Jordan
The smell of spaghetti sauce and meatballs greets me the moment I open the door. I stop and inhale with deep appreciation while my stomach rumbles. It’s been a long day, and I skipped lunch because of the detour to Theo’s school, so I’m starving.
I slide off my boots, drop my bag on the floor, and shrug out of my jacket before I head toward the living area.
The kitchen is bright and loud with voices. Theo is parked at the table with his textbooks, my dad sitting next to him, leafing through some papers. Theo is absently chewing on the end of his pencil, his mess of dark brown curls flopping over his forehead. He could use a haircut.
Dad has his glasses pushed up on top of his head, his hair a mix of gray and the exact same dark brown shade as Theo’s.
My son doesn’t really look like me, or really anybody from my side of the family.
Aside from the color of his hair, the rest of him is all Kira.
The roundish face with dimples that show even when he’s not smiling.
The deep blue of his eyes. The high forehead.
The button nose. Even the slight gap between his front teeth—all from his mother.
He’s somewhere right between the innocence of childhood smiles and the awkwardness of adolescence, hovering, not quite here anymore but not quite there yet either.
Wren is leaning against the counter, and Sutton is putting the finishing touches on dinner. They have their own place in Soho, but they spend so much time here I sometimes forget that they don’t actually live with us.
It’s nice. I don’t think I even know how to live without all my people around me.
The two of them have been together for almost a year now, and Wren has gone from hiding from the world to slowly gaining confidence.
He’s wearing short sleeves. He never used to do that.
I’ve known him since he was a kid. He’s gone from Kira’s annoying baby brother to my sort-of brother-in-law, to my sort-of ex-brother-in-law, and by now I just think of him as my baby brother, with any influence from Kira having passed a long time ago.
“It’s nice Wren stumbled upon you,” I tell Sutton when I pass him on my way to the table. “It’s like having a personal chef move in with us.”
“It’s what persuaded me to keep him,” Wren says. “I wasn’t sure about it at first, but then I thought, somebody needs to feed Jordan. Take one for the team, Wren. So I did. You’re welcome.”
Sutton just laughs and presses a quick kiss to Wren’s lips on his way to the sink. Wren looks at him with the kind of gentleness that makes me feel wistful. It’s been a long time since I felt like that about anybody. A lifetime ago.
I ignore the whisper of melancholy that sometimes parks itself in my chest when I think about Kira, and instead of examining it too closely, I start to set the table instead. Wren takes the utensils from the drawer, and we work around Theo to set everything up.
“Dinner, kiddo.” I kiss the top of my son’s head.
He looks up, blinks, and after I squeeze his shoulder, starts to put his textbooks away. A few minutes later we’ve all settled around the table with plates of food in front of us, and everybody’s eating, except for Theo, who’s pushing his food around, a faraway look in his eyes.
Needless to say, it draws attention. Theo usually eats like it’s his only meal for the foreseeable future and somebody’s standing behind him to grab the plate if he’s not fast enough.
“How was school?” Wren asks after eyeing Theo for a bit.
Theo looks up. “You can ask me about the bruise,” he mumbles. “It’s fine.”
“Okay,” Wren says. “What’s with the bruise, Theo?”
Theo plays with his food some more, eyes firmly on his plate. “It’s like a rite of passage, isn’t it? Getting beat up at school.”
“Not really.” Sutton’s jaw tightens imperceptibly. “At least, it shouldn’t be.”
“What happened?” I ask.
Theo twirls his fork in the spaghetti moodily.
“It was my fault,” he finally says.
“And by fault, you mean…?” I prompt.
He sighs and drops the fork, then slouches back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest.
“I did that thing. The… Where I’m… He doesn’t talk to anybody at all at school.”
“Rory?” I ask.
Theo nods. “And I just… like, I don’t too much either? And it’s… I know what it feels like. Like, when you don’t have friends and stuff? So I don’t know why, but I just figured maybe he’d be… I figured I could have somebody, right? Like a friend.”
His cheeks flush. I clamp my mouth shut and wait silently.
It’s been getting better recently since Theo changed schools.
His last one turned into a bit of a nightmare three years ago with all the bullying.
That stopped in St. Patrick’s, but he’s still been having trouble making friends.
He has his soccer team friends, but kids spend so much time at school that not having even one friendly face there is incredibly difficult.
“He has this book he always carries around with him, and he draws in it all the time. I kind of went to him during lunchbreak, and I figured… You know that thing you said about making friends? To find a common interest. So I asked him what he was drawing, but he ignored me, and then I said I know somebody who draws really well.” Theo glances toward Wren quickly and then goes back to glowering at his plate.
“I wasn’t going to take the book, I swear.
I just… kind of touched it with the tip of my finger.
I just wanted to take a look. I wasn’t going to, like, laugh at it or anything.
He lost his shit, and then he pushed me, and I grabbed him to stay upright, and then he punched me in the face. And then the teacher came.”
The grown-ups around the table, all four of us, exchange glances.
“Theo, that wasn’t your fault,” I say.
“I shouldn’t have touched his stuff.”
“No, you probably shouldn’t have,” I say carefully. “But he shouldn’t have reacted the way he did either.”
He twirls his fork between his fingers for a bit before he looks at me. “Can I be excused?”
I nod. I’m not going to push for more right now. Theo is the kind of kid who sometimes needs a bit of quiet to figure out his own feelings.
We all watch him leave the table and then listen to him stomp up the stairs.
I lean back and blow out a big breath, rubbing my palms over my face.
“Who’s the kid?” Sutton asks. “The one with the quick fists.”
I sigh and lean forward on my elbows. “Rory. Never heard of him before. It’s a bit of a case. Apparently his father died, and now he’s being raised by his two older brothers, who only found out he existed after the death of said father about three months ago.”
“Oof,” Wren says. “That’s not an easy situation.”
“There have been some growing pains.”
“How do you know?” Wren asks.
“I talked to the brother for a bit after. He seemed overwhelmed as fuck, to be honest.”
“I’d be overwhelmed as fuck too if I suddenly inherited a thirteen-year-old,” Wren says reasonably.
I nod.
“The kid doesn’t have a reputation for going around and regularly beating up his classmates?” Wren asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. Anyway, the principal wanted to suspend them both because neither was willing to explain what happened.”
Sutton makes a face. “Seriously?”
I nod. “That was my reaction, too, so now we’re doing forced proximity instead. Rory’s going to join the soccer team, and they’ll learn to cooperate.”
Wren and Sutton exchange glances, and they both grin.
“What?” I ask, looking between the two of them.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Wren’s grin widens. “Aww. Jordan has a project.”
I raise my brows at him and look between him, Sutton, and my father. “What does that mean?”
Wren holds his hands up placatingly. “Nothing. Nothing.”
I’m willing to let it go.
“It’s just nice to see you meddling in people’s lives again,” Wren says. “It’s been a while.”
They all snicker.
“I don’t meddle,” I say indignantly.
“That’s true,” Sutton says, looking at Wren. “He doesn’t meddle. He just knows the way things should be and nudges others in the right direction, too.”
I glare at him. “Okay. For all intents and purposes, you’re new. Let’s just keep that in mind, yeah?”
He grins at me. “It was a compliment. You’re good at it.”
I roll my eyes. “Sure.” I push my chair away from the table and get up. “I’m going to take a long, hot shower and then maybe a long nap before I go to bed.”
I start to head toward the stairs when Dad’s voice stops me.
“Did you talk to Kira?”
My face falls, but I make sure to arrange my features into a pleasant smile before I turn around. “Yeah. Yeah. All’s good.”
Dad’s face is blank. That’s not unusual for him, but in reality, it’s the eyes that show the emotions, and right now he’s calling bullshit with them. He’s not going to push, though. That’s not what he does.
“Night,” I tell them and head toward the stairs.
I poke my head into Theo’s room on my way to my own. He’s lying in bed, listening to music from the speaker on his desk, eyes trained on the ceiling, a frown marring his usual sunny expression.
I watch him for a bit before I knock on the doorframe. He glances at me and then scootches toward the wall, making room for me on the bed. I go and lie down next to him, leaning my temple against his.
We’re both silent.
“I like soccer,” Theo eventually mutters.
“I know.”
“Well, then, couldn’t you have suggested anything else for our punishment?” The frown deepens.
I sigh. “Like what?”
“I don’t care. Anything,” he blurts. “I have friends there, and he’s gonna tell them I’m a loser or something. Or maybe he’s really good at soccer and will push me out of the team.”
“You’re good at soccer. It’s not a one or the other situation. And besides, I don’t think he’s ever played before.”
He thinks about that for a moment before he nods, head moving against mine, hair tickling the side of my face.
“I can talk to them if you really don’t want him to try his hand at soccer. We’ll figure something else out.”
There’s another long moment of him thinking things through before he blows out a breath. “It’s fine. It’ll make it too obvious it’s because of me if you start changing stuff now.”
He’s probably right about that. I don’t know where he got that levelheadedness from.
Not Kira. Certainly not me. I’ve done a lot of work to suppress my impulsive side over the years.
You don’t get your girlfriend pregnant at the grand old age of fourteen by thinking things through and making sensible decisions.
“You sure?” I ask.
He nods. “Yeah. It’s fine. I’ll deal.”
I turn my head and kiss his temple. “You’re one of the good ones, kiddo.”
The smile is minuscule, but it’s there.
“It’s why you chose me at the hospital,” he says.
“I did have a good feeling about you.” I make a thoughtful face. “The one I switched you with looked like trouble.”
He lets out a reluctant snort.
“I’ll go take a shower, and then we can play a round of cards?”
He scrunches his nose. “Maybe some other time?”
“Okay. Don’t stay up too late.”
He nods and goes back to staring at the ceiling.
It’s only once I’m in my room, safely away from prying eyes that I let the smile fall. I sit down on the edge of my bed and drag my fingers through my hair.
My phone pings. I take a glance at it. The message is from Kira. It’s another list of great high schools that are conveniently located in San Francisco. I don’t have the energy to deal with this tonight.
I drop down on my back, eyes on the ceiling. Instead of having my thoughts circle how things stand with Kira, my mind wanders to Milán.
And then I smile.