Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT_
HAZARD
I stand over Decaf’s sleeping body with a pillow in my hand.
I could totally do it. I could put it over his face and smother him. End this whole thing and get back to the happy and carefree me. The one everyone else in Mike Bravo says is an impulsive brat.
Considering Trav was concerned about Decaf and me not getting along, hence sending us to stay with Atlas and Lemon, it’s annoying that we’ve been put in a room together.
It’s also not smart. Because here I am, contemplating murder.
Surely, the big house across the driveway has a spare room with a spare bed.
Though with the way Decaf is suddenly acting all protective and overbearing, I’m guessing he’s made it so that’s not an option.
Which is even more annoying. Because I finally decide to leave, to stop chasing some stupid dream where I get a piece of my father back, and that’s when he decides to step up?
Fuck him.
I should motherfucking suffocate him. I could do it and then run away.
I don’t move. Didn’t think I would. I talk a big talk, only usually, it’s out loud and to others. That part of me has been missing lately, disappearing more and more every day that I’ve been working for the same company as Decaf. Being in his orbit but not his presence.
That’s his fault.
Oh, look at that, the urge to murder is back.
“If you’re going to suffocate me, a plastic bag would be easier.” He pulls his head back, looking up at where I stand behind his head at the side of the couch. “Less effort.” He smiles, and I hate that it makes me angrier and slightly turned on.
I throw the pillow at him. “Stop snoring, fucker.”
“I don’t snore, and if I did, I definitely wasn’t when you first started standing over me a few minutes ago.”
“You’re faking being asleep?”
“Considering my black eye, I thought it would be smart to not let myself fall asleep completely. I’m like a shark. Only turn off half my brain so I can sense when someone is about to smother me with a pillow.”
“I wasn’t going to actually do it.” I turn and head back to my bed, and even though I realize I threw my one and only pillow at him, I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of asking for it back. I’ll have to wake up with a pain in my neck and deal with it.
A second after my body hits the mattress, face down, my pillow hits me. Then I hear rustling and twist my head to see him sitting up and staring at me.
“If you’re waiting for a thank-you, you’ll be waiting a long time,” I say.
“Not waiting for a thank-you.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Well, I’m awake now. What time is it?”
“Two. I haven’t even been to sleep yet, old man.”
“This is becoming a habit.”
“What is…?” I ask but trail off when he stands.
His tight T-shirt and loose boxers show off way more of his body than that much material should. It doesn’t help that he’s tenting in his shorts.
I grab the pillow from my back and bury my face in it.
“Being up at sleep o’clock. Want coffee?”
He can’t be serious. Yet, as I hear him moving about the small kitchen, I realize he is.
I flip over and sit up. “You have a real problem, you know that?”
“With coffee? It’s not exactly a secret.”
“It can’t be healthy.”
“Also not a secret. Are you having one or not?”
He’s so fucking frustrating.
“On one condition,” I say.
“I’m not fucking off.”
“That’s obvious. But I want to know why. Why now? Where the fuck have you been, and why have you only decided now to give a shit about me?” I will not cry. I will not fucking cry.
“Going to need coffee for this conversation,” he grumbles. “Go sit at the table.” He nods in the direction of the small round table near the entry to the guesthouse, and as much as I want to hold on to this anger, I want answers more. I have the gist now but not the explanation.
I climb out of bed once again and head for the table. I’m only in my sweatpants, and as I pass Decaf, he says, “Maybe put a shirt on.”
I’d like to think he wants me to put a shirt on because my muscles on muscles are too much for him to handle, but I doubt it. It’s probably so he can take me seriously or some shit. Well, he’s already got me cooperating with having coffee and chats at two in the morning. He can deal with my abs.
I ignore him and pull out a chair and plonk my ass in it.
“Or not,” he says under his breath.
He brings the two cups over and slides one across to me. “Drink.”
“You know, every time you tell me to do something, it makes me not want to do it.”
“Fine, then. Do what you want with it. Snort it up your nose for all I care.” He sits opposite me and takes a long sip, closing his eyes as he drinks it down. I swear I even hear a moan.
I hate, hate, hate that it’s a delicious sound. I have to take a drink so I don’t stare at him, waiting for him to make that noise again. When I set my cup back on the table, I run my finger over the rough wood surface and say, “Okay, so talk.”
Decaf sighs. “I thought I was doing the right thing by not being a part of your life.”
“Explain your logic with that one, genius.”
“Do you want to have this grown-up conversation or not?”
“Oh, so I’m a grown-up now? I really wish you’d make up your mind. You don’t want me in your life, you won’t leave my side, I’m a kid, I’m an adult. What. Do. You. Want. From. Me?”
“I want you to be safe!” he booms and slams his cup on the table.
I physically pull back but can’t help thinking it’s a good thing he drinks fast, otherwise coffee would’ve gone everywhere.
“I was convinced, still am if I’m being honest, that if I was a role model in your life, if you followed in your father’s and my footsteps, that I would have to watch as another Hazard died right in front of my eyes.
I did nothing to save your dad, and he deserved so much better from me.
I was a gay man at a time where being gay in the military wasn’t allowed to be talked about.
Everyone in our unit knew, and they also knew if they had anything to say about it that your dad would kick their asses for me.
” Decaf’s lips form a small smile, but his deep brown eyes remain full of sorrow.
“He always had my back, and in the moment he needed me to return the favor, instead of fight, I didn’t even choose flight.
I froze. I’ve never forgiven myself, your mother certainly never forgave me, and so when she found out and pushed me out of your lives forever, I accepted it.
Because I knew you would never forgive me either. ”
It’s obvious with his words, through the self-hatred in his voice, that he’s punished himself enough for the last twenty-two years that I don’t need to do it too. And now it’s time to show him that I can be a fucking grown-up. “You could not have possibly made any more wrong choices in your life.”
“You don’t think I know that?” Now his voice, so small, softens me toward him even more.
So there isn’t a trace of anger when I say, “I don’t think you do. Because your one mistake wasn’t that you sat by and watched as my father was killed. It was every single thing you did after that.”
Decaf blinks at me, glances down at his coffee cup, and then back up at me again. “I’m going to need more coffee to understand that.” He gets up to make himself more.
“This conversation is going to take all night if we have to keep having caffeine breaks.”
He rests his hands on the small kitchen counter, leaning forward as his shoulders sag. “Trust me when I say you’d rather I be overcaffeinated than under.”
I have no doubt about that.
“What did you mean?” he asks and turns his head toward me. “That everything I did after was the mistake.”
“No, no, shouldn’t I wait until you have more coffee?”
He finishes making it and brings it to his mouth as he pops a hip against the counter. “I knew it was almost ready. I’m nothing if not knowledgeable about timing when it comes to coffee.”
“This sludge is going to kill you one day.”
His lips turn up again. “That’s reassuring.”
“It is?”
“Well, yeah, up until fifteen minutes ago, I thought you were going to kill me, but if you’re saying it’s coffee that’ll do it, I feel relatively safer going back to sleep later.”
“Sorry, I thought the ‘If I don’t kill you first’ was implied.”
Decaf laughs. Legit, lets out a soft repeated huff. He chuckles. Here I was, thinking he was void of any personality or happy emotions. He comes back to sit across from me and then waits with an expectant look on his face.
“Your mistake,” I say slowly so he gets it through his head, “wasn’t not saving my dad.
He broke orders and died because of his decision.
If you had done it too, you’d also be dead.
Logically, we can both tell ourselves this, but that’s not going to stop the voice inside your head telling you that saving him could’ve been an option, and it’s also not going to stop the voice in my head telling me you abandoned him. ”
“But I—”
“I’m not done,” I interrupt, and he shuts up.
Wasn’t expecting him to, but good. “The mistake you made after that was letting my mother convince you it was your fault and then doing the exact same thing you did to my father to me. You abandoned me. And even though I had no idea you existed until last year, I’ve read my dad’s journals.
I’ve felt his feelings for you, how close you were, and how much he wanted you to be an influence in my life.
Now, sitting across from you after being ignored for eight months—no, two fucking decades—I don’t see an ounce of the man my dad thought you were.
You say you regret not doing anything to help him that day, but all you’ve done since then is the exact same thing. ”
I could keep talking. Keep rambling about how he’s done wrong by me.
But when I think about the amazing man I read about in Dad’s journals, I’ve come to the conclusion that either the real Denton Fitzgerald died alongside my father and has been replaced by a shell, or my dad severely overestimated him.
Either way, I don’t see Decaf and me ever being able to overcome the past.
I wait for him to respond, for it all to sink in or for him to dispute anything I’ve said, but the longer we sit here in silence, the more I realize we don’t have anything else to say to each other.
So I stand, rinse my cup in the sink, and go back to bed.