#drifty rambles | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

junedenim · 1 month ago

Text

2019

beneath the boardwalk, part 17 (series masterlist)

hello you

warnings: grief, sex, and guinness

word count: 16k

From an early age, my mother taught all her children what wine pairs best with a dish. If my mother had any leisurely hobbies, it was discovering the best wine for every single food imaginable. Though my mother rarely cooked any of the food we ate, she did consume every bottle of wine we ever owned. But I’m not one to talk. It might be the habit I picked up the most from her. Some may call it a problem, but unfortunately, I’ve come to the age my mother was when she told me, “It’s a skill to know how each wine tastes.” And I have to agree with her because I don’t want to have to kick any more of my addictions. I mean, hobbies.

Alex admires this skill from afar because there’s a thin line between supporting someone’s drinking and advocating for someone’s consumption of alcohol, especially when that person’s last name is Cavendish. But, one night in a drifty January, stuffed in a house that made Stephen King write The Shining, Alex and I were on a mission to decide which wine pairs best with pizza. Important distinction is that this was not your rich man’s pizza at a ridiculous price, this was the local pizzeria for a whole pie under £10 that sometimes came delivered, so greasy we had to soak it up with paper towels.

We came away from the whole operation deciding that it was probably better to just drink a Coke with your za. But we liked the sauvignon blanc, or maybe I generally just like it. I don’t know. We were too tipsy by the end of this to make an official judgment, and sex felt better at that point than arguing whether the pinot grigio was better than the sauvignon blanc.

I declared that night in bed, when we were faced down in our pillows with our arms awkwardly locked around each other’s backs, “I think this is the height of adulthood.”

Alex held his eyes closed whenever we were in bed and whenever he was drunk. I think he’s in a constant state of being half-asleep when either of these occurrences happen and I’m the annoying pest poking him awake. “I once stole a bottle of wine from my parents—I must’ve been 13 or something—and we had this big plan of getting drunk one night until we discovered that wine tasted like shite.”

I giggled, gazing at his cheerful little grin, half smashed into the pillow. We were certain to have lines across our faces in the morning. “You’re weak.”

He opened his eyes and instantly pushed my stray hairs out of my face like those ten pesky little strands were somehow blocking a clear view of me. “Not all of us were drinking beer out of paper bags on the playground when they were 5.”

I tucked my laugh away into the sheets. “I was never that bad. I did it at my local brewery. I was respectable.”

He hummed a tune of amusement to himself that I was lucky to overhear. “I don’t think anyone has ever called you respectable, love.” He stretched his body out with a sigh. We were both uncomfortably positioned but didn’t wish to move away from one another. It would be too much work.

“Maybe. I don’t mind.”

“I don’t either.”

One of the most enjoyable things about growing older, in that sweet period between your newfound independence coupled with instability and occupation with wrinkles, also known as your thirties (or my thirties), is a lack of care for what others thought, at least the others I didn’t really know. I still cared obsessively about what everyone I knew thought of me, and sometimes at night, I had a sneaking suspicion Alex had actually hated me all these years and was being paid by my parents to date me.

But I was no longer envious of Alex’s apparent ability to shrug every disparagement of him off, which, after years of being jealous of him for this, I learned wasn’t fully true. Simply, he had an insane condition not to ramble about every complaint lodged against him that day like I did. I still haven’t decided what condition is healthier, likely lying somewhere in the middle of our spectrum, but that doesn’t sound fun. I like complaining. It’s one of my many great skills. Alex likes to huddle his insecurities in storage until he is called out for being a hoarder. It’s one of his many great skills.

It’s a good balance otherwise, he would be complaining too much for me to ever talk about who I hate that day. His lack of complaining allows me to complain for him, which I might like best of all. Back in the early days, one thing that attracted me to Alex was his secure nature in letting women speak. This is partially due to his shyness, but he was never offended by a woman, typically me, standing up for him. I had many a boyfriend who never learned the skill of listening, and I suggested they should get their hearing tested. I might also talk too much. Two things can be true at once.

Our dining table slowly became converted into a working table. It sits in the kitchen where we sometimes ate breakfast if we weren’t eating it in front of the TV or not eating breakfast at all. In other words, on rare occasions, we ate breakfast at this table.

For Christmas, Penny and David gave me a puzzle of the New York City subway map, which I appreciated, but was pretty confident I’d never do. Until one night, I was convinced I was becoming my laptop and decided to cut the plastic off the box. Alex joined me, but after misplacing a piece, I refused his assistance.

I finished the puzzle by the end of the week and I was left with nothing to do. So, Alex and I went out to a consignment shop, and each of us purchased a puzzle; his was the Sgt. Pepper cover, mine was a bouquet of tulips. I let him assist with the former but not the latter. He didn’t quite enjoy it like I did, but he sat with me while I did them. He didn’t like helping until the edges of the puzzle had been figured out. He found it too infuriating.

The table quickly became covered with whatever puzzle I was working on and any of Alex’s work. We left our messes there. It was the only furiously unkempt place in our house and that’s the way I liked it. I found it made the house feel lived-in.

When Alex went back on tour in February, it allowed it to feel like he was coming back at any time. He left scraps of paper there that felt like when I was little and believed my father’s fax machine was the ghost in our house sending messages to me. I’d read over these sheets of paper constantly as if something new might appear on them.

A record would often be put on while I did my puzzles. The album would be selected by whoever was at the table first. So, some mornings Al would wake up to St. Vincent, and some evenings I would come home to Aphex Twin. Other than the noise emitted from the stereo, there would be little conversation. It’s odd how much I feel like Alex and I talk, yet the most intimate moments appear in those silent avocations. I guess it makes sense for two people who make a living off of words that the absence of them should appear to be revelatory.

I was the white girl who drank one too many margaritas in Mexico. My skin was tinted by a sunburn and as I strolled through the heated streets with a drink in my hand, fiddling the straw with the other, I was certain that if I looked in the mirror that night, my mother would have been in the reflection.

The band was playing in Mexico and I was glorifying myself with having absolutely no work to do, not even the act of planning a holiday. I hung off Alex’s arm that last night in Mexico City and whined, “I’m a step away from getting a lobotomy. I’m a Stepford wife.”

He stood me up straight and said, “You’re drunk is what you are.”

I could tell he was annoyed with me, even in my disoriented state. His fingers gripped the fat of my arm tightly, but I was numb to the pinch. We were back in the hotel lobby and the walk, which was definitely long and laborious for Alex, felt fantastically short for me.

“Do you hate me?” I was asking in what I always thought Alex perceived as the cutesy, daft drunk girl. The interpretation of this act of mine had been the same since college: the sloppy, tiring pissed girl. I tended to recognize that in the morning after, but never when I was blotto and it was just more embarrassing as I got older.

His body was wracked with an exhale like his whole body was about to give out and if he wasn’t in charge of keeping me up, he might have collapsed into me. “No, Jane,” he exasperatedly told me.

I giggled and picked at his chin where a few sharp hairs were hiding. “Ouch,” I yelped and laughed like it was something funny because I enjoyed reveling in pretending to be oblivious. “Are you telling the truth? I don’t believe you.”

We were walking as if I were a child standing on his feet. He swung one foot forward and I went with him. He was closed off to me, shutting his eyes, his blood had been drained from him. I only hung more of my weight on him. My arms linked around his neck and we awkwardly waited for the elevator.

The doors opened. He pushed me toward them. “Come on. I’m tired.” It was late and I was unsure of how early the hour was.

I leaned against the elevator walls and let the coolness melt into my skin. “Are you mad at me?”

“Nope.” His arms were behind his back and he was rocking back and forth on his feet.

I shook my head. My hair was mussed and the elevator handle dug into my back. “I don’t believe you.”

He didn’t talk the rest of the night. I fell asleep before I took my shoes off, but I woke up with them off so he must have done that for me. We had breakfast together, quiet for nearly the whole duration—I had a killer headache and he had a gut-wrenching irritation.

I flew to LA later that day. The band continued on to South America. I was meeting with Opal for business—both personal and Womb-related—and one of my book publishers. Alex and I kissed goodbye in a routine that we had mastered, but we both recognized that a misstep had been made the night before.

I texted him when I arrived and he called me that night from Lima, Peru, but there was no desire from either of us to address our issues over the phone. “We’ll talk more in person,” he said. I agreed because I needed to ask Opal what she thought I should say.

Her script went like this: “How did my actions affect you?” “I’m sorry that made you feel that way.” “Do you have a belief that you need to control me?” “Do I dictate how much you drink?” “If my drunkenness as a woman annoys you, then that’s sexism.”

I told much of the story from my biased perspective rather than the full scope of events. I realized afterward that my need to tell the story that way was the problem and not in the misogynistic lens I wished it to be.

As the hours went on, I became increasingly embarrassed by what had occurred, so much so that my urge became to go back home rather than join the tour for their final three shows. It was childish and I enjoyed how childish the thought was, regressing back into a teenager once again.

I blame LA. I felt lonely after seeing Opal and it’s disgusting how much I let the city overtake me. It’s the weather, it doesn’t match my natural disposition. Then again, that’s too easy of a cop-out. Wherever I went, there I was.

In our unfortunate custom, Alex and I didn’t talk about it once we were reunited. We didn’t talk about it in Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo or Bogotá. I’ll claim it was for the best, even though it wasn’t the greatest feeling to have hanging over us for days.

We returned to London and didn’t talk about it there either until I came home one night to Alex sipping a beer on the couch. He softly smiled over to me as I neared him. He was watching something football-related (I lack the ability to retain any information about football due to a correlation of my father spending his time drunkenly screaming at the television). His bottle dripped water droplets onto the end table. I ran my fingers through the condensation that had formed.

I stood beside him long enough to raise an alarm, but he chose to focus on the television. This annoyed me at first until I realized Alex was annoyed by me standing beside him, saying nothing, so he wasn’t saying anything in retaliation. It’s a terrible thing to be understood.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

He looked up at me. His feet were on the coffee table and I could picture how offended my mother would be at the sight of it and it delighted me immensely. He was smiling again. “You mean with the match?”

I squinted at him. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

He swigged a chuckle into his bottle. “It’s never too late for a newfound interest.”

I put my bag down on the floor and climbed over his legs onto the couch. “Oh, dream on, bud.”

“What’s up?” He asked me, his eyes playing a game with me, sweeping all over my face, looking for the secret code.

I headbutted him, forehead to forehead. “I asked you first.”

His hand reached up and swept his hand through my hair. His eyes drifted back to the screen. “I fixed the showerhead if that’s what you’re asking.” Alex had messed with my perfected water pressure and angle since his return, and, yeah, you could say that I messed with whatever system he had when I moved in, but my system is better than his obsolete system.

“I’ll determine that.” I carded my hand through his hair. It had sprouted back to a short, goofy stance. I thought it looked like when a baby is born with hair, covered in bodily fluids, and it sticks up in an uncombable state. I never told him that because that would be rude. Putting it in permanent writing for his consumption is more my style. “What else did you do?”

Alex gave me a look in response to this odd insistence on talking about his day. I don’t usually care that much, especially when I had the knowledge that Alex didn’t do anything noteworthy that day. He shrugged—a request to no longer talk about him.

“Did you eat?”

He cocked his head, resting it on the cushioned backing. He tilted it slightly toward me, enough to see the indication in his eyes that I should shit or get off the pot. “Yeah. Did you?”

I nodded. “I grabbed takeaway for dinner. I suppose I should have called to ask if you wanted anything, but…”

He hummed.

“What?”

He shook his head.

I pulled away from him. “Do you want me to go and get you something?” I asked it as if he were a child incapable of obtaining dinner himself.

He shook his head again. “I ate.”

“Am I bothering you?”

He had gone completely non-verbal and shook his head once again like a toy with only one trick.

“You’re not very convincing. You know that, right?”

He muted the TV like it was the only problem. “What do you want to talk about, Jane?” He was chafed by me. I was as pestering as a woodpecker, only I kept hitting different spots rather than the same one.

“I don’t like it when you call me Jane like that. It’s like your parents saying your full name when they’re mad at you.”

He rolled his eyes and rubbed his hand over his face. “God, you’ve been pissed your whole life when someone calls you Janie.”

I put my hand on his shoulder in an attempt to ease our stand-off. “Not you.”

“Well, Janie, what is it that you’re dancing around? I don’t tend to like this avoidance game you play until I guess the winner, which I suspect, with how this is going, will be the topic of our next fight.”

I crossed my arms. “That or the way you’re talking right now.”

He stared at me like a ticking clock going off over and over again, and no matter how punny it is, I had chosen for too long to keep hitting the snooze on the situation.

“Is me…drinking—is that a problem for you?”

“No,” he quickly replied. He eyed me closer and one day I predict he’ll have developed the ability to X-ray scan me. I returned his stare. His body slowly eased. He waited, moving the words around in his head, changing the order, revising before presenting me with it. “You’re not the easiest to take care of.” He quickly added, “When drunk, I mean.”

“You don’t have to take care of me.”

He rolled his eyes. It was given to him. It was an ingrained trait, something he had to do. “When you’re hanging all over me, whining about how I hate you.”

“You weren’t being very convincing.”

His eyes narrowed. “Do you actually think I hate you? So, I was a little ticked off by you in Mexico, but that’s how I get when you’re like that.”

“I’m selfish, I know.”

Frustratedly, he sighed. “I don’t like your pity party, Janie. You’re not selfish and you know it.”

“I’m burdensome.”

He grabbed my shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “Eh. You’re fine. A bit annoying, but I enjoy how irritating you can be.”

I pushed away with my so-called irritation. “Oh, how nice you are. I hope you know how personally ugsome you can be.”

He leaned over to me. His mouth made contact with my clothed upper arm. “It ties into my inevitable charm.”

I placed my chin on my shoulder, eyes peering down at him. “Which in the full circle of things leads to ignorance.”

He chuckled and persuasively used his mouth as the offensive attack and his hands in a defensive stroke.

Stacey got married at the perfect time. In hindsight, it was an even more perfect time knowing what was to come in the following months, but even on the day, when we were all getting ready, it was declared that she had picked the perfect day to get married. It was a perfect April day where the sun would hit the foliage just right, which is a necessity for a wedding that is held at a converted farmhouse.

Stacey also had superb taste for a bride because I imagine the most dreadful thing that could happen as a bridesmaid is an ugly dress, but she chose fairly well between colour—the prescribed dusty blue—and cut—strapless flowy A-line dress with pockets (!!!)—though I was against the floor length of the skirt due to confident belief it would get dirty and an adamant fear of tripping.

Paul and Stacey got married and I didn’t trip.

Besides, a wedding is just an excuse to spend a bunch of money on a party, at least that’s what I believe. And to look your best. After all, enough money was spent on Stacey’s dress to put a down payment on a house, but I would pick that dress over any boring house, especially when you’re as gorgeous as Stacey and work a job that makes me feel stupid.

My habit of making other people’s big life moments about myself likely comes from my mother’s ability to make other people’s big life moments about me (and herself). The night prior, at the rehearsal dinner, my mother turned to me one bite into her pasta and said, “I’m so glad this isn’t your wedding.”

I was too taken aback to even know how to respond to that, stuttering out, “Huh?”

She distracted herself with her wine glass and her new boyfriend, who, yes, we had just met. He seemed fine at best, unmemorable and bland at worst, which is high marks for what I thought my mother’s future partners would be like.

“I’m so glad this isn’t your wedding either, mum,” I said to her. She either ignored me or tuned me out by this point, but I got Al to laugh bubbles into his champagne.

Later, at the wedding, I was confronted by an aunt, with whom I had not seen in about a decade, who greeted me by saying, “There’s nothing wrong with being a spinster, Jane. In fact, I think it’s quite honourable.”

I’ve never been irked by these remarks. I find there’s a hilarity in how much weight certain people put into whether I mark “Married” on a legal document. In this particular circumstance, I enjoyed it even more with the way Alex reacted to these comments by going completely bug-eyed and hiding behind me like a child behind their parent’s legs.

“I find it to be an appealing job,” I told her. “It beats divorce.”

She gave me a tight smile and told me not to talk about divorce at a wedding, but I think that had to do more with her past divorces than Stacey’s fresh, stable marriage. She excused herself to continue making the rounds like it was her wedding. I suppose there is something in my family’s bloodline that makes them feel like they deserve copious amounts of attention. I do in fact share blood with these people.

I turned around to look at Alex. “You’re plenty of help,” I told him.

“Well,” he cocked his head back, “I didn’t want to get involved in your family affairs.”

“You’re more family than she is,” I told him. “You’re not gonna defend my honour.”

“She said being a spinster was quite honourable and I have to agree.”

I slapped his chest. He grabbed the hand that bit and held it in between his palms like he was trying to start a fire. “What a dodger you are.”

He was passing my hand back and forth between his two hands like we were playing a hand-clapping game. He smiled with the corner of his mouth. “You want me to go knock her out?”

“Nah. I don’t want you to break your hand against her silicone.”

Paul’s family is apparently occupied by a bunch of dancers, consisting of a mix between professional ballroom dancers and people who shout at you to join the conga line. I don’t mind dancing, but I refused to do it in front of my family in a shared sensibility of being dreadfully embarrassed by anything your mother does, including grinding against her new boyfriend.

Alex and I stayed seated and indulged in the food bar for most of the wedding until I was abducted for the throwing of the bouquet for which I had zero interest in after enduring about ten comments per hour about how people couldn’t wait for a future wedding to the point where I felt I had entered a Clockwork Orange torture chamber where all I could do was smile and nod.

After I stood in the back with arms crossed until the bouquet had landed in Paul’s 17-year-old sister’s hands, I sat back down next to Alex where we were approached by my step-grandmother, who said, “How nice would it have been for you to catch the bouquet at your sister’s wedding?”

“Paul’s sister will have first dibs, I suppose.”

She laughed in the tone normal people make when they get a tooth pulled. “You better get on that soon.”

I then made the mistake of saying, “It’s up to Alex.” It was a deflection method that led to Alex looking like he had wet himself.

“Oh,” she exclaimed. “What are you waiting for? The good ones don’t stick around, you know.”

I was more shocked by being referred to as a “good one” than by Alex saying, “When she’s two weeks late.”

The blood drained from her face. I enjoyed a happy helping of laughing before tugging on Alex’s arm and exiting the venue. It was quite a childish thing to say, but it equalized out considering I hadn’t seen these people in half a lifetime and they had more interest in the occupation of my uterus than me, or better, no interest at all.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Alex repeated with a lack of anguish and with a levity the situation needed. He had always found these conversations of small talk to be ridiculous and that’s why I tended to be the mouthpiece. His taking up the mantle for me caused more than just a laugh. I also find everything Alex does to mean more than anyone else doing it.

No matter how immature we were acting, cackling outside the venue, I found it made me feel like an adult to be able to say these things to your family and no longer having to accept their judgment simply because it’s the proper thing to do.

“You’re gonna kill that woman,” I told him, scratching at his chest like a cat on all the nice furniture.

He kept muttering apologies with convulsed effort. He grabbed my hands off him and tugged me closer to him, knocking himself against me. “I’ve wanted to say that all night,” he explained. “I’ll rectify it if I have to.” He was an honourable soldier with integrity. How cheesy of him to be sworn to me and fall on his sword for me.

I kissed his cheek like he was my little puppy dog with sweet little cherubic cheeks. One of these days, I’ll swallow him whole, starting with those cheeks. “You’re good in my book.” His thumb dashed over my cheekbone, an archaeologist trying to uncover a fossil.

We produced cigarettes for ourselves. We swayed side-to-side in front of one another, saying small comments about the wedding, future plans, and the recent Notre Dame fire. The environment was stale and when we eventually drifted into our individual comfortable silences, I figured that would be it until we went back inside for another slice of cake.

But Alex spoke up, saying, “Do you want to get married?”

I shrugged. “One day, yeah.”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding his head, “I know that. I mean, do you want to just get engaged?”

My eyes went wide and I was certain I was misreading the situation. “Like…to be married?

He pressed down a laugh. “Yeah. I would get down on one knee, but I think you’d slap me.”

“You’d be right and I’m thinking of slapping you now. You’re proposing?”

He slipped his hands into his pockets, stuck in clear nerves, shifting on his feet. “Well…yeeeeesssssss,” he dragged out. “Maybe.”

I was having processing issues. I stared at him for several long, stretched-out seconds. “This isn’t feeling too romantic.”

“When have you ever wanted that?” He was smirking.

I shook my head and pressed my hand into my forehead, suffering from a terrible case of second-hand embarrassment. “Yeah. No. This is feeling more obligatory than actually wanting to.”

He shrugged and looked at his feet. “I’d want it.” He peered up like a scared little boy, afraid I had changed my mind on everything, and now I would deeply hate him. We’re one and the same.

I had a hard time looking at him and chose to scan the surrounding area instead. I needed to be occupied by something other than him. I was overwhelmed, about to overdose. “Do you have a ring?”

“You don’t want a ring,” he reasoned.

I was still struggling to track the whole situation. “I still don’t think you’re seriously asking.”

“Okay, but if you want, whenever you want.”

“Standing offer?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.” As if it were a business transaction between us. As if this was a simple thing and these were simple affairs, and it was normal to ask your girlfriend to marry you over two cigarettes and after a joke about how you wouldn’t marry her unless she was two weeks late. I found it humorous, but not worthy of a “Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!”

I don’t know what I would’ve expected after years of denying any romanticism or possibility of marriage. I just didn’t want it to be something that seemed loveless. Something that would appease my family more than me. It wasn’t the story I would want to tell my children.

I worried about him, though, all twisted about, tangling himself up from the inside. I’m fearful that one day it’ll be discovered that his organs had wrapped around themselves and shut off blood flow, forcing his heart to explode. I would no doubt be the primary cause of torsion organs.

He looked down at the ground. His shoes skimmed the grass like a magnet was holding his attention. His hands were out of his pockets and now at his hips. He looked simultaneously fully formed and adolescent. I don’t know if saying yes would have changed this at all. To me, he didn’t act as if it was something he wanted, but he might have, if my eyes weren’t so shaming toward him for asking me under these circumstances.

The environment had just turned awkward. I would have to bend down to get him to look me in the eye, and I know that would feel belittling, acting toward him like he was a child who misbehaved and had to be placed in time-out. “I’m sorry if I upset you,” I told him.

He shook his head and his lips moved in the motion of saying, “No,” but he never spoke it out loud.

“You know how picky I can be about these things. Probably to an enraging degree.”

His eyes met mine and they didn’t look like how I imagined: dreary, dark, downy. Instead, he was sunny, jocular, and rapt. I’m still not sure what rabbit’s foot I carried around in life to earn him, but I’d do it over and over again, even if I had to cause that poor rabbit pain. “No, perfectly normal. Or, at least, the way I like it.”

“I just feel like I shat all over you.”

He huffed a laugh and closed his lips together to silence himself. I swung my arms down by my side. We were two black holes merging together, but for now, we both resisted, instead dueling each other in Street Fighter: The Courting Version.

“I look clean. Don’t I?” He widened his arms and looked down at his suit. His jacket was undone, so his white button-up was showing. I imagined everyone else thinking vile things about him. It made me want to jump around like the girls who caught bouquets, screaming, “I won! I won! I won!” And maybe I should lose that competitive spirit that I must be the ultimate winner in all outcomes, but at least in this circumstance, I will deem myself the winner.

I eyed him up and down, the way I had seen him do to me a thousand times (again: “I won! I won! I won!”). I tossed my head to the side with a thoughtful pull of my cheek. “Maybe. I don’t know. You look pretty dirty to me.”

“Shut up, you.” He threw his arm around my shoulder and scruffed up my hair like we were once again teenagers “wrestling” on his bed, back when we felt the need to act out play fighting as a prelude for sex. It made me miss the days when every action was a nervous domino in the sequence concluding in sex. All our conversations were just reasons for me to eventually get him under the covers (and, in the really really long term, get him here with me).

I pushed against him, shouting all through laughter, “Stop it! Stop it!”

He surrendered, but kept his hold against me, keeping me with him. I tilted my head back to look him in the eye as he spoke, “I’ve just gotta think of something more grandiose.”

I gave him the pleasure of needing to hide my face from him, still terrified of this boy seeing my rosy cheeks and aching smile. “A mix between this and flash mob. Plus, Stacey would kill us if we got engaged at her wedding.”

He whistled in pure relief.

My father adopted a dog. My father’s parenting of his children was on an absentee basis. I believed for a long time he never wanted children, but he did it because my mother wanted children. Then, he got a dog. A black lab that he named Oswald.

This is when we all believed my father had gone nuts. He began sending blurry pictures of this dog to us. Whenever he was prompted about why he got a dog, he replied only saying that Oswald was too cute to pass up. My father had been oozing with unusual affection as of late and I don’t believe the word “cute” had ever been in his vocabulary. It would be a word he would chide me, “Quit talking so babyish, Janie.”

It was enough to prompt me to call him, asking after him, the unnamed girlfriend, and Oswald. He replied, saying that he would be in London soon and hoped to get the family together. The request seemed ridiculous, considering we had only just been together a mere month ago. I’ve gone full years without seeing family.

“I’m worried about him,” I told Alex while we were eating dinner. We met at the restaurant after I spent the day in boring meetings over the phone and he had been out doing things that weren’t making his brain melt.

I liked meeting at places. It gave me a unique sensation. It was a reenact of the days of distance when we had crushes or heartbreak or a deep, perpetual longing for each other.

We were chewing on rolls, waiting for our meals to come out. “He’s always been a mystery,” Alex said. “He’s probably engaged or summat.”

“Lord only knows,” I sighed. “But the dog? That’s weird.”

“Maybe she’s into dogs. If I told people I had a turtle, they would probably question that.”

“You’re not a man who once gave me batteries for my birthday.”

Alex shrugged. “I don’t know. The guy’s gone through a lot of changes as of late: retirement, divorce, moving, new girlfriend.”

“Maybe.” But I didn’t think so. It was more likely for the guy to have a brain transplant than to have that big of a lifestyle change. “Maybe the new girlfriend is a miracle worker.”

My father came to town a few weeks later. It was just him, Stacey, and me. My father insisted that it would be only blood relations, so Alex and Paul didn’t attend the dinner. We ate at the restaurant in the hotel where my father was staying, which was luxurious at every corner, down to the teaspoon. He said he would pay, causing Stacey and me to take advantage.

“So,” I opened, “when do we get to meet this girlfriend of yours?”

He twitched a smile, something that, for a long time, was an unimaginable sight to see on his face. “Oh, soon. She’s a great woman. Patricia, so goes by Pat, and she’s…” He stopped like he couldn’t fathom another word. I felt sad that I never witnessed my parents experience this kind of affection for one another. There was a claim that it had once been there, but I had never lived to see the sight.

When I got home that night, Alex was in bed with a book. He had drifted off with it in his hands. It had now collapsed on his chest. I shut the bedroom door, jolting him awake. He rubbed his eyes, slowly sitting up. “Hey. Hey. How’d it go?” Ripples washed through me, an overwhelming tide was sweeping me away, so I sat on the end of the bed. “That bad?” Alex questioned. “You were out for a while.” I left at 6, it was now past midnight.

I exhaled the best I could and kicked off my shoes. “Yeah. I’ve been walking around for a little.”

“What happened?” His approach over to me was slow as he began to understand the situation. Each move stretched with calmness and hesitancy until he sat beside me. He didn’t try to touch me, instead showing me his presence first. The trace of him has been a far greater antidote than anything else I’ve seen out there.

I scrubbed my face and improved my posture. I knew I had to process, but was aware I would likely never process the truth. “He’s got metastatic non-small cell lung cancer and there’s—he’s dying. So, that’s all.”

When I learned Tommy died, I was trying to comfort my crying mother, and since that early age, I was well-aware that there’s nothing you can say to aid that debilitating pain. The hard part with my dad is that I had spent years of my life avoiding him, and for reasons I still deemed as rightful, and yet, all I could do was rethink what could have been.

Alex wrapped his arms around me and held my head to his chest. He didn’t say anything. He held me and what an untouchable feeling it is to be held. I heard his beating heart under my ear and I could only think about my dad holding me as a baby. He had told me that rocking us to sleep was his favourite thing because it was the only time he felt he was doing something right.

I was crying, I’m sure of it, though when I recall the memory, I don’t think I was. I definitely wasn’t at dinner, I know that for sure. Stacey sobbed. I was too embarrassed to cry in front of my dad. I was too embarrassed to cry in front of my dad when he told us he was dying. Alex told me I cried when he held me, so I think that’s what happened.

He kissed my head and placed his mouth up against my ear. “What do you need me to do?” I pulled away from him. He told me to take a deep breath, so I was definitely crying, even if I didn’t feel it. We lay down under the covers and I told him to turn the light off. I don’t think I wanted him to see me cry either.

“All those nice things we said about him,” I said. “It was because of this.”

“That’s not true,” Alex insisted. “It’s him. It’s all him there.”

I didn’t believe him then, but I believe him now. “And what about Oswald? He’s just gonna leave that damn dog behind. What the fuck?”

His hand rubbed circles on my back. “He’s probably a comfort for him—”

“What about me? Huh? He’s had it for a bit. He didn’t want to tell us because of Stacey’s wedding. The whole dinner, I kept thinking, ‘What about me? You know, don’t I deserve to be blissfully unaware of all of this?’ Then, I kept thinking how selfish I was and how I’ve always been—”

“It’s your dad.” He squeezed me to insist upon this point. “That’s not selfish, J. He gave you life—”

“Yeah, and now he’s dying, and I’m thinking me me me. Imagine how he feels.”

Alex’s breath brushed my neck, and it felt like he was breathing for both of us. He was my life support. “Seems like he’s trying to fix things. He might be acting out of the ordinary lately because he’s evaluating the life he’s lived.” I do remember crying here. It felt like a sneeze that couldn’t be held in. “Janie.” All I could think was how much I hated that nickname because my father called me it.

In the wake of the news, I smoked vigorously for two weeks before deciding to quit. It’s a tribute to my father, who wasn't actually dead yet. I tried to write something, an obituary, already planning a funeral for someone who might die in a week or five years.

I talked extensively with Stacey for two weeks. We indulged ourselves in our most unforgiving vices, but primarily alcohol. She had always been closer to our parents than I had. She was the baby and remained with them longer than any of us had. She cried over it for a number of hours on the first few days before sobering up and slowly turning to laughter.

I kept thinking how the man wasn’t actually dead yet, but we are all acting like he was. For parts of my life, he has been dead for months at a time. I didn’t tell Stacey that out of fear she would reprimand me for thinking of our father as a disposable thing, but I whispered it to Alex at night because I’m confident in the belief he will only ever judge me for my favourite Strokes song and my deep hatred of bourbon.

That’s the primary reason to have a partner. The amount of secrets locked up with him could sink a ship, and not just a small one, a big one, not quite a yacht, maybe a schooner. I would be at the bottom of the ocean without him during this time. Each day, I squeeze out the amount of tears left in me. We talked in the dark. I could be more honest, like a makeshift confession box in our bedroom. It felt like speaking to the void and the void was speaking back to me.

“Do we throw a party for him?” I asked Alex, semi-serious. “Do you even throw a funeral? Let alone if the guy is still alive.” It had been over a decade since someone close to me had died. I barely knew what a person wore to a funeral other than black.

It was early in the day, though neither of us knew the time, we could tell through the position of the sun sneaking through the window. We had spent innumerable mornings into the early afternoon like this since the beginning of time, but the amount had increased exponentially since the pending death of my father. I could never reach the end of a topic with Alex, but with this one in particular, I don’t think anyone has reached the end of the topic of death until their own death.

“Seems like something he would like,” Alex said. I had my legs crossed, leaning my back against the headboard while he was lying out on his side, half-tucked around the blankets. “It’s in his humour.”

Alex had been trying to make sense of this whole mess to the best of his ability. He had to guess the moves of a man who had barely spoken to him, and when he had, the tone was in jest. He was untangling a dynamic that the people in it didn’t discuss among themselves. He was trying to break into a window that had been painted shut decades ago with deadly lead paint, and it was dark, raining, and he only had the moon to guide him inside.

“Sit around having a bunch of cigars, playing a game of poker.” I was choked up by the thought. It would be the first and last time I ever joined in on my father’s favourite game. When I was a baby, my father would occasionally take me off the hands of my mother or the nanny by sitting me in his lap while he played poker with his friends. I am not sure what the surgeon general would think of having your baby sit in on a booze-filled, smoke-infested poker game, but I was my father’s good luck charm. And he could use some good luck.

Alex placed a hand on my thigh. His thumb moved back and forth. “It sounds like a fun evening.” It’s the “fun” that can only come when a plague has been placed on you. I was only waiting for the locusts to descend.

The feeling of heaviness wore off about a month later. I had accommodated to the constant weight of getting The Phone Call™ on my mind. I knew it wouldn’t be coming too soon. My father sent a record number of updates in that annoying way when someone sends text after text, rather than finishing a sentence and then sending it, but in this situation, I didn’t mind. I just wanted to know. I hated not knowing things.

Dad: Breathing good today

Dad: Had troble last night

Dad: Getting scan

Dad: Tomorrow

Dad: walking oswald

Dad: Fresh air good for lungs.

Dad: even if air is prob poluted

Me: Okay.

I didn’t work for a while, even though I had writing deadlines to meet that I didn’t ask for extensions for. I joked with Alex that they probably thought I died, but he didn’t laugh at that. Death didn’t seem so funny anymore.

We talked about going away somewhere to take our minds off of it, but it didn’t matter where I went, the thought would still be on my mind. So, we stayed huddled up in London. It was becoming warmer and I was in constant need to feel like it was summer. I needed it to be enduring, like summer would never end, and this is a time loop that would play out in some twisted form of Groundhog Day, where the date would never change, and therefore nothing would ever change.

But the more I thought that the more I felt unhealthy for not facing the truth of the situation. Alex said there’s nothing wrong with that. He thinks I feel a need to shoulder the burden of things. We were never punished growing up in the typical way kids receive punishment, therefore, I felt a need to mentally bring it on myself. I told him he was trying too hard to be my Dr. Melfi. We had been rewatching The Sopranos, which, other than Alex, was my only salvation during this time.

There was a birthday party one evening that Alex had questioned me all day about whether I really wanted to go, constantly saying, “You don’t have to, no one would judge you.” I appreciated his tenderness toward me through these trials, but he talked to me like a child, or maybe worse than a child, a person completely incapable of making their own decisions. He talked to me like I was a baby or his pet fish. He had more nuanced conversations with Lou than he had with me about this party.

He was extending my grief out as a constant reminder that if I ever forgot it, he would give me a little tap on the shoulder. It made me couple everything with guilt now. I was angry at him for caring. I had no right to fault him for caring after I had spent decades of my life begging for someone to care. The only person judging me was myself.

The sun had disappeared by the time we left home, which is the way I prefer leaving for any evening occasion. Alex was dressed like he was about to change the oil on someone’s car, but would shout, “Ew! Ew! Ew!” if any dirt got on his hands. I wore a blue T-shirt and jeans.

We were eating dinner made by the birthday girl’s husband. Alex and I ate food off each other’s plates, even though we had the same meal. The food tasted better when shared between us. He would be chewing and sounding a moan of pleasure, rubbing his lips together to taste every drop. He would tell me, “Here. Have a bite of this.” He held his fork up to me and I bent down to bite it off like I was a dog earning scraps of dinner.

I scantily talked, an unusual convention for this group of friends, causing them to ask, “How are you doing, Jane?” They were so downtrodden, I thought they already knew, like talking to a child after their dog had “gone to live on a farm.”

Alex spoke for me because he had an idea that if he said it would somehow lift the pain from my lips. “Her dad isn’t doing too well, uh, health-wise.” When they expressed concern, asking further, Alex continued to explain it vaguely. I wonder if he talked about death with anyone like they were a child. I thought if someone asked him how babies were made, he’d tell them a stork brought them. I wonder how long he believed in Santa Claus.

“He’s dying,” I said because easing the band-aid off hurt like a bitch. Why weren’t we just ripping the fucking thing? Everyone there was already guessing it, so why do we feel this need to tiptoe around it? It was as if not saying it wouldn’t make it real. It was real. I didn’t want to act like it wasn’t real. I was tired of everything feeling like some performance we had to act out.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I told them. I was already tired of the idea. That night, I told Alex my most shameful thought. I wanted my father to hurry up and die already. It was an anvil hanging over my head. I didn’t want the anvil to exist, but I just wanted the process to be over already, rather than thinking the anvil would drop at any time.

We walked home from the party that night. I scuffed my shoes on the concrete, so there was some noise for our ears to acknowledge because we weren’t talking. Silence between Alex and me could be one of the most deadly sounds.

“I don’t like it when you talk for me,” I told him when we were a block away from home.

His hands were in his pockets. He hadn’t held mine in a long time. “You do it all the time.”

“You like it when I talk for you,” I countered.

He shrugged. “Not all the time.”

“Oh, okay. ‘Some’ of the time.” I performed air quotes, an eye roll, and a promise to not look at him for the rest of the evening.

“Yeah,” he anathematized, “some of the time.” I could tell he was getting annoyed with me. He only repeated things I said when he was annoyed with me or trying to be cute. His tone was too short for flirtation.

“Fine. You can talk all the time.” We were doing that thing where you don’t yell, but your voice gets just close enough to it. We were still quiet enough to insist that “We’re not fighting!” even if everyone knew you were. I call it Cold War-ring.

“That’s not the point, Jane.” He was calling me by my given name. That meant he was really mad at me.

“Sureeeeeee.” When I talked like this, I was really mad.

He scoffed and swatted his hand at me—his way of seeming like he is over fighting, but actually wants to continue fighting. “Fine. You can do all the talking.”

“I don’t want to do all the talking!”

“Pft,” he spat. “That’s all you do. Hours upon hours. We can’t talk about anything other than what you want to talk about.”

He was saying that to hurt me, which I knew, so I didn’t take it personally. “You could interrupt me at any time or—here’s an idea—just go to sleep!”

“I can’t go to sleep if you’re talking.” He was unlocking the door. I was happy we would be home so I could yell. I liked yelling. It’s the same release as crying or an orgasm. “You’re so fucking loud. Surprised someone hasn’t come complaining.”

“Well, maybe they like listening to me. I’m very insightful.” He was chuckling, and I knew in a matter of minutes we would be having sex. It makes a fight a lot more fun when you know it will end in sex. It’s an additional game. “Besides, it’s not like you could fall asleep anyway.”

“You’re making fun of my insomnia.” He was laughing loud enough to make the house shake. “That’s a new one.”

“I’m creative like that.”

He agreed. “One of your best qualities is telling a person everything you hate about that.”

“Oh, not just everything I hate, but anything anyone could possibly hate. Like your shirt.”

He pulled at the fabric. “What’s wrong with my shirt?”

I pressed my eyebrows together. “It’s got holes in it.”

“I like it!”

We were in our bedroom now. I was taking off my jeans and he was peeling off said shirt. “Don’t you want to look nice? My mother would call you homeless if she saw you wearing that.”

“You’re listening to your mother’s opinions now! You used to love me because you knew your mother would hate me.” I was taking off my bra now and he was waiting with his hands on his hips to take off his underwear so we could each do our own at the same time.

“Oh, what do you know? You don’t even speak to my mother.”

He twisted his face offensively. I think I like him best when his face is all scrunched up. It accentuates his cuteness. “You used to hit me if I tried to speak to your mother for too long.”

We were taking off our underwear now at an equally matched pace, one might mistake us for mirrors of one another. “Because I wanted to go upstairs and have sex.” I slingshot my underwear at him and the piece of fabric brushed his crinkle-ridden nose.

“Are you going to hit me now?” He asked. He had a smirk now. I used to long for this predictability. It felt like we had already had sex before we even committed the act. It’s like our bodies were already three moves ahead, but our brain hadn’t yet captured the movements.

“Do you see my mother anywhere?”

He neared me, moving like a snake. I both deeply hated and was intensely turned on when he moved like that. I found him to be too smug, but his body moved too sultrily for me to ever complain. “Is that what it takes to get you going? The threat of someone walking in.”

“Please. My mother likely spent a total of 10 minutes in my room the entire time we lived in that house and half of them took place when we were moving in.” I moved over to the bed and sat down.

He sat beside me. “We’re getting off topic,” he reminded me. He tapped my back. “Scoot.”

I moved up the bed, lying on my back. “That’s what happens when you do the talking.” He was laughing too much to continue the act. “You’re distracted too easily. You need cue cards or something. I am your teleprompter.”

He twirled his fingers, motioning me to flip over to my stomach. He liked fucking that way because I told him once that it felt more punishing because we weren’t allowed to look at one another. I think I picked that up from porn. Alex got turned on if he thought I was turned on. It didn’t take much for his mind to wander to sex. He found it to be more precious if he thought I was thinking about it. Thus, having sex this way felt hot to him and to me in some Newton’s cradle where we were turned on as long as the other was turned on.

“You’re too fast to be my teleprompter. You malfunction at every other word.” (One thing I have mostly excluded from my personal writing is the amount of filler words I use. I’m afraid “uh,” “um,” and “like” would take up the majority of this book if I included them in every piece of dialogue I say as I do in real life. I don’t think I can begin a sentence without it. It’s like my start-up sound.)

He was in me by this point. “You’re just slow,” I said. “I’ll see you next year by the time you get to the end of your sentence.”

“I’m choosing my words carefully. You could probably try that more.”

I made a noise at this point. It was a mix between a moan, an interjection, and a giggle. “I would lose all my charm if I did that.”

“You’d probably get along better with people if you did.”

“Why would I want that? Then you wouldn’t have me all to yourself.” I looked back and smiled at him. It was intended to tease, but I found it came off more sensitively than a sexual gesture.

He rolled his eyes, knowing that I was looking at them. “I’d finally have some time on my hands. Probably learn a new language.”

I turned my head back straight forward. “And not be able to speak it to anyone.”

He did a quick thrust then, which meant he needed time to think of a rebuttal, so he had to distract me. Unfortunately, successful. “Maybe I’ll learn sign language.” His head was closer to me now. He was talking straight into my ear, brushing his chosen air on my neck.

Once I knew he had moved back, I spoke again. “You’re quite good at gesturing. You move around so much I sometimes think you’re in pain from that stick up your ass.”

“You can’t say that when you’ve got me in you.” He moved quicker to prove his point.

I tilted my head. “Fair enough. Then again, you’re the one moving, and I’m just sitting here. Thus, proving me right.”

“Oh, you’ve always got to be right.” He said it as if this were a new development in my behavior. I was likely born with the gene that makes you unflappably stubborn. “That’s another thing that’s wrong with you.”

“But don’t you find my precocious tenaciousness attractive?”

“I find everything you do attractive.”

“That isn’t saying much. Men would fuck a fire hydrant if it had a wig on.”

He snorted through his nose. It was wildly unattractive and I never wanted to come more. “Are you a fire hydrant?”

“In another life.”

“Certainly are wet.”

I laughed and decided nobody had ever loved another human being more than me at that moment. Most people probably feel that way before they come. “Does that make you the hose?”

“Aren’t I long enough to be?”

My face ducked down into the mattress. I was shaking from laughter and pleasure too much to hold myself up. “Shut up.”

“We’re saving lives, honey.”

He could cut into me and I wouldn’t care. It used to scare me how much I was willing to take any pain he could cause me. I used to lie awake at night, right in that early phase when I knew I loved him but hadn’t told another soul yet, and think about how he could do the most awful things to me and I’d still find him to be the most exquisite thing to walk the earth. I had never used the word exquisite before. I find it to be filled with a propensity that only my mother could pull off, but I found him to be perfect for my first usage of it.

The real love came when I realized he would never do such a thing. He wouldn’t even think about it. Even when I did some of the most wicked things that would cause even the most level-headed of people to squeeze their hand into a fist, he would lean back like he was Buddha. I then lay awake at night, convincing myself of all the awful things I would do to him that would run him off. One day, and this was only a few years before this, I realized that I had never thought about doing those things. I only ever thought about having those thoughts. He was too beautiful to think of placing a scar on him.

“I think we’re causing a fire, not putting one out,” I told him.

“Are we?” He questioned seriously. I thought he might pull out of me and go sit at the desk and write a research paper about whether or not sex is a fire or the water coming to aid it. “Or are we already on fire? Isn’t fire associated with these things? Fighting? Making love?”

I giggled at how cute he was. “Making love? Who are you? A teenage girl? Am I taking your flower?”

“Oh, I was plucked long before you.”

I tossed my head back again. “No, you weren’t. It was only about a year before me. Unless I’ve been lied to.”

“Me?” He pointed to himself. He acted out these gestures even if I couldn’t see him. He didn’t need to perform for anyone but himself. “Lying? No.” He was being serious when he said this, not rhetorical. “I wasn’t lucky enough to save myself for the Jane Cavendish.”

I turned forward again. “Ew,” I implored, “don’t use my full name.”

“Should I call you something else? What’s your stripper name? It’s your first pet’s name and the street you grew up on, right?”

“How do you know that?”

“You don’t know what I get up to.”

I playfully pushed his left hand off me. “Don’t want to know what diseases you’re carrying.”

“Compared to you? Nothing I’m sure you don’t already have.”

I looked back at him with my mouth wide open. “I’m not one of the whores you picked up off the street. Though I should charge with how good I am.”

“Oh, yeah,” he agreed. “Should teach classes or something.”

He was mocking me, so I once again turned away and told him, “Shut up.”

I wasn’t sure we were even having sex anymore. It was easy to forget about when talking to him or arguing or whatever foreplay this was. “When did you lose your V-card? 12?”

I chuffed. “Are you 12? V-card? Has your prepubescent lifeform taken over your body?”

“You should be in jail if that were true.”

“Don’t talk about rape when you’re fucking me.”

He paused. “Sorry.” Then, he picked it up again.

“I was 13.” We had never talked about it before for some reason. I guess it never came up before.

“Really?”

I nodded. “At his parents’ coastal house. After we did it, he never spoke to me again.”

“Wow. How? It’s impossible not to talk to you. We’re talking right now.” I like it whenever he feels the need to commentate a situation. Sometimes we’ll be grocery shopping or waiting for an airplane and he’ll just state out loud what we are doing, for no one in particular. I’m not sure who is talking to when he decides to exclaim, “We are now waiting for the airplane.” It might just be a way for him to make sense of situations, to confirm some trick isn’t being played on him. He lives in constant fear of that happening.

“It’s fine. Not like it was that good anyway. I didn’t even know what good was yet, but I knew it wasn’t that.”

“When did you know it was good?” He asked. “I’m not saying that to flatter myself. I’d prefer it if you said someone other than me. I know I wasn’t too good in the beginning.”

“How did you know?”

He lightly chuckled, followed by a groan. We were still in the midst, believe it or not. “I was 18. I wasn’t exactly Casanova.”

“I always liked you. You were better than the 13-year-old.”

He squeezed my side. I knew that meant he wanted to kiss me, but the position was too awkward to perform the act. “I hope so. I just meant, when did you know sex was good? I know it isn’t always…you know, pleasing for girls.”

His tenderness was easy to laugh at, but was a far greater display of his maturity and endearing qualities that men were unlikely to possess, especially when he came to asking women about things like sex or periods. “Well,” I thought out loud. “I had done some stuff before I liked. Masturbating and reading the dirty romance novels my mother read, so I knew it could be good. Or thought it could be with how romance novelists describe it. Then, I had a boyfriend, maybe a year or two before you. He was pretty good. A little bit older, more experienced. It doesn’t matter. No one really counted before you.”

We finished around this point, so the conversation paused for a moment for a while until we were settled beside one another. We lay down on our backs and his hand drifted up to play with the stray hairs that poked out their way around my head. “When did you know sex could be good?” I asked him.

“Oh, probably the first hard-on I got.”

I spat laughter into the air, covering my mouth as my muscles tensed up. “You really are a 12-year-old boy.”

“Oh, come on,” he insisted, “you wouldn’t get it.”

“Why? ‘Cause I don’t have a penis.” I flipped onto him and reached my hand down in between us to touch him like a medical examiner. Like I had to make sure it was still attached to him. “Sexist.”

He held his hands on my upper arms to make sure I wouldn’t move them away from what I was touching. “But it’s true. It’s the first sign that you’re a man.”

“Is that why men are so attached to this thing?” I squeezed it like it was my chew toy. He squealed like a pig. “Don’t men think about sex every 30 seconds?”

“It’s impossible not to think about sex when you’re involved.” He was trying to play cute. He knew how to get under my skin.

“Stop. I’m being serious. Do you really think about it all the time?”

“No,” he said. “But it’s a nice thought. You know, when you want to pass the time and think of something.”

“You think about sex? Doesn’t that give you an erection?” I was moving my hand over him.

He chuckled. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“How am I supposed to know? After all, I’m not a man.” I fluttered my eyelashes to play our cute little game. “Tell me.”

“I don’t know.” He was blushing and I liked him best when he was blushing. It fell in a different category of sex, making love, fucking. “I don’t know. What do you feel?”

“Probably the same thing as you.” I presume. It was hard sometimes to feel like we didn’t share a mind. Half the time, I thought we were just communicating inside someone’s brain, not actually two individuals, just two brain cells wrestling with one another. “Try,” I urged, tugging on him.

He was turning redder. “I don’t know,” he said, frustratingly. His head drifted off to the side, unable to look me in the eye. I kissed his Adam’s apple. It had been playing tricks on me all night. “Warm, I guess.”

I hummed. “Yeah. I feel that too. Doesn’t it hurt?”

“If you wait long enough,” he said. “Waiting is a pain for anyone.” His eyes flicked back to me. “Especially you.”

I giggled, my chin chattering against his chest. “What about coming? It comes out of the same hole you pee out of. Isn’t that weird?”

He laughed with his eyes coasting down to me. “It’s weird you have so many holes down there.”

“You get confused which one to put it in?” He quickly pinched my arms in a tight grip to make me yelp as payback. “Why are men such babies when it comes to getting kicked in the balls?”

“Why are women such babies when it comes to giving birth?” He joked. I took my hands off of him to punish him for such an awful joke. “No, no, wait, I’m sorry,” he said through laughter. I didn’t believe him, but I returned them to their juncture. “It’s a sensitive area. It’s like getting poked in the eyes by Moe’s two fingers.”

“That’s good. I can imagine that. You’re very good at that. You should write sometime.”

He sighed like remembering. “You’re good at that.” He was drifting off. He was looking heavenward, and I let him go to the sky for a moment. I knew he’d return to me at some point. It was nice to see the appearance of peaceful demise in those trying times—a friendly reminder that letting go could feel gratifying.

We returned again to our backs. I waited for him to speak to indicate he could breathe again and then I would breathe again. He began to hum a tune so faintly that you couldn’t even echolocate it. He delicately touched a finger to mine and then pulled it up my arm; more soothing than a massage. “I didn’t know it was good until you,” he said.

I squinted, disbelieving. “Just now? It took you 33 years?”

He huffed a laugh. “Be sweet to me.”

“I’m very sweet to you,” I said. I rolled onto his chest because I liked to hang out there for a little while. “Didn’t you just feel how sweet I could be?”

“Don’t play, Janie.” His eyes were escaping my view, and I could tell he was growing tired. It was later than we would allow ourselves to believe. He had to get up early, but he wouldn’t reject speaking to me in favour of sleep. “Don’t play when I’m sincere.”

“Mhmm.” I suddenly felt sleepy, like it was an osmosis transfer. “I believe you. Sometimes it’s hard to handle the weight of what you say. You know, like ‘nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.’ I need a funnel for all the things you say, age it like wine, or something.”

His eyes were closed now. “That’s nice. You should write.”

“Don’t play, Al.” I quipped, defeating the purpose of my statement.

“Go on,” he said.

I wasn’t aware I had to say anything more. So, I talked for him. I knew he was growing tired. “I have a ‘if I loved you less I might be able to talk about it more’ mentality.”

“Are you going to talk through quotes for the rest of the night?” He asked.

“Are you going to talk again at all?” He didn’t say anything so I continued. “You’re too big for me to handle sometimes. I have to take you slowly, in pieces.”

“Like a chocolate bar.”

I giggled and tried to pull him closer to me. Unfortunately, conjoining our two skins wasn’t a possibility. “Sure. In that case, I have diabetes, a mad case of it.”

“Maybe you should eat less chocolate then.” We might have been talking about two different things at this point. He was half-asleep. I didn’t mind. It felt like I was in one of his dreams.

I kissed his cheek. “But it’s so addicting,” I whispered in his ear.

He was smiling then in a sleepy way and I thought it would be best to not keep him up any longer. I moved away a little to put my head on my own pillow. He pulled, not wanting to give too much of me away.

He flipped to his stomach so the hold would be less awkward and his hand shifted down to my waist. I thought he was about to squeeze my ass but he kept his hand on the line. He shuffled a little closer. I thought he must be somnambulant by this point, but then he whispered, “I love you.”

We never said it much. It was a phrase implied in everything we said or did. I found the phrase too much sometimes. It still made me flush red the same way it did when he first said it. I would tell him it was such a disgusting thing to say, like it was covered in some sticky substance and smelled like garbage. For a long time, it was, but he had cleared it off like he had much of the other dusty things in my life. I didn’t know it was good until you. I whispered it back and was under the suspicion he had fallen asleep by the time I uttered it, but he kissed the back of my neck. When I asked him about it the next day, he said he couldn’t fall asleep until he heard it like your mum tucking you to sleep or the night before Christmas. I’m not sure what I had to do with his mum or Santa Claus, but I knew at certain points, they were the dearest, closest things to him and had kept him warm in the bitter cold of life. I thought nothing could be more apt for him. He was both my blanket, mum, heater, Santa Claus, and Alex—my Alex—all at once.

July was sluggish in the way much of summer is after the heat no longer feels pleasurable, but instead that gross, sticky, unbearable feeling that has you longing for the cooler months that you had spent praying for the warmth of summer. There’s the rub, always wanting what you don’t have.

Alex and I went up to my father’s house, where the summer was cooler and there were fewer other miserable people around, which was saying something about how London had felt, considering the preferred location was with a man dying from cancer.

It was all about time anyway. The location didn’t matter much to me anyway. You only focus on time when you’re losing it. The hourglass isn’t as daunting when it’s still full of sand. Perhaps, the situation made me too philosophical. I tend to get introspective in the face of death, most people probably do, but I’ve never been another person, so I can’t say for sure. I tend to get long-winded in moments like this. Alex has said I talk until I run out of breath because it forces me to stop and control myself, and from that, few moments in my life will put things in perspective then watching as my father died like a car slowly going downhill at just the right speed that you’ll never catch up to it. It’s death and taxes, right?

My father stayed inside most days. He didn’t have anyone to go out with other than Oswald and most days he let him out into his wide backyard that stretched on for acres and acres. I told him many times that I wished we had a backyard like this when I was younger. He said we did. I said that I knew but it wasn’t like this backyard, so wide the human eye could not perceive all of it at once—a place where you couldn’t see where it ended. He told me I was the only kid who saw the beauty in a place like that, my siblings had become too industrial for the country, the true country, “not those blasty old suburbs,” he said.

Alex and I drove to the River Severn to sit by the shore. I had never seen it despite its English status and I liked being near the water with Alex. It made the world feel like it was turning on the right axis for just a moment. We rested in the blades of grass and waited for the rising sea levels to sweep us away in the next Great Flood.

It was warm and had begun to rain in that sweet, dewy summer kind of rain that God had designed for the sole purpose of driving thirst from Earth’s plants, so we went and sat in the car to watch the rain on the windscreen with no use for the wipers. The sky was grey, and I was slowly convincing myself it might be my last day on Earth. It felt like a meteor or War of the Worlds was hours until it was upon us, or, at least, me.

For once, I was the one too inside their head. Alex sat in the passenger seat, drumming his fingers in a rhythmic pattern against the centre console, signifying his boredom, but not vocally speaking because that would be deemed rude by me. However, his drumming meant the same thing as him telling me to hurry up and get out of there. I demanded, “Could you quit doing that?”

He lifted his arm, muttering an apology, and straying away to the other side of the car seat. The minutes passed slowly. I stared at the car’s clock, always a minute behind. His voice broke through. “Is there something you’re waiting for?”

I sighed and decided to be done with it. “No.” I took the car out of park and pulled away from the river.

“Sorry it wasn’t a nicer day,” he said.

I shrugged with a frown bubbling to the surface. “What can you do? It is what it is.”

His hand reached over and squeezed my shoulder, a thumb strumming my collarbone. “I’d stop the rain for you.”

I chuckled to feel something. “Okay, Al Roker.”

His hand crawled to my neck and rubbed right where my hair ended, pulling at the itty-bitty baby hairs. “Do you want to go somewhere else? Somewhere special?”

I shook my head. That had been my something special. It was a chance to feel normal and at home again. It was a worn-out tape, and I suddenly felt old by the river as if I had turned into the old hag version of the Evil Queen. I was terrified of sleeping—of missing out on something, something I’m not sure of—yet, it was all I wanted to do. My weight felt like a burden pressing down on Alex and I could only hate myself in these moments for both being that burden and thinking of myself that way.

“Is there something—”

I interrupted aggressively, too much for my liking, “Just be quiet.” I was casting some spell, a curse, or cough medicine with that pink colouring and artificial bubblegum taste my mother forced down my throat when I was sick.

Alex’s hand fled the scene and went back to his body. I couldn’t help but feel the urge to scream out for it like my own limb was being taken from me. I was stuck remembering the days when all we did was talk in this car with an amplitude that single-handedly caused the radio to become obsolete.

He was bored and had begun fiddling around. I hated how twitchy he could be, but he went for the glove compartment instead of the radio so I didn’t say anything. He was searching for gold in there, only coming up with some ragged paper. “Gin rummy scores,” he hummed in recognition. “We could play a game of that.”

I gripped the steering wheel until I turned a whiter shade of pale. I nearly cried, but melted away instead. “Found your letter in there. The one with all the quotes from Letters to Véra. And that letter you wrote me.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?” I glanced over to little avail at getting a read on him. “‘Oh’ like ‘Oh, that old thing’ or ‘Oh’ like I shouldn’t have found it. Don’t tell me it was for some other girl.”

He let out a short laugh. “No, no. You were the only girl. Well, for the most part, you know the rest.”

“Why didn’t you give it to me back then?”

“Don’t know. I wrote it half a lifetime ago at this point. Nerves, something like that.”

“I was unworthy of it anyway.”

“No,” he was reading over the gin rummy sheets in the midst of this, “you weren’t. Wouldn’t have written it then.”

“I know. I just meant I wouldn’t have appreciated it. I brushed all those things off too much. You sent me into a panic back then.”

He shut the paper away like its rightful place would always be in that glove compartment behind the car’s registration papers. “You were slow to open. It’s what I liked about you, attracted me to you at first. So mysterious.”

He was being playful. I realized my mind was no longer drifting away with me, so I went with Alex instead of whatever terror lay on the other end. I did that with my whole life. Instead of counting sheep at night, I tried to figure out what my life would’ve been like if I had never met Alex. The imagination would often scare me to sleep to escape the what-if spiral.

“Thank god we met when we did. You know, like what if I went to uni without meeting you?”

“You’d be fine. Maybe have a drug dependency, but chilling. Like the stoned mum or something.”

I snorted and thought about pulling over so I could look at him straight on, but we were only a few minutes away from my father’s home by this point. “Who would I have kids with?”

He thought for a minute, which meant he was thinking the best way to tell a joke without me getting (mock) offended. “One with Robert, but you wouldn’t be together. He’d be your sperm donor without paying for it and he’d see the kid on its birthday and one week in the summer.”

“You’ve really worked this out in your head,” I noted. He tossed his head side-to-side, not to indicate one way or the other. “In this scenario, I’m a single mother suffering with Robert for the rest of my life.”

“You’re an independent woman,” he cheered, trying to put a positive spin so brightly on his face I couldn’t reject it.

“Sure. And where are you? With some model?”

“An orgy of them.”

My jaw hung open at his boldness. “Oh, how nice for you.”

He brushed my arm. “Relax. I’d be some drunk, unable to get it up, too frustrated to enjoy it.”

“Okay.” I just laughed on and on.

“I wouldn’t have anything special in my life without you.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t get all cloying on me.”

He was laughing but sitting up and squeezing my arm, insisting, “I’m being serious. You know everything you’ve done for me.”

“I’m having a hard time believing you when you’re laughing in my face.”

“It’s because I’m so happy my body can’t keep it in anymore.”

I leaned away from his lips that were coming in to plunge on my cheek. “I’m gonna flip the car if you don’t stop.”

“Fine. Fine.” He leaned back into his seat, but I felt his eyes because he liked to see all the hair stick up on the back of my neck.

Something was stuck in between my teeth after dinner. The three of us were crowded around the small kitchen table. Oswald was below it, by my father’s feet, wagging his tail. Everyone was breathing heavily, an indication of a good meal. I excused myself to floss the thing out from its lodged location.

I returned to the two men, having moved to the living room with cracked-open beers, chatting. I went to the fridge to grab one for myself. When I returned, they quieted down. “Am I interrupting you two?” I fluttered my lashes with wariness.

“No,” they both said with their lips curled out.

I looked down at my shirt for a stain. They were staring. “Okay,” I said when I found nothing. I sat on the sofa beside Alex. “Why are you being weird?”

“Sweetie,” my father said, “you’re being weird.”

I rolled my eyes and pulled from my bottle. “Right.”

“We were talking about Stacey’s wedding,” my father said. “It was a cracking old event.”

I narrowed my eyebrows together. “Has the cancer spread to your brain? You’re talking funny.” The ultimate sign of adjusting to a tragic circumstance is the ability to joke about it. I read that online somewhere, so I was trying to be more willing to joke about all of life’s ailments.

He waved me off. “Piss off, you, whining about everything.”

I sank back and let him carry on. I just wanted to listen to him talk for a while about all those uninteresting things he rambled on about. It was my inheritance.

Later, when I was turning down the sheets, I asked Alex what they had been talking about. He was digging through the suitcase for a pair of boxers. “He was going on about Stacey’s wedding.”

“What about it?” I asked. He didn’t reply, focusing on changing his clothes. I asked again, “What about it?”

He scrunched up his face, shook his head, and got into bed. “Nothing.”

I squinted and got into bed beside him. “Why aren’t you telling me? You’re keeping secrets with my father, of all people. Don’t count on him keeping it. He spoiled every surprise party ever. I think my mother listed it as a reason she was filing for divorce.”

“He was talking about being the father of the bride and walking her down the aisle. Just things that would upset you.”

His synopsis had done that enough for me without knowing the additional details. I couldn’t fault Alex for telling me after I pried it out of him. He just had to get better about lying. “Trying to urge you into proposing?” I jested in an attempt to lighten the tone.

“Something like that.” He was closing his eyes with a smile on his face. It scared me.

“Well, are you?”

Alex chuckled and opened his eyes. “Are you allowed to ask me that?”

“You’re talking about it with my father and not with me?”

He barked a laugh. “Of course not. If I have any plans, Janie, you’ll be the first to know.”

“So, nothing on the table?”

His lip jerked. “Or in the sock drawer. Don’t sound so terrified, jeez.”

“I’m not,” I assured, tucking my arms under my pillow. “Only if you’re talking about it with my father, of all people.”

He nudged my side with his elbow to bust a laugh out of me. “Don’t worry, he brought it up.”

“Okay,” I exhaled. We were going through the motions of going to bed, but I knew we’d talk for a distance more. It was dark, except for the light bleeding through the crack between the door and the wall. “He’s not going to walk me down the aisle. Or he’ll be really feeble and he’ll have to be pushed in a wheelchair by Michael Scott, and it'll be funny but painful to watch, and nobody wants that. My whole life, I shuddered at the thought of my father walking me down the aisle and ‘giving me away’ and now the thought of not having that scares me, even though I wouldn’t want it. Or thought I wouldn’t want it.”

He smiled to ease me. “You’re allowed to want that, Janie. Doesn’t mean you’re bending to anti-feminist or societal pressure.”

“Yeah, I know. Still, the thought of not having those things. Like he never was going to be an involved grandfather, but him not being here for the hypothetical children is sad.” I laughed at myself as I said it. Anything that he wouldn’t be here for would be sad, even for the mundanity, stupid small talk I had shunned. Perhaps it was better this way, not having to worry about him dropping dead of a heart attack or dying in his sleep. It was impending and I knew when it would occur and I would save up every conversation I would’ve or could’ve had in the time beforehand. “He seems content with it, so why should I interrupt that?”

Alex pointed out, “He’s had more time to deal with it than you.”

I agreed. “Change the subject.”

“Samuel Beckett drove André the Giant to school,” he spouted out. “He was too big to ride the school bus and Beckett was his neighbor.”

I wonder where he read these things. If he was simply more well-read than I, or if he had a book of fun facts that he carried around. I didn’t ask him because it’s nice for there to still be some mystery, some untouched part of his being. He imagined he had a little magician’s hat and pulled these facts out of it.

“I have an idea,” I told him. He perked up his eyebrows to indicate he was all ears. “What if we got married?”

“Yeah?” He suggested that I move further.

“No, like really.”

“Yeah, and?”

I giggled at him and tumbled over his body, forcing eye contact with him. “Alex, I’m asking you to…” I motioned my hand in a circle instead of saying the words out loud.

“Marry you?” He chuckled. “Hard for you to spit it out.” He hissed between his teeth. “Doesn’t seem like a good sign.”

I turned off him, smacking down on the mattress. “I’m about to revoke my offer.”

“No, wait, wait, wait.” His voice was tinged with hilarity as he pulled himself over me. “I just never prepared to be on the receiving end of this.” His arms lay on either side of me. His body was compressing my chest, but I didn’t want to breathe quite yet.

“This is how I’ve chosen to be non-traditional.”

“Okay. Say it. You know, ask me.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not gonna.” His words were tickling me as he kept insisting I ask him. “You say it. I’m not gonna say it. I already asked.”

“But you didn’t say it.”

“Say what?” I attempted to trick him.

“Nice try.”

I closed my eyes. “So, that means no?”

“No.”

I sighed. “I’ll take my answer off the air.”

“Alright, Janie. I say yes to whatever your question is. I’m your yes-man.”

I smiled because, you know…

The next morning, my father said, “That’s mighty nice,” and continued making his bacon.

I complained for decades about those annoying people who say fiancé like it’s the only word they know, like they are teaching the baby to say a word—“Can you say fiancé? Fiancé. Fiancé. Fee ahn say!”—and I still hate those people, but I told everyone I knew. I wasn’t trying to boast, I mean, I definitely was, but I wasn’t like “Ha ha ha! I’m engaged and you’re not!” but I did tell everyone I knew like it was a passing thought.

I told Stacey and Paul when they came over for dinner a couple of nights after we returned to London. We sat down, and I said, “Oh, hey, by the way, we got engaged.”

She screamed one loud scream. Her hands were shaking by her face like she was auditioning to play Laurie Strode in the Halloween remake. Then, she shouted, “Copycat!” while pointing her finger like we were in a court of law and she was pointing to the offender.

In the grand scheme, I felt I was low-key about it, but maybe I wasn’t. Alex and I went grocery shopping and I felt the urge to tell the cashier we were engaged. Then, I ranted at him the whole way home about how embarrassed I was that I had told her we were engaged, because what a disgusting idea to be happily with someone and getting married.

Alex shared a similar disposition to mine, telling people in passing, not calling them up to make an announcement, except for his parents. His mum kept calling him honey, like when she tucked him to bed every night. His dad said, “Alright, that’s nice.” So, they were very happy and I knew it.

My mother called me a week later. “Hello there, Mrs. Turner. Do I have the pleasure?”

I grimaced. I had elected to defer the announcement to her, simply forgetting about it, at least that’s what I told her. “Not quite. Who told you dad or Stacey?”

She gasped. “You told your father before me? Christ, Jane!”

“He was in the periphery.”

She lightened up when I told her we could go wedding dress shopping. I questioned the whole ordeal, but dressing up always sounds nice.

A few weeks after the new title of fiancée had been ordained on me, Alex and I were finishing up lunch together, walking around, when he suddenly suggested, “We should get you a ring. Let’s get you a ring.”

I told him I didn’t need one, but he had his mind set, and he insisted. He shrugged, but it obviously meant a lot to him. “I like the idea of you with a ring.” He ducked his head down to hide his grin. He was staring at our joined hands.

“Okay.” I was overcome by his sudden insistence. It was more personable than the ring. “But nothing too big. No diamonds.”

“Not too big to you is a toy ring,” Alex pointed out.

I squeezed his hand. “Exactly. Like Hello Kitty or something.”

He tipped his head back with a boyish grin. “I’m not getting you a Hello Kitty ring, Janie.”

“But I want you to. Shouldn’t I get what I want?”

“I’ll give you that for Christmas. Stuff it in your stocking.” (And he did).

The ring ended up being nice, but not too nice. Alex allowed me to pick the ring I wanted as long as it was nicer than “that plastic crap.” We ended up at Portobello Market, searching around. I felt settled on this sapphire ring deemed worthy enough by Alex.

We went to pay for it when I told the vendor it would be my engagement ring. He clicked his tongue and shook his head. In his thick Cockney accent, mouth wrenching of Guinness, “You’ve got to get a Claddagh ring.”

Convinced he was trying to sell us more, and told him, “Just this.”

He was searching through the stacks of boxes he had behind his table. He shoved a box into my head. “Here. Here. There you go. Vintage. Gold.” I opened it and I couldn’t help but think how beautiful it looked. “Richard Joyce made it in captivity for his future wife.”

I was overwhelmed by the power of it. Hands held a crowned heart, the slight wear on it adding to its character, charm, and lure. “This one?” I held it back to him.

He shoved my hand away. “No, love. I wouldn’t be here if that was the original one. Back in 1600s. This is ‘70s or so, but very nice. Gold. Gold.” He took it out of the box. “Depending on what hand it’s on and the way it’s turned, it tells you whether a woman is taken or not.” He spun the tip of the heart outwards. “In your case, engaged, outward on the left hand.”

He motioned for me to hold my hand out. “Suppose I should give your man the honours.” He handed the ring to Alex. He slid it on slowly. I let out a mix of giggles and stuffed-up tears. “I’ll give you this pretty sapphire thing for free. Engagement gift.” That meant it was mighty cheap. “Claddagh ring £10,000.”

We looked at him, utterly dumbstruck and wide-eyed. After all, we were on a side street in London and this ring had been protected by nothing but this half-drunk man.

He howled out boisterous laughter. “Kidding, mate. Gimme a few hundred, a wedding invite, and a Guinness and it’s yours.”

a/n: so like ten other things were supposed to happen in this part but it grew so long that we'll just push them to 2020, which i'm scared about. that'll be weird to right. but with five minutes left of my birthday, here's my gift to you. also, i like it so you better like it. thanks.

#alex turner #alex turner fic #alex turner x fem!reader #alex turner x oc #alex turner x reader #alex turner x y/n #alex turner x you #alex turner smut #junedenim #beneath the boardwalk

42 notes · View notes

apiratewhopines · 4 years ago

Text

Killian, Persuaded

Chapter Five - Straight and Narrow

Summary: In which our hero learns the hard facts

Chapter Five on AO3

“I’m useless but not for long”

-Clint Eastwood, Gorillaz

Killian was irritated to learn walking to the principal’s office as an adult was quite similar to being marched to the headmaster’s office as a teenager. He was informed by Iris’s teacher when he dropped the girls off that morning his presence was requested for a brief conversation regarding who knew what.

He followed the hall monitor, a rather self-important sixth grader who wore his limited authority like a crown, and noticed the miniature lockers lining the hallway were neatly numbered and uniform in their metal blandness. An admirable attempt to brighten the institutional neutrals of the concrete block walls was made by using artwork from some of the younger grades but it failed to completely divert attention from the sameness of the structure.

Of course, when the last time someone had been in a school involved traversing the halls of a former castle to find his classes and room, a recent construction such as the one he was currently trapped in would lack a certain ominous je ne sais quoi. At home in drifty, rambling spaces tacked on to the main keep as the centuries marched on, the straight and carefully planned layout of the elementary school left him feeling like a sore thumb.

He was a hot mess. Even kindergarteners had it more together than him.

As if to prove his point, the bell rang loudly and the hall was immediately flooded by hundreds of tiny people, scurrying about like they were late for important business appointments. It would have been easy to lose his guide in the chaotic shuffle of humanity but the young man raised his hand in the air, his training having clearly prepared him for all potential pitfalls. He continued to cut a swath directly down the center of the hallway and Killian followed slowly trying not to look like an oversized tourist in Lilliput.

Stopping outside a brightly lit office in the center of the building, the hall monitor opened the door and ushered him in before shutting it with a quiet click behind him. The feeling of being ambushed increased tenfold.

An elderly woman was perched comfortably behind a low counter but either she didn’t hear him come in or was unconcerned with his presence. He cleared his throat several times before her owlish eyes shifted from the ancient desktop monitor to the doorway. When she adjusted her bifocals to get him in focus, he flashed his most charming smile and greeted her. “Good morning, lass! I believe Principal Mills is expecting me.”

“You’re a bit old for a talking to,” she observed with a kindly smile. “And I’m a bit old to be called lass.”

“I wholeheartedly agree with the former observation but respectfully disagree with the latter. A woman such as yourself will never stop causing hearts to flutter,” he flirted, taking the opportunity to study the neat, well-organized office. “I’m Killian Jones.”

“Trust me, I know,” she informed him with the same sweet smile. “We don’t get many visitors in Storybrooke, especially famous ones with handsome faces.”

“Keep it up, lass, and I’ll start blushing,” he murmured as he finished his inspection of the room. Fairly certain the woman who demanded his presence was ensconced behind the closed door to his right, he leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, “Any idea what the old girl wants to talk about? I swear I haven’t stolen anyone’s lunch money.”

Lips twitching in amusement, she whispered back, “What about copying someone’s homework?”

“Innocent until proven guilty.”

“Well, we’ll hold off on calling Sheriff Swan then.” The secretary, whose gold-edged nameplate announced was Mrs. Ruth Nolan, winked at him and continued, “You can have a seat. She’s finishing up with a student right now.”

Knowing a dismissal when he heard one, he tried to pick the largest chair available, which unfortunately was better suited for the school’s general population than a grown man in his thirties. Stretching his legs out, he distracted himself from the cramped position he was forced to bear by looking at the picture lined walls. Decades of graduating classes stared back at him from matching frames. The youth of Storybrooke were displayed like a visual time capsule beginning as far back as 1983.

Giving into curiosity, his stood to get a closer look at a particular picture from the mid-nineties. He was delighted to find off to the far side of the grouping there was a tiny blonde figure with a miserable expression captured by the camera lens.

Clearly, Emma had been as happy about entering this building back then as he was now.

Hearing the door to the principal’s office open, he looked over and found himself staring at Henry’s upset countenance. The boy’s nose and eyes were red, presenting an image of someone doing his best to keep from crying. Concerned, he moved to his side and asked, “Alright there, Henry?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” he muttered, refusing to meet Killian’s eyes. “I need to get back to class.”

He watched as the boy walked quickly out of the office. When he glanced back, he was faced with a striking raven-haired beauty many years younger than he expected. Pushing aside his surprise, he demanded, “What happened to him? Why is he upset?”

“Excuse me, Mr. Jones, did I miss the part where you were Henry’s guardian?”

Practically frost-bitten from her tone, he replied flippantly. “You know what they say, it takes a village.”

“And every village needs an idiot,” she responded, not to be outdone. She raised an eyebrow, daring him to continue their increasingly venomous exchange. Not used to being so directly insulted, he backed down and preceded her into the spacious office when she gestured for him to enter. Sensing the undercurrent of tension, she sighed and said in a more professional tone, “Thank you for coming in. I realize you were under no obligation to meet with me.”

“To be completely honest, I don’t have much going on right now. Even so, I am intrigued regarding what you could possibly want to talk about. As you so eloquently pointed out, I’m not anyone’s guardian so our topics of conversation would be limited at best.”

With a tight smile, she said, “I understand from Iris that you’re looking for a job.”

Gobsmacked, Killian leaned back in his chair and stared at Principal Mills. “My niece told you I was looking for work?”

“She insisted I consider you for one of our open teaching positions,” Mills answered with a grim look.

“Rather forward of her…”

“I try to encourage assertiveness in all of my students, especially the girls. Too often in this world, women are demeaned for having leadership abilities. Iris is one of the best students I’ve ever had. She’s focused, smart, hard-working, and fortunate enough to have a supportive environment at home.”

“She’s definitely all that and more, Ms. Mills. But you can’t be considering me as an instructor. What would I even teach? How to develop a cunning wit and condition leather?” Although, it was his valet who usually handled the leather so he wouldn’t be much help there either.

“Obviously I’m not considering it. You’re totally unsuitable.”

Ah, this was more the speed of conversation he was expecting. If he had a dollar for every time someone tried to make him feel inferior since his fall from grace, he wouldn’t have needed the family money in the first place. Nodding, he stood to leave. “Lovely chat. I’ll see myself out.”

“Sit down, Mr. Jones. Despite your lack of suitably for a job here, I wanted to invite you to volunteer at the school. If you intend to stay in our community, it will allow you to make some excellent contacts and spend time with your nieces who, for reasons that escape me at the moment, think you are a talented man.”

“Just to be clear: You’re saying I’m not good enough for a paying job but you’ll allow me to work for you without compensation.”

For the first time, real mirth flitted across the woman’s face and it completely transformed her. Gone was the severe lines of displeasure. Instead her eyes came alive with laughter, her cheeks flushed softly and her lips parted to reveal a smile that would probably turn heads if you were into that kind of thing. Recently, he was more attracted to women—one woman really—who wouldn’t give him the time of day. “Maybe there is a brain behind that face after all. Your first assignment will be to chaperone the Halloween sock hop. You should probably recruit some help as well.”

Ignoring the fact he had no idea what a sock hop was, he responded, “I haven’t said yes.”

“You will. Even if you don’t want to, Iris will talk you into it,” Principal Mills assured him. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a school to manage.”

—

He emerged from the principal’s office relieved to have survived the encounter. Despite the brief show of emotion at the end of their meeting, he was half convinced the woman was some sort of evil cyborg.

Making his way down the empty hallway unaided, Killian was almost to the door when he heard a sniffle behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Henry distractedly trying to open one of the tiny lockers near the bathroom. Retracing his steps back to the young man, he leaned with careful casualness against the next section of lockers and asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Henry took great pains to wipe his tears as covertly as possible but subtlety was not a natural talent for most ten-year-old boys. As extraordinary as Emma’s boy was, it seemed he fit squarely in the norm on this at least. “Are you going to tell Emma I was in the principal’s office?”

“Your secret is safe with me. I hope I can count on your discretion regarding my trip there as well. She’s quite scary and I have a reputation to protect.”

“Who? Ms. Mills or Emma?”

The lad was definitely stalling, probably hoping Killian would drop the subject. With a grimace, he admitted, “Both, I suppose. So how did you end up there?”

Coming to a decision, Henry made his way to Killian’s side and stuck a similar pose next to him. Eyes closed, in a soft voice he asked, “Did Iris tell you I’m a foster kid?”

“She may have mentioned something to that effect.”

“It’s okay, it’s not like it’s a secret. I’m the only foster child in the whole town. Anyway, some of the older boys like to remind me my parents didn’t love me enough to keep me. Repeatedly. So today, I punched one of them and he cried so hard they had to call his parents to come get him.”

“Well done, lad. Proud of you.”

“But Ms. Mills says it’s better to use your words,” Henry argued without any real conviction. Sneaking a glance at Killian, he had a hint of a smile on his face.

“She gets paid to say those things,” Killian pointed out. He was at a loss as to what to say next. On some level, he knew he was supposed to be a responsible adult and reinforce the message of keeping violence to a minimum. However, he was never particularly good at being responsible, or an adult for that matter. “Listen, I’m not saying you should clock every bloke who irritates you. That makes you no better than the bullies. But long ago, your moth—Emma—told me something that stuck with me. My life would have turned out much better if I had heeded her advice.”

Having Henry’s complete attention now, he hoped he was doing the right thing. He had no idea how much of Emma’s past she shared with her foster son and he would hate to break any confidences, even though it could hardly make things worse between them. “She said sometimes you have to punch back and make the world see you for who you really are. Never forget, Henry, you’re not the only foster in Storybrooke. Emma was one too and look at how great her life has turned out. She’s a respected sheriff, she has more friends than she has time to spend with them, and she’s got you to make sure she eats a vegetable every once in a while.”

Hearing a watery chuckle from his companion, he nudged Henry softly. “What is it the kids are saying nowadays? Don’t let the haters get you down.”

“It sounds weird when you say it,” Henry criticized.

“It’s the accent,” Killian joked. “Everything sounds weird when I say it.”

Picking up his backpack, Henry took a deep breath. “I guess I should go back to class before I get in trouble again.”

“Do you want me to walk with you?”

“No, I’m good now. Thanks, Killian. I’m glad you’re here. It’s nice to have a friend.”

Watching his small form until he turned the corner, Killian wondered why his chest felt like it expanded to twice its normal size as he made his way back home.

—

Walking into the kitchen, a scene of chaos unfolded before him. Liam and the twins were supposedly showing Robin and Roland the best way to make a cake and the results were disastrous. Broken eggshells littered the floor, there was flour on every surface—including the ceiling and the children—and one of the twins was currently stirring sugar into the can of chocolate frosting Elsa bought for the occasion.

“Bloody hell.”

“Welcome home, little brother. We have quite the situation brewing and we need all hands on deck,” Liam shouted over the sound of the mixer Robin and Roland were using in the corner.

Trying to remind himself he had thought silence was the worst part of his dire straits, Killian rolled up the sleeves of his blue button down and made his way over to Linnea. Plucking the girl into his arms, his scowl turned into a grin when the little one flashed him a disappointed look. His mother used to make the exact same expression. Liam just may be the luckiest man in the world. “Darling, what kind of cake are you making today?”

“Sugar cake,” she answered as if it should be obvious.

“Excellent, that happens to be my favorite kind,” he replied with mock seriousness. Linnea proceeded to smear sugar-laced chocolate frosting into his beard as he looked to the adults in the room and asked, “What exactly are we trying to accomplish here?”

“We’re practicing,” Liam said by way of explanation as he took a pan away from Lily.

“For what? The apocalypse?”

His questions went unanswered as Roland, or perhaps it was Robin, changed the setting on the mixer and a shower of half incorporated cake mix splattered over everyone in the room. Like the true hero she believed him to be, Killian curled his niece away, taking the brunt of the sweet blast himself.

Slipping and sliding through the mess on the floor, Liam valiantly fought his way to the corner and pulled the cord on the offending kitchen appliance. Before anyone could say a word, the back door opened and Elsa walked in with the poise he was beginning to think she had trademarked. Taking in the scene, complete with abashed adults and delighted children, she rolled her eyes and muttered, “So much for a quiet lunch with my husband.”

Jumping into the fray with grace only she could exhibit, it was merely ten minutes later that shining, happy faces were properly settled in booster seats at the kitchen island, floor scrubbed, countertops spotless, and two layers of yellow cake placed into a preheated oven. She hadn’t even broken a sweat.

Killian thought he may be a little bit in love with her.

“I hope it goes smoother this weekend,” she observed with a wry look at Liam. Leaving the adults to tidy themselves up with the wet wipes she threw on the counter by the sink, she walked to the refrigerator and pulled out leftover roast chicken and a salad. “We could always order a cake from the diner.”

“It was going fine, love. We will make you proud at the party.” To make amends for the mess she walked into, Liam began to plate up lunch for everyone.

Killian assumed it was the heated glance the two shared that made Robin smirk as he asked, “What party?”

“Emma’s birthday party,” Elsa replied as she poured milk into plastic cups.

“And Emma would be?”

“Our neighbor, who happens to be Killian’s ex-girlfriend.”

Never mind, he wasn’t a little bit in love with her anymore.

The way Robin’s eyebrows raised left him concerned they would disappear into his friend’s hairline. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to retreat now, he settled in for what was surely going to be an extremely tedious conversation.

“Ah, I see. Would she happen to be a stunning blonde?”

“You’ve met her already?”

“Just spied her across the way,” Robin said through a grin. Looking at Killian with a sly side-eyed glance, he added, “I’m sure you’ll all have a rousing good time. I do hope there will be plenty of fireworks.”

“You should join us,” Liam offered as he took the stool between the twins. “It’s usually only our family and Henry so the more the merrier.”

“Go if you want, Robin. I can watch Roland if you need a break,” Killian murmured. The truth was even though he knew her birthday was approaching, he hadn’t been aware of a celebration and he wasn’t entirely sure he would be welcome.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Killian, you have to come. It’s not like you to slink away,” Liam argued, completely aghast at the idea.

“I’m not slinking away. I’m simply not forcing my company on someone who would rather not have it. Consider it my birthday present.” If he grew morose at the realization he had never spent a birthday with her, it was nobody’s business but his own.

“I don’t know,” Robin observed thoughtfully while he cut Roland’s chicken into small pieces and poured a frankly obscene amount of ranch dressing onto his own salad. “It didn’t seem like she minded your company the other day on her porch.”

“Oh, I haven’t heard this story,” Elsa said, propping her elbows on the countertop and looking at Robin with interest. “Do tell.”

“Nothing to tell,” Killian interrupted with a warning glare at his friend. The last thing he needed was his family getting the wrong idea about something Robin took totally out of context. “She was thanking me for helping out with Henry is all.”

Elsa studied him as she popped a grape tomato into her mouth, still resting her head in her hand as if sitting up straight was beyond her abilities at the moment. “Well, you won’t be able to get into any porch shenanigans at the party. Walsh is coming.”

Mirroring Elsa’s stance, Robin asked in a melodramatic whisper, “Who’s Walsh?”

Behind Elsa, Liam rolled his eyes and started mouthing his answer to Robin’s question, something appearing suspiciously like ‘Prat.’

Unamused, Elsa said, “I can see your reflection in the oven, Liam. Walsh is the man Emma is dating.”

Heart dropping, Killian focused on shallowing his bite of food which had suddenly become a difficult task. He wasn’t surprised. Not really. It would be much more shocking for a woman like Emma not to have someone in her life. The only part he couldn’t figure out was where the hell the guy was hiding. He’d been there for nearly three weeks and hadn’t seen him once. Kicking himself for asking but unable to stop the words falling from his mouth, he muttered, “How long?”

With a resigned sigh, Elsa said, “About a year I guess.”

“That’s not dating. It’s a relationship,” Robin pointed out. “What’s the matter with him?”

Once again, Liam was mouthing insults about the man behind Elsa’s back. She turned around and swatted at him with her napkin. “Honestly, what kind of example are you setting for the kids?”

“They don’t know what I’m saying,” he responded, face shining with innocence. “He’s just…I don’t know. He’s the kind of guy you never notice and never miss but he still annoys the cra—crayons out of you.”

“Really, Liam? Crayons?” Giggling, Elsa started collecting plates and stacking them in the sink. “Besides, you don’t have to like him. You’re not the one dating him. He’s good to Emma.”

“There is more to love than being good to someone, sweetheart. You can’t tell me you’re a fan.”

“I’m not not a fan. He’s a little vanilla for my taste,” she answered slowly. With a teasing grin at Killian, she added, “But she’s definitely dated worse.”

“Hey, that’s my little brother you’re insulting,” Liam retorted defensively. Turning to plead his case with the other men, he said, “Now you both have to come to the party so you can see for yourselves.”

7 notes · View notes