One Small Thing #2
“And Mom—who’s a good mom—told me that it didn’t matter what he’d done. He was a good kid, and sometimes, life just took people when we loved them, so we had to love them now, and let them know that they were loved now, and I said, ‘Wait—can this life thing take away any of my siblings?’”
It was like the sun broke through the clouds and Anthony could suddenly see.
Julie Royal wouldn’t have lied to her baby boy, but she wouldn’t have known how bad the answer would be for him either.
“You’ve spent your entire life thinking God could just yeet your family out of your arms like Ilia yeeted his phone,” he said in absolute horror.
“With less warning,” Reg muttered, like he was embarrassed.
“You worry all the time,” Anthony said, still horrified.
“Every minute of every—oh fuck.” Suddenly he was running toward the surf, shouting, “Ilia, Reynaldo—that wave’s a sleeper! Get back! Get back! Get ba—fuck!”
Anthony had no idea how Reg spotted it. Maybe his entire life spent worrying about random shit coming to snatch the people he loved actually paid off in moments like this, but as Anthony followed Reg down the beach, the wave grew and grew, looming behind the boys like a killer shark, and there was no doubt Reg sure had called that wave right.
As Anthony hauled ass, hard on Reg’s heels, they both watched as the sleeper wave, bigger, more powerful than it looked, seemed to lunge up the beach and swallow Reynaldo whole.
Anthony got there in time to grab Ilia and haul him backward, dragging him up the rise of the beach, and then they both stared as Reg ripped off his shirt and let the wave eat him, diving right where Reynaldo disappeared.
Ilia—poor Ilia—was muttering to himself in Russian, and Anthony was about to sit him down and haul into the water to get both Reg and Reynaldo when the ocean coughed them up again.
Except Reg, it seemed, had made that happen. His overshirt was wrapped around Reynaldo’s torso, and as Reg scrambled in the surf, he hauled the shirt over his shoulder—and the boy with it.
Anthony had spent summers lifeguarding for extra money—and a chance to ogle both sexes in their swimsuits—and he recognized the technique, meant to keep panicked people from dragging their rescuer down.
He’d had no idea Reg had done the same, and he wondered if Reg had learned lifeguard procedures just like he’d learned computer encryption, so Life, that fickle bitch, couldn’t swallow any more people in his world.
“Oh my God,” Ilia gasped, finally reverting to English. “Let’s go get them!”
Anthony let him loose so they could help Reg and Reynaldo out of the surf, both of them covered with sand and abrasions as Reg finally stopped dragging Reynaldo and started assisting him to stand.
“Well,” Reg said, staring dazedly at Anthony through naked eyes, “that happened. It’s a good thing I brought my extra pair of glasses.”
Reynaldo stared at him and started to laugh, and then Ilia, and then Anthony gathered him into his arms. Salty, wet, freezing, out of it—but damn if he hadn’t figured out how to cheat Death out of its newest prize.
“You are so going to be my boyfriend,” Anthony told him, pulling him close. “I’m never letting you go.”
REYNALDO GOT the shower first, while Reg gathered the sopping, sandy clothes he’d plopped on the porch of the cottage and shoved them into a plastic bag.
“After you take yours off,” Anthony said, not even able to leer at him he was still so shaken, “you go in and shower, and I’ll take them around back. I saw coin washers and dryers back where we parked the SUV.”
“Shit,” Reg muttered, reaching behind him. He pulled out his drenched and shattered phone, and Anthony grimaced. “I think Reynaldo’s got lost in the surf too.”
“Well, that leaves mine,” Anthony said, “which is sort of a blessing, because I’m the only one who wasn’t supposed to be on this little adventure, so nobody’s looking for it.”
Reg grimaced. “Can I borrow it tonight? I can encrypt the shit out of it before we call my parents.”
Anthony nodded. “But maybe we shouldn’t tell them about your little frolic in the surf, although I gotta tell you, I want to talk to you about it, because damn, Registrar. That was fucking cool. I doubt even an Emeritus could have done something like that.”
Reg rolled his eyes. “An Emeritus would have remembered to ditch his phone,” he said dryly.
“Where did you learn to do that?” he asked. “The lifeguarding, I mean.”
Reg shrugged. “They offered health and safety classes at the high school over the summer breaks. I got junior college units for them. Gave me something to do, and I felt better about letting Chance and his friends swim in Mom and Dad’s pool.
They just got it when I was, like, twelve.
I sort of felt like there was a hole there, since so few of us were medically trained. ”
Anthony raised his eyebrows, because that was the first hint of, well, criticism that he’d ever leveled at his family.
“I mean, Mom and Dad knew,” he said, “and Val and Laure, but they weren’t there all the time. It just felt safer, particularly after people started moving away.”
Anthony was suddenly besieged with more questions: How much health and safety stuff did Reg know? Could he be a nurse in his spare time? His “just a certificate” in the IT field had successfully eluded one of Mexico’s biggest cartel leaders and the FBI. It wasn’t beyond the scope of imagination.
“Why didn’t they send you to college?” he asked, suddenly desperate to know.
“Because I told them I’d help send Chance instead,” Reg said, but he was turning his head, deflecting the question, and Anthony was starting to recognize his tell.
Another thing, buried deep inside him, that made him want to disappear, to efface himself out of existence.
Except there was something so pure inside Reg, so bright, so shining, that anybody with half a brain could see him light up like a summer star.
Anthony shook his head, suddenly wanting to corner somebody and get the whole story out of them, but Reynaldo called out from the cottage, “I’m all done—there should still be hot water,” and they both had other things to do.
But Anthony wasn’t going to forget any of it—the conversation, the rescue, Reg’s ability to just…
pivot and answer any contingency. Yeah, his siblings were right to worry about him.
It was a blessing to know somebody had, because there was quiet damage here, the kind that could only happen with a truly sensitive child who had been raised to be so self-sufficient, his own emotions had been neglected to the point of devastation.
But there was also strength. Reg was worried—all the time—about the people he loved.
So he took lifeguarding classes to take care of them in what seemed like a dangerous situation.
He created a secure computer facility to protect his parents’ electronics.
He monitored their phones so he always knew where they were.
For all Anthony knew, he monitored their food and his parents’ medications, cholesterol levels, heartrates, income…
. Whatever Reg was afraid of failing the people he loved, he was right on top of.
It was amazing in a way.
But he’d done a lot of sacrificing to be that amazing. Anthony suddenly wanted to give him everything. The ocean. The moon. A trip to Italy. The computer of his dreams. Money he had, but the ability to make Reg light up like he’d done when Anthony had admired his paintings?
He wanted that.
Of all the crazy, selfish, inconsequential things he’d ever wanted as the “baby god,” that was suddenly the most important thing he’d ever wanted from life.
And he needed Reg to open up enough to let Anthony give him that.
THEIR TELEVISION got cable, but the boys were too restless to settle down on it, so Reg pulled out not one but four packs of cards from the go-bag he’d packed at his parents’ and made everybody spend ten minutes shuffling them all together.
“These were brand-new,” Anthony accused, as his hands accustomed themselves to the motion of splattering the cards so they merged together.
“Yes,” Reg said. He’d put on a fresh T-shirt and a pair of flannel pajama bottoms after his shower, and sitting cross-legged on the floor with the teenagers in the same attire, it was hard to spot him as the one in charge.
“Your mom had four brand-new decks of cards lying around?”
Reg shrugged. “Mom’s sister takes her to the First Nation gaming casinos once a year.
Mom brings home, like, twelve decks—some of them with the cute cartoon animals on them, some of them plain—because she knows every card game known to man and can teach them to children to keep them out of trouble. ”
Anthony snorted. “Your mom the card sharp—who knew?”
“Oh, she’s terrible at it,” Reg said sincerely. “We’ve all been able to beat her at every game she plays since we were in, like, sixth grade. But she loves when the family sits around the table and plays games. We’ve all gotten very adept at letting her win.”
Reynaldo burst into laughter. “That’s the sweetest frickin’ thing I’ve ever heard. You people would have been eaten alive in my compound.”
“My family too,” Ilia said, shaking his head. “If you cannot play the game, get out of the room.”
Reg shrugged. “Well, this game I’m going to teach you here, you have to play in teams. I’m across from Ilia, Anthony’s across from Reynaldo—those are the teams. Does somebody have some scratch paper and a pen?”
And then quickly and efficiently, Reg “cheated” through the first hand so he could help everybody learn the strategies, which was how he taught them Hand and Foot.
Four hands later, Reg and Ilia were winning, and everybody was out for blood.
It was a game that depended on each team to count up their own points and then give an honest reporting at the end, and as Reg and Anthony were counting their books, he saw Reg watching Ilia and Reynaldo having a silent conversation with each other.