Chapter 22. Liam
Quiet Time is supposed to be for reflection, which means "sit in silence and contemplate your sins.
" But we have fun, sometimes. Most days, we just nap.
We also talk, play cards, and read. Today, Harry is already dead to the world, face smashed into his pillow like he's trying to suffocate himself in his sleep, and Jack is reading a comic book in a rare moment where he's quiet for more than a minute.
Miles lies on his bunk, staring at nothing.
He's good at disassociating. I think it's how he survives.
And I'm standing in the middle of the room like an idiot, trying to decide if I have the guts to walk to Ethan's bed.
He's propped up on one elbow, flipping through his nursing textbook, but I can tell he's not reading.
His eyes aren't moving across the page. There's a butterfly bandage over his left eyebrow where Reed split it open, and the bruising along his jaw has ripened to a spectacular purple-green, like a fucking sunset painted by someone who hates sunsets.
He looks rough. He also looks stupidly beautiful in a beaten-up way.
I love it. I love that he was fighting for me.
I take a breath, shove my hands in my pockets, pull them out again. My leg bounces. I chew my cuticle.
"Can I… can I join you?"
Ethan looks up. Those green eyes, still slightly bloodshot from Reed's beating, find mine, and he smiles. He closes the textbook, sets it aside, and shifts toward the wall without a word, making a sliver of space on the narrow mattress.
I lie down there, and Ethan's arm comes around my waist, solid and warm, pulling me against him, and I know we're okay, I know we’re super duper okay, and I feel my heart speeding so fast I might die.
I fit into the curve of his body, my chest against his chest, my head tucked under his chin.
His ribs are wrapped under his shirt. I can feel the bandages through the thin fabric, and I'm careful not to press too hard, even though every cell in my body wants to burrow into him and stay there permanently.
"Your hands are freezing," he murmurs against my hair.
"I'm always freezing."
“It's because you're small.”
“I'm not small!” I protest, chuckling.
“Sure, buddy.”
He takes my hand and folds it into his, and I immediately feel sleepy listening to his heart beating and breathing, like a baby. His fingers trace my forearm, and my delusional mind believes he's doing the infinite symbol. Ugh, I've never been so pathetically in love before.
I could fall asleep here. I could fall asleep and wake up in a different life, one where we met at a normal school, or a coffee shop, or some other place that doesn't have razor wire and solitary confinement.
But we didn't. We met here, in the worst possible version of reality, and somehow this still feels like the best thing that's ever happened to me.
"Sleeping, baby?" he whispers.
"No." I feel my cheeks burning. He keeps calling me baby and it fucking murders me in the best way. It’s the best word I’ve ever heard. "Ethan?"
"Hmm?"
"What are you going to do when you get out of here?"
The question surprises me as much as it does him. I didn't plan to ask it. It just fell out.
His fingers pause on my arm. Then they resume, slower now.
"Finish my nursing degree," he says. "Clinical hours. I want to specialize in psychiatric nursing, work in correctional healthcare."
I don't understand why he'd want to work with lunatics like us. But I understand that he wants to help. I nestle closer.
"There's a program," he continues, and now his voice is excited. "At the state university. Griff wrote a recommendation for me already. If I keep my record clean…" He stops. "Well. Cleaner than it's been lately."
"Your record is spotless except for me," I say.
"Exactly. You're a full-time job, Marsal."
His arm tightens around my waist, just slightly. I giggle.
From across the room, Jack lowers his comic book, and he props himself up on one elbow.
"You two are the worst at whispering, you know that?" Jack says, but he's grinning. "I can hear every word."
"Eavesdropper," I accuse, though I don't actually mind.
"Hard not to eavesdrop when you're three feet away," Jack says.
He adjusts his position, one arm behind his head, staring at the underside of the bunk above him.
"Since we're doing this, my older sister's got a tattoo shop.
Back home in Georgia. She said when I get out, she'll take me on as an apprentice. "
"You'd be good at that, you can draw really well," Ethan says, and he means it.
"No more drugs either," he says. "I learned my lesson. Three years clean, and I'm staying that way. Just me and the ink and normal-people adult problems, like taxes and shit."
“It fits you,” I say, and he beams. It fits him so well, I feel a pang of something that might be envy. I don’t think anything fits me. No pun intended.
"What about you, Miles?" Jack asks, touching the underside of the bunk above with his foot.
For a long moment, I think Miles won't answer.
Then, flat and quiet. "Research. Microbiology."
Jack waits for more. Nothing comes. That's Miles.
"Like... in a lab?" I ask because I can't help myself.
"Yes." He says, and doesn't say anything else. We wait, but nothing comes. But we're used to it.
"You'd be amazing at that," I say. He doesn't answer. He knows he'd be amazing.
"Alright, Liam." Jack turns his attention back to our bed, and I feel Ethan's arm flex slightly around me, protective and unconscious. "Your turn. What's the master plan?"
My stomach drops. I've been dreading this, knew it was coming the second I opened my stupid mouth and started this whole conversation.
Why is that the case with me, always? I do things that will fuck me up, even if it's a simple question.
Because the truth is ugly and simple: I've never had a plan.
Not once. Future planning requires the belief that you'll have a future. I was planning to be dead by now.
"I don't…" I stop. Start again. "I never really thought about it before. Before here, I mean."
Ethan's fingers resume their movement on my arm, steady and patient, not pushing.
"Survival was kind of the whole game," I continue. "Wake up, don't die, find food, don't vomit said food."
The room is quiet, but they aren't judging, and they aren't pitying me either. They understand, because we're all in the same fucked up sinking boat.
“Aren't you like, eighteen?” Jack asks. I nod, humming a confirmation. “You're a baby. Relax. That's when we start to figure out life.”
“Aren't you like twenty-two?” I snort. “You sound like Griff, a fifty-year-old.”
“Twenty-three!” he exclaims. “I'm the oldest here. Ethan's twenty-two, so you all should listen to me and not him.” I knew that. Ethan had told me when he explained that we usually have kids here until they turned twenty-eight, twenty-nine. After that, we have to get a life.
“Mmm, sure, bro,” he says, and I chuckle. “Go on, Liam,” he tells me, seeing I still have stuff to say.
"But now..." I say. "I don't know. It's weird.
Being here, with the routine, and the schedule, and knowing where I'm going to sleep every night and that there'll be food in the morning, even if it's disgusting food, it's like my brain finally has bandwidth for other thoughts.
" I laugh, but it comes out thin and strange.
"Not carpentry, though. I suck at that. And…
I like having you guys with me. I… I…" I hesitate, not being able to say what I want to say.
Jack snorts. "Awww. We love you too, man."
I feel myself blushing. It's almost too much. I press my face into Ethan's chest, hiding my expression against the cotton of his shirt, breathing him. His chin rests on top of my head.
Then: footsteps. Ethan checks his watch.
“Shit, Quiet Time is over.”
Ethan's arm loosens around me, and I feel the reluctance in it.
"Go," he whispers.
I don't want to. But I know the cost of getting caught.
I start to pull away, but Ethan catches my jaw with one hand, gentle, careful, and presses his lips to mine.
It's brief, but his mouth is warm and slightly chapped and tastes like peppermint toothpaste that they give to us, and when he pulls back, my heart is slamming so hard I'm sure the approaching guard can hear it through the walls.
"Go, baby," he says again, softer this time.
I slide off his bed and cross to my own bunk, almost pouting. The guard unlocks the door, and we jump up, falling in line, hands behind our backs, eyes to the ground, but I feel okay.
■
Of course, I ruin everything again.
The mashed potatoes look like grey mud today.
They always look like that, but tonight they also smell like mud, and the texture against my tongue is the exact consistency of drywall paste mixed with tears.
I chew, swallow, smile at something Jack says, chew again.
I’m definitely… definitely not thinking about the bathroom.
Ethan sits by my side. His bruises from Reed have faded to a dull yellow-green.
He's eating his own food like a normal person, not like a sicko like me.
But his eyes keep drifting to my tray. I hate that he notices.
I hate that he's smart enough to notice.
I want to apologize, but I also don't want to eat.
Ethan's jaw tightens. I see it, and I look away before he can catch me seeing it. We've been doing this dance for days now, him watching, me pretending, both of us knowing the other knows, neither of us saying it out loud. It's fucking exhausting.
"Gonna hit the bathroom," I announce, standing. Casual. Light. Sometimes I go without saying anything, sometimes I invent better excuses.
Miles doesn't look up. Jack waves a fork at me in acknowledgment. But Ethan goes very still, his fork frozen halfway to his mouth, those green eyes pinning me to the spot.
“I gotta pee,” I add, as if it's an excuse.