Seven Minutes in Heaven
Preston Darling
“What the fuck?” Devlin barked, reeling back.
I went in for another punch, but he grabbed my arm and shoved it aside. We wrestled around for a minute, still on our feet, until Colt and Dolly dragged us apart.
“If you liked Lacey, you could have said something,” Devlin said, wiping blood from his mouth.
He was so fucking clueless.
But he was still my cousin. I may have been a jealous bastard, but I couldn’t tell him that I liked his girl, that I wanted her in a way that felt close to madness at times.
He was family, after all, and despite what my father had said, there was a code we didn’t break.
We were tight, all three of the Darling cousins born a year apart.
They were the closest I had to brothers, closer to me than my sister or my Delacroix cousins, who were too far apart in age to hang out as equals.
“I didn’t really want you to hit him,” Dolly chastised me.
“Here, hold this on your face,” Lacey said, getting Devlin a cold beer from the box. “Want to go to the house and get some ice?”
“I better,” Devlin said.
“I’ll go,” Dolly said.
Shame and regret sank into me, the way it usually did after a fight. It wasn’t about Dolly anymore. I didn’t care about climbing into the trunk and kissing her. Everything had shifted when I hit my cousin.
I had too much temper, too much rage, too little self-control.
Sometimes, it built up until I couldn’t see straight, like when I was sitting there with Dolly, feeling her pain and my fury.
It multiplied every moment as I seethed at Devlin for his stupidity and blindness and self-absorbed nature.
My own helplessness at the situation fanned the flames.
Why couldn’t she see all those things about him, see that he’d never care the way she deserved?
I was right fucking there. I would never have made her play a game that she so obviously didn’t want to play.
I would never disrespect her wishes, and I’d sure as fuck never kiss another girl if I had her.
But she never saw that, either. My frustration at her, at myself, at him, all combined until the perfect storm was created, and then it erupted, like it did each time.
Everyone had always said I was just like my father, and they were right.
Like him, I solved problems by beating them into submission.
He’d taught me, with words and deeds, that being a man meant getting things done, and if violence was the way to do that, it was as good a tool as any.
It was, after all, the tool he used to gain my obedience.
When I was a child, I learned to take his blows like a man.
Now that I was one, I dealt them back to the world, unleashing the storm of my rage on whoever provoked it.
More often than not, I was the one who faced the lasting devastation of that hurricane, even if the immediate damage was more visible in my victim. After all, Devlin was the one bleeding, the one they’d crowded around to offer sympathy while they shot me dirty looks.
Destiny edged away from me nervously, like I was a monster instead of the friend she’d known all her life.
I knew in that moment that she was right, that they wouldn’t look at me the same again.
I wasn’t like them or the other polished, well-bred kids I grew up with and went to school with.
I may have looked like them, but tonight, they got a glimpse beyond the mask.
For a moment, they saw the truth of what I had become.
Though we’d all grown from the same soil, my roots had never grown right.
In the beginning, I had been a plant that might bloom one day, like them.
But unlike them, I’d been rooted on the precarious edge of a cliff.
Over time, they grew and bloomed and reached for the sun, while I was twisted into something grotesque, a tree deformed by the winds of my father’s rage, the thousand little storms that blew through our lives so constantly that no one even noticed, not even us.
That was just the weather on the cliffside.
There was no big event, no lightning strike that cleaved me in two, leaving one side blackened while the other went on as if nothing happened.
No hurricane of tragedy flattened our house and rallied our neighbors.
No one lost a life, succumbed to a disease, or suffered addiction.
My family was free of even the hue of scandal that hung over Devlin’s and Colt’s since their fathers divorced and remarried the others’ wives.
My cousins seemed fine, though. They grew in deep soil, had healthy roots.
I was the one who was somehow stunted, like I’d gotten too little sun, though everyone would look at me and say I had the perfect family, the ideal spot on that cliff that never saw shade.
I knew the answer to that question, too.
Just as I learned from my father how to solve problems, I learned from my mother how to hide them.
I was the perfect reflection of my household, a balance of my parents, both sides of the tree that lightning never struck.
I was a shapeshifter, both man and beast, tree and storm.
I grew two faces, one to show the world, and one to keep behind closed doors.
But I was still mastering the art of presentation, the one my mother had perfected down to the last sprinkle on her bake sale brownies.
Tonight, I’d let the mask flicker. Usually it was just a fight at school, something my father would work out with the other kid’s parent.
I’d hear snatches of gossip about it in the office or at church.
These Darling boys, just like their daddies…
Mind you, the temper on that one’s gonna be trouble…
Remember the fights his daddy got into, tell you what…
“I’ll get the ice,” I said, and I stepped past the group, who huddled out of my way like I might explode again.
I was unpredictable, an animal who might suddenly attack.
I hadn’t just gotten in a fight with some asshole at school.
I’d hit my own cousin, one of us, and more than that, the favorite among us.
I had always seen myself as Devlin’s equal, jealous as I was of what he’d been given. I may have been the chosen one among my family, but Devlin was chosen by the town. That put us on equal footing.
For the first time, though, I realized that no one else saw us as equals.
They saw me as equal to them, not him.
He was the center of their world. They were his friends, here for him and whatever games he wanted to play, just like Dolly was.
To them, I was just another friend he allowed into his orbit, and my job was to play along like they did.
They all knew how lucky they were that he’d graced them with his friendship, and if I wanted to be one of them, I was supposed to show the same deference for their hero.
Instead, I’d fucked up and disrespected their king.
I’d stepped out of line, and I knew that if he told them to shun me, I would no longer be welcome in the treehouse when they came to hang out.
I wouldn’t sit at their table at school.
I would still come to the Darling parties because our family threw those, but I would be a step removed, no longer welcome in my cousins’ world.
I would be an observer, and I’d tell myself I was above it all, that I was better because my father said so… Exactly like he was with his family.
Cursing myself silently all the way, I retrieved the ice from Grampa’s freezer and headed back. I was almost to the treehouse when I saw someone was sitting on the heavy wooden ladder that slanted up to the door. I stopped when I got close enough to see it was Devlin.
“You good?” he asked.
“That’s my line,” I said, handing him the ice pack.
“It fucking hurt, I’ll tell you that much,” he said. “You busted my lip up pretty good.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten in a fist fight with my cousins. They were raised by families who had a different approach to problems than either of my parents, like talking about them.
“You should learn how to take a punch better,” I said.
“You should learn who your enemy is,” he said. “It’s not me.”
“You deserved it.”
“Dude, it’s a game. You and Dolly both need to chill.”
I jerked my chin at the treehouse above, where we could hear quiet voices. “She okay?”
“She’s drunk and pouting,” he said with a shrug. “You gonna talk to her for me?”
I drew back. Last I saw, she’d been glowering at me for punching her boyfriend, his indiscretions forgotten when she saw a little blood. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to make out with her so she can’t hold this over my head,” he said, cracking a grin.
“We’re still playing?”
“Yeah,” he said. “If I tell them I’m fine, and I want to keep playing, they’ll do it.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re not pissed at me?”
“Nah. I’m not mad. I didn’t know, that’s all.” He gave my shoulder a little clap. “I’m not into Lacey, man. It was just for fun.”
“Sure,” I muttered.
“She’s cute, though. You should ask her out.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe I will.”
I reached for the ladder, halfway expecting Devlin to clock me back. He wasn’t known for fighting, but he didn’t let anyone push him around. He was the king at school because he demanded the position. He didn’t take any disrespect.
But he needed me right then, or so he thought. We climbed back into the treehouse, and everyone stopped talking and waited for Devlin’s verdict. He threw an arm around my shoulder and grinned. “Don’t fuck with this guy,” he said. “He can throw a hell of a punch.”
“You kiss and make up?” Colt asked from where he was lounging on a pillow on the floor.
“Kiss that ugly face? Never,” Devlin said. “Though Dolly might disagree.”
“What?” she asked, her eyes going wide.
“It’s your turn, babe,” he said. “Show my cousin what you can do with that mouth.”