41. Hotaru
There isn’t a naive bone in my body, yet I am so fucking naive.
I grip my cell phone so hard, it might crumble in my hand. Kinda like my life.
How fitting?
My father’s tirade continues a string of Japanese spoken so fast that even I struggle to comprehend it. I wonder if he even knows what he’s saying.
A few keywords stand out, though.
Haji. Kai nashi. Baka.
Shame. Worthless. Stupid.
Mostly, I tune him out. Something heavier than his disappointment weighs on my chest.
Arlo’s withdrawal.
He may not lose me, but I’m losing him. One piece at a time.
Somehow, it hurts worse this way.
And that’s where my apparent na?veté comes in. I’d expected this incident to bring us closer together. Like his cutting episode last year. It had been the catalyst for our touching, for our bonding, for our physical exploration.
No matter how short-lived.
While he’d spent three full days in the hospital, true to my word, I’d been by his side.
I’d held his hand and placed cool washcloths on his head. I’d hushed loud nurses and kept the room nice and dim. I’d told him stories and read him his favorite poems. I’d slept with my head on his thigh and his fingers threaded through my hair.
Then he’d been questioned. Then he’d been discharged.
After that, everything fell away piece by piece.
First, his nightmares came back with a vengeance.
Then Phillips’s family attorney had knocked the second chunk loose, threatening me with assault charges. Of course, I didn’t blink. I simply explained that if they wanted to go to court, Arlo’s attorney, one that didn’t exist, would happily bring charges of attempted murder against Phillip.
With Arlo’s injuries, the physical evidence, and witnesses, it wouldn’t be hard to prove.
That shut them up.
The last straw seemed to be the fine. No matter your role, if you were involved with a fight, you were fined, if not expelled. It was what kept the school full of testosterone-addled boys and young men from devolving into utter chaos. That’s the school’s stance anyway. Personally, I just think they like the extra funds.
The fee wiped out Arlo’s savings. For me, it means enduring this phone call that seemed to go on and on and round and round about my lack of any positive qualities.
My tongue stings with the desire to tell him I love a man just so he can be that much more disappointed in me.
I hold it back. Mostly because my feelings aren’t reciprocated. Not really.
“You need to remove yourself from this Arlo Judge’s life.”
A gasp chokes me.
My father never speaks English. Even in business meetings, he uses a translator, never stooping so low as to speak such a simple man’s language. Of all the things he could say in the language, why that?
Anger bubbles up, burning my throat.
“He is a weak person. You will not be associated with him. Do I make myself clear?”
It balloons, building to a pressure nothing can hold back, not even my father’s disapproval.
“He is not weak. He is the strongest person I’ve ever met. He is my best friend. My only friend.”
A restricted groan whispers through the phone. I can imagine his face turning caramel to red and his cheeks puffing.
“Then you are weaker than I suspected. Weaker than your mother,” he hisses.
His words land like Phillip’s rock. Only my father’s aim is dead center.
I walk to the tree line near the back edge of campus, where we’re now forbidden from going. No more fields on Fridays. No more freedom. I brace my forehead on the nearest tree and suck oxygen in through my nose.
“You are weak and not worthy of the Kido name.”
“What?” I hiccup. “How is defending my friend weak? How?”
“Your friend should be able to defend himself,” he spits.
“Like Mom should have defended herself from the adults who abused her when she was a child?” I vomit back.
“What happened to your mother was in her past. She should have left it there.” My father hollers every word. The vibrations rattle around my brain, trying to make something of my already scrambled thoughts.
Several truths solidify.
Until Arlo deals with his past, it will always haunt him. It will always haunt us. I can’t push him to face it. I can’t face it for him. He has to take the steps himself. All I can do is be there for him when he does. If he does.
Tears slick my cheeks.
My father reverts to Japanese. “Leave Arlo Judge behind. Leave your mother behind. Become the Kido man you are meant to become.”
“Kesshite. Never,” I growl through my tears.
“Then you are not my son,” my father bellows.
My heart constricts. Even though we’ve never been particularly close, he’s the only family I have left. If he disowns me, his parents will disown me too. I want to start this conversation over. I want a redo so we don’t end up here. I want so much, but only one outcome has consequences I can live with.
I won’t lie to my dad. I won’t forget my mother. I won’t abandon Arlo.
“Then I am not your son.”
In truth, I had never been my father’s son. Not one he was proud of. I was always my mother’s child. Even when I let her down, she was never disappointed in me.
In the past few years, I’ve grown into a man I am proud of. I don’t need this man to do it for me. I hang up on the man who both gave and tainted my life, resolved to never speak to him again.
I would do it for Arlo, but I do it for me.