Chapter Thirteen #2
Knocks were unexpected. Loud. Demanding. Ellis knew that if it was his mother, she’d have just come in. Unless she lost her key again. His heart began to race, his body instantly bracing. He didn’t move, barely breathed, hoping whoever it was would leave.
There was a pause. Then another knock—softer this time. “Ellis,” Issaky’s voice called gently through the door. “It’s me. You don’t have to open this. I just wanted to leave something for you.”
Ellis's chest tightened painfully. He stayed where he was, standing in the living room, a bottle of beer in one hand and the ashtray in the other.
“I made soup,” Issaky continued. “It’s in a container that can go straight in the freezer. I’ll just leave it by the door, okay?”
Ellis heard the faint rustle of movement, the soft thud of something being set down.
“I’m not going to wait,” Issaky said quietly. “I just wanted you to know I came by. Call me if you want. Or don’t. I’m still here.” Footsteps retreated down the hall.
Ellis didn’t move for a long time after that. When he finally moved, legs trembling, he opened the door just enough to retrieve the container. It was warm through the plastic, heat seeping into his palms. Something about that undid him.
He closed the door again and sank to the floor, clutching the soup like it was proof of something fragile and precious.
Issaky still cares. He still likes you.
Ellis felt relief for the first time in a week as he got up and dumped some into a bowl. It was chicken noodle–Ellis's favorite–and he smiled at the smell alone. Did Issaky know he liked this soup the best? It didn't matter; Ellis felt seen.
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That night, his mother was drunk enough to be louder than usual. She argued with the television. Laughed too hard at nothing. At one point, she knocked on Ellis's door, voice slurred and sharp.
“You think you’re better than me now?” she demanded. “Locking yourself away like that?”
Ellis didn’t answer. His mother always got like this when she had one too many beers.
“You remind me of your father, you know that?” His mom paused, hitting her cigarette, “He was always so quick to leave me alone. Alone to raise you, alone to mourn him. You Carter men are all the God damn same.”
He didn't answer once again, not trusting his own tongue.
“And then you go and you ignore me! I was trying to be open and honest with you,” her voice raised in pitch, “You know, I knew there was something different about you from the moment you could talk. Always so God damn quiet and particular. Why couldn't you have just been normal?”
Ellis felt silent tears leak down his face. This wasn't the first time they had had a conversation similar to this.
“You make me feel like I failed! How dare you, Tommy.” His mother cried out, slapping the thin, wooden door separating them.
It wasn't the first time she had called Ellis by his dad’s name, and he was sure it wouldn't be the last.
His mother sobbed against the door and Ellis stayed quiet. Eventually, she stumbled away.
Ellis slid down against the door, hands pressed to his ears, breath shallow and uneven.
He didn't understand why his mom hated him.
Or the bus lady, or the man at the Chinese place on Roberts Ave.
All of these people were so short with him.
So quick to judge and mistreat. They didn't like that he couldn't make quick decisions, that he couldn't sit in a seat that wasn't his. Ellis was made to feel wrong and weird.
His phone buzzed, interrupting his internal spiral. He begrudgingly looked at it. Another voicemail. Ellis swallowed hard and debated whether or not he should listen.
You're just like your father. You're useless and stupid. His mother’s voice rang in his head and he decided that listening to literally anything else would have been better.
“Hey,” Issaky said, voice tired but steady. “I stopped by today. I hope that was okay. I didn’t want to push. I just wanted you to have something warm. Please call me back. I miss you, El.”
Ellis listened twice. He missed Issaky in a way that felt unbearable. He missed the quiet mornings, the way Issaky adjusted his touch automatically, the safety of being known without being interrogated. And because he missed it so much, he stayed away.
Grief had taught him this lesson early: The things that mattered most were the ones that could hurt you the deepest when they were taken away.
Clyde had mattered.
His father, once, had mattered.
Ellis didn’t know how to survive losing Issaky too. So he withdrew further.
He stopped charging his phone, letting the battery drain down to nothing. He slept with headphones on to drown out the sounds of his mother moving through the apartment. He avoided mirrors. Avoided thoughts of the future. He existed in a narrow corridor of time: breath to breath. Moment to moment.
One night, he dreamed of the recordstore.
It was empty, shelves stretching endlessly in every direction.
Clyde stood at the far end, straightening a display that didn’t exist. Ellis tried to call out, but no sound came.
When Clyde turned, his face was blurred, indistinct, like a photograph left in the rain.
Ellis woke with tears already on his cheeks. The numbness was cracking and he began to worry that he was already forgetting the older man.
He curled into himself and cried silently, hands knotted in his sheets, grief pressing in now that it had finally found a way through. It hurt—his chest, his throat, his head—but it was real.
Issaky didn’t know it yet, but Ellis was still listening—to the echo of his voice, to the proof that love had existed at all. And that, somehow, made everything hurt worse.