Out of Nowhere (26 page)

Rafe turns on his side so we’re facing each other and kisses me, softly at first, then more urgently. This. This is what I need. I need to forget everything except the feeling of Rafe against me, his mouth on mine, his hair between my fingers, his hands on my skin.

“Rafe,” I murmur into the kiss. “Please. I need….”

“What?” He strokes my cheek. “Anything.”

“You—I… I need you.”

I try to pull him on top of me, needing to feel that he’s really here.

“Yeah?”

I nod. He’s studying my face, and I try with every last bit of energy I have to show him how much I want him. How much I need this.

“Okay,” he breathes, and relief rushes through me.

“You’re so handsome,” he says, kissing my neck. I snort, and he covers my mouth with his fingers and goes on. “I didn’t think about it until the kids started talking about it, but I can see what they mean.” He runs a finger down my cheek, over my chin, down the bridge of my nose, and over my eyebrows. “I watched the show.
Supernatural
. Last week.” He looks a little embarrassed at this confession. “I was missing you and… anyway, I see the resemblance.”

He kisses me before I can argue with him, sliding a hand under my neck to control the kiss. It’s hot and hard and I pull him down on top of me. My exhaustion evaporates, replaced by need. Our hands are everywhere as we kiss. Rafe is like a tornado and I meet it with everything I have, until we’re straining together, sweaty and shaking. Until I’m obliterated. Gone.

SOMEHOW LAST
night with Rafe, I forgot everything. I forgot that Pop is dead. I forgot that, in the last few months of his life, I didn’t even notice anything was wrong because I barely saw him. I forgot that he died terrified and alone in a room of doctors. I forgot that I’ll never see him again, that I’ll never have the chance to earn his respect or… or…. But now it all comes rushing back.

Brian is a mess when I pick him up. He’s in Pop’s bed, eyes red and clothes stinking of beer. We meet Liza and Sam at the cemetery, and after a few minutes, Daniel walks over slowly, Rex at his side. They both look put together and pressed. Daniel doesn’t even look sad. His green eyes are clear, and though he’s a little pale, he mostly looks impatient, as if this is all just an inconvenience to him.

And with him is Ginger, his best friend. The two of them put their heads together, and when Ginger says something, Daniel looks over at me with a half smile on his face. As if it’s not bad enough that Ginger told Daniel about my tattoo, it looks like they’re laughing about it. I’m still furious with myself for going to her to ask about getting it covered up in the first place. She was the only female tattoo artist I could think of, and it seemed less embarrassing than having another man see the butterfly. My stomach clenches.

During the funeral, I can’t look away from the coffin. Pop’s coffin. The words being said about Pop don’t matter. This guy didn’t know him.

Hell, I’m not sure that I knew him. I wrack my brain, trying to think of things I know about him.

I could read his mood, sure, since it was necessary to surviving in his house. Tell when he was pissed off and I should leave him alone. When he was in a good mood and I could approach. When he wanted to teach me something and when he wanted me to figure it out for myself. I know what beer he liked, and what rum. I know which teams he rooted for and which radio stations he listened to. I know his socket wrench of choice and which brand of oil he’d recommend to a customer.

Yet I can’t think of a single other thing about him.

And he didn’t really know me either, did he?

I’m shaking with cold and nausea as they turn the crank that lowers Pop into the ground. I wrap my arms around my stomach, trying to keep from puking. Trying to pretend that they’re Rafe’s arms around me, like they were when I woke up this morning. Even though I’m the one who told him not to come, everything in me cries out for him.

As the coffin sinks deeper and deeper into the earth, something dark inside me follows it down. I can’t stop the tears from coming no matter how hard I try to squeeze my eyes shut against them.

Rex is holding Daniel tight against his side, and an uncontrollable fury rips through me at the sight. I think about what Rafe said, that my anger is really desire for what he has. And I nearly double over with pain when I realize he’s right.

Because I haven’t just lost Pop. I’ve lost the chance to ever know for sure. To know if Pop would still love me if he knew the truth about me.

I did everything he ever wanted. I worked with him on the cars he loved. I advertised the shop and put together our website. I made sure Brian kept on the straight and narrow at work and didn’t let Sam turn into a corporate douchebag. I lived nearby and drank with him, watched sports with him, went to baseball games with him even though I hate baseball. I did everything he wanted, lived the life he wanted for me, and I still don’t know. I don’t know if one simple confession—a confession Daniel made at sixteen—would have changed everything.

And now I’ll never have the chance to find out.

Daniel’s leaning into Rex and staring off into space the way he does when he’s pretending to be somewhere else. It’s an expression he’s worn since he was about thirteen years old. When he decided he didn’t care about us anymore. When he decided we were too stupid, too low-class, too crude to want anything to do with us.

After, Luther hugs me and I practically throw up. I don’t want anyone to touch me. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I just need to get out of here. I need something that isn’t dark and foul and miserable. I stumble away from my brothers, from the pile of dirt covering Pop. I don’t know where I’m going, just that I need to get out of sight so I can lose it. I fumble with my phone, but my hands are shaking too hard and I drop it on the wet ground.

“Fuck!”

I pick it up, but before I can dial it, I hear my name and look up, confused, to see Rafe coming toward me.

“Hey,” I croak, and he catches me before I stumble.

“Oh, babe,” he murmurs and wraps me in his arms. He guides me into some kind of storage shed, leans against the wall, and pulls me to him.

“It’s okay.” He’s talking low, saying soothing stuff I’m not listening to because all I can do is clutch at his shirt and try not to shake apart.

“Tighter,” I say, and he squeezes me so tight it’s almost painful. But I start to calm down a bit. Stop shaking so much. Breathe. “Rafe, I don’t even know if he would—if he’d known that I’m—that I—that we—I just—I don’t even know if he would—fuck!”

“Colin,” Rafe says softly, and I look up at him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I nod. There’s nothing else to say. And there’s nothing I can do. I missed my chance. I just have to try and live with that.

Rafe is warm and solid, and I can almost pretend we’re back in my bed, waking up slowly as Shelby pads over our legs.

Suddenly, Rafe freezes, and I turn around to see what startled him, blinking away tears in the dim light.

When I see Daniel, every muscle in my body tenses. Rafe’s hand is still on my shoulder, but I am a tiny, cringing thing alone in the universe.

“Holy fucking…,” Daniel mutters, staring between Rafe and me. I can see the exact moment he realizes what’s going on. He drops into a crouch, like the force of his surprise drives him downward, elbows on his knees, looking up at me in shock.

I see my hand reach out toward Daniel as if it’s not even attached to me. My whole arm is shaking, and Daniel looks like he’s about to crumble.

“Look, Dan,” I say as he stands back up. My voice doesn’t even sound like my own, and before I can get any words out, he launches himself at me.

“You fucking
liar
,” he screams, grabbing my coat and pulling me closer to him.

For the briefest second, his anger doesn’t register and I think he’s going to hug me. Even when he starts hitting me, I can’t quite make sense of it. Because it’s not just anger. It’s something that seems like… grief. But Daniel doesn’t care about me. I can’t believe he even cares enough to hit me. Sure, he gets angry and wants to fight when I start shit with him. But I didn’t even do anything.

I only realize Daniel’s crying when I hit the dirt and he lands on top of me, his tears dropping onto my face as he punches me. He’s practically screaming. I shake off my surprise enough get in a few hits, but he is powered by some kind of unholy rage. For the first time, I see that all those feelings that make him so easy to read, when pushed further, have power.

He slams my shoulders to the ground and chokes me with his forearm. I jab him in the kidney, the mouth, the stomach. And then we’re just wrestling. I’m trying to get Daniel off me without hurting him too bad, but he’s trying to do real damage. His fist slams into my mouth just before he’s pulled off me, still screaming that I’m a liar.

It’s Rex dragging Daniel backward, holding him tight as Daniel shakes with anger.

I pull myself up and blood splatters the dirt floor when I spit. I concentrate on it so I don’t have to look at Daniel’s face. At my little brother’s face so contorted with grief that I know I’ve made a huge miscalculation in thinking he didn’t care.

“I—I—please, Danny,” I say. I haven’t called him that since he was a kid. Since I was the one he’d come to in the middle of the night when nightmares about Mom’s death woke him. Since we’d sing along to the radio together and I’d walk him to school. Since he used to look up at me with something like admiration, the only person to ever look at me like that.

“Don’t fucking call me that, you fucking
liar
,” Daniel yells, his voice just a scratch, and the only thing that keeps him from launching himself at me again is Rex holding him back.

“But,” I try, “can I—”

“How
could
you?” Daniel croaks out. Tears are running down his cheeks and his eyelashes are spiky with moisture, just like they were when he was that little boy. He’s looking at me like he used to when I stomped on his sandcastles at the beach. Anger, shock, betrayal.

I’m underwater again. I can’t breathe, and this time, I don’t want to. Then his face changes to the expression I’m more familiar with. Scorn. He just shakes his head at me like I’m nothing. Like I’ve failed to live up to his standards so completely that he can’t even think what to do with me.

He turns to leave and a new panic grips me.

“Dan,” I choke out. “Don’t tell Brian and Sam. Please. Please,” I whisper. Tears are running down my face, and I can’t even lift my hand to wipe them away. For a second when he turns around, something nasty flickers in Daniel’s eyes, and I feel a flash of relief. Relief that Daniel’s as petty as I thought. Relief that if he hurts me, then it means, for once, maybe I’m not the worst one.

Relief that the choice is being taken out of my hands.

But then he takes a deep breath and his shoulders droop, the victim once again. He nods once and closes his eyes like maybe he can forget I ever existed. Rex follows him out, as close on his heels as a shadow.

“Oh god,” I choke. I stumble to the doorway of the shed and gag, throwing up the toast Rafe made for me this morning. Then I’m just dry heaving and gagging.

The world has narrowed to a single drop of blood that fell on the dirt from my nose as I puked. It’s an ocean, trying to swallow me up. And I want to let it.

“I wish I was dead,” I whisper, too soft for anyone to hear, and Rafe’s hands on me falter.

THE GRAY
of the ocean is one shade darker than the sky. The waves roll in, crash, and pull back in an endless rhythm. It’s like as long as the outside is moving, then things inside me can stay still. The sound of the ocean is so constant that everything we say sounds softer here, makes me feel tipsy or sun-drunk.

We’re in Ocean City, on the Maryland coast. I hardly remember getting here. After the funeral, Rafe packed a bag for me, grabbed Shelby’s litter box, and put us in the car. Then he just drove and I slept.

The house was Javier’s and he left it to Rafe when he died. It’s right on the beach, up on stilts so that you take stairs up from the entrance to the first floor high off the ground. A kitchen and breakfast room open onto a large deck that looks out over the ocean. Upstairs is a master bedroom that also looks out on the ocean and a small front bedroom with windows out onto the tourist town of Ocean City: donut shops, fried fish and chicken restaurants, tiki bars, and bowling alleys that are all deserted in the winter.

On every side table are arrangements of shells that seem too perfect to have come from the beach outside, smooth stones that sparkle with mica, and coasters printed with starfish and sand dollars. In the bathrooms are dishes of small blue and green and pink soaps in the shapes of shells that have never been used and towels with beach umbrellas embroidered at the hems. Paintings of palm trees and herons in seashell-crusted frames are scattered around the walls of the breakfast room. The trivets look like they’ve had shells pressed into them to leave imprints, and there are vases in the corners filled with tall, stalky grasses.

The bedspread in the master bedroom is striped in shades of blue like the ocean and the sheets are the color of the sand on the beach outside. Last night as I fell asleep, I imagined that I was lying on the beach and the blanket was the ocean slowly covering me, pulling me into its dark.

Rafe ordered pizza, and though I can taste it, I can’t remember eating it. He’s talking about Javier, and I don’t know if I asked him a question or not. Then I realize he’s talking so I don’t have to. To distract me.

He tells me how Javier bought this place with his partner before the area was developed. When the beach was empty. How he’d tease Clive for the way he decorated: like the beach took a shit in the house. How Javier brought Rafe out here and it was the most peaceful place he’d ever been.

How the ocean makes him feel small. “You look out over the ocean and you know that the water you’re seeing, no matter how far out you look, is only the very edge. It’s like space or something. Scary big. It’s kind of strange to know you’re only experiencing the very outside of something. All those kids in the summer, wave-jumping, swimming, surfing in the sun. They’re just playing on the very edge of this giant monster. But I like it. The sense that there’s something bigger than me that connects me to someone far away, on the other side, looking out over the water thousands of miles from here, from a totally different place, living a completely different life.”