Epilogue #2
He says, “I don’t expect you to be chief.”
Everything but that, I realize. All of those words, and I’d skipped the important part. He’d heard it anyway.
“You don’t?”
“With your brother, it was never a question,” he says.
“Not just because he was my firstborn but because he always wanted it, whatever his reasons. But you’ve always seemed interested in different things.
” I look down at my shoes. “That’s not a bad thing, Kieran.
I admire it. I don’t need you to be another me. I’m fortunate.”
“Fortunate?”
“That you have so much of your mother in you.”
“Oh man,” I say under my breath, hating that Mason was right about the crying. “Um. Okay.”
“What you have with Mason,” he starts to say, then takes a moment to think.
The pause makes me anxious even though I know he likes Mason.
That doesn’t mean he likes what Mason is or that I’ve forced them together.
I haven’t found the gall to ask yet. But I wonder how much of his acceptance hinges on the fact that we’re together because of fate.
If this is just another way I’ve disappointed him.
What he says, though, is, “You chose well.” And, “Whatever you start with him, I just hope I can be a small part of it.”
“Oh man,” I mutter again, emphatically. I know the feeling.
It’s stellar, it’s starshine, realizing I can relate to him. There are still levels on which we can understand each other. Seeing that now, after making so many assumptions, it’s hard not to regret. But my dad catches me mid-fall.
“And how many times do I have to tell you?” he says. “I don’t see it as your fault. Any of it.”
“How many times do I have to tell you to quit trying to be strong for the both of us?” I counter. “It’s not like when I was a kid.”
He looks around the room. “All grown up, huh?”
“Not . . . that grown.”
My dad gets the hint, opening an arm. He used to have to get on his knees to hug me, but now we’re nearly the same height. I allow myself to feel small anyway—naive and afraid of the dark, and full of imagination.
“And anyway,” he adds, “I already have my eyes set on a successor. She’ll make a great chief, if she’s interested.”
Catching on, I say, “She’ll burn the whole house down.”
The rumbling feel of his chuckle reminds me of falling asleep on his chest while he laughed at the bedtime stories Mom used to read. He had always enjoyed them more than I did.
“Maybe that’s just what we need,” he says.
***
That night, Mason orders takeout and eats on the couch while I decorate the wall across from my bed.
It creeps right up to the kitchen counter, smaller than my bedroom wall back home, and I use every centimeter.
I hang up a few of my mom’s shitty watercolors, her doodled-on pages, and a few pieces of my own (of flowers, not of Mason, or I’d never hear the end of it).
Then there are the shark drawings Casper gave me as a going-away gift and the handful of paintings Dad had let me dust and take out of his closet.
They’re post-impressionistic, a few nighttime landscapes and a portrait of my mom in a wide straw hat.
I hang a small frame holding Annalisa’s newest flower art.
The last to go up are the pages I took from Cedric’s room when I could bear to go down there again: dark-ink sketches of magical creatures and skeletal animals that I recognized from his stick-and-pokes.
His milkweed drawing hangs next to one of mine.
Mason is already making himself at home. He discards his dirty clothes on my floor before we shower and afterward gets boxers and a T-shirt out of his backpack.
“My roommate kept me up until four in the morning raging over League of Legends,” he says when I raise an eyebrow at his presumption. He doesn’t even bother to sound sheepish or pause dressing. “League, Kieran. I’m going to basically live here.”
He’s beautiful. The places where he was stabbed have healed back to almost-smooth skin, and the burn on his neck is hard to see in most light.
The shallow silver cuts on his torso, though, scarred dark and raised.
When he puts his shirt on, only the bite marks are visible, and only if I really look for them. I do. I always do.
I realize I’m going to need to clear some closet space for him.
I’ve never had to share like that before.
So much has already changed that it’s hard to believe the ground is still shifting beneath me, in the same way it’s hard to believe a meteor storm or a red aurora. I never thought it would happen for me.
I fiddle with the action figures on my nightstand. They’re out of place next to the bonsai-shaped lamp, but I like them right where they are. I climb into bed, extending my arms. Mason jumps on top of me, wrapping me up, nibbling at my jaw.
“I can live with that.” I’m sounding too mushy again. I warn him, “I’m totally getting a cat.”
I can feel his grimace against my bare chest, but he grumbles, “I’ll get over it.”
Mason smells like my tea tree conditioner.
His skin is still warm from our shower. I feel warm too.
I don’t know if it’s from him, or the residual steam, or something nestled deep in my bones.
It’s funny—I finally feel like I can do anything, maybe something amazing, and all I want is to lay here and do this nothing at his side.
It’s funny—I gave up immortality over a decade ago and never looked back, and now, all of a sudden, I’m wishing for eternity.