Milán
By the time we get back home the new day has long since dawned. We all had to give our statements to the police and get checked out at the hospital, all of which took forever and a day.
We stumble through the apartment door, and I send Rory off to bed the moment we finish reassuring Aiden we’re all okay.
“You’re not leaving,” I tell Jordan when I close my bedroom door behind us.
He smiles and shakes his head. “Wasn’t going to.”
I wake up bleary and disoriented for a second, but Jordan’s face is right next to mine. His lips are slightly parted, and his breathing is soft and even.
The storm has passed, and the sky is an endless shade of blue. There’s still the aftermath to handle, but it doesn’t seem like something insurmountable. It’s just minutiae. Details.
I lean over Jordan and kiss his temple.
“Too early,” he mumbles.
I laugh.
This kind of happiness is new. It’s light. It’s easy. It fits seamlessly.
“Go back to sleep,” I say.
His eyes are closed, and his hand moves and pats over the bed until he grabs my ass and squeezes.
It makes me laugh again. I kiss him once more before I roll out of bed.
I go through the living room to the kitchen, where there’s a note on the counter from Aiden. He’s gone to get food. I grab a cup of coffee, slide the door to the balcony open and sit down on the floor with my legs outside. I prop my elbows on my knees and drink my coffee.
Footsteps approach, light and hesitant. He stops a few feet behind me.
I finish my coffee and put the cup down before I turn my head to look at him.
He’s dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of sweats he’s already outgrown, even though it feels like it was only yesterday that I bought them. Guess there’s another shopping trip on my itinerary.
Rory hesitates for another beat before he comes and sits down next to me.
For a while, we’re both silent, and that’s okay because I like sitting here with him like this.
“You okay?” I eventually ask.
He ponders the question for a long time before he nods and then shakes his head right after.
“I…” he says and then stops speaking. He glances at me, then looks away. “What happens now?” he asks, so quietly I can barely hear him.
“Well,” I say slowly, “I figure you haven’t had much say in what happens with your life, so I suppose the first thing we have to do is ask you… What do you want to do?”
He fixes his gaze on the city that’s spread out before us. He doesn’t say anything for the longest time, but then he turns his head and looks at me.
“I want to stay here.”
I nod. “I want you to stay here, too.”
He looks down at his hands and starts playing with his fingers. “I didn’t think you did.”
“I tend to take my sweet time before I get my head out of my ass. But, kid? This is your home. We—all of us. Me, Aiden, Jordan, Theo—we’re already your family. It’s up to you if you want to be in it.”
“I do,” he whispers. He glances toward me again. His throat bobs when he swallows. “But I’ve been… What I did… I’ve been a real assh—butthead.”
“You’re in good company. I’ve been a butthead about so many things it’s impossible to count them all.
” I nudge him with my shoulder. “I don’t know how to be a proper big brother.
There’s a steep learning curve, and I have failed and will fail again in the future, too.
But here’s an offer. This is a space without criticism, okay?
Whatever you tell me while we sit here, I will not judge.
I will just listen, and then we’ll figure out what’s next. ”
He’s so still it almost feels like he’s frozen next to me.
“Nobody’s really wanted me,” he eventually says.
“Since my mom died. Staying with Dallas really sucked. But then he found out about Gerard, and I don’t know what Dallas did exactly, or how it happened, but one day he just told me I was going to go and stay with my father, and that he had a plan for how I would…
finally be useful. I didn’t even know who Gerard was, but Dallas took care of everything.
” Rory shakes his head and keeps his gaze firmly on his fingers.
“Anyway, I was sent to Gerard’s. And it was fine, I guess?
He didn’t really bother with me. He just kind of left me alone. ”
“Sounds like the Gerard I knew.”
Rory nods slowly and his eyes flick to me for a second before he goes back to looking at his hands. “It wasn’t really difficult to figure out Gerard had money. So… the plan was that I would… get closer with Gerard. And then, when Dallas ‘kidnapped’ me… Gerard would pay.”
“Okay,” I say. “But then he died.”
Rory drops his head and seems to somehow shrink, like he’s trying to take up less space. He nods.
“Which was inconvenient,” I venture a guess. “Because it required some modifications to the plan?”
Rory is quiet for a bit. Another flick of his gaze follows.
“Not too many. It doesn’t really matter who pays in the end,” he says. “As long as they pay.”
Unexpectedly, even to myself, I laugh out loud. “Pragmatic.” I turn my head and look at him. “Why did you agree to this?”
I’m still not judging. Mainly just curious.
“I was gonna get a cut of the money. And then…” He shrugs.
“You have options.” I echo the words from that conversation long ago. “You’re tall for your age. And you can get a job. Because you know how to do lots of things.”
He sends me a small smirk, like it’s a shared joke. The smirk is gone a second later, though.
“Why didn’t you go through with it?” I ask. “I would’ve paid.”
“Things started to feel different. Sort of like maybe you wanted me here. And then I didn’t want to do it anymore. Dallas’s plan. He called a lot, and I ignored him, but he just didn’t stop. He showed up at our place a little while ago and caught me before soccer practice.”
“What?” I snap my head toward him.
“I told him I didn’t want to do it anymore.”
“I feel like there’s a but coming.”
“He got angry, but then Jordan and Theo came to pick me up, and Dallas took off.” He looks at me properly then. “Jordan said I would have to tell you about what happened. He didn’t know who Dallas was or anything. And I said I would.”
“But you didn’t.”
He shakes his head.
I rub my face and sigh. “Okay. Okay. But then last night? How did we get there?”
He bites his lower lip. The tension is palpable. I could cut it with a knife.
“I overheard Jordan when he said you were leaving.”
Christ, I’m an idiot.
“And I…” Rory says. “I…”
“You were angry. And hurt,” I guess.
He nods.
“And I figured, well, if you didn’t care and were leaving anyway…” His voice trails off, and he sniffs. He dashes his arm over his eyes with a quick, sharp movement, but then he sniffs again.
“Kid,” I say with a sigh. And then I scooch closer and put my arm over his shoulders before I remember I shouldn’t, but he doesn’t freak out or try to escape. He just sits still, eyes on the floor. I wait until the sniffing subsides and his shoulders stop shaking.
“If… if you want to send me away after this?” he says, his voice so quiet it’s almost a whisper. “I understand.”
“Hey.” I nudge his foot with mine and wait until he looks at me. “This is your home. Here. With all of us. For as long as you want it. So I guess the question is, do you want it to be?”
I wait with bated breath and jangling nerves. I almost don’t recognize myself. I’ve strolled through life for over thirty years with very few emotions on display or even inside me. I figured that was just the kind of person I was.
But now I’m starting to wonder if maybe it’s not that I lack feelings. Maybe it’s that for most of my life I’ve never truly wanted something as badly as I want this life I’ve accidentally stumbled into.
And now, looking at Rory and seeing the oh so careful look of hope in his eyes, it feels like another piece clicking into place.
He nods.
“I want it.”
“This is where you spent your summers growing up?” Jordan asks as he slides his hand over the marble kitchen counter and looks around and out the double French doors that lead to the backyard of Gerard’s house.
I refuse to call it Maplewood Manor. Not speaking ill of the dead, but it’s a fuck-awful name for this place.
“Until the divorce. Gerard got the house, and my mother got the apartment in the city.”
Jordan throws me a look over his shoulder.
“When’s the last time you were here?”
“Not even sure. Maybe when I was fifteen? Seventeen? I don’t remember.”
He nods and doesn’t prod. It’s not that I’m exactly against reminiscing, but the truth is, there’s not much to say about this place.
“Where do you want to start?” Jordan asks.
We finally managed to sell, so before we hand the keys over to the new owners, we have to do a sort of final walk-through and figure out if there’s anything we want to keep before the rest is donated.
Aiden’s been bugging me about this for weeks, but I’ve been putting it off for no real reason other than I don’t feel like doing it.
That’s a lie.
What’s holding me back is the fact that as of right now, I don’t know whether there’s anything in this house that is about me.
I don’t know. And that leaves room for hope that somewhere in here are folders with newspaper clippings with my name in them.
Or recordings of the matches I’ve played. A fucking T-shirt. Anything.
I’m afraid to find out.
The house and Gerard’s belongings have turned into some sort of boogeyman I’ve been trying to avoid confronting, but I also can’t seem to just say “fuck it, I’m making my peace with it, I don’t want anything.”
“Maybe the living room?” I say halfheartedly.
Jordan comes and wraps his arms around me from behind. He leans his chin on my shoulder.
“Want me to burn it all down?” he asks.
I snort out a laugh. “Would you?”
“For you? Anything.”
“We’ll see how I feel by the time we’re done.”
We go through the kitchen with its mostly bare shelves and cupboards, glance into the master bedroom at the back of the house, then walk through the living room.
“Does this place have a trophy room?” Jordan asks. “Or wherever you people keep all the… medals? And stuff.”
I turn to look at him and grin.
“Medals and stuff?”
“Cups. I don’t know what you win when you win.” He tilts his head to the side. “Where do you keep yours?”
“Storage unit, mostly. I’ve auctioned some off for charity over the years, and some are on display in museums and exhibitions.”
“You’re very, very hot.”
I raise my brows at him. “Because I have trophies?”
“No.” He waves his hand dismissively. “We already moved past that topic. It’s a new one.”
“Our next topic of conversation is my hotness?”
He nods. “Let’s go into detail.”
I laugh out loud and kiss him.
By the time we’ve gone through the rest of the house, I’ve come to terms with the fact that there’s nothing here for me.
“What’s this?” Jordan says.
“Hmm?” I turn to look at him. He pulls something out from behind Gerard’s desk and holds it up. It’s a framed tennis racket. Not just any tennis racket. It’s mine. The first one Gerard ever bought me.
I stare at it.
There’s nothing else in this whole damn house that gives even the slightest of hint that I exist.
But there’s this.
It’s not an overwhelming feeling. No great joy or relief.
It’s a kind of calm acceptance, though. A feeling of being okay. Of not screaming for closure, because maybe this is it? And if so, I’m fine with it.
In the end, Dallas is charged with criminal possession of a firearm and reckless endangerment, among a few other minor charges. He’s looking at a few years in prison even when the kidnapping charges didn’t stick.
I can’t say I’m happy with the sentence, but in the grand scheme of things, Dallas takes up very little space in my brain, so in the end, I let it go.
Lately, I have a lot of life to live and less time to keep grudges.
I let it go.
He kisses me in the kitchen one afternoon when we’re both sure the boys are occupied with homework upstairs.
It’s a regular Sunday. The kind I’ve started to love, where nothing much happens.
We have no plans, so we just hang out, halfheartedly puttering around in the backyard because Jordan has decided to fix it up, but neither of us has any idea how to go about it, and we’re also in no rush at all because we have all the time in the world.
So I kiss him. My palm on his cheek. His back against the counter. His arms around my neck. My front pressed against his.
I can’t get enough of him. Can’t keep my hands off. We sneak kisses and moments together.
We both jump apart when somebody clears their throat behind us.
Jordan’s eyes widen when he sees both Theo and Rory in the doorway.
“We were just…” He looks at me, then at Theo. “Kissing,” he finishes, surprising a laugh out of me. I didn’t expect that to be the end of that sentence.
“I’m sorry,” Jordan says. “I was planning to talk to you. We were planning to talk to you. It’s just that a lot was happening, and it was difficult to find the right time and—”
“Dad,” Theo says, “it’s fine. We already suspected, so it’s not exactly a surprise.”
Jordan blinks. “You did?”
“You were being kind of obvious that something was going on,” Rory says.
Jordan slumps against the counter and glances at me. “And here I thought we were being discreet.”
“No,” Rory says.
The urge to laugh at the deadpan delivery of that one word is overwhelming.
Jordan, for once, is lost for words. “Well. This is…” He drags his hand through his hair. Looks at me. Looks at the boys. “Are you both okay with this?”
Rory shrugs. No other reply.
Theo looks at Jordan and nods. “I like that you’re happy.”
Jordan’s whole body relaxes, and he strides over to Theo and pulls him into a hug.
“I love you, kiddo,” he says.
Theo grins. “Why wouldn’t you? I’m great. Do we have food? Because I’m also hungry.”
The smile on my face is effortless. It feels like something permanent.
“Go get dressed,” I say. “We’ll go have lunch somewhere. You two pick where.”
They sound like a herd of elephants when they run up the stairs.
I smile some more and Jordan slides his arm around my waist while I throw mine over his shoulders and kiss the side of his head.
There’s still a lot we have to figure out. A lot of unknowns in the future. I’m not worried, though.
Because I have Jordan.
I have a home.
Family.
“I love you,” I tell him.
And he smiles.
There’s a lot of uncharted territory all around us, but the foundation we’re building everything on is a strong one. It can weather any storm. Handle anything we throw at it. I don’t have to wonder, I simply know.
Whatever life throws at us, we’ll figure it out.