28 #2
He sat back. Wiped his mouth. Turned off the car. He cracked the window to jet out a stream of vapor, and the cold was like fingers on his jaw.
A sound.
He snapped around in the seat.
Nothing. Bright asphalt. Dead grass.
The car was getting smaller.
Movement.
He twisted, saw long, empty lawns, a mailbox shaped like a bird’s head.
He was sweating, and his hands were starting to shake.
How long have I been here?
Jem didn’t trust himself to pull into the garage. On the short walk to the front door, the wind picked up, and the way it moved over his skin made him feel like he was a drum, and he was hollow inside.
I am really, really high.
Scipio nuzzled into him, turned in a circle, wiggled his butt. His fur felt like static electricity between Jem’s hands, and he kept running them down the dog’s back, and Scipio kept wiggling.
Where have you been?
It took him a moment to realize the words had been spoken aloud.
Tean was standing in the hallway that led to the bedrooms. He wore sweats, and his hair was mussed, and it looked like his new—well, newish—glasses had gotten bent.
“Oh my gosh, Jem, you’re okay. You’re okay.” He stopped. He crossed his arms, seemed to catch himself, and dropped them, but then he rubbed his palms against his thighs. “I thought— I don’t know what I thought. I’m so glad you’re okay.”
He came across the room, and Jem had to stop petting Scipio, which meant his palms no longer felt like lightning.
Tean grabbed him in a hug and pressed his face to Jem’s neck.
Jem stroked his back. The sweatshirt didn’t feel the same as Scipio’s fur, but it was nice too.
And the feel of Tean’s breath on Jem’s neck was nice.
And he was starting to chub up. Tean had a little stubble on his cheeks, and when it scraped against Jem’s cheek, it sparked.
Tean leaned back from the hug, a strange look on his face, but then Jem noticed the couch wasn’t made up as a bed anymore.
“Where’s your dad?” Jem asked.
“Hm? Oh. He’s gone.”
Jem kept rubbing Tean’s back, but the movement was automatic now. “Where’d he go?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. We had a huge fight, and I told him to get out. Jem, where were you? I’ve been so worried.”
Jem’s hand slowed. Then stopped. Tean held on to him for another moment, and then he stepped back.
“What do you mean, you don’t know where he went?” Jem could hear his voice tightening, but it was that same feeling as earlier, like someone else was doing the talking for him. “He was hurt. He needed somewhere to stay.”
“It’s a long story,” Tean said. But his tone had changed too, and he was hugging himself again. “I asked you a question: where were you?”
“Is that my vow book?” Jem asked.
The book was on the counter.
Tean didn’t say anything.
“Why is my vow book on the counter?” Jem asked.
“Because my dad was snooping. That’s what we fought about. He was upset I hadn’t told him about the wedding.”
“Did you read it?”
Tean cut his eyes away, but he said, “No.”
The heaviness in Jem’s body no longer felt grounding. It felt like it was all on his chest. Like he couldn’t breathe.
He picked up the vow book and flipped through it, like maybe they’d left fingerprints, some sign they’d been reading it. But the pages were all still blank.
“You weren’t supposed to look at it,” Jem said.
“I told you, I didn’t. My dad was the one who found it.”
Jem’s gut tightened. Let it go, he told himself. Move on. But he heard that other person say, “I’m still thinking about what I want to say.” A beat passed, and he kept talking. “I’m working on it.”
“It’s fine. That’s not important. Where were you last night?”
All that blood. The torn apart thing that had been a person.
“You can’t kick your dad out,” Jem said. “You need to call him.”
“I’m asking you a question,” Tean said. “And I want you to answer it.”
“He’s your dad. He’s family.”
“Where were you?”
“I was dealing with something, okay? What’s the big fucking deal?”
“What’s the big—” And then Tean stopped. And in what sounded like disbelief, he asked, “Are you high?”
“No.”
But it came out too quickly, and it sounded too much like Daniel when he’d gotten busted.
“Jem, what is going on right now?”
“What’s going on is you threw your dad out and you’ve been reading something that’s supposed to be private.”
“You haven’t written anything! There’s nothing private in that book, Jem! And we’re supposed to get married in a few weeks! And you haven’t written a single word, Jem. What’s your plan? Are you going to stand up there and riff?”
Jem’s cheeks were hot. “I’m going to call around and figure out what happened to your dad.”
“What is going on with you right now? Why are you talking about my dad?” Shaking his head, Jem tried to walk around Tean, but the doc moved into his path.
Under the soft brown of his skin, his face was red.
The glasses, Jem could see now, had definitely had their frames bent.
“Someone almost killed me last night. Kai almost killed me. You told me you’d meet me at Amy’s—”
There was more, but Jem didn’t hear it.
Amy’s house.
The phone call.
Dropping off Daniel.
The fight with Zeb, discovering Wendell’s body, and then the desperate need to get away from it all—to get out of his own head.
As memory crashed in, Jem had the sickening feeling of his guts turning to water, and he thought, for one moment, he might shit himself.
Tean had almost gotten killed.
Because of Jem.
Because Jem hadn’t been there to protect him.
And then that other person said, “You went inside?”
“Yes, I went inside. You never showed up—”
“You went inside?” It was a shout this time. “What the fuck were you thinking, Tean? My God, I told you not to go in by yourself.” But a little voice in his head asked, Did you tell him that? Did you say anything?
Tean reached up for his glasses. The gesture was defensive, almost like he’d taken a step back. “I waited—”
“You waited?” The tightness in his chest, the dizziness, the way everyone had been watching him, the knowledge that it was going to happen, whatever it was, that he was going to step wrong or turn wrong or blink wrong, and the floor would open up, or the sky would come crashing down, and he’d die, everything that had been building since he’d starting hitting the vape, everything he’d woken up with—and now Tean had gone and almost gotten himself killed, almost fucked everything up.
The anger built the way Tean fed sticks into the fire, and then the sticks were gone, and the fire was hotter.
Jem slapped the vow book against the counter.
“You didn’t wait! You went in there without me after I told you not to! ”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jem saw Scipio scurry behind Tean.
Tean took a deep breath. “You’re yelling at me.”
Somehow, Jem’s voice got even louder. The edges of the words were ragged. Probably because he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. “You’re goddamn right I’m yelling at you! What the fuck were you thinking? You could have gotten killed!”
The last words were a scream, and they ran through the house.
Scipio shrank down.
Tears rose in Tean’s eyes. He blinked them away. “I’m upset right now. And you’re not acting like yourself. I want to finish this conversation later.”
Yes, a voice said at the back of Jem’s brain. Yes, we’ll finish it later. Say yes.
But the other guy was screaming again. “We’re not going to finish it later. We’re going to finish it right now! I can’t believe you did something so stupid!”
This time, Tean couldn’t blink the tears away fast enough, and they spilled down his cheeks. “I’m going to the bedroom. I’m not going to do this with you while you’re on something.”
Yes, that voice said. It was relief, under everything else. Yes, go away. And I’ll go away too. And when I come back, everything will be better.
But when Tean nudged Scipio toward the bedroom, the panic squeezing Jem’s chest didn’t leave room for that little voice. And someone else was shouting, “Don’t walk away from me! Get back here!”
Tean kept walking.
“I’m not your dad, Tean! You can’t kick me out! You can’t make me disappear because you don’t want to deal with me anymore!”
The door shut.
And Jem was alone.
He howled—wordless. And then the words were there, forcing their way out, even though they sounded wrong, too loud, their shape not right: “I’m supposed to protect you!”