankie said, apropos of nothing.

  James glared at her over their math homework.

  “How the hell am I supposed to get ho
ld of him? Dad still has my phone, I’m not allowed out of the house, and he changed the fucking Wi-Fi password so I can’t even Skype him.”

  “Do you have his number?”

  “No. It was programmed in my phone, why the hell would I bother to remember it?”

  Frankie glared back, and James eased off. None of this was her fault, and she was getting caught in all sorts of cross fire. James didn’t want to make anything worse.

  “I don’t know why he wouldn’t talk to me earlier,” James said, slumping back into the pile of pillows on his bed.

  Frankie snorted.

  “What?” James demanded.

  “You really can’t think of anything?”

  James looked at her for a long moment.

  “You’re so useless,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Frank, I love you; I honestly do. Help a guy out.”

  “What happened after you left here on the weekend?”

  James scratched the back of his neck. “We went for a drive. Then back to Dylan’s house.”

  “Uh-huh. Then what?”

  “We had sex. Is that relevant?”

  James had planned to tell Frankie about it at some point. Frankie wasn’t homophobic, she wouldn’t care about the sex stuff.

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “Then Dad put me on lockdown and…. Oh.”

  And James hadn’t texted, or called, or contacted Dylan at all in days. Days. If Dylan had called or texted James, all his messages had gone unanswered and probably unread. Even if Dylan had contacted him on Facebook….

  “Shit,” James said, burying his face in his hands. “I thought he would have known….”

  “How would he have known, James? You had sex with him, then didn’t call.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” James wailed.

  “Oh my God, James, your personal crises are not my responsibility,” Frankie said, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “I have a relationship of my own, in case you hadn’t noticed. And I’m currently trying to convince Dad to take you off lockdown and give you your shit back without pissing him off so much he puts me on lockdown with you.”

  “I don’t know what to do.” James whimpered.

  “I don’t think I can tell you what to do,” Frankie said, smoothing her hand over James’s bedspread. “I think you have to convince Dad that you and Dylan are in a responsible, adult relationship.”