Chapter 20 Tex
I wake up and Stormy is asleep against my side.
His head is on my chest, his arm across my stomach, his breathing slow and deep.
He's been sleeping like this every night, wrapped around me as if I'm the only solid thing in the world.
Every morning, I wake up with him there and every morning it hits me the same way.
He's here. He stayed. He's mine and I'm his.
I slide out of bed. Careful, slow, the way I've learned to move in the mornings so I don't wake him. He stirs, makes a sound, but doesn't open his eyes. I pull the covers up over his shoulder and go downstairs.
I hit the button on the coffee maker. The mugs are already out, sugar next to Stormy's. I reach for the mug and I see it.
A folded stack of papers leaning against the mug. TEX written on the front in block letters. His handwriting, small and careful, the handwriting of someone who learned to take up as little space as possible.
I unfold it, sit down on my stool and start reading.
The coffee maker beeps behind me. I don't move. I sit on my stool and read every word my boy wrote last night while I was sleeping.
Lorraine. His mom's name was Lorraine.
I read about the pancakes. The good days, the gaps between them. The drinking that was just the way things were. I read about a little boy marking good days like holidays and replaying them at night like a movie he could rewind. Mama making pancakes. Mama laughing.
I read about the men.
I read about fucking Gary.
My hands tighten on the paper. The edges crumple under my fingers, and I force myself to loosen my grip because this letter is precious. This letter is the most important thing anyone has ever given me, and I will not damage it with my big fingers.
He was ten. A man named Gary came into his room at night while his mother was passed out on the couch. Sat on the edge of his bed. Put his hands on a ten-year-old boy and told him it was normal, told him it was their secret, told him his mother would send him away if he said anything.
I set the letter down, and put my hands flat on the counter. I breathe through my nose, in and out, because if I don't breathe, I'm going to put my fist through something. And that would wake Stormy, and Stormy cannot see what's on my face right now.
I pick the letter back up and keep reading.
He started sleeping with a steak knife at ten years old. A steak knife. A child. Under his pillow with his hand on the handle, staring at the door. Waiting for the next man.
He told his mother. She was making pancakes. A good day. She stopped flipping the pancake and she said he was making up stories for attention. She went to her room and she opened a bottle and that was the end of the good days.
I'm crying. I don't know when it started. The tears are running down my face into my beard and landing on the paper. I grab a roll of paper towels and wipe them away quickly because I don't want to smudge his words.
She died when he was fifteen. Liver. She died at three in the morning alone and he was fifteen years old with a duffel bag and fifty dollars and nobody came for him.
I read about the streets. Five years, six years. Shelters and dumpsters. "I can clean" as currency. Twenty bucks here, forty bucks there. A kid teaching himself to survive in a world that never once looked at him and said let me help you.
I read about Ron Jackson.
The Waffle House. The salvage yard. The room above the shop. The lock on the door, the clean sheets, the hot water. Two weeks of everything he promised. He called Stormy valuable and it felt good. It was bait.
The fury starts low. Not in my chest. In my stomach.
A heat that builds like a pilot light catching, blue and focused and getting hotter with every line I read.
The key turning. The big man in the doorway.
The hand on the leg. Stormy doing the hard math.
This room or the gas station. Him or nothing.
He didn't say no the second time. Not because he was forced. Because he did the math that this man laid out for him and he chose survival the way he's been choosing survival since he was ten years old.
My hands are shaking while the paper trembles in my grip.
The hitting. Ribs, back, stomach, sides. All places a t-shirt covers. Never the face. Smart about it. A deacon. A church-going man. A little league sponsor who beat a kid bloody and told him nobody would believe him.
Oh my God, the food. Why didn't I feed him more? How many times has he gone hungry since he got here? In my house where there's enough food to feed an army? Is he lying there awake at night waiting for me to wake up and give him breakfast?
I force myself to keep going.
He tried to leave three times. The first time, the man found him before noon and beat the soles of his feet with a belt so he couldn't walk. Then held ice on his ribs. Told him the world was dangerous and he was protecting him.
The second time, Tallahassee. A shelter. One night in a real bed. The man was in the parking lot the next morning. The beating put him in bed for three days. He pissed blood for a week.
I set the letter down again, and drop my face into my hands.
Stormy.
I can't do this.
I breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
The fury is a living thing inside me now, a creature with teeth and claws, and a specific target. Ron Jackson. A salvage yard in Alabama. A man with thick arms and wide shoulders who found a hungry kid behind a gas station. He smiled at him and spent four years dismantling him piece by piece.
I know his name now, and I want to kill him.
I don't mean that as a figure of speech. I don't mean that in the way people say it when they're angry at someone who cut them off in traffic. I mean that I want to find Ron Jackson and I want to put my hands on him the way he put his hands on Stormy and I want to end him.
Permanently.
I want to stand over him the way he stood in that doorway, backlit, filling the frame, and I want him to feel what Stormy felt when the door opened. I want him to know what it's like when someone bigger than you decides what happens to your body, and you can't do a damn thing to stop it.
I have never wanted to kill someone before. I've been angry. I've been furious. I've been in bar fights and parking lot brawls and I've thrown punches and taken them. But I have never sat in a kitchen at six in the morning and felt the specific desire to end another person's life.
I close my eyes, breathe and put it away. Not gone. Put away in the place where I keep the things that will need to be dealt with later, very carefully, with thought. Because what Stormy needs from me right now is not a big man consumed by rage. What he needs is what he's always needed.
Me to be steady and safe.
I pick up the letter and read the rest with dread, every word blurring my vision.
The friend Carl. The overheard conversation. The word "available." Ron offering Stormy to his friend like a tool you lend to a neighbor.
The Sportster. Keys in the ignition. Forty-three dollars. A hundred yards of gravel in the dark, pushing the bike, his heart louder than the crickets. The engine catching. South because south was away from hell.
The overhang of the souvenir shop on the beach road. The rain. The visor.
That's where you found me.
My name is Matthew. But I'd rather be Stormy forever, if that's okay with you. Because Stormy is the name you gave me. And Stormy is the one who gets to live here with you.
— Stormy
I hold the letter in my hands and look at his name at the bottom. Stormy. He signed it with the name I gave him, because that's who he wants to be. The man he wants to become.
Stormy is the man who lives here.
With me.
The sobs can't be contained, not anymore.
I try to cry quietly, not wanting Stormy to see the wreck I am, but it's impossible.
I cover my face with my hands and I sob my heart out for him.
Then I go to the sink and wash the tears off my face and beard.
Seems like I've been fixing my face a lot lately.
There's nothing to be done about my red eyes.
Stormy will know I've been crying. At least he didn't have to see it.
I fold the letter carefully. I will keep this letter for the rest of my life. I will keep it the way I keep the photo of my dad on opening night, close and permanent.
Picking up my phone, I text Mickey, even though it's early. Need to see you today. Can you meet me for lunch near the station? Not at the bar. Just us.
I set the phone down, and pour our coffee.
Stormy's mug, three sugars. My mug, black.
The routine steadies me. Pour. Stir. The smell of coffee filling the kitchen.
The steam rising. Normal things. Morning things.
The little things we take for granted that makes a good life what it is. And we will have a good life.
My phone buzzes.
Mickey: Noon. Sandy's Deli on Fifth. You ok?
Me: I'm ok. Need to talk to you. See you at noon.
I pick up both mugs and head upstairs. Stormy's still asleep, curled on his side now, the covers pulled up to his chin.
He looks so young and fragile that my heart breaks open all over again.
He's only twenty-five years old and he's lived through things that would have wrecked a person twice his age.
Yet, he's here, in my bed, sleeping deep because he finally found a place where sleep is safe.
I set the mugs on the nightstand, and sit on the edge of the bed. Lightly, I put my hand on his shoulder, the way I've learned to touch him in the mornings.
"Stormy."
He stirs. His eyes open, slow, unfocused, and then they find me and sharpen. I watch the awareness come in. The letter. Every word he wrote in the dark. And I watch the fear arrive right behind the memory, the old fear, the one that says telling makes it worse.
"Morning," I say, the same as I always do.
"Morning."
"I read your letter, baby."