Page 18

TUCKER

T he bus was loaded, and Silas was running final checks before we hit the road back to Harbor. I stood to the side, staring at the camp, wishing that I could just stay here for a day or two more. I needed to sit in the silence and try to figure out exactly what I wanted from everything. Maybe find the courage to tell my family before they find out from a news source or school gossip. Silas wandered over, handed me an apple, and crossed his arms.

“Thanks for skipping breakfast this morning.” He scowled.

"I was packing," I said with a shrug, ignoring him and the way my thoughts felt sluggish, rolling around in the back of my mind.

“That’s probably the most bullshit answer you’ve given me to date.” He shook his head. “Eat.”

I took a bite of the apple, counting each chew before swallowing and stared at him. "Happy now?”

“Do I look happy?” He asked, and the answer was obviously no. “I want you back with Riona when we get home, no more of this bullshit.”

“Seriously, Doc?” I groaned. I didn’t have time for mandated therapy right now.

“Deadly,” he snapped. “You don’t wanna listen to my advice? You deal with her. She won’t let you get away with this shit and you know it.”

“She’s terrifying,” I whined, knowing exactly how pathetic I sounded.

“You should have thought about that before you decided to open Pandora’s box,” he reminded me. “I’ll call her on the way home and make you an appointment.”

“I can do it myself,” I said as he patted my shoulder and made his way to the bus.

"I know you can, but you won’t. So I’m skipping the middleman—just like you skipped breakfast." He stared at me one last time before disappearing up the stairs.

I sighed, still stalled out and unable to move my feet.

Leaving meant dealing with every complicated puzzle piece back home. All I wanted to do was play baseball and forget about all of it. I was half tempted to pull them off the bus just for one last practice.Inhaling the smell of camp, pine trees and lake water, I let it fill my lungs and wash down the stress. The trees rustled in the wind as the clouds moved in; there was a storm coming in more ways than one, and I wasn’t ready to weather either of them.

“Tuck,” Josh’s voice came from behind me, and I turned to look at him. “Get on the bus.”

I nodded and followed him up the steps to the only open seats on the bus. I looked around hesitantly before sinking into the seat next to him. Cael winked at me and gave me two thumbs up as I took the seat. I had a feeling the ride back wouldn’t be a thumbs-up situation, more like awkward silence with a few choice words that would surely piss one of us off.

That seemed to be the circle we had drawn out, uncomfortable silence followed by me saying something stupid that set Josh off, only for him to prove my point. I turned to speak—though I didn’t even know what I was going to say , but he was staring out the window, completely oblivious to my struggle.

How did I ask him about his past without starting a fight?

And how the fuck was Cael so good at doing it? When I tried to get to know people, they just talked to me like I was a toddler or yelled at me like I was prying into things I wasn’t allowed to know.

“What’s your favorite color?” I blurted out and immediately regretted it.

“What?” Josh turned to look at me.

I cleared my throat and shifted in my seat to give him as much space as I could manage. “Your favorite color…”

“I don’t have one.” Josh stared at me as if I were insane.

“You don’t have a favorite color?” I asked him, confused by his answer. He could have said anything, blue, red… but instead he said he didn’t have one.

“Nope,” he grumbled. It looked like he was going to turn back around, but he stayed staring at me. I could smell the cologne he used that morning, and it tangled with the faint smell of generic camp shampoo and the pine tar he used on his bats; it lingered on his skin and tickled my nose. I inhaled slowly, filling my chest with air and living in that scent because it was a small piece of my haven left behind for another year.

“Mine’s yellow,” I said to him when I finally collected my thoughts.

“You would love the most obnoxious color in the rainbow, Tuck.” Josh shook his head at me. “What’s appealing about yellow?”

“Golden retrievers, buttercups, bananas…” I shrugged.

“You did not just list off yellow things .” Josh smiled at me and the lines around his eyes crinkled in the softest way. I’d never noticed how gentle his face looked when it wasn’t scrunched angrily.

“The sun, cheese, lemon cookies…”

“Please stop.” He sighed, but the smile remained.

“It’s easy to pick a favorite color, you just have to think about things that you love,” I explained to him. “Honey,” I added. "It’s yellow…”

“Yeah, I know that honey is yellow, Tuck,” he said, but went quiet. I didn’t think it was even possible for someone to not have a favorite color, but the question weighed heavily on his shoulders in an unexpected way.

I should have known it was coming, it was just a part of the circle. We had slipped unknowingly into awkward silence all because Josh didn’t have a favorite color.

"Favorite food?" I asked.

“All food is food,” he fired back.

“Mine’s chili, or actually… when Ella gets french fries from Hilly’s and we eat them with the leftover chili, that’s the best,” I clarified.

“Surprised you actually have a favorite, considering you didn’t eat dinner yesterday or breakfast today before we got on the bus,” he said, completely ignoring the light tone in my voice. I was trying, and he just wanted to fight, as per usual.

I chose to ignore his jab and moved on. "What music do you listen to?”

“I don’t,” he said.

“You don’t listen to music? Like at all?” I was growing increasingly worried for Josh’s well-being. At this point in the conversation, it seemed like all he could manage was baseball and angry contemplation.

“I like silence, Tuck.” It was a pointed response, aimed at me to get me to shut up, but if there was one thing I was bad at, it was social cues, so I kept talking, if only to get under his skin.

“Void of color, eats to survive, and hates music…” I hummed. “Do you read?”

“No.”

“What about movies?”

Josh shook his head.

“Seriously?” I grumbled. "Do you watch other sports?”

“Nope.”

“Ok,” I said, refusing to give up. “Favorite thing to do outside of playing baseball?” I asked him. There had to be something he enjoyed other than the sport.

He scowled at me, his lips pressing into that typical Josh expression. Anger and annoyance. “Baseball is the only thing I do .”

“That can’t be true. There has to be something you do other than baseball,” I said, refusing to take his answer at face value. "I study," he muttered, clipped and flat.

“You study?” I scoffed and flipped my hat into my lap before brushing the knots from my hair with my fingers.

“Yup.”

“Shit, Logan, I’m trying to get to know you… You can’t just study and pitch,” I complained, the frustration coming out in my voice.

“I can, because that’s what I do, Tuck, and if you need something more exciting than that, go harass someone else because that’s my life,” he muttered under his breath, but his voice had fallen into an irritated territory.

“There’s got to be more!” I urged, and Josh finally broke. He shifted in his seat and stared at me.

"There’s nothing more," he said, his voice low but steady. “That’s it. I’m sorry that my life isn’t sunshine and favorite foods. We didn’t have a TV growing up, and the only music I ever heard was from the apartment above us when they turned it up to drown out the sounds coming from ours,” he snarled. His cheeks were red and his eyes were darker than I had ever seen them. His confession turned my mouth dry.

“I didn’t have a golden retriever, or a mom who made me dinner every night. I didn’t have a dad who played catch with me, or siblings to carry the blame when something got broken by accident. It was just me and my mom in some shitty apartment that permanently smelled like smoke and sex. Quit trying to fucking relate to me Dean. You're from the side of the tracks where boys get yellow as a favorite color. You don’t get it—you never will."

“I’m sorry,” I said, and the fact that I meant it rattled him. It was written all over his face as his shoulders relaxed and he settled back into his seat. He pressed himself up against the window and turned away from me.

It wasn’t his whole story, but it was something to go on, and by the sounds of it, nothing in his life had been even close to normal. The bus jolted, and I swallowed tightly to keep the nausea from rising as I leaned back against the seat for a split second before sitting up again.

"You know what? No," I argued. "No."

He didn’t move, but I saw his brow arch.

“You think my life is perfect just because I grew up with money?” I bit out. “It wasn’t. I grew up in a house where I couldn’t be anything but what they wanted me to be. A gilded cage is still a fucking cage, Josh. Say what you want, but my life was far from perfect."

Silence.

“Yeah, Dad played catch with me, but the second he finds out he’s never getting a daughter-in-law out of his golden children, he’ll never look me in the eyes again. My Mom? She openly talks about how horrible of a sin gay people are at the fucking dinner table on Sundays. And sure, I’m eating my favorite food, but I’m doing it while she rants about how people like me don’t deserve to breathe the same air as her at the grocery store. So, maybe it looks perfect—but it’s fucking not. I’m not taking that shit from you."

“Why not?” Josh laughed, it was hollow and quiet, and he didn’t bother to look at me when he asked. “You take it from everyone else.”