Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
later that day - orlando
“Hi,” Nico said softly, closing the door behind him. He was tired after only catching about a half hour of sleep on the short flight from Columbus and the beeping monitors tore through his ears. “I know it’s been a while.”
Nico’s older brother, Elon, lay on his side in a hospital gown, his body supported by a barrage of pillows behind him. His eyes were the same as Nico’s but lifeless, staring blankly ahead at walls as a ventilator pumped air through a ribbed hose into Elon’s trach.
The room was an upgrade to the room Elon had been staying in prior.
That old room, in the back wing of the hospital, was dingy with dim yellow lighting.
Here, it was more vibrant with a large window overlooking a palm tree lined park.
But the walls were still a sterile white.
With how much the room cost Nico, he wondered if they’d paint it for him.
“I’d say I’m sorry, but I have to be honest.” Nico draped his jacket on the back of a rocking chair beside the bed.
“I’m so fucking angry with you.” Nico patted the back of his palm over Elon’s bare leg.
His brother was warm to the touch, but didn’t respond to his touch.
He never did, never would. “Dad believes you’re still here.
That you can hear every word we’re saying. ”
Nico sighed and took a seat in the rocking chair, and it began to glide under him, back and forth in slow motions like the tired tides of the sea.
He stared at his brother and wondered how long he’d been laying on his side.
He wondered how long he had until the nurse would come in to reposition Elon.
Probably not long enough for Nico to say what he needed to say. It’d been almost two years since the last time he’d visited him, and seven years since they last spoke.
“I think you’re gone. Your body is here but your soul is elsewhere,” Nico continued. “That makes me a shitty brother,” Nico nodded. He couldn’t believe he was finally saying all the things he wanted to say to the boy who was once his idol. “I know that.”
But that boy was no longer a boy. Elon was a man now. It was a weird sight seeing how much his brother had changed in his two years absence, like his face was aging while the rest of his body seemed to stay the same.
Nico leaned forward and braced his feet against the floor. “But you’re shittier,” he scowled. “For drinking and driving, and the fucking drugs. For leaving me here to do this thing, to be who you were supposed to be.”
Elon blinked twice in quick succession, and then followed it up with another blank stare.
“But I miss you,” Nico said, his voice cracking. “And I just want you to wake the fuck up so that I can hug you again. So I can tell you how fucking angry I am, and to know that you can hear me when I say it. So I can know that you understand just how badly you fucked my life up.”
Elon blinked twice again.
And then just stared, lifeless but present.
Nico dragged fingers over his eyes, wiping away the dampness.
He was wrong to come here. Mistakenly, he believed he’d feel better if he could get the things that’d been suffocating him off his chest. It only made him feel worse, to talk to his defenseless brother like this.
And he imagined what it’d be like if they swapped places.
If it was Nico in that bed, and he could understand what was being said to him, how would he respond?
The tears rolled down his cheeks, but he wiped them away before they could make it very far. He cocked his head over his shoulder and stared at the closed door. Looked back to Elon.
“I’m kinda gay. Bisexual, I guess,” he whispered, and god that actually felt fucking good. A weight lifted from him, his shoulders loosening. “I’ve been fucking your idol, Cooper Callahan.“ He laughed, and imagined Elon would be laughing right back. “Yeah, I can’t believe it either.”
Nico stood up and brushed a hand through Elon’s hair.
His brother’s hair was lighter than his, bordering on a dirty blonde.
He must have gotten that from their mother who had been MIA since Nico was a toddler.
“You’re the only person I’ve ever told that, so please try to keep that our little secret.
” Nico’s lips trembled. “But if you ever decide to wake up, I won’t be mad at you for telling the whole damn world. ”
Nico leaned over the bed and gave Elon the softest kiss on the forehead.
Nico sat in an old, tattered loveseat next to his father in the house he grew up in.
His father was fifty years and some change, but he still looked to be in his late thirties.
His hair hadn’t greyed much and he kept his face shaved because whenever he’d try to grow a beard, it would always come in patchy.
Natalie looked more like her father than Nico did, with beautiful tan skin while Nico took more after their mother.
Nico searched the room with his eyes. The ghost of Elon was on everything he touched and everything he saw. Memories replayed in his mind. Stupid shit. Unremarkable shit. The kind of things one wouldn’t consider they’d remember a year down the road, let alone a lifetime.
In the corner of the dark living room, there was a rocking chair that had been passed down for generations. Every year, on the last evening of November, that chair would be stored in the garage to make room for a fresh-cut pine tree.
The Christmas memories stung the most. In every memory, the three siblings sprawled around the tree while their father passed out too many presents. He couldn’t afford it and somehow he always made it work. The three Fallon kids were the luckiest kids in the world.
Nico took a good look at his father who was transfixed by a rerun of Law and Order he’d no doubt seen twenty times. Nico wondered if now would be a good time to bring up something that’d been on his mind.
“Dad?” Nico asked, stealing his father’s attention. “Are you ever going to let me buy you a better house?”
“Absolutely not,” his father responded with a gruffness in his voice. “The lord provides all that is necessary and there are memories in this house I’m rather fond of not forgetting.”
Nico just nodded, knowing it was best to not press the issue. The same reasons he wanted to buy his father a new house were the same reasons that kept his father glued there.
Another half hour of silence passed before Natalie called them both into the dining room for dinner. Nico sat across from Natalie, their father sat at one head of the table, and an empty plate sat at the other end.
Whereas Nico was content to try to move on with his life, his father was hellbent on living in the past. And so, every time they’d gather there, a plate would always be left out for Elon.
Nico loaded his plate with homemade chicken enchiladas and was immediately scolded by his father with a not-so-polite cough. How could he forget that in the Fallon house, food was not eaten without praying first?
The three of them bowed their heads, but Nico kept his eyes open as his father began the prayer, “Our father who…”
Nico zoned out, because he wasn’t the religious type. Not anymore. He quietly cut off a bite of an enchilada and forked it into his mouth. And then shoveled another. By the time his family was finished with their prayer, he was still chewing.
And he was caught.
His father shook his head, but a soft chuckle squeezed through the disappointment.
The general conversation around the table was unremarkable. Typical gushing about Nico’s prowess on the field, how various members of the congregation had been doing, and Natalie’s day-to-day life as a school teacher to Floridian middle-schoolers.
And then it shifted to something a little more uncomfortable.
Natalie took a sip of wine—how she got away with that in their father’s house, Nico did not know. “I’ve been studying the clocks on your arm.”
Nico glanced down at his arm which was entirely covered by the sleeve of his grey hoodie. He looked back to his sister with squinted eyes.
“I think it’s nice,” she continued.
Nico didn’t enjoy talking about such things, which is why he never explicitly told anyone the symbolism behind his tattoo.
There were nine clocks inked into his skin, but only five of them had hands.
Each finished clock pointed to the month and day of his family’s birthdays.
All five of them, even the one who ran away.
“Four of them don’t have birthdays,” his father pointed out. “Are you trying to give us a hint?”
Clearly, the two of them had discussed Nico’s tattoo.
“What are you trying to ask?” Nico questioned.
“Someday, you’ll have a wife and kids,” his father said. “Sooner rather than later, I hope.”
“You’re going to be waiting a while.” Nico reached for a glass of water and took a long gulp as his father’s attention shifted to Natalie.
“Don’t look at me.” She pressed her hands against her chest and shook her head. “I’ve already told you. After being around children all day, I will not be having children of my own. That is not on the menu. It is not my plan. It is not God’s plan. It is absolutely not happening.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Their father cleaned his hands with a napkin. “Of course you will.”
“No dad,” she said flatly. “I won’t.”
Nico lay in the full-size bed of his childhood bedroom, unable to sleep despite the fact he had slept for a grand total of thirty minutes in the last thirty-six hours. The yellow glow from the streetlight outside slipped through a crack in the curtains that he was too tired to get up to close.
He didn’t hate his family. Not even close. Though, he wished he did. It’d simplify a lot of things in his life.
Natalie, from a young age, was adamant she never wanted to be a mother.
She changed so much in her teen years and early adulthood, but that was the one thing that remained unchanged.
With the odds of Elon ever waking up close to zero percent, that left Nico alone to continue the Fallon bloodline as their father was an only child.
Simple enough because Nico actually wanted kids sometime far in the future.
But… Gay. Bi. Whatever.
Things were complicated.
What if Nico ultimately ended up with a man?
Sure, they could adopt but that would never be enough for his father who took great pride in the bloodline of the Fallon lineage.
What if things with Cooper Callahan turned into something far more serious, but Cooper would cry that he was too old and too cranky to raise children?
Not that Nico was thinking that far ahead, not when it came to his former coach whom he hated as much as he lusted after.
Things would’ve been easier if Elon was still kicking.
Elon was a hornball—even hornier than Nico, as if that were fucking possible.
Surely, his brother would have had children by now if he was able to.
Hell, the odds were favorable that there were little Elon’s running around somewhere.
Elon’s decisions the night he decided to drink and drive reshaped everyone’s world who knew him, but none more than Nico.
Nico, who dreamed of being an astronaut, a writer, an olympian track star, and a stripper—in that order—was forced to become a football star, to live the life Elon couldn’t. Now, it seemed he was going to be forced down the path of marriage and children to appease his father.
Sometimes, it fucking sucked being a people pleaser.