53. Arnaz
ARNAZ
“ Surrender ”
The most delicate of delights.
I wait until Ana?s drifts to sleep to head out.
“You’re not staying?” Mom asks from the second floor when I reach the ground level.
“I’ll be back tomorrow.” Ana?s and I have plans to binge our favorite Gothic movies.
Carter appears next to her, changed out of his jeans and hoodie into a T-shirt and sweats. Sweats I recognize from my partnership with Nike.
For fuck’s sake.
“What happened to Ms. Brown?” I blurt.
Mom trades a confused glance with Carter. “Your nanny?”
“Yeah.” I place my duffel down and cross my arms. “She took us to church every Sunday.” I liked being in the choir. It taught me how to sing. “She helped us with homework after school. Then one day, she disappeared.”
“Her son was sick, and she had to leave the country and return home,” Carter answers.
“Her son was sick?” I shift in place. “I thought it was because you scared her away.”
“No, son.”
My teeth grind. “You know I hate when you call me that? Like, I want to bash my fist into something hard until I can’t feel it anymore.”
“Maybe you should go down,” Mom encourages him.
“No. Stay there,” I demand when he starts to move.
“Okay.” He steps back. “I’ve gotten help. I’m not the same man I was. I’ve been trying to make amends.”
I snort. “When?”
“Pardon me?” he says.
“You heard me. When have you tried to make amends? Was it the time after my back was cut open from trying to save you from falling into the fire? Wait, mmm, no, I don’t believe there were any amends then.
” I start to pace. “Was it when you found out I was gay and tore through the house and broke everything you could in my room? Oh, wait, nope. Don’t remember an amends then.
Or was it when you left me in the field after dark, covered in animal blo?—”
“Stop.”
“Oh, I remember,” I continue, snapping my fingers. “You mean that time after I totaled Ana?s’s car and you couldn’t be bothered to show up at the hospital.”
“I was there,” he says.
“What?” I stop pacing. “Liar!”
“I was there.” He grips the banister and sinks onto the step, arms crossing in front of his knees. “Every time you slept, your mother and I would trade places in your room.”
I stare at Mom, her face crumpled, eyes wet, and she nods.
“I checked into rehab—again—the day of your release,” he tells me.
He was there?
I ball my fists.
So what?
He doesn’t get a fucking brownie for doing the bare minimum.
“You made me feel like shit every day for needing anything from you. God forbid I asked for anything that resembled love. Those punishments were the worst. You know how fucking unbearable you made the house for us?”
“I do,” he croaks, his face reddening, like he’d rather explode than be here having this conversation.
Hey, he asked to talk.
“I carried shame for years for needing anything from you.” I stare at Mom. “And you.”
“Arnaz, we were supposed to take care of you,” she whispers, tears running down her cheeks.
“Oh, so you did know that?”
“Son—Arnaz—we messed up,” Carter says at the same time Ana?s appears over the banister asking, “What’s going on?”
“When Mom wasn’t working herself ragged to get away from us, she was depressed. I was okay, but Ana?s needed you. She cut herself. Neither of you saw the Band-Aids and lines on her inner thigh.”
Mom’s head flies up, and she turns to Ana?s. “Is this true?”
Ana?s doesn’t respond at first, then she nods, looking away as Mom sobs.
“You know we took turns watering down your alcohol every day after school?” I sneer at Carter.
“N-no.” He shakes his head.
“We were scared to death you’d fall and bust your head open like that time you came home covered in blood.
’Cause maybe if you weren’t shit-faced, the beast wouldn’t wake at the snap of a finger and rage at us.
Nothing I did was good enough. Everything I did made the two of you eviscerate each other. ”
“It wasn’t you. Or you.” He glances up at Ana?s. “I had all my worth tied up in football. The alcoholism, the women.” He looks at Mom with remorse. If she’s surprised to hear about his infidelity, she doesn’t show it. “I was broken, and I tried to break everyone in my path.”
A dark cackle rises from my stomach. “Not everyone. The perfect Carter Show never missed airtime.”
“Everyone I love,” he corrects himself. “Imagine if you had everything taken away from you, your NBA contract?—”
“What? I’d terrorize my family and cheat on my husband? Negative. I’m not you.”
He hangs his head between his arms. “I’m a piece of shit for what I did to you, your sister, and your mom. You have no reason to believe or forgive me.”
“You didn’t have everything taken away from you,” Ana?s breaks in. “ We were there.”
“I know.” He raises his head to turn and face her.
“I couldn’t see that. A man is supposed to provide for his family.
And in the blink of an eye, your mom became the only one bringing in money.
I had just signed a contract that would have taken us to the next level.
And like that”—he swipes his palms together—“it was gone. I worked my whole life to play football. It was all I knew. I didn’t know how to be a man, let alone a dad or a husband, without it. ”
I snatch up my bag.
He turns to me. “I’m sorry for the hell I put you all through.”
“I’m sorry too,” Mom rushes out. “For abandoning you both when my marriage started to fail.”
“Got it.” My muscles lock, hardening to contain the surge of rage inside me. “We’re done?”
“Listen, I know one talk isn’t going to fix us. If you give us a—” he starts.
I raise my hand for him to stop. “This trip is for her.” I nod to Ana?s. “I heard you out. Tomorrow and the day after, I’m here for her. Not you or Mom. Respect that.”
“I just want to fix this,” Carter says.
“Some shit can’t be fixed.”
“You don’t mean that,” Mom says. “Please.”
“He just needs time,” Ana?s says. “We both do. You don’t know him. He’s been working really hard to heal. He goes to?—”
“Ana?s,” I interject.
“—therapy, he sees a psychiatrist, he’s even figuring out a way to let in someone he loves. And that’s a really big deal. It’s hard for him to let people in, to trust that they won’t turn around and hurt him. I?—”
“Anais. Please,” I beg.
“—don’t know how he’s so resilient after everything he went through, but he is. He doesn’t give up.”
I shake my head, clenching the strap of my bag, as I turn away and stare at the door.
“He’s brave. You read the article. To come out that way after being told from the beginning that being gay is wrong. His heart has been broken for a really long time. This was big for him to talk to you tonight. Accept where he is. If you push, you’ll push him away.”
“We are proud of him,” Carter says.
My nails dig into my palm as I force my legs to stand strong.
“You can leave now, Arnaz,” Ana?s says. “It’s okay.”
I don’t stop moving until the door slams shut behind me. I make it a few steps before my knees buckle, and I crumple to the ground against Carter’s car.
Pressure seizes my chest, throat, and back, and my knees sink into the downpour.
Mom’s tear-stricken face flashes in my mind.
Get up, I will myself, but I can’t move.
I don’t know how long I’m stuck there before an arm wraps around my back.
“It’s okay.”
“No.” I push Carter away. “Don’t touch me!”
“Okay,” his voice cracks.
I stare at his tire as my chest heaves and pain drowns my lungs, ribs, throat…
I fight to choke it down.
“I’m sorry,” he croaks.
…but it’s scraping, tearing, mangling my sternum.
His arm tightens around me again.
“Get off me.” I push away until my back hits the other end of his car. The wet, cold pavement seeps into my bones.
“I don’t deserve your forgiveness,” he says, collapsing to sit a safe distance away. “I don’t deserve this family.”
A car pulls out across the street, its headlights lighting up the driveway. I expect him to climb to a stand or shift toward the shadow to avoid a blemish to his perfect image.
He doesn’t move.
“For the longest time, when I looked in the mirror, I saw you”—I wipe my eyes and nose on my drenched hoodie—“not as a demon over my shoulder, but your eyes where my eyes should be. And I hate it when people look into my eyes and tell me I look just like you. I can’t even leave the house without covering them.
” I scrub my thumb across the ink on my knuckle.
“Every time I looked in the mirror, I felt small. It took me a long time to realize it was you I was seeing, not me. You always tried to prove that I was insignificant. I’m not. ”
I force myself to stand, legs unconvinced of their strength, breath arrested by the sobs squeezing my chest, and push. Every step feels like it’ll be the last before I drop again, but I don’t stop until I can no longer feel him watching, until I can no longer see the house.
Pulling out my phone to order a car, I click on Ana?s’s text.
Ana?s
I love you
And there’s an address.