18. Gideon #2
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Good.”
“Ryan and I thought we’d get on the road after.”
Dad nodded. He knew the plan. He’d known it for days because while the Copperheads had been good, I didn’t want to push my luck. “You’ll call when you get back?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“And not only about Noah.” I glanced at him. Dad shoved his hands into his coat pockets. “We could talk about other things. Hockey?”
I groaned.
“Not hockey?”
“You always talk about hockey.”
“I thought you liked hockey.”
“I do.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
I stared at him, and he stared back. Then he sighed.
“Okay.” He brightened. “There’s more to your life than hockey. We could talk about Ryan.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What about Ryan?”
Dad looked confused. “Nothing. Jesus. I like Ryan.”
“Good.”
“He makes you happy.”
“He does.”
“I know.”
No big announcement, no acceptance speech. Dad had spent nearly two weeks watching us together, seeing Ryan from the start, beside me in the hospital bringing coffee, finding food, sitting quietly when there was nothing useful to say.
Dad bumped my shoulder with his. “Tell him thanks for making you happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.”
I thought about Ryan waiting outside Noah’s hospital room.
Ryan driving when I couldn’t. Ryan waking beside me every morning in that shitty hotel room, never once asking when we were going home.
Hell, I thought about a lot of things as I drove around for a while.
When I got back to the hotel, Ryan was asleep on his side on top of the comforter, his phone loose in one hand.
There was glitter on his eyelids. The TV was flickering silently across the room, subtitles running beneath two people arguing in a kitchen.
He’d gone out yesterday while I was at the center visiting Noah and came back with two new palettes because, apparently, Michigan had makeup unavailable anywhere else on Earth.
I stood in the doorway and looked at him.
For two weeks, he’d been here, no complaints, no questions about how long, no reminders that he had a job or a dad or a life waiting for him back in Rochester.
He’d admitted he’d told his dad about Noah, worried I’d be pissed that he’d shared something so personal.
I wasn’t. Ryan needed someone in his corner too.
He’d found a laundromat when we ran out of clean clothes. He made sure I ate. He sat on the bathroom counter every morning doing his face while I stood under the shower trying to work out how I was supposed to get through another day.
At night, he climbed into bed beside me.
Sometimes we kissed. Mostly we slept. Some nights I woke with my heart trying to punch through my ribs and Ryan’s hand already flat against my chest. Once I woke crying, and he never mentioned it the next morning.
I loved him for that. I loved him, full stop, and that was becoming harder to pretend I hadn’t worked out.
I locked the door, and Ryan stirred, his eyes opening slowly.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
He pushed himself upright and rubbed one eye.
“Careful,” I warned. “You’ll get glitter in your eyes.”
“Fuck.” He peered at his fingers, and I laughed. “How was it?” he asked.
I took off my jacket. “Hard.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He waited. “Good too.”
His expression softened. “Come here.”
I crossed the room. Ryan shuffled back against the headboard, and I sat beside him. He immediately leaned into me, his head finding my shoulder, and I wrapped my arm around him. For a minute I said nothing, then I told him.
Not everything. Some things belonged to Noah, but I told him about Dad. About the three of us trying to claim responsibility for Ethan, about acceptance, about Noah saying he wanted his brother back.
“What did you say?” Ryan asked.
“That we start from here.”
He lifted his head. “That sounds very emotionally healthy.”
“Fuck off.”
“There he is.”
I kissed his forehead. “Dad says he likes you for me.”
Ryan dipped his head, a blush on his cheeks. “Cool,” he murmured. “I like him too.”
My phone buzzed, and I glanced at it. Noah.
NOAH: See you tomorrow?
GIDEON: I’ll be there.
I put the phone face down.
“That okay?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah.” I breathed out. “Actually, yeah.”
He kissed my shoulder, and we stayed like that until my leg went numb. Then Ryan shifted.
“I went to an NA meeting today.”
God, I’d left him alone in a hotel room while he fought to stay clean. “Did you need it?”
“Yes.” He paused. “No.” Another pause. “Yes, probably.”
I waited.
Ryan sighed. “I’ll always need it. You know that, right?
” No drama in the way he said it, no embarrassment either.
Just fact. “I’m clean,” he continued. “I’m doing good.
Really good. But that doesn’t mean there’s going to be some magical day where I wake up and addiction isn’t part of me anymore. ” His fingers tightened around mine.
“I know.” I paused, not entirely sure what to say. “So, um… how was it?”
Lame. So lame, Gideon.
“Okay. Different people. Different stories. Nobody knew me, which was weird.”
“Good weird?”
“Some of it.” He rested his head against my shoulder. “There was a guy who’d been clean for twelve years. Someone else had thirty days. One woman kept talking about how she’d stopped going to meetings for nearly two years because she thought she didn’t need them anymore.”
“And?”
“Turned out she did need them.” We went quiet, then Ryan said, “I miss my Rochester group though.”
I knew enough of the names now: Lyle, Rita, Trucker, Bobby Blue Hair, people I’d never really met but somehow knew anyway because they’d been part of Ryan getting himself back.
“I miss Lyle,” he admitted. “I miss the shitty coffee. I miss everyone knowing when someone’s lying about being fine. I even miss Trucker farting.” I rubbed my thumb over the back of his hand. “But I think going here was good.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Different room. Different people. Same shit underneath.” He was quiet for a second. “Did you ever do groups?”
“I used to go to a grief group. Five years. Maybe a bit more on and off.”
“Why did you stop?”
I glanced toward the television, where the arguing had ended and now someone was crying into a beer.
“I think I stopped needing that particular room. I didn’t stop needing help with the grief.
I still had Dr. Ellison. But the group…” I shrugged.
“I understood everyone’s stories. Knew what the new people were going to say before they said it.
Knew which weeks were going to be bad. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Christmas.”
“And you got tired of it?”
“No.” I thought about it. “I think I got scared I was staying because it was familiar.”
Ryan nodded slowly. “That makes sense.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah.” His gaze dropped to our joined hands. “Maybe meetings are like people.”
“What does that mean?”
“You can need different ones at different times.”
I snorted. “That was disgustingly wise.”
“I know.”
“Don’t do it again.”
“No promises.” He settled back against me.
Hockey. Therapy. Ryan had his meetings. Maybe staying alive was mostly a collection of things I had to keep choosing, even after I thought I should be done needing them.
His phone chimed. He ignored it. A few seconds later, it chimed again.
“Your dad?” I asked.
“Probably.”
“Is he checking we haven’t murdered each other?”
“He worries.”
“Check it.”
Ryan groaned dramatically and reached across me for his phone. “You’re so bossy.”
“You like it.”
“I really do.”
He unlocked the screen, then stopped, every bit of him going still. I knew that kind of stillness now, and my heart kicked. What kind of message had he been sent at eight o’clock at night that made him go into shock?
“What?” Ryan didn’t answer. “Ryan?” His eyes moved over the screen once, then twice. “Baby?”
His lips parted, and he handed me his phone. Whatever this was, we’d face it together. We could be home in six hours, and if his dad needed him…
Dear Ryan Vale,
Congratulations.
I didn’t need to read beyond the first line when I saw who it was from, and my heart exploded with pride.
I looked at him. “You got in.”
“Oh, my God. Oh my God. Gideon.”
“I know.”
“Gideon!”
He launched himself at me. I caught him around the waist and went backward onto the bed with Ryan half on top of me, laughing so hard I could barely breathe.
“I got in!”
“You got in.”