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“Okay,” he exhales. “What do you want to know?”
“Hmm,” I tap my chin as I mull it over. “Your family, this life. How’d you end up here?”
“There’s not really a lot to tell,” he starts, chewing on his bottom lip nervously as he continues to stroke my hair. “I’ve lived in Havok Hills my entire life. I used to think about getting away. Going somewhere new. But I think I was sort of fated to wind up here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I dunno. I’m kind of a lifer I guess,” his bright eyes dim, becoming a sad, muted gray as he continues, staring off into the empty space while he opens up. “My dad was a piece of shit, and my mom tried, she did. But she was an addict, and she couldn’t even take care of herself. Stripping barely fed her addiction. The one thing she did for me in this life ended up being the end of her. I’ve been hustling for the Brotherhood longer than I can remember just to stay alive.”
“What did she do?”
“Huh?” he startles, gently dipping his head as if he were stuck inside a memory, watching it replay over in his head.
“Your mom,” I answer softly, tracing my fingertips across his forearm as it lies draped across my chest.
“She saved me,” he whispers as he presses his eyelids closed. Before I can open my mouth to ask what he means, his eyelids flutter and a single tear rolls down his cheek.
“He uh, my dad,” he turns his head and wipes the tear away with his shoulder and clears his throat. “He got out of prison on early release, one of his many, many stints. I um… well my boyfriend was over. My dad walked into the room and… I don’t really remember too much after that,” his brow furrows like he’s trying to scrounge up a memory from the depths of his mind, but it’s just out of reach.
“He just… he hit me so hard. Knocked me out cold. I only remember bits and pieces. The way he screamed ‘faggot’, and ‘not my son’, while he just fucking… beat the absolute shit out of me. I guess… she must have come home in the middle of it all? Because I don’t remember her being there that day. I don’t really know. But she was there, and she killed him, with his own gun. He would have killed me if she hadn’t shown up.”
A nearly inaudible gasp escapes my lips before I can claw it back, and I instantly feel a pang of guilt at my reaction.
“She um,” he jerks his head side to side quickly as he clears his throat and turns his gaze back to mine. “Anyway she went to jail, and she died there. Someone gave her a hotshot, and that was that. I was an orphan at 16. My boyfriend was too traumatized to ever look at me again. A good friend took me in, and… the end.”
He smiles as he shoves the memory back down, and while part of me is soaring over the fact that he would trust me with such intimate details about his life, another part of me is swimming in regret over asking him to pick at a closed wound.
“Yeah, I dunno. Can’t really help the cards we’re dealt can we?”
“I -”
He quickly interrupts me and diverts the topic, but I’m ill prepared when he diverts it to my own damage. “So what about you? Your family? You’re the only one of us that has some kind of normalcy… you must think we are all a fucking mess.”
“Actually,” I swallow the lump in my throat as I prepare to tell the first person in Havok Hills that I don’t have it all together the way they think I do. “I’m not sure when all of you decided I have this big happy family.”
“What do you mean?” he cocks his head to the side and gives me a questioning glance.
Pushing myself up to a seated position, I tuck one foot beneath me and bend my opposite knee, resting my foot on the couch. Resting my chin on my knee, I look down and sigh.
“It’s nothing like what most of you have gone through. I almost feel silly now even talking about it.”
“No, I wanna hear it.”
Licking my lips, I suck in a breath and start, “I was born with it all. Most people would have killed to have the life I had. We lived just outside Silversun Valley. Huge house, lawyer dad, stay at home mom… I never wanted for anything...”
“Okay?” confusion laces his face and I exhale sharply.
“On the surface, it was peachy. But there were expectations. Sports, college, law school, my life was picked out, my future wife was picked out, everything was… picked out. There was no room for me to want anything for myself. And I wanted none of it. I just wanted to paint,” I shrug.
“And that was really a problem?” he asks.
“It wasn’t just the painting, that was simply the first straw. It was putting my foot down about law school. It was throwing away college entirely. Even then I think it would have been okay in the long run, ya know? But dad walked in on me blowing some guy I was seeing, and that was the last straw. He never looked at me again. Never spoke to me again. My mom had his back, not mine. So as soon as I could, I left. Mom tries to get me to come home and visit but it’s always the same. I can’t go back there.”
“Damn,” he whispers, running his fingers across my back in soothing circular motions. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you kidding me?” I shift to face him. “Compared to what you all have been through, it’s… it’s nothing.”
“Don’t do that Cole,” he shakes his head.