33. Arlo
“Hey, fellas.” Nate nods at us as he steps off the bus with a couple of guys I recognize from the wrestling team and one I’ve seen absolutely maiming at the debate tables. He’s undefeated.
I jerk my chin at the group. “Nate. Henry. Guys.” My arms knit over my chest. I’m propped on a low stone wall, legs out and crossed at the ankles, waiting for Hota.
He’s a few steps away, back to the bus, hand at his nape, while the other one attempts not to crush his phone. It’s against his ear. He’s quiet now, listening to whatever his father is saying.
His only acknowledgment of the guys is to take a few steps away.
“His dad,” I explain to the group eyeballing him.
“Ah.” Henry chuckles. “I should have known. I look like that when I talk to mine. The only difference is you can usually hear the screaming through the phone from this distance.”
“You talk.” The really good debate guy blabs before Henry is even finished with his anecdote.
“Occasionally.” I shrug.
“What are you up to?” Nate asks in an effort to redirect the conversation. His gaze dances covertly between me and Hota.
“Just getting away from school for a while,” I hedge, not wanting to admit the real and purposeful reason we came to town today. “You?”
“Same.” He stuffs a hand into his trousers, ones very similar to the ones he wore only eight days ago. “We’re going to see what they’re showing at the cinema. Would you guys want to come along?”
“No thanks. Hope you have fun. Maybe we’ll catch up later.” I say the words more confidently than I actually feel. Today is my day to act boldly. Today is the day for baby steps. Though what I said is kind of a leap.
“Yeah,” Nate nods, “I’ll catch up with you guys later.” He leaves the others out of the statement.
My shoulders pull back and my spine feels stronger than it did a few minutes ago. “Good.”
We haven’t had a repeat of last week. I haven’t broached the topic with Hota. We certainly didn’t discuss it with Nate after Hota cleaned him up and sent him on his way.
“Let’s go, or we’ll be late.” The awkward guy takes a few steps away.
Though, I can’t judge. What’s more awkward than not talking at a school for a full year? Not much. Maybe lusting after your roommate, who you can’t touch because it ignites memories of your abusive uncle who he helped you kill.
Yeah, that.
“See ya.” Nate nods, then hurries away with his group.
Hota speaks a string of Japanese that I only catch a few words of. Perhaps, if he spoke slowly and clearly, I could understand enough to know what’s up. We’ve been practicing every day. Hell, it’s the most we talk these days.
I hate the growing distance between us. It hurts to be away from him even for a few minutes. But it’s for Hota’s own good.
He needs more than his broken suitemate.
“Ready?”
Hota towers over me. His hands are in fists at his sides, and he’s the most stunning thing I’ve ever seen.
The cut of his face is art on skin.
“What was that about?” I counter.
“Just my dad being an asshole.” He waves me on and takes off toward the town’s main street.
The man could lead the world. He has the charisma, the looks, the brains, and the authority. He would speak, and they would listen.
I shove off the low stone and catch up to him. “An asshole about what?”
He scrapes a hand over his beautiful face, and I wish I could do the same and map it with my fingertips. I’d spend an entire day on his cheeks. One on his jaw. One on his brow. Two or five on his lips.
My fingertips tingle, and my heart burns with want.
Inevitably, as it always does, my uncle’s image looms over my shoulder, tainting my joy.
“He’s thrown away all of my mother’s things,” he hisses. “Not donated. Not a few items. Everything, like she was nothing more than trash. Like he’s trying to erase her.” He walks faster and faster, blowing by shop after shop.
I keep in step with him. Eventually, we reach the far side of the town, and Hota stops, staring off into the distance. Sheep and trees dot the pastures beyond. He braces his hands on his hips.
If I could rub a lamp and wish for anything in the world, if I only got one, shamefully at this moment, it wouldn’t be to bring my parents and brother back. It wouldn’t be to erase my uncle from ever existing.
I would wish to hold Hota, to touch him and love him, without torment.
“I don’t even have a picture of her. Like a real picture. There’s the fake one on my desk. It doesn’t show her real smile.” His shoulders hunch. “That’s it. All I have left of her.”
“You have your memories, Hota.”
He winces.
“Not the last memories.” I step as close as I can to him without sweating or seeing my uncle’s cursed face. “You have good memories of her. Tell me one.”
Finally, he faces me. There are tears in his eyes, but the set of his jaw refuses to let them fall. “My tenth birthday. Mom was often in bed for days at a time, depressed, and despondent. Most of my birthdays were celebrated over a cake from a store sometime during the week of my birthday, but usually not on the actual date.”
He blinks up at the sky as though begging the tears not to come.
“On my tenth birthday, on the actual date, my mom woke up early. She cooked me breakfast and brought it to me in bed. We ate together on my blankets, just talking about school and my friends and the puzzle I was working on at the time. She let me stay home from school, which never happened. We baked a cake together and ate it for lunch and dinner.”
Hota smiles at me. “It was the best birthday ever.” He swallows, and I watch the way his throat contracts and his skin moves. “Thank you for making me remember it.”
I nod, hating that I can’t do more for him. Comfort him physically. Give him a true picture of his mother.
“What do you want to get today?” Hota asks, eager to move past his pain.
Only we were moving right into mine. That’s okay. I can do this for him. “A new duffel bag.”
“Planning on running away?” He eyes me.
“No.” I shake my head. “The old one…It’s the last piece of him .”
All hint of amusement falls from his face.
“I want to get rid of it.”
He nods but makes no move to walk back toward civilization. The sun shines off his thick black hair. A gentle breeze blows. It’s an unusually stunning day for the UK.
His lips press together and then purse.
“What?”
He exhales like a mythical beast, long and hard. “I haven’t asked.”
The random words in random context shouldn’t mean anything to me, but I know exactly what he’s talking about. My stomach drops into my toes.
“A big part of me doesn’t want you to have to think about it.” He presses a hand to his heart. “Another part is scared to know because I can’t kill him again. A little part knows that it doesn’t matter if I know or not. It won’t change anything.”
I don’t want him to ask. It’s why I stayed in my room for so many days after I came back. I couldn’t bear the thought of rehashing it. I didn’t want him to see the fresh marks on my body either. I didn’t want him to see the despair in my eyes and all my broken bits.
His deep gaze pins me. “What did he do to you?”
My blood goes cold, despite the sun blazing on my back. A knot forms in my throat, and I think I might throw up.
I walk to the end of the cobblestones to the top of the first hill and drop onto the grass, not sitting, not kneeling, not on all fours. Just slumped into a lump on the grass. It might be the fetal position. I focus on the feel of the long blades on my cheek and the air sawing in and out of my lungs.
Hota scrambles to sit next to me. “Forget I asked. I’m sorry.”
There’s nothing for him to be sorry for. Except maybe there is. If I’d never known Hota, never known his careful touch and kindness, maybe I’d still be whole. Chipped and cracked, sure. But not shattered like I am now.
“I bet there are two hundred sheep in that field,” he says, trying to turn the tide of the day. “Have you ever counted sheep to sleep? I used to. When I was little, my friend at school told me that’s how you were supposed to go to sleep. So every night for three days, I counted and counted and counted. I was so determined to keep track of my count that I never let myself sleep.”
He props back on his hands in the grass and stares out over the sheep.
“That third day, I told my friend at school that their method sucked. When I asked how many sheep they counted, they said twenty-eight was the last number they remembered. I’d counted to nine thousand six hundred forty-two.”
I relax on my back and let the sun warm my face. I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth for a long time. And then I look at Hota. He’s still looking at the sheep. “Are you counting them now?”
His smile is soft and sweet. “There are only one hundred and eighty that I can see from here.”
I push onto my ass, bend my knees, brace my forearms on them, and meet Hota’s gaze once more. I can’t give him so much. Not myself and not the whole truth.
I can’t tell him that I came while my uncle raped me. Not because I fear he’ll judge me. He wouldn’t. I know that better than I know myself.
I can’t tell him because that would mean facing my own shame.
That I pictured Hota inside me when it was really my horrid uncle. That I moaned and begged and enjoyed it. That I finished for the first time in that hellhole. Came unglued, all my shattered pieces scattered.
I need to give him something, for him and for me. So that maybe one day, we can move on in some way. I can give him this partial truth.
“He didn’t do anything more than he already had, which was fucking horrible.” I choke on the last word but shrug like Hota always does. “It was so much harder.” My voice cracks, and I stop for a second. “It was harder knowing that you were here, waiting for me, and I couldn’t be with you.”
Tears stream down his face, but he makes no move to wipe them away.
“Before, I had nothing left to lose. When I was chained up, I realized having something to lose is so much more terrifying than anything my uncle did to me.”
“Fuck.” Hota buries his face in his hands and cries outright.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper as the pieces of my broken heart scatter a little further apart. My cheeks are wet too, for the first time in a long time.
After a while, our tears stop and slowly dry. Hota wipes his face and stands. “Let’s go find you the best fucking bag this tiny little town has to offer.”