Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
CASH
June
I wake up in the middle of the night to loud banging on my door. My heart leaps into my throat as it nearly shakes my entire room.
Jerking upright, I stare at my door. Is Mount Pepper erupting? Is the ground actually shaking, or is that feeling because I was woken up so abruptly?
Is it Onyx forgetting how loudly he’s knocking on my door?
“CASH!”
Benson’s voice makes me scowl. I let myself fall back onto my bed, but my brother continues to hammer on my door with his fist. As if I’m on the other side of the house and he needs me to hear him.
“Get up, you stupid fuck. Let me in. Now.”
I roll my eyes and roll onto my back, not bothering to respond. I’m not sure what I could have possibly done to piss him off while I was asleep, but yeah, I’m not opening my door.
His next round of slamming his hand into my door sounds suspiciously like my door might creak or crack. Turning my head, I watch it. The door handle jiggles as he tries to force his way in. Is he drunk?
“Wake up, fucktard. Why the fuck are you always around? Why can’t you get a life? Get up!” Slam. Slam. Slam.
I sigh as I stare at the door. Is it going to hold against him?
Benson continues to scream obscenities that sound as if he’s talking about something specific, but I have no idea what.
Like he has a particular grievance that he needs to confront me about and it can't wait until morning. It’s like I was at the bar and he wasn’t allowed to yell at me as long as he wanted to there, so he’s continuing here.
Except I didn’t go to the bar tonight. Even if I did, Whiskey Horizons wasn’t playing.
He slams on my door so hard that the picture frames on my walls shake. One falls to the floor. Thankfully, it lands on a pile of clothes, so the glass doesn’t break.
“Benson!” Dad’s yell silences Ben’s outburst. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Ben’s hand slams against my door again. It sounds like an open palm. More like a slap than him hitting my door with the underside of his fist.
“He’s always fucking there. Invading my shit.”
“He’s asleep, Benson. He’s been in his room since early this evening.”
“Make him come out and face me.”
“You’re out of control,” Pops says. “Are you drunk?”
“No,” Ben snaps.
“Are you high? Are you fucked up on drugs?”
“What the fuck—no! That’s what you think of me? Cash is perfect, but I’m a druggie?”
“You’re acting like a petulant child,” Pops answers. “Cash is asleep. You’re the one in the hall throwing a tantrum.”
“Why am I always the bad guy?” Benson screams.
Silence follows his question, and I imagine our fathers waiting for him to take in the situation and answer his own question.
Benson slams his hand on my door again as he screams for me to open up, and Pops’ voice gets loud and hard. A tone I’ve heard maybe once in my entire life.
“ENOUGH!” he hollers. Silence falls in the hall. “I don’t know what your problem is. You’re a fucking adult, and I have yet to see you act like one over the past five years.”
“Why is it always my fault?” Benson screams.
“Because you’re the one slamming on Cash’s door at one in the morning,” Dad yells back. “Look around you, Ben. Cash isn’t even out here. Just you. Just you being out of control.”
“But I—”
“I’ve heard enough,” Pops snaps. “Get out.”
I inhale sharply. Oh my god.
“I—what?”
“Get. Out. Of. Our. House,” Pops says slowly, articulating each word.
“Why does he get to stay, and I have to leave?”
A beat passes.
“Are you fucking serious, kid?” Dad asks, anger and disbelief coloring his voice.
“Until you can get your shit together, you’re not welcome here,” Pops says. “Leave. Now.”
The hall turns eerily quiet. My eyes, wide with shock, are glued to the door as if it’s a window, and I can see through it. My breathing has stopped entirely; oxygen stuck right there, but unable to enter my lungs.
I jerk when the front door slams. I expected to hear his footsteps stomping down the hall as a prelude.
The quiet knocking on my door has my shoulders tensing.
“Cash?” Pops calls through the door, his voice quiet. “Are you okay, baby?”
I get out of bed, grab a shirt on the way to pull over my head, and open the door. The light from their bedroom down the hall illuminates the hall with long shadows.
Dad pulls me into his chest and gives me a tight hug.
“You understand that this isn’t just something we need to work out as adults now, don’t you?” I ask.
Before either of my parents can answer, something slams against my bedroom window. I hear the glass crack. Ben’s voice follows. “I FUCKING HATE YOU, CASH. I HOPE YOU DIE.”
Pops pushes through my door, shoving us to the side in his anger as he crosses the room. He throws open the window and sticks his head out. “So fucking help me, one more word and I’m calling security. You will pay for the damage to this window. Do you understand me, Benson?”
I don’t hear Ben’s answer.
“Get off my property and don’t you fucking return until I say you can.”
Dad’s arms around me are tight. Almost too tight.
The world seems to hold still for a second. No one moves. No one speaks. I strain to hear outside, but I think there are too many walls between us.
Pops eventually backs away from the window, closing it. He turns, and I flinch because he looks so angry. My parents are always happy. Always smiling. I can count on one hand the number of times either of my parents has looked anything other than happy. Or the few times I have seen one of them mad.
I’ve never seen my Pops like that, though.
He crosses the room and hugs me with Dad.
“I’m sorry,” Dad says quietly. “I… didn’t realize how out of control he was. I thought it was just teenage angst hanging on.”
I shake my head. “I admit that I do push back now. When he starts griping at me about whatever, I do push back, and I have been for the past year or so. But I swear, I never instigate it.”
“We believe you,” Pops says. He runs his hand over my head like he used to when I was a kid, and he was smoothing my hair down. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
“Has he hurt you?”
“He pushed me once. It wasn’t hard. It startled me more than anything because I didn’t think he’d ever actually hurt me. Onyx was there, though. He threw Ben to the ground and told him never to touch me or anyone again. Ben hasn’t. Not me, anyway.”
“You should have said something,” Pops says.
I don’t answer. I used to tell our parents about what Ben was doing, but the answer was always the same. “You two are adults now. You need to work it out.” So I stopped telling them. Nothing came of it. I was obviously supposed to deal with it on my own.
“I don’t know what to do about him,” Dad says.
“Tomorrow, we’ll call security and let them know what’s going on. I’ll talk to Maurice and see what he suggests.”
Maurice is one of the owners of the island.
The patron—the man who technically owns all of Kala and built it from the bottom up—is Old Man Winter Calloway.
Maurice is one of his sons. If I’m not mistaken, he’s in his mid-fifties and gearing up to take over much of Winter’s authority since Winter is now eighty-one.
Not that you’d know it. I’ve seen Winter dancing at the bars and at parties on Ceto like he’s thirty. He’s a pretty great guy.
Because the entire island chain is privately owned, there is no actual law enforcement. There’s no one with that kind of authority. We police our own.
If someone gets out of hand to the point where the Calloways feel they’re making the islands hostile, they’ll banish them. It happened once in the past. It’s never been necessary since then. That one banishment was warning enough for every other person.
Everyone except Ben, I guess.
My dads kiss my head and let me go.
“Are you okay?” Dad asks, framing my face with his hands so I have to look into his eyes.
I’m not sure what he wants me to say. If I say no, then what? What will he do about it? If I say yes, is it a lie?
I shrug. “I’m not afraid of Ben. I wasn’t prepared when he pushed me before. I didn’t think he’d ever hit me. Now I know that he will, I’m ready for it.”
Pops rests his head against the side of mine. “I hate that,” he mutters. “I’m so sorry. I think we were na?ve in thinking that Ben was just… throwing a tantrum or something. I’m sorry we didn’t listen and take it more seriously.”
“No offense, but I know how the rumor mill works on Kala. How did you not know?”
“Honestly?” Dad asks. “I think we just didn’t want to believe it.
We laughed it off because how can our child be homophobic?
I can’t make sense of it in my head. How did we—as gay men—raise a bigoted asshole for a son, while on a queer island resort?
” He shakes his head. “I can’t fathom how we fucked up so thoroughly. ”
“I don’t think it’s your fault. This is a Benson problem. The change was abrupt, remember?” I point out. “It’s not something he expressed throughout our childhood. It literally happened overnight.”
Both of my parents frown. Probably realizing that I’m correct.
“Why?” Pops asks, but I think that question is for himself, as opposed to actually expecting an answer.
I yawn, and my dads remember that it’s the middle of the night. They hug me again and kiss my temples.
“Lock your door,” Dad says, giving me a sad smile. “And your window.”
I nod. “Yep. I will.”
“We’ll fix this, Cash.”
I shrug because I’m not sure what kind of response I’m supposed to give them. They can’t fix Ben. The time to force Benson to get to the bottom of this was when he was still a teenager. When it first began to manifest.
Not eight years later, now that he’s an adult. There’s no fix now. Ben simply isn’t going to work through it. I’m not sure he wants to. Whatever poison had taken root has already taken over.
I’d already been locking my door and my window, but not because of Benson. Na?vely, I thought that he’d leave me alone while I slept. Now I’m wondering if my door had been unlocked, would he have suffocated me in my sleep? Does he truly hate me that much?
Once, the thought would have hurt. It would have brought me to tears. I’m beyond that now. I’ve grown numb to Benson’s hate. There’s nothing I can apologize for because I didn’t do anything. This isn’t on me.
I sleep fitfully, which isn’t surprising. When I wake, it’s to my alarm, dragging claws down my spine and through my ears. I hate that ringtone, but I know it’ll force me out of bed.
There’s a notification on my phone from Onyx that came in at two this morning.
OG
What happened?
My first reaction is to ignore it. In much the same way my parents did, Onyx has overlooked Ben’s behavior for years.
Not quite in the same way. My parents refused to see the seriousness of the situation.
Which means, in many ways, Onyx’s loyalty is worse because he knows and sees the truth of the situation.
My reason for responding is out of anger. If I’m willing to admit it, it hurts as well. I start typing a response and erasing. Over and over. In the end, I hit the mic button to send a voice note.
“He slammed on my door for twenty minutes at one this morning, carrying on about who fucking knows what. Woke my parents. Continued to throw a tantrum as he yelled at my parents that I’m perfect and they’re always on my side, or some bullshit.
My parents kicked him out when he refused to…
acknowledge that he’s literally the one out of control.
Once outside, he slammed on my window, broke the pane, and told me he wanted me to die.
But thanks for harboring him. At least he always has you to run to, no matter how much of a tool he is.
” I pause, finger still on the record button.
Before I let it go and send the message, I add, “This doesn’t mean you can call or text me.
I just wanted you to know the truth about the piece of trash you took in last night. ”
Letting the button go, I watch the recording end. A little circle appears as it sends. When the sending turns to delivered, I close the app and head for the shower.
However, when I step out into the hall, I immediately smell bacon grease. Which is weird. It’s nine a.m. on a Tuesday. Both of my parents should be at work.
Once again, I grab a shirt and pull it over my head on my way to the kitchen. Dad’s standing at the stove cooking breakfast. He looks up when I step into the room and smiles.
“Morning, Cashy. Have time to eat with me before work?”
My eyebrows climb as I stare at him. “Uh… okay. But aren’t you late for work?”
“I took the morning off. I have a meeting with Maurice at ten. If it’s okay with you, I’ll join you on the ferry this morning since we’re going in the same direction.”
I watch my father suspiciously. “I’m not scared of Benson, Dad. You don’t need to take time off work to protect me.”
It’s clear that I hit the nail on the head. Dad’s smile softens. I can see his age this morning. He looks tired. There are wrinkles in the corners of his eyes.
Dad sets the tongs down—he’s always loved cooking with tongs.
I’m not sure if it’s something he’s carried with him in recognition of his ancestry, if he watched a lot of Asian cooking shows, or something else.
Our food growing up wasn’t always Asian.
It was global. We ate traditional foods from cultures all over the world regularly.
Whatever my parents felt in the mood for.
I’m pulled from my thoughts when Dad wraps his arms around me and rests his head against my temple. “I know. I trust that. But at least at home, we’re going to make sure Ben stays away from you. Home should be safe. We’ve let it become anything but safe for you.”
I can practically feel his guilt.
My phone, ringing in my bedroom, interrupts our conversation. Dad kisses my cheek and lets me go. “Go get ready, and we’ll have breakfast before we leave.”
Nodding, I head to my room and grab my phone to take it into the shower with me. I’m expecting Lie. It’s not my best friend, though.