Chapter 11 Ballast
ballast
The weight you carry to stay steady.
I overate on good festival food, and now I’m being punished. I toss and turn, jiggling the whole bunk frame.
“You okay?” Trent murmurs in the dark.
“You should’ve stopped me at the third food truck.”
“Would you have listened?”
“Grandpa was goading me. And it was such a nice treat.”
“Probably didn’t help you also finished what he couldn’t.”
“What he shouldn’t. I was looking after his health.” I grimace. “What’s it going to be like when we spit roast that whole hog we promised him?”
Trent laughs softly and I hear the rustle of sheets. “I’ll make peppermint tea.”
We shuffle quietly past Grandpa’s room. My stomach gurgles loud enough to echo down the hall. I wag a finger at it, and in the murky moonlight Trent catches the gesture and—without thinking—pats my stomach. A small, instinctive there, there.
The touch halts the air in my chest.
So easy. So unguarded.
For a moment, I forget he means it like an older brother.
Then his hand is gone and the kettle’s hiss fills the silence.
I settle at the kitchen table, tracing the frayed brim of the denim hat left there earlier. The moonlight glints off an old brass stud. The fridge hums softly. Peppermint curls faintly in the air.
Trent dims the light to its lowest glow. “You really ran through half the market for this,” he murmurs as he pours.
“Yes, well—” I lift the cup, the steam fogging my vision.
He’s watching me over his cup. “Well what?”
“That’s what family should do,” I say, the words heavier than the tea.
His chair creaks. He sits back, studying me. Then, quietly: “He would’ve forgiven you if you hadn’t found it.”
The sentence drops through me like an anchor.
I freeze, the hat caught between my fingers. “I wouldn’t have forgiven myself.”
“Why not?”
I shrug, pretending nonchalance. My thumb presses into the scar’s ridge through the fabric of my shirt. I can’t speak.
But I feel him, reading me.
The kettle clicks again as it cools, a faint metallic sigh.