Twenty-four #2
“By the time I got over my cowardice, I realized it wouldn’t do any good.
There’s no revenge in hurting someone who can’t feel the pain.
So where does that leave me? It’s an itch I’ll never get to scratch.
” He pushed a hand roughly through his hair, scratching at his scalp like he could feel it.
“I won’t hesitate, Kier. If one of them lays so much as a finger on anyone in this family, I’ll tear them to shreds.
Every last one of them if I have to; I don’t fucking care. ”
I shrank away from Cedric’s wild eyes. His expression shuttered.
“You said you wanted to talk to Dad,” he said. “I won’t keep you.”
“Cedric. Wait.”
My brother paused on his way to the door.
“I won’t forget,” I promised.
Cedric nodded once, sharply, then left.
After dropping Mason off at his car in the school parking lot, I had spent the drive home talking myself up, convincing myself I was equipped for the conversation I was going to have with my dad.
After talking with Cedric, I nearly scrapped the plan altogether.
I sat at my desk for several minutes, trying out those mind-clearing exercises humans swore by and reminding myself that he wouldn’t figure me out from one little conversation.
I wasn’t going to tell him about Mason—I couldn’t.
Now more than ever, I didn’t know how I ever would.
The word in my head when I imagined it was traitor.
Mrs. Kane had been right, though, terrifying as she was. I couldn’t keep it a secret forever.
Baby steps.
I knocked on his door. My dad was in bed, holding a clipboard far from his face like an old man.
His curtains were drawn, his room lit with red-orange light from the Tiffany lamp on his nightstand.
Beside it was a wine glass filled with blood.
Dramatic music played from his TV, some Italian telenovela.
He smiled when he saw me. “Welcome back. Did you have a good trip?”
“It was okay,” I lied. I tapped the top of my head and my dad reached up, finding his glasses nestled in hair. He lowered them over his face with a sheepish chuckle. “Are you working?”
“Just looking over inventory. The new tech is . . . enthusiastic. A little trigger-happy.”
“It’s Sunday,” I said.
“Hence the recreation.” He waved toward the TV. The volume was low; he clearly wasn’t watching.
I came around to the other side of his bed. It still looked as big as it had when I was a kid.
“Turn it up,” I said. “And can you turn the subtitles on?”
He looked surprised but did as I asked.
“In English,” I said flatly.
“Come on,” he said. “It hasn’t been that long. Try.”
With the Italian subs, I understood maybe a third of what the actors said and relied on context clues and exaggerated expressions for the rest. Nevertheless, I gasped out loud when the blond protagonist with the scar on her face found out that the man she had just made passionate love to was actually the mastermind behind the downfall of her sister’s business.
“Oh, that’s sick,” I said as the man told her, more or less, that he had done it so the two of them could be together.
And she folded.
“I can’t stand this show,” said my dad. His clipboard sat on his lap, forgotten. He sipped from his glass. “Nothing is sacred to these people.”
“Turn it off, then.”
He gave me a narrow look.
Two forty-minute episodes later, when the main villain and his brother-in-law got into a fistfight so spectacular they crashed through a window, my dad said, “That brings me back.”
I reached over him for the remote, paused the show, and said, “Pardon?”
“Have I not told you about the summer of ’99? Dante and I did not get along when he and ’Cesca first started dating.”
By now I had my own wine glass filled with blood. I swirled it like a sommelier. “I need to hear more. Every detail, actually.”
One episode later, during a lull, I said, “Dad? I think I’m gay.”
This time, he was the one to hit Pause. There was maybe a drop left in my glass, but I brought it to my mouth anyway, tipping it to coax the drop down and avoiding my father’s eye.
“To be clear,” he said slowly, “I stopped the show because this feels like an important moment, not because I’m upset.”
I shut my eyes, lowering the glass. “You’re not?”
“Kieran. Of course not. If I’ve ever acted in a way that would suggest otherwise, I apologize.”
He hadn’t. So why did relief hit me so hard it made my head spin?
“You don’t care if I can’t, like . . . carry on the bloodline, or whatever?”
My dad laughed. “We don’t have a bloodline.”
I nodded, taking it all in. There wasn’t much to take in, which in itself was a lot to take in.
“I think I’d prefer if this wasn’t an important moment,” I decided.
“Well, all right. If you change your mind, I can make a whole thing about it.”
I opened my eyes when I heard the TV start back up.
“I would even consider buying one of those shirts, if you really wanted.”
A laugh slammed out of me before I was ready for it at the mental image: my dad in an I <3 MY GAY SON shirt with a rainbow inside the heart. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him wear color outside of his maroon scrubs.
“Please do not,” I said.
“Gladly.” He sounded grateful. He tapped his empty glass against mine and said, “Cheers.” Thoughtfully, he added, “I always thought it would be your brother.”
We got through three more episodes before Eloise, the deceptively old head of the Marino family, appeared in the doorway to inform my dad that blood supplies were low in the basement. He left with a parting smile.