Chapter 7
Adriel
The evening light in Adriel's bedroom was the color of weak tea, washing the walls in a pale, gloomy yellow. He lay on his back on the unmade bed, phone pressed to his ear. The ceiling above him was a blank slate, marred by a single old water stain.
His father's voice boomed through the speaker. Familiar and sprawling.
He'd been staring at this same stain since he'd gotten home.
Come through the front door, dropped his bag in the hallway, sat on the edge of the bed, and simply, stopped.
Hadn't changed. Hadn't eaten. Hadn't done any of the ordinary functional things a person did at the end of a working day.
Just sat, then lay back, and stared at the water stain, and replayed the scene from the stairwell for what felt like the hundredth time.
His mouth. Landen had looked at his mouth.
He'd been turning it over all day like a stone he couldn't put down, examining it from every angle, and every angle kept producing the same result; he didn't know what it meant and couldn't trust himself to know.
His phone had rung at seven and he'd answered on autopilot, because it was his father and not answering required more energy than he currently had.
"So I started going back to the gym," his dad announced, pulling him back to the present. "You know, just to move. Doc says it's the cartilage. Knees are shot, can't really play ball anymore. Getting old, you know?"
Adriel made a soft sound in his throat.
"But you still can," he continued, and Adriel could hear the faint good-natured laugh in his voice, the one that pretended it was all just harmless observation. "Hell, you're young. It'd help. Clear your head. Get the blood pumping." A pause. "Help you feel better about yourself."
Help you feel better about yourself.
"Yeah," he said.
His father kept talking. Stories about old teammates, glory days under Friday night lights, weekend pick-up games with the guys. Each anecdote a brick in a wall, building the silhouette of a son who should be out there, sweating, striving, improving.
"You could come play sometime," his dad added, tone light, almost offhand. "The guys wouldn't mind. Be good for you. Get you out of the house."
Adriel pictured it. The sharp smell of a gym. The echoing slam of a ball. The sidelong glances. His father's friends.
"Maybe," he breathed. A lie.
There was a pause on the other end. It stretched two seconds, three.
"I'll think about it," Adriel added, his voice dropping to a whisper.
His dad laughed. "Alright, alright. No pressure. I'm just trying to help, kiddo."
The call ended with a casual talk soon.
Adriel lowered the phone slowly onto his chest, over his still-tight heart. He stared at the water stain. The silence had a physical weight, pressing down on his sternum, making each breath a shallow, effortful thing.
His eyes burned. He blinked rapidly, refusing to let the heat spill over.
A man like Landen Waters did not look at a man like Adriel Alvarez and mean it. Whatever he thought he'd seen in that stairwell; it was nothing. A narrow space and bad lighting and his own imagination, which had always been the most destructive thing about him.
The tears came before he'd finished the thought. Slow, humiliating, unstoppable.
∞∞∞
Time became a sticky, indistinct thing.
The light bled into deeper blue, shadows pooling in the corners of the room. The phone was a dead weight on his chest. The tears had carved their cool, itchy tracks down his temples and into his hairline. Every muscle locked in a futile effort to hold himself together.
The door opened without a knock.
Jenna stood in the frame, backlit by the hallway light. She took him in and her expression did the thing it always did; the brief flicker of something sharp and pained, gone almost instantly.
"Your dad," she said. Not a question.
Adriel didn't answer.
She crossed the space and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped with her weight, her shoulder coming to rest a whisper away from his.
"What did he say this time?"
Jenna waited, watching the tight line of his jaw, the way his throat worked as he swallowed. "Was it the gym again?"
A pause. Then a single, almost imperceptible dip of his chin.
She exhaled. "Adriel." His name, a plea and a reprimand in equal measure. "You can't keep letting them do this to you."
His eyes welled over. He blinked hard, a futile defense, and a fresh wave of tears spilled free, tracing the old paths down his skin.
"He just wants to help," Adriel whispered. "He's right. They both are."
"They are not right." Her voice lowered, becoming almost tender even as the conviction sharpened.
"They don't mean to hurt you. But they are.
With every helpful comment, every loving suggestion.
And you keep just… taking it. You sit there and absorb it and carry it home and let it convince you of things that are not true. "
She paused. Studied his profile in the fading light.
"Did something else happen today?"
Adriel's jaw tightened. "Nothing," he said finally. "Just a bad day."
Jenna looked at him. He could feel it without turning his head.
"You are not what they make you feel like," she said, a repeat of the speech she'd been giving him since they were teenagers hiding in her room after a particularly brutal family dinner. "You are healthy. You are thriving. I hate that you can't see that."
Adriel said nothing.
He stared at the ceiling, jaw clenched, hands curled into the sheets. He thought about the stairwell and Landen's grip on his arm and the way his eyes had moved. His father's voice. The break room and the colleague's laugh, fresh as the first time.
Jenna watched the stubborn, defeated set of his body. The fight seeped out of her posture, replaced by a familiar, weary protectiveness. She reached out and squeezed his forearm, firm and warm, a tether to the present.
"I love you," she said. "You know that, right?"
He managed a nod. She gave his arm one final squeeze, then stood and left, closing the door softly behind her.
The rigid control he'd maintained in her presence shattered.
He rolled onto his side. Curled in on himself, knees drawing up toward his chest. Fumbled for the edge of the blanket, pulling it up and over his head, creating a dark, woolen cave.
The shame seeped deeper. Into the marrow.
He buried his face in the pillow and told himself, for the last time tonight, that he had imagined all of it.
He almost believed it.