24. Gil
CHAPTER 24
GIL
S aturday morning, I finally caved in.
Not about Rowan, but about Jack.
I showed up at his house with two breakfast burritos crammed into my backpack and what I hoped was an apology in my eyes. He opened the door looking tired, rubbing sleep from the corner of his eyes before stepping out of the way to let me in.
“You look like shit,” I said.
He snorted. “My best friend has been blowing me off for a week and someone woke me up.”
I slung the backpack onto one arm and unzipped it, wafting the smell of eggs and bacon in his general direction. It perked him up enough to smile, which was more than I deserved. Jack snatched the bag off my shoulder and shuffled off into the kitchen like a zombie only concerned with his next bacon fix.
“You look like shit too,” he said, already with a bottle of hot sauce in hand.
I pressed my fingers against my jaw and rubbed at the half-week’s worth of scruff that had been growing since my fight with Rowan.
“I look like I haven’t shaved. There’s a difference.”
Jack poked me beneath my eye, tracing his finger in a half-moon toward my temple.
“These bags are my imagination then?” he asked.
I swatted his hand away and stole the hot sauce, adding a generous sprinkle to the top of my own burrito before taking a bite and sliding onto a barstool.
“I haven’t seen Rowan in a few days.”
It was the truth, but my issues were so far beyond simply not seeing him. It was more than just the sex too. I’d gone two years after Philip without being intimate with another man, but a handful of weeks with Rowan had made the thought of another two near impossible. I also knew that didn’t have anything to do with the act itself, but more the person I was engaging in the act with. It was Rowan who had caught me in his net and stole me for himself. Whether he’d meant to or not didn’t matter. He and his damn kid had worn on me, and even just three days in…I missed them both.
“So, fighting with everyone who cares about you?” he asked around a mouthful of a breakfast he hadn’t even paid for.
Sighing, I took another bite of my breakfast. “When is the wedding?”
“The spring.” He added more hot sauce to both of our burritos, more for mine and less for his. Just like always.
“I know what you said last time we talked.” The foil wrapper crinkled loudly beneath my fingers. “That our friendship?—”
He cut me off, smacking me on the side of the head with so much force I almost fell off the barstool. “You know what you thought you heard, not what I said.”
“You said they didn’t think you should stand up for him if we were friends,” I repeated it to him. I remembered exceedingly well what he’d said to me.
“Right.” He bit into his burrito, eyeing me over the top edge, eyes finally awake and somewhat amused.
“I shouldn’t be here. I just…”
“Why not?” he asked, tilting his head to the side. “Why shouldn’t you be here?”
“Because Philip is your brother. They’re your family.”
“You’re more family to me than any of them have ever been.” Jack set his burrito down, propped against a fruit bowl, and hit me again…this time in the middle of my chest.
I rubbed the contact point, even though it hadn’t hurt. I was too stunned for pain. “What do you mean?”
“He’s my brother. They’re my parents, but…you’re my best friend.”
“Jack.” I set my breakfast down beside his, rubbing my greasy hands off on the thighs of my jeans.
“I’m not going to stand up for him as long as he’s lying to everyone about who he is,” he said softly.
“He’s not gay,” I reminded. “He’s always been bisexual. Like me. It’s fine for him to be with a woman. He’s not lying.”
“He doesn’t want to marry her, though. She’s sweet, but she’s not right for him and he knows it. He’s told me so. He just wants everyone off his back.” Jack dragged his tongue across the front of his teeth and shrugged, doing everything he could to avoid my gaze. “And I won’t support that. It’s not fair for either of them. Or me.”
“Or you?”
Jack’s cheeks flushed red as the hot sauce between us.
“If they push it on him, they’ll push it on me, and I’m…I’m not as good of a liar as he is,” Jack admitted.
“Are you…are you coming out to me right now?”
He scrubbed both hands down his face and walked to the other end of his kitchen, staring out the window over of his sink.
“I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just saying, I can’t—no—I won’t stand up for him. I won’t support what he’s doing or what they’re asking of him.”
“Have you told them yet?” I asked, turning to study the tight lines of his back, muscles stretching the threadbare t-shirt I was fairly certain he’d stolen from me at some point in our friendship.
“That I wouldn’t stand up, yeah.”
“When?”
“Before I talked to you last.”
Regret exploded in my stomach, souring the cheese and eggs that had already begun to settle there.
“I’m a shit, Jack.” I climbed off the stool and went to him, turning him around and wrapping my arms around him. Jack sighed and pressed his forehead against my shoulder, arms hanging limp at his sides.
“You’re fine,” he muttered into my chest.
“I should have been here for you. For whatever you needed.”
“It was complicated.” He sighed again and shrugged his shoulders to knock me loose. I let him go, taking a step back so I could see his face.
“Are they speaking to you still?”
“Philip is, but our parents aren’t. Though, I think if I told them everything I told you, he’d cut me out too.”
“Do you want to talk about this? Any part of it?”
I’d been a horrible friend. After Philip and I split up, Jack had saved me from myself in ways I’d never be able to thank him for, and the first time he truly needed me since then, I was so wrapped up in my own head and my own shit that I hadn’t even known what he was going through. Rowan—and my feelings for him—had tripped me up beyond comprehension, and I’d very nearly lost the person who mattered more than anyone else.
“No,” he said simply. “I just want you to know that I choose you, and if I ever want to talk about the rest of it?—”
“I’m here,” I said, shoving my hands into my pockets. “I’ll always be here.”
“And you’ll listen better,” he added, mouth twitching into a smirk. “So you hear what you’re being told, not what you think is being said.”
“I’ll listen better,” I promised him.
“Okay.” Jack’s stomach growled, and he glanced longingly back at our abandoned breakfast. “Can you move so I can get my burrito?”
I stepped out of the way and followed Jack back to the bar, climbing onto the stool and re-saucing both of our burritos. We ate together in a quiet and companionable silence which felt more comfortable than any other feeling I’d had since the middle of the week.
After we finished and I gathered my helmet and backpack to get ready to head back home, Jack stopped me in the hallway with a gentle touch on my forearm.
“There’s one more thing,” he said.
I swallowed down all the garbage feelings that had churned up earlier in the morning, hoping I didn’t know what was going to come next.
“I don’t want to see him, Jack.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I don’t want to talk to him either,” I said.
“Maybe just to clear the air,” he said.
“It’s already polluted,” I said, sliding my helmet over my head in hopes having half my face obscured would keep Jack off my case. “There’s nothing more for Philip and I to say to each other.”
“Are you sure?”
Before I could argue, he reached up and slammed my visor closed. He furrowed his brow, and clicked it back open.
“What?” I asked, rolling my eyes at him.
“You didn’t say what was going on with Rowan.”
“Nothing is going on with Rowan.” I closed my visor again.
“That’s different from before.”
“Rowan was always just a distraction,” I reminded Jack, adjusting my backpack into place on my shoulders and sidestepping toward his front door.
“You fell in love with him,” Jack said.
“No.”
“Yes,” he argued.
“I don’t love Rowan Verne.”
But it was a lie. I could taste it in the back of my throat.
“Don’t make his kid the issue, Gil.”
“I didn’t come over here to talk about Rowan,” I pointed out. “I came over here to talk about you and me and your brother.”
“Is it not an extension of that?”
“Not today, Jack, alright?” I opened his front door and stepped onto the porch.
“Tomorrow, then,” he said.
“You know Sunday is my alone day.”
“Tomorrow, then,” he repeated.
The thought of going home and knowing Rowan wouldn’t be showing up at my house in the middle of the night soured what was left of the tolerable feelings that lived in my body, and I answered Jack with a reluctant nod.
“Tomorrow.”
“Your Sunday isolation rule is ridiculous anyway,” he said, closing the door halfway on me. “You don’t need to sulk alone.”
Suddenly, it was hard to breathe, hard to see. Was I about to cry? That was preposterous. My scar ached, and even though I had the visor down, I turned away quickly so Jack couldn’t see.
“Tomorrow!” he hollered as I shoved the key into the ignition on my bike. “And thanks for breakfast!”
I turned the bike on, the roar of the engine drowning out whatever he was about to say next. I didn’t deserve Jack’s forgiveness, at least not as quickly as he’d given it. But that was the thing about Jack, why he’d always been the best man in his family. Why he’d always been the best man in my life. I took the long way back home, winding around the edges of town. Somehow, I knew what was coming next, but I was out of back roads and I needed coffee before I lost my mind. I needed to get home, even though I knew with certainty who would be there when I pulled into the driveway.
I opened the garage and pulled in alongside my car, cutting the ignition and resting the bike on its stand. I took my helmet off without looking behind me, but the familiar click of Fisher’s bicycle kickstand hitting the concrete was unmistakable. How quickly he and his dad had ingrained themselves into my life.
“What do you want, Fisher?” I yanked my helmet off and rested it on the fuel tank.
“Something’s wrong with my bike,” he said, pulling his earbuds out and sliding them into his pocket. He looked so much like how I imagined Rowan must have looked at that age. Curly red hair and bright blue eyes, freckles across his cheeks, and limbs too long for his body. Even with the hoodie pulled up over his head, it was impossible to ignore the vibrant shock of curls that poked out, and I found myself wondering what his mother looked like.
“Does your dad know you’re here?” I asked.
“He’s been working on the house non-stop all week,” Fisher said. “He forgot to get groceries yesterday and he’s just…I don’t know.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“He told me not to bother you anymore.”
“And yet.”
“I’m not bothering you, though. Am I, Gil? I don’t think I am.”
I shrugged out of my backpack and unzipped my leather jacket, frowning down at the most earnest and brave kid I’d ever met in my life. I couldn’t walk away from him and his dad, just like I couldn’t walk away from Jack. I’d repaired one of the relationships in my life, and whether I wanted it or not…Rowan was going to be up next. Even if I never got him into my bed again, we needed to have a proper conversation about what had happened between us and what the future of our relationship looked like. Not just for us, but for Fisher too.
Notwithstanding, that third party was one of the reasons I’d been so adamantly against kids in my relationship with Philip…but Fisher was a barnacle I hadn’t yet been able to shake. Sighing, I stared down at him, seeing so much of Rowan in his face I knew I couldn’t turn him away.
“What’s wrong with the bike, kid?”