Epilogue
Three Months Later
“ I think they’re teaching her to cheat,” I say to Gunnar as we walk to the car.
“She’s not cheating, you just suck at mahjong.”
He’s laughing at me. His face isn’t, but he is on the inside. I can always tell.
“That’s racist. You’re all being racist.” I point at him over the car when we both move to our respective sides. “Them for forcing the old Asian lady to play a Chinese game, even though she’s not Chinese, and you for making fun of me for losing.”
I hold a straight face the entire time we’re getting inside and sitting down, but the second the doors close, Gunnar bursts out laughing. It’s too infectious to hold out, and when he pulls me in toward him and kisses my cheek, still laughing through it, I can’t help but smile as well.
“Sure, baby. You’re right. The whole world is against you.”
“Prick,” I mutter under my breath, pulling away from him even though I’m still smiling.
I can’t let him think he’s right about everything, even though he almost always is. It’ll go to his head.
He was right about the stupid nursing facility, and that still pisses me off. I didn’t think she’d want to go, but as soon as I had asked her, she told me there was no question about it. She was going.
I can’t watch you kill yourself to take care of me anymore, Apo. Your mother let us both down. I’m not letting you down, too.
She sold her car, plus the trailer and the land she owned, in the end. I never thought she’d part with it. She’d lived there since before I was born. She didn’t want to hang on to something previous only to watch me rot inside it, she said.
It all felt wrong. But Gunnar was right. It was her choice. Between that, her social security, and some leftover insurance money from the bar that I still feel cripplingly guilty for accepting, we had enough to make it work.
I was still worried about the nurses being racist or shitty, because I know what this town is like. That wasn’t a joke. But we did a bunch of research, and of course Tristan got way too involved in the process, and it turned out that one of the best places in the area is actually in Possum Hollow. So, she’s not far.
It’s barely fifteen minutes to go see her if I take my Ninja, or twenty-five if I go in the car with Gunnar’s old man driving.
She likes it there. The nurses are all her new besties, because they’re excited to have a patient so young, sharp-minded, and relatively mobile. They hang out with her on their breaks and keep her entertained when I’m not around. It worked out as well as it could have, I suppose.
I still hope she’ll be able to come home eventually. We’ll see what happens. We’d have to have a bigger home for her to come to, and right now I’m struggling to save up enough money to get this fucking snake tattoo on my neck covered up.
I was going to get it removed, but then I found out how much more expensive that is and decided against it. Now Gunnar keeps telling me I need to get it replaced with a giant possum, in honor of the bar.
I’ll keep thinking about it.
“I don’t think we’ve found a single game that you’re good at, baby. Maybe this is a sign you should spend less time with your emotional support horror films, and more time socializing with human beings.”
Gunnar is staring at the road as he drives, but he’s not bothering to hide his smile as he makes fun of me. I punch him in the arm anyway, driving or not.
“I had a neglectful childhood! Isn’t that what got you all hot and bothered in the first place? If I was good at normal things, I wouldn’t trigger your broken-toy kink and then where would we be?”
Gunnar looks at me out of the corner of his eye, half-bemused, half-scowling. This probably counts as ‘negative self-talk’, which I know drives him fucking nuts.
But fuck, come on. At least all the trauma made me funny.
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” I hold up my hands for emphasis.
Gunnar’s eyes are on the road, while I scroll mindlessly through social media on my phone. It’s not something I ever really did before. Digital footprints don’t mesh well with a criminal lifestyle, and I was also so stressed all the time, I didn’t have the capacity to care about something that trivial.
Now, it’s kind of nice. Like another veneer of normality over my life I never thought I’d have.
I’m thumbing through videos on TikTok when the algorithm seems to keep showing me different versions of the same thing one after the other, so I finally stop to look.
It’s a mashup of clips of a male gymnast. The shots are mostly from phone cameras instead of professional ones, and nothing about this is screaming Olympics-level-famous. I’m searching my brain to see if I’ve been thirsting over male gymnast videos or something to make this fall into my feed, but I can’t remember anything relevant.
Then I see why—every fucking person I know in Possum Hollow and the surrounding area has liked and shared these videos. The caption tells me that it’s about a local athlete getting chosen for ‘nationals’, which is apparently a big deal.
I thought we were more of a football area, but I’ve never been known for my love of sports, so who the fuck knows? Either way, everyone’s apparently salivating over the idea of this guy representing our shitty little neighborhood on a national platform. And also salivating over him, because in addition to all the jumping and twisting bullshit, he seems to be an expert at posting thirst traps.
Something about it nags at me. He nags at me. Then I read his name, and all the pieces fall into place.
Finch Lewandowski, from Mishicot, population 196. Lewandowski . A last name I can’t even pronounce, but would have been mine if my mother hadn’t insisted on changing my birth certificate at the last minute.
So that’s what my half-brother looks like. I’ve seen one shitty old picture of my sperm donor, and the resemblance between them is on point. I’m surprised I didn’t notice it sooner, but I guess I wasn’t expecting a long-lost relative to reach out of my phone and slap me in the brain.
For a second, I consider telling Gunnar. I know how much he wants me to confront my childhood, or whatever. He told me it’s never too late to reach out to this guy if I want the chance at more family.
I think Gunnar and my lola are all the family I need.
I’ll tell him about it later. Once I’ve processed it a little. Maybe I’ll talk to the guys about it tonight, actually. They normally understand my reticence to get involved with new people, in a way no one else seems to. Which reminds me to remind Gunnar.
“I’ll be back later than usual tonight. I only have a half shift, but then I have the thing after.”
Gunnar’s gaze flicks to me again, but he quickly corrects himself and looks back at the road.
‘ The thing ’ is not to be discussed in detail. I don’t like mentioning it, let alone really talking about it. Because of this, he treats everything to do with it like Venetian glass. Like it’s something precious, and if he breathes the wrong way, it’ll splinter into pieces.
He’s probably right. I refused his offer of bankrolling me going to therapy so many times; we agreed to disagree so we could just stop arguing about it. Even though I know there’s a fucking pin in that subject in his brain, and we’re coming back to it one day.
What he did convince me to do, as a compromise, is start going to this stupid support group. I don’t even like the words ‘support group’. I like ‘survivor group’ a lot less though, so it remains ‘ the thing ’ whenever it’s mentioned.
It’s virtual, so I could technically do it at home. I get too antsy, though. The apartment feels too big, and I spend the entire time looking over my shoulder. It’s easier if I’m in the car by myself, and I can sit in some distant corner of a parking lot, lock the doors, and join the Zoom on my phone. It feels more private than the apartment, whether anyone else is there or not.
Gunnar found it for me, of course. I assumed it was going to be me and a bunch of women, but of course he went out in the big, wide internet and found one specifically for members of the alphabet mafia. Which means I’m always saying stupid shit, because it turns out taking dick all my life isn’t the same as actually knowing other gay people. Half the time it feels like they’re speaking a whole other language that I’ll never be able to learn.
They’re chill, though. They don’t get pissy if I say something dumb. I don’t talk a lot, anyway. Mostly it’s just nice to sit and listen to the others, and not feel like the only person on the planet who has the same stupid set of problems. It’s better than drinking myself to sleep every night, anyway, a habit Gunnar seemed terrified I was about to launch myself into that I’ve managed to avoid. With a little effort.
So, Gunnar helped me sort out everything with my lola. Then he helped me find a bar job in Mission Flats and wrote me an entirely fabricated recommendation before teaching me how to bartend on the fly, so they’d hire me. Then he found me this whatever group and lends me his car so I can drive to work and join the Zoom after.
Fuck, it’s like a life starter pack. He should trademark it and package it to other wayward youths. Except not any of the parts that include his dick, because that’s mine.
We pull into the parking lot of the Feral Possum, but instead of getting out of the car, Gunnar looks at me with an unreadable expression.
“Are you good, baby?” he asks at last.
I frown, because I don’t know where this sudden concern has come from. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that he can feel insecure, too. He seems so put together. I spend a lot of time swimming around in my own head, I have to make a point to come out and remind him that he’s the reason I’m as good as I am.
So, I smile at him. A real one, not like I was teasing him earlier.
“Yeah, Gunnar. I’m perfect.” Then I realize what I said and scrunch up my nose. “Well, as perfect as I get.”
He laughs, but it’s enough to break the tension.
“I’ll always think you’re perfect, baby.”
When he leans over, I don’t hesitate to let him kiss me. Because yeah, I’m still fucked up. Probably beyond repair. But also, I really am perfect.
Two things can be true at the same time. It’s a hell of a lot closer to perfect than I ever thought I’d get.
Which is why I tell him I love him, kiss him one more time, then race him inside. Because I might suck at mahjong, but I’ll always be faster than him.
He loves to chase me, anyway. It’s a win-win.
XXX The End XXX