epilogue
GRADUATION
Duke Dolce
Royal adjusts the black gown, making sure it sits squarely on my shoulders, then stands back and looks me over. “If Dad was here, he’d be proud of you.”
“Not you?” I ask, cracking a grin so I don’t bust out crying or do some other pussy shit. I shouldn’t be sad anyway. It’s a happy occasion, cause for celebration. The Dolce Dumbass made it through high school.
“I’m proud too,” he says gruffly. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was about to get choked up. Royal doesn’t do that, though. The men in my family are men. Emotions are for the girls and the gays. That’s what Dad always said. When I showed too much of them for his liking, well, he had ways to rid me of the urge.
“Thanks, bro,” I say, holding out a hand to Royal, like it doesn’t matter that someone is proud of me for probably the first time in my entire fucking life. That’s what happens when you’re the family fuck-up, and all the good ones already made it out, so there’s no one left to be proud of but you. “And Dad’s here, even if we can’t see him.”
I feel him. Lingering on, looking over my shoulder, judging. Finding me lacking, as he always did. The family disappointment—that’s my legacy.
I rode with Royal, but I linger a minute, feeling the emptiness all around us where the shapes of those missing shimmer like cut-out mirages in the air.
Dad.
Mabel.
Baron.
“You better get in line before the whole family gets here and mobs you,” Royal says after a pause.
I wonder if he feels it too, but I’m too much of a pussy to ask. So I pull on my cap, tilting it at a rakish angle, and saunter across the lot toward the doors topped with our motto, Inis Origine Pendet. When I reach the entrance, I veer off and circle around the building with a couple other seniors, toward the little stadium where I played football for the past three years. Willow Heights is holding the ceremony outdoors, since all the parents and families can fit into the bleachers, and they think the weather is perfect. They didn’t take into account that it’s as hot as the devil’s ass hole in the sun, and we’re all wearing black.
A pang of loss hits me when I join the other seniors heading for the field. This is it. The last time I’ll step onto the grass where, under the harsh lights every Friday night, I banged chests, tapped asses, and gripped the thighs of triumphant teammates as we hefted them onto our shoulders. Where I slammed into opponents with all the force of fury and frustration I was allowed to unleash here; slid on the wet, sucking ground in the rain and the wet, sweaty bodies in the heat; spent countless hours locked in the heady grip of grunting, pushing, masculine aggression that was every bit as addictive as the tease on the sidelines, where girls danced in skimpy outfits, screamed my name when I scored, and whispered hot, dirty promises in my ears of the things they’d let me do later if we won.
How can anyone celebrate the end of that?
On the field, I wasn’t a fuck-up. I was good. I was needed. I was part of something bigger.
Everyone always talks about graduation like it’s this great, epic conclusion, high school’s greatest achievement. They don’t talk about what comes next. Not in any real way. It’s abstract—write this college essay, fill out this application, impress this recruiter. It’s just another assignment. Now the assignments are over, and there’s no one to tell us what to do, what not to do.
I spot my friends standing around in a group, the guys I’ve shared everything with the last four years, the jokes, the drinks, the pussy, the time. Everything but the truth, and the blame.
They open the circle for me, pull me in, clap me on the back and include me in their plans for the party tonight, the one they’re calling the last party of high school, even though high school will be over when the last of us take our diplomas and leave the field today. To anyone else, it must look like I’m popular, that I belong. But I know otherwise. They knew each other long before I was here, will know each other long after I’m gone. Even when we ruled, we were interlopers, usurpers. I always knew the crown was borrowed, stolen from the rightful king.
“Hey, dumbass,” he says, tipping his chin at me. “Your tassel is on the wrong side.”
I shake the offending bundle of gold thread to the back of my square cap. “Better?”
He shakes his head like I’m hopeless, but he steps over to me, yanking the brim of the cap down and arranging the tassel on the right side like his. A stitch of annoyance forms between his brows, and I fight the urge to smooth it out with my thumb, to inhale the scent of smoke and leather that wraps him in the memory of the most shameful night of my life. I wish I’d drank a little more, swallowed one more pearl and disappeared into wonderland, and I didn’t remember. Since I can’t forget, I pray Colt has.
“Get off me, you homo,” I say, my palms colliding with his pecs, hard under the hot fabric of his synthetic black gown in the sun.
He shakes his head again and turns away, then freezes solid. No one else notices. Cotton is laughing at something DeShaun said. The Dolce girls are fanning themselves and reassuring each other that their makeup is fine. Dixie is on her phone, as usual. I follow Colt’s gaze, and my own body turns to stone, a fault line rending open inside my chest.
There, strolling across the grass like he does it every day, is my twin.
His gait is casual, confident, unbothered, but his eyes are alert as always, watchful, a black hole absorbing everything in the vicinity. My gaze sweeps the area behind him, then the stands, looking for her. But there’s no sign of Mabel Darling.
Baron reaches us and steps into the group like he was never gone. “Hey.”
Before I know I’ve moved, my fist connects with his face. His glasses fly off, tumbling across the grass, and he stumbles backwards, a flash of bewilderment crossing his face. Baron always knew what I was going to do before I did, so it takes a lot to catch him off guard.
Conversation dies around us, and everyone turns to gape, taking a moment to register there are two of us, that the prodigal son has returned, that he walks among us once more.
“What the fuck?” he snaps, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth and checking it for blood.
“That’s for leaving without so much as a fucking goodbye,” I say.
“You’re mad?” he asks incredulously.
“Were you mad when Crystal came back?” I challenge.
“I didn’t fake my own death,” he grumbles, spitting a stream of blood onto the ground.
I can’t help but grin. “Yeah, true.”
My happiness overflows then, and I grab him and drag him in, wrapping my arms around him and pounding him on the back, feeling everything inside me settle into place as easily as he fits back into the crowd he always ran when he was here. Nothing makes sense without Baron.
He’s fine without me of course—Baron’s too cool to need anyone. He went off to build a better world for us, assuming I’d be fine too. But I wasn’t fine at all.
He should have known that.
I give him a minute to greet everyone else while I swipe his glasses from the ground, straighten them, and hand them back.
“You’re friends with Colt Darling?” he asks, slipping the glasses onto his face. “What the fuck?”
My eyes meet Colt’s, those blue eyes made of sky you could fall into like a well and never get out. They’re hazy now, not with drugs but with caution. He gives the slightest tip of his chin in acknowledgment.
I swing my gaze back to my brother and shrug one shoulder. “He’s not so bad.”
“Are you fucking with me?” he asks, glaring around our group like he’s trying to find who’s responsible for this outrage.
“Yeah, see, that’s what happens when you leave for five months,” Harper says from beside me, though I’m not sure how long she’s been standing there. “You don’t get to run shit while you’re gone.”
“You run shit now?” he asks her. “That’s why this limp-dick loser is hanging out with the elite like he’s not a scourge on this school?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my dick,” Colt says coolly.
I think I’m going to hurl as I wait for him to go on, to tell Baron that I would know, to reveal to the whole school what happened when he was gone and Dad was dead and I was fucked out of my mind on beer and grief and those fucking blue pearls. It’s the kind of thing he’d do, saving it for graduation and then pretending he’s a good guy because he waited until I wouldn’t have to see their faces in the hall at school anymore.
But he doesn’t say anything, just stares down my brother like he’s Baron’s equal—and then some.
“Where’s Lo?” Baron asks after a second.
“She went crazy,” Dixie says, looking quite satisfied at being the bearer of that news. “She was so mad that I took her place that she ran me over with her car!”
The Dolce girls all gasp on cue, then nod in sympathy.
Baron snorts. “You took Gloria’s place?”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” Dixie says, lifting her chin. If anything, Gloria did her a favor. After their last fight in the café, when Dixie revealed her true motives, it looked like the tides might turn against her at last. But all was forgotten in the rush to offer condolences and take her side when she was ‘on her death bed,’ as she likes to tell people. News that sensational is more exciting than a regular girl-fight, especially when they could get a firsthand account if they went to see her in the hospital.
“Lo got fat,” I explain. “And she was working at Vices.”
“That’s not what happened,” Colt says. “And she’s my girl, so watch your damn mouth.”
I’m about to say sorry when I see Baron watching, incredulous that I’d let Colt Darling speak to me that way. “Hey, we all got our thing,” I say with a shrug. “There’s no shame in that. Everyone knows you’re a chubby chaser.”
Colt pops me in the chin so suddenly I never see it coming. Before I can even react, he’s got his hand back in his pocket, looking as cool and casual as if nothing happened. I stumble back, my ears ringing and my lips stinging.
“What the fuck?” I demand, spitting blood and then running my tongue over my teeth to make sure he didn’t break one of them.
I wasn’t expecting dude to be lightning quick like that. He usually can’t be bothered to do anything faster than a sloth, and he’s sure as fuck never hit me for talking shit about Dixie. Guess I should have learned my lesson at prom—Gloria is off limits.
“Now you can match your brother,” he says. “Isn’t that your goal in life?”
I’m about to point out that I hit Baron’s jaw, and now I’m going to have duck face in all the graduation photos, but Baron steps in before I can.
“You think you’re going to hit my brother and get away with it?” he growls, prowling forward with his hands fisted.
“I think you’ll find you have less allies in this town than you expect,” Colt says, not even taking his hands out of his pockets to defend himself.
“It’s cool,” I say, grabbing Baron’s shoulder to stop him. “I’m good. He hits like a pussy little bitch anyway.”
Baron glances around at the other elite, taking in the fact that not one of them moved to jump Colt when he hit me, their king. If he didn’t realize how much things had changed before, he does now.
“Damn,” he says, relenting and stepping back next to me. “Guess I was holding this whole school together.”
“Pretty much,” I say, throwing an arm around him. “Glad you’re back, brother.”
“Oh, I’m not back,” he says. “I just came to get my diploma—and you.”
I imagine this is how Colt felt when he fell off the wagon and stood at the edge of that cliff. Letting myself get swept along with Baron is like taking a flying leap into the oblivion of an addiction, the relief so potent you want to cry, even though you can’t. Even the knowledge that it’s going to kill you can’t eclipse how goddamn good it feels to give in.
The teacher in charge of lining us up in alphabetical order starts to herd everyone into the rows of chairs they set up, and we move toward our spot.
“Where’s Mabel?” I ask quietly, since we’ve been in contact enough for me to know that’s what he was after when he left.
Baron gives his head a small shake and steps even closer, gripping my arm as if to ground himself. “She’s waiting for us,” he says. “I was taking care of other shit. I saved her for when we could go get her together.”
Relief settles into me, all the questions and hurts and jealousies I’ve entertained while he was gone swept away with his words. Of course he didn’t take her for himself and forget me here in this shithole town. No matter what anyone says about him, I know better. Baron is the most loyal bastard who ever lived. He would die before he’d betray his family, especially me.
“Does Royal know you’re here?” I ask, since I also know the reason he left wasn’t Mabel.
He shakes his head. “No, and seeing as how I tried to murder his girlfriend last time I was here, I don’t think he’ll be too happy about it.”
“He won’t do anything while everyone’s here,” I point out. “Nonni and Nonna, all the uncles, even Mom.”
“Mom’s here?” he asks, twisting around to look at the stands.
“Yeah. Everyone came down for graduation.”
“We’ll stick around long enough to see the family,” he assures me. “We’ll be gone before he can put a bullet in me, though.”
“Sounds like just long enough,” I say, taking my seat after Baron in the row of D names. I spot Crystal and Devlin making their way along the bleachers with a small army of children, and a deep sadness creeps toward me when I think about leaving, maybe never seeing them again. I lost so much time with them. And there’s Royal, the brother who stayed with me while Faulkner rolled back over and went on like we never did the things we did. He gets it in a way Baron can’t. There’s my grandparents and uncles and cousins, and there’s Mom, gorgeous and proud in her designer wear, looking around at what the other moms are wearing.
There are all the other Faulkner families I’ve come to know—DeShaun and Cotton’s parents, Mr. Montgomery with his new wife, Amber, and even Rylan, who might have been useful if Colt hadn’t fucked that up. There’s the whole Darling family, here to see Colt walk at last. And over there is little Olive, bouncing in her seat and waving wildly, hoping I’ll see her. I open my hand in a small wave and then turn back to Baron. He doesn’t form attachments like I do, wouldn’t understand the ones I’ve formed while he was away.
But he understands the other side of me, the one no one else does. He understands my demon, the need for dominance and destruction, even if he doesn’t share it. I’ve tamed that side while he was gone, fit in with the rest of the world like I belong here. That’s something Baron learned from me, a quality he admires, even if no one else does. And he knows what it costs me. He knows that it eats me up inside if I don’t let it run free, if I don’t let chaos rain down and dance in the ashes left when the wildfire has consumed everything in its path.
I’ll miss the others, but I can live without them. I think about what Colt said that last night at the quarry, about how I lost someone I can’t live without when Mabel left. I can’t live without my other half, though, the half of me that split off before we were born, that formed into another body, so outsiders think we’re two people. Baron and I know different. We’re one person split in two. He’s the order to my chaos, the ice to my fire. We share a soul, a heart, a mind. And that mind has been made up. Mabel Darling stole something that wasn’t hers to keep, and we want it back.
*