Page 28

I didn’t remember getting in the car. I didn’t remember driving. Red washed my vision, my head pounded, and the anger was so big that there wasn’t room for anything else. Everything Darnell had said. Everything I’d said. All of it going round and round, and with every pass, my rage ratcheting up again.

Eventually, though, it passed. Or it changed. Or something. Awareness returned, enough for me to make sense of where I was. And then I only got angrier.

It was a beautiful old Arts and Crafts home, the kind of place that just looks like it’s meant for a family. A kid’s bike—pink and silver, with training wheels—was parked on the porch. The old truck that had taken up residence in the driveway was gone. On the mailbox, peel-and-stick letters from the hardware store said HAZARD John-Henry hit the floor, and I landed on top of him. He was saying something—shouting—but I couldn’t hear him. Didn’t want to hear him. I got one arm free and swung, but he was moving too, drawing his knees up between us to force me away.

He almost got free, but when he scooted back, I threw myself at him again. We both thumped down onto the floor again. This time, I didn’t care about punching. I rolled, dragging him with me, and slammed his head into the old floorboards. He let out a pained noise, and his body slackened. I scrambled upright to straddle him and took another swing.

He must not have been as disoriented as I’d thought because he got one arm up to block me. Then he started grappling with me. He grabbed my wrists. I jerked away, trying to get free, but he held on. All I could think about was pummeling him. Hitting him in his fucking face over and over again. He was shouting, “Gray, stop! Stop!” I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.

John-Henry bucked his hips and sent me sliding off him. I slammed into the wall, and that gave him an opening. He got to his feet, hands out to ward me off as I stood. A red mark on his cheek made me wonder if I’d gotten in a punch without realizing it.

“Calm down,” he was saying. “Calm down! Whatever’s wrong, we can fix it, but you need to—”

I tackled him again. We stumbled through the opening into the dining room. I was distantly aware of hitting the table as we fell. Something—several somethings—fell, hitting me on the head and shoulders as I tried to land another blow. This time, I got a really good one—my fist connected, and his head rocked back and clipped the boards. But John-Henry brought his knee up into my gut, and the breath exploded out of me.

Flopping onto my side, I wheezed, trying to get air into lungs that had forgotten how to work. John-Henry stood above me. He’d grabbed one of the packages that had fallen from the table, and he was holding it like a weapon now. Some of the packaging had been torn away during the tussle. I stared, trying to process what I was seeing. This was it. My brain had finally broken.

But somehow, sucking in air, I managed to ask, “Bro.” Another gasping breath. “Is that a dildo?”

John-Henry stared at me, eyes blank. Then he looked at the package.

“Rodeo King.” I held my fist out for a bump. “Nice.”

He left me hanging, but I was kind of used to it by then. He just stared at me. And then it all seemed to catch up to him, and he blushed and held the package out at his side, as far as his arm would stretch. It wasn’t quite as bad as hiding it behind his back, but it was the next best thing. His eyes were huge.

I started to laugh. It came out of nowhere, and it grew until I was shaking, my chest and belly tight with it, muscles aching. John-Henry started to laugh too. He leaned against the wall and sank down to sit on the floor, head back, wiping his eyes with one hand. The other hand, I couldn’t help noticing, never let go of the dildo. That only made me laugh harder.

When it was over, my body was loose, my head clear, and aside from some fresh pangs from brawling like a teenager, I felt better than I had in a long time. It was like that best post-O feeling. When you didn’t feel like you were waking up to all your worst decisions.

John-Henry had stopped laughing too. He was watching me.

“Dude, that one has a killer suction cup,” I said. “I saw a guy fuck himself through a wall one time. I mean, it was a video, and it was just drywall, but still. And the nine-incher. Respect.”

He groaned, and his head thunked against the wall a few times with what sounded—to an expert like me—like regret.

“Emery’s not throwing it to you anymore?”

“I liked it more when you were trying to break my nose.”

“Dude, it happens. Older guys’ sex drive goes way down. Not forever, though. It’ll get better. And then you two will be fucking like a pair of silverbacks. Like, when you’re fifty, I think.”

“God, I wish,” John-Henry muttered. “It’s like he’s seventeen sometimes.” And then he seemed to realize what he’d said, and he brought his head up again. “Gray, I swear to Christ, if you repeat that, I’ll murder you.”

“That’s sweet, bro. He’s horny for you. With his heart.”

“Why did I open the door?”

I moved around a little, trying to get more comfortable on the floor. It was weird how easy this was. How normal it felt. Like nothing had happened, and we were just talking again. The way we’d always talked.

“So is it, like, a warm-up? Because if you tell me that’s the warm-up, I honestly might believe you. Like, I’ve seen Emery in those running panties he wears.”

John-Henry gave me a look.

“Is it aspirational?” I asked.

“This part of the conversation is over.”

I almost grinned. Instead, I stared up at the ceiling. The side of my face was beginning to throb. My hand felt like a balloon that was slowly inflating, and not in a good way. My knee jolted lightning every time I moved it. As the pain made itself known, I started to realize what I’d done. Shown up on his porch, after months of not talking to him, and attacked him. In his own home. And almost ruined his recent investment in a dildo. Like, the synthetic skin made those things seriously expensive. I tried to get up. Or I thought about getting up. I needed to get out of here.

But John-Henry moved first. He got to his feet. He threw the Rodeo King on the table and stood over me, holding out a hand.

“Is it uncut for, like, verisimilitude?”

“Gray, I really feel like I’m meeting you more than halfway here.”

I let him help me up.

I did, however, glance over at the table.

“Touch it and die,” John-Henry said.

That time, I did grin, but only for a moment.

“I shouldn’t have—” I gestured, trying to take in the whole mess. I ducked my head as I turned toward the door. “Sorry. Uh, don’t tell Emery, please?”

“Nice try.” John-Henry grabbed my arm and steered me toward the back of the house. “You’re not getting out of here so easily.”

“I know you’re going to think I’m joking, but I knew this guy who did a crazy amount of Kegels—”

“Stop talking.”

When we got to the kitchen, he sat me at the counter. He took a couple of Pepsis from the fridge and slid one to me. The can was cold, and it felt good in my sore hand. I held it for a while, trying to avoid John-Henry’s gaze. Then I moved it to my throbbing cheek.Look at me, I thought. Having a low-key social event.

“So,” John-Henry said. “Want to tell me why you tried to knock my block off?”

“Not really.”

He didn’t say anything for a while. He pressed his own can of Pepsi against the red mark on his cheek. Then he caught me looking and gave a crooked smile. “You got in a couple of good ones.”

I shrugged, but I felt like I had to say, “You too. For a senior citizen.”

The crooked smile got a little bigger. Then it faded, and the crow’s feet deepened as he studied me. The silence swelled inside the kitchen. Sure, there were sounds—the hum of the refrigerator, the whisper of air conditioning, the distant whine of a weed eater. But it was still silence. And it kept growing.

“Did something happen with Darnell?” John-Henry finally asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

My phone buzzed. With my good hand, I worked it out of my pocket—a little awkwardly—and saw Peterson’s name on the screen. I sent the call to voicemail, and the silence came rushing back in.

John-Henry opened his Pepsi. He took a sip. He leaned on the counter, still watching me.

“Don’t you have shit to do?” I asked.

“Not really. That’s one of the perks of an indefinite leave of absence.”

“I meant, like, chores. Isn’t that one of your kinks?”

“Funny you should mention that. I was doing a little cleaning before a maniac showed up on my porch and tackled me.”

The Pepsi was warming quickly, and it wasn’t doing much for my face anymore. I opened the can and took a drink.

He was still watching me.

I took out my vape.

“Not in the house.”

“Bro.”

He shrugged.

After a moment, I put my vape away again. “This is some adulting bullshit. You weren’t like this before Colt.”

“I didn’t have to be like this before Colt.”

And then he just kept watching me.

“Is this some parenting 101 stuff? Just standing there? Like eventually I’m going to say something?”

“You got it.”

I moved the can around. I thought about going outside to vape. Or, fuck it, just leaving. I mean, he couldn’t stop me. Well, maybe he could. He was freakishly strong for somebody with a serious case of the pre-forties. And his knee had definitely rearranged my guts, and not in the fun, sexy way.

“I’ve been working this case,” I said. I didn’t mean to say it; it just slipped out of me. So, maybe there was something to the parenting bullshit. “It’s…it’s pretty messed up.”

He was looking right at me, so I knew he’d heard me, but he didn’t say anything.

“It’s not even my case, not really. I guess that’s part of what’s so messed up about it. I found this kid—you heard about that?”

John-Henry nodded.

“I’m not stupid.” Then a jagged little smile crossed my mouth. “Evidence from today to the contrary.” The smile dropped away, and I said, “I know why I got so…so hung up on this. But it’s not only that. I mean, that’s not the only reason. Nobody else cared. It was just going to—to disappear.”

The silence pulled on me. Dragged. He still didn’t say anything, and a moment later, I was speaking again.

“Nobody cared about this kid. Tip. His name’s Tip. His boyfriend is pissed that Tip didn’t love him as much as he wanted, or the way he wanted. His other roommate was more of—I guess competition. His dad can’t stand having a gay son. His mom might love him, but she’s so wrapped up in herself that she didn’t even know he’d gone missing. She might love him too much. Love him in the wrong way. I don’t know; like I said, it’s all pretty fucked up.

“And Tip was his own particular brand of fucked up. I mean, he and his roommate, they had this game. Or contest. Or whatever. Their body count. These photos on their walls. I mean, just a fucking mind-fuck, man.”

I stopped. Or it was like something stopped me. Like something inside me dug in its heels, while another part of me tried to drive it on.

John-Henry’s voice startled me. “I’m only saying this because I know how much you’re going to enjoy another age joke, but we used to call it scoring. Maybe people still call it that. Kind of the same idea, right?”

A laugh worked its way out of me. I hadn’t realized I’d taken out my vape again, and I turned it in my hands. My eyes stung, and with something like shock, I realized I was on the brink of tears. I started talking again, not even knowing what I was saying, everything just pouring out of me.

“I get it, you know. You watch your parents’ fucked-up joke of a relationship, and it’s all about power and fucking and attention and control. You grow up without anybody who really cares about you. About you . Not about what they want you to be. Not about you like some kind of…accessory, like you fit into their life in this one, specific role, and otherwise, they don’t have any use for you. So, you start to think it’s you that’s the problem. That people don’t love you because you’re unlovable.” That thing inside me tried to balk again, but I heard myself say, “I’m unlovable because there’s something wrong with me. And then, one day, it happens. You realize somebody wants you. And that feels good. So, you roll with it. And maybe after, you don’t feel quite so good. But you don’t feel as bad either. And after a while, you realize that’s enough. Maybe that’s all there is. I mean, those fucking body count boards in their rooms. Like they could fix whatever was wrong with them if they just fucked enough guys.”

John-Henry was quiet when he spoke. “That would be a hard way to grow up. And a hard way to live.”

“Yeah, well.” I had to stop and take a breath, only it didn’t feel like a breath because my throat was so closed up. “I don’t think they really thought about it. I mean, they’re kids. It probably felt like the world finally made sense. Like they’d figured it out. It’s—it’s easier not to think about it too much. Especially when it’s working, when it seems like it’s working. Somebody wants to fuck me, so I must be worth something. It’s proof. Someone else thinks I’m worth something, so it must be true.” I worked my jaw, fighting the tension there. “And then it’s all gone. In, like, this one fucking nanosecond, it’s over. And it doesn’t work anymore. What you thought you knew, about how things worked, about how to make your way through this—through this fucking world, it’s no good. And it’s like, who the fuck am I?”

The words dropped away into that silence. I couldn’t look at his face, so I stared across the room. The late summer sunlight coming through the window was syrupy, golden. Motes of dust drifted. When they fell below the beam, they disappeared.

John-Henry played with the tab on his Pepsi. Then he seemed to realize what he was doing and set the can down. His voice was unexpectedly rough when he said, “I don’t know—” It was only the slightest hitch, like at the last moment, he’d changed what he’d been about to say. “—what these guys you’re investigating have gone through. Or I don’t know all of it. But I know some of it. I know what it’s like to grow up and realize the people who are supposed to love you aren’t who—aren’t who you’d like them to be, I guess. To know that they want something from you, maybe something you can’t give them, but you’re going to try anyway, because that’s the closest it ever comes to love. I know what it’s like to feel like there’s something wrong with you, and you have to hide it, or everyone will hate you. And I know what it’s like to do what you’re talking about—to try to find validation, approval, self-worth, all of that stuff, in other people. It didn’t look exactly the same for me, but I know how it feels. I know how shitty it feels when you start to realize that none of it is real. That when push comes to shove, it’s all—” And his voice tightened in what I realized, with something like shock, was anger. “—it’s all so much fucking smoke.”

I ran my hand along the counter—it was clean, of course. This was Emery’s house. I found it hard to look John-Henry in the eye. I knew what had happened last year, the accusations that had gotten John-Henry placed on leave. And I had an idea, although it was just my own theory, about why he hadn’t gone back after the truth had come out. Even wrapped up in my own shit, I’d been aware that he’d been struggling, hurting. That he’d felt betrayed. I just hadn’t done anything about it because, well, I’d been living in my own personal dumpster fire.

But I hadn’t known about everything before. Or maybe I hadn’t wanted to know. It was easy—when you were with him, listening to him, watching him, when you saw how he moved through this town, and the thousand ways it shaped itself around him, how people couldn’t help wanting his attention and approval and interest because he was Saint fucking Somerset—when you lived with all that, and you were his partner, and you were new, and you were looking at it from the outside, it was easy to assume it had always been that way. Everyone loved him. I thought they’d always loved him.

“What’d you do?” I asked.

He rubbed his forehead. “I’m still working on that.”

“No, I mean—you said when you were a kid. What’d you do?”

John-Henry didn’t answer right away. He flicked the tab on his can, and it made a little thrumming noise. “I don’t know. A lot of stuff. I mean, I’m still working on it, Gray. It’s not like it’s something you do and it’s over.” He stopped, and I thought maybe he was done, but then he said, “Accepting myself for who I am, I guess. That’s been hard. God, understatement of the year. Not just coming out, although that wasn’t easy. Everything. All the stupid stuff I did. Not stupid. That makes it sound like—” He broke off with an unhappy breath. “The selfishness. The pettiness. All the awful, cruel, cowardly shit I’ve done.” Silence came like a wave again, and when it pulled back, he said in a quieter voice, “Ree has helped a lot with that.”

For an instant, the facade cracked. It wasn’t Saint Somerset in front of me. It was a guy with his own demons he was still wrestling with. Seeing it felt like memory or like a dream or like waking up. I’d known that too, at one point. Seen it. A dirty little part of me had, if I were being honest, liked it. The drinking. The grievances. Right then, in the honey-colored light pouring into the kitchen, though, I wanted to say something to make it go away.

The best I could come up with was “Bro.”

John-Henry gave an unhappy smile. “Yeah, well, being kinder to myself has been part of it too. Trying to, anyway. I try to remember everyone makes mistakes, even if they aren’t as epically fucked-up as mine have been. I tell myself that what matters is what we do about our mistakes. How we try to do better.” He looked up, the gaze so sudden and direct that I couldn’t avoid it. Those clear blue eyes pinned me. “Do you know what I wish someone had told me?”

I shook my head.

“I wish someone had told me that I didn’t need anybody to approve of who I was. I didn’t need someone else to give me the okay. Not my friends. Not my family. At the end of the day, the only person I had to be able to face was myself. That was hard for me, for a long time, because I didn’t like who I was. And I wish someone had told me I didn’t have to be someone I didn’t like. I could change. And the changes I made, they mattered. What I did mattered. What I wanted mattered. I could be someone I wanted to be, someone I respected.” His final words had a jangly note that wasn’t quite bitterness. “Someone I could live with.”

After a moment, I cleared my throat, but my voice still had some gravel in it when I said, “Some things you can’t change just by wanting them to be different.”

“Maybe not. But everybody can change something.” The seconds ticked past. Something in the refrigerator clicked off. With one quick yank, he ripped the tab from the can and spun it across the counter toward me. “Of course,” he said drily, “I thought I had it all figured out until December.”

My phone buzzed. I glanced at it and sent the call to voicemail. When I looked up, John-Henry was watching me—too polite to ask, but obviously wondering if it was Darnell.

“Peterson,” I said.

He gave a funny little laugh. “Better you than me.”

“I don’t know about that. He’s going to fire me. I really fucked up.” And then it all started to come out—pushing my way into an investigation that wasn’t mine, fucking around with people involved in the case, the huge mess I’d made. I managed not to tell him about Sunny, but it still sounded pretty bad when I laid it all out for him.“And then today, I was trying to interview this kid, and I ended up beating the shit out of him. It was—” Glass shattering. My heart racing. My vision tunneled and black. “It was like I was someone else. Peterson’s going to have me in front of a review board, and then I’m out.”

John-Henry nodded. “Maybe. But maybe not.”

“Bro, it was bad.”

“I heard you. I also heard you tell me that the boy initiated the altercation by throwing things at you. You were defending yourself.” When I opened my mouth, John-Henry stopped me with a shake of his head. “I’m not saying what you did was right. But things get heated, and you have to make a snap judgement. And if there were extenuating circumstances, like your judgment was compromised, well, the board will take that into consideration as well.”

“I don’t know if they should. I think maybe they should fire me.”

He didn’t say anything to that.

“Also, bro, what the fuck is up with you?”

Blond eyebrows arched. “Excuse me?”

“This bullshit about sitting around the house in pearls and heels waiting for Emery to come home so you can make him a drink.”

“Yeah, that’s really not what this is—”

“Fuck yeah it is. When the hell are you going back to work?”

“Never.”

“What the fuck do you mean, never?”

“I mean I’m trying to work out a settlement with the city to get my pension and then be done.” A smile tightened his mouth. “My father is making it difficult.”

For a moment, I literally had no words. And then I said, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He looked away. Then he shrugged.

“Are you kidding me? Jesus fucking Christ. Are you shitting me?”

“I’d like to drop this.”

“Too fucking bad. Bro, people are waiting for you. We’re waiting for you. Peterson is a good chief. If you weren’t around, he’d be a great one. But he’s not you.”

He tapped the half-empty can, still not looking at me, and the aluminum flexed and popped softly. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘playing in the ruins’?”

“No. I haven’t. And I don’t care—”

“It’s one way of thinking about what you can do when your life burns down around you.” And he did look at me now, quirking his eyebrows again, in case I missed the point. “We all have these—these lives we build. And sometimes, reality comes along and knocks everything to the ground. Tramples the shit out of everything we thought we knew, everything we believed. And when everything you thought you knew about the world, about yourself, about your place in the world—when it’s all ashes, it’s paralyzing. You can’t move forward. You can’t do anything.” He shifted his weight. The sun touched the side of his face, his shoulder, the hollow of his throat. He was thinner; he’d lost weight. “How did you say it earlier? ‘Who the fuck am I?’”

“You’re John-Henry Somerset.”

That made him smile, if only for a moment. “Playing in the ruins is a way of thinking about what comes after. Because it can be—liberating, I guess, if that’s the right word. Once the fires go out, once all the things you believed were true are gone, you’re in the ruins. And you can either sit there, feeling sorry for yourself. Or you can be grateful. Be grateful that you finally get to see the world for what it is, not for what you thought it was. That you get to see yourself for who you are, and not who you thought you were. ‘Delivered to reality.’ That’s the phrase I read. Like, for example, the reality that you only became a police officer to piss off your dad.”

It took a moment for that one to work its way through my brain. I nodded slowly, taking it in. When I felt like it had landed, I said, “Yeah?”

“Yep.”

“Damn.” I rubbed that aching spot on my cheek. “You were a police officer for, how long? Fifteen years?”

“Something like that.”

“That’s seriously messed up.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Risking your life, getting shot at, pulling godawful shifts, having people spit on you and piss on you and puke on you and shit on you—and I mean that literally, bro—and doing a fucking fantastic job of it, and getting promoted to detective and solving all those murders with Emery—you did all that just to piss off your dad?” I whistled and leaned back on my stool and applauded. “Shit, bro, that is dedication .”

A hint of color rose in his cheeks. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Fuck that noise. I know better than just about anybody except Emery. The people in this town fucked you over. You’ve spent your whole adult life trying to help them, and they turned on you like a pack of fucking hyenas. That’s shitty, man. I’m sorry. Fuck them. Fuck their faces off. But don’t give me this self-pity jackoff story about how you finally realized you were only doing it to get Daddy to pay attention to you.”

He stared at me for what felt like a long time, the blush rising in his face, until finally he said, “What the fuck kind of motivational speech was that?”

“I don’t do motivational speeches, bro. I do, however, totally know how to throw a pity bone.”

“Jesus Christ, Gray.”

“What? We’re both pretty fucked up.”

He gave me a look.

“Emery would totally be okay with it.”

“Great. You tell him.”

That made me grin. John-Henry had a hint of a smile around his eyes. And once more, for an instant, it felt like things were back the way they were supposed to be.

My grin faded, though, and I said, “I really fucked things up with Darnell.”

“What happened?”

“I said some awful shit to him. He said some awful shit to me, too, but—but I think I needed to hear it. Maybe not like that. I don’t know.”

“You know what to do. Take some time for both of you to cool off, and then apologize. Do the hard part, Gray. The relationship work.”

I nodded. And then I said, “I’m going to break up with him.”

John-Henry stilled.

“I didn’t even know I was going to say that,” I said. “That just popped out.”

“Okay.”

“I know everybody thinks I’m an asshole. I know everybody thinks I’m this selfish, self-absorbed fuckboy, and I don’t see how great Darnell is, and I don’t know how lucky I am.”

“We don’t think that.” But it took him a moment to say, “Gray, nobody outside a relationship can totally understand it. I really believe that. If you think you need to break up with him, that’s a decision only you can make.”

“Emery’s going to be sad. Emery loves Darnell.”

“Emery’s not in a relationship with Darnell.” He paused before saying, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s much to say. I mean, I learned some stuff about him that—that makes me think we’re not the right fit. Not just him, I mean. But who we both are. We’ve got this weirdly toxic perfect combination of traits.”

I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud, but I remembered the fights, the threats, the time I’d set the bed on fire. Pushing. Pushing. Always pushing. Because it was a test. When will you leave? When will I learn you don’t love me? And Darnell, who’d never met someone he didn’t want to save, believing if he loved me enough, loved me long enough, he could save me from myself. And that was why he wouldn’t leave. And it was why we’d never get better.

The silence must have been longer than it felt because John-Henry said slowly, “Okay. But you and Darnell have been through a lot together. Have you considered therapy?”

I laughed, and then, at his shocked expression, I shook my head. “Sorry. It’s just funny.”

But the shock lingered, mixed with something like disapproval, even a hint of hurt. He was their friend too. Maybe, now, even more than I was. Because he’d always been the good guy.

“I should go,” I said. “I’m sorry.” And then I added, “You know.”

There was the tiniest gap in the conversation as his face smoothed. He even managed a smile. “For the ambush?”

“For everything. I really am sorry, John-Henry.”

He seemed to consider that for a moment. “We love you, Gray. We want you to be happy. Please tell us—tell me— if there’s something I can do to help you.”

“Sure.” And then, because I had to say something, I said, “And dude, you have to tell me what you think of the Rodeo King.”

But John-Henry didn’t smile. “Gray, why don’t you stay a while? We don’t have to keep talking if it’s upsetting you. We don’t have to do anything. We can watch TV. Relax. But I don’t think you should do anything while you’re upset.”

The funny thing, though, was that I wasn’t upset. I felt like I’d been sick for a long time, and now I was thinking clearly again. I pushed back from the counter, stood, and said, “Thanks, man, but I should go.” I tried to think of something else to say, but what come out was “Yeah. I’m going to go.”

He followed me to the door. And when we got there, he surprised me with a hug. It went on longer than I expected. And it kept going. After a few seconds, pins and needles started dancing through me, and I had to stare at the wall behind him.

“In case you didn’t hear me earlier,” he said, and it sounded like he was fighting to keep his voice normal, “I love you, bro.”

A wobbly laugh escaped me; it was better than crying. “You said bro.”

“Yeah, dumbass.” He let me go, and then he gave me a gentle thump on the side of the head. “Because you’re my brother.”

I couldn’t look him in the face, but I managed to say, “Your much younger brother.”

“Yeah, well, your much smarter brother is telling you not to rush into anything while you’re emotional. Please, Gray. Don’t do anything you’re going to regret.”

“Bro,” I said as I let myself out onto the porch. “Look who you’re talking to.”