12. Roman
TWELVE
Roman
I lead Lucas down the hallway to the stairs, and we walk down to the mess of the sitting room. The body is gone, and the broken furniture has been set aside for removal, but the floor is damaged and so is the drywall. The worst of the blood is gone, but not all of it.
From the corner of my eye, I watch Lucas take in the sight. His eyes don’t even widen. He knows what I am.
He wasn’t shocked last night either. He didn’t mind my aggressive behavior.
I don’t know why I’m upset about it. I guess because … it felt so good. But at the same time, it felt bad to o.
I don’t know how to sort through it. I don’t know how to transition out of it. I don’t know what I’m supposed to transition to .
I don’t like that I’ve gone silent. I want to talk to Lucas. But everything is locked inside me because I don’t know what to do with it.
I can hear quiet voices and smell pizza before we walk into the kitchen.
Everyone goes silent when Lucas and I appear.
Sasha is at the island by one of the open pizza boxes picking olives off the slices of pizza on her plate.
Vitali is looking through the spice cupboard for something. Quinn is at the table.
Lucas and I have halted in the doorway. I have an unexpected and unpleasant sense of being …
outside, like I’m completely disconnected from the three of them.
It’s how I felt months ago when Lucas and I first came here.
It didn’t bother me then. If anything, I enforced it, so it’s a surprise to find that it bothers me now.
Then Lucas squeezes my hand and tugs me forward. I walk with him to the island. He leaves me there with Sasha while he goes to get plates for us. On his way, he stops at the spice cupboard, reaches in, and hands a jar of what looks like red pepper flakes to Vitali.
“Ah,” Vitali says. “Thank you. Quinn was being an asshole and wouldn’t help me.”
Quinn huffs. “I told you which cupboard. I don’t know why you have so much trouble reading labels. ”
Sasha says, “I, for one, don’t think you deserved extra help after ordering my pizza with olives on it.”
Vitali groans, “I forgot, okay? Good god, Sasha, I already told you I was sorry.”
“Actually, you said, oops , but okay,” Sasha replies as she continues plucking the olives off her slices, leaving them in a little pile on the open lid of the box.
Lucas returns to me and hands me a plate. When I take it, his hand brushes my lower back.
God, he’s so fucking sweet.
I feel myself suddenly choking up. It’s weird and sort of makes me panic. I just feel so inside and outside and upside down and I don’t fucking know what to do.
But I swallow it down and put a piece of pizza on my plate and walk to the table with Lucas. I sit in my usual spot and Lucas sits in his, kitty corner to me. It puts him next to Quinn.
Quinn’s eyes flick up to me. “You took some hits. You okay?”
I nod. I’m sore, but sore doesn’t mean anything to me.
It would be a different story, though, if Vitali hadn’t insisted on that bulletproof vest. That bullet probably would have killed me. And then I wouldn’t have been around to protect Lucas.
He said to me, not long ago, that I couldn’t protect him with my absence. Those words have weighed on me, and they weigh even heavier now.
I have to figure out how to be here.
I have to figure out … a lot of things .
Lucas presses the side of his foot against mine and starts eating his pizza. Vitali comes to the table with his plate and starts shaking red pepper flakes onto his pizza.
Lucas looks to my brother and asks, “Is everything okay?”
Vitali knows what Lucas means. The mess of last night, both here and at the gym. He says, “We’ve got it. Quinn and I will head back over there after we eat. There’s nothing you need to worry about.”
Lucas breathes a sigh of relief. “Okay. Good. Thanks, Vitali.”
It catches Vitali off guard. He wasn’t looking for thanks. He just takes care of shit. But he smiles slightly at Lucas’s words and lifts his pizza slice, folding it in half.
Sasha finally comes to the table with her plate. She says to Quinn, “I’m surprised you allowed junky pizza like this into the house.”
“Yeah, well. I’m tired,” he replies. “Enjoy it while you can.”
Quinn does look tired. So does Vitali. Sasha too. They took care of things last night, when I couldn’t.
“There’s nothing wrong with liking a little junk food,” Sasha replies. “Today calls for it.”
Lucas leans near to me and whispers, “Do you want something else?”
I shake my head and manage to say, “No. Thanks. ”
Lucas’s eyes close briefly in relief. I’m relieved too.
When I stopped speaking years ago, I thought it was entirely voluntary. I thought I could start again at any time. But then when I realized that I wanted to talk to Lucas in our cell, I found it so hard. I still find it hard way too often.
I try to eat the pizza, but I’m not really hungry, and I don’t like greasy, heavy things anymore. I used to. I used to like and do a lot of things that seem foreign now.
Would the person I used to be fit better at this table? Maybe. I don’t know. I try to imagine it. My old self, sitting here. I would be arguing with Vitali about cleanup. I’d be needling Quinn, trying to get under his skin to get a reaction. He wouldn’t like me. Sasha wouldn’t like me either.
I was an asshole.
I definitely wasn’t someone who could have been with Lucas. He would’ve avoided me.
I frown, not liking the thought.
Lucas gets up from the table and goes to the fridge. When he pulls out one of the chicken and rice bowls that he made the other day when I wouldn’t eat, I get up, but he puts it in the microwave before I get there.
I come to stand behind him. “Go eat,” I tell him quietly.
“You’re gonna eat something,” he replies. He’s also quiet, but he’s sharp. I’m upsetting him.
“Okay. I will. Go eat. ”
He turns toward me and wraps his arms tightly around me. He buries his face against my chest.
“I love you,” he whispers forcefully.
Some of the tightness inside me eases. I feel myself settle into the present. I stroke his hair. “I love you too.”
He draws away from me and goes to the island, where he grabs another slice of pizza and carries it to his plate.
When the microwave chimes, I take out the bowl. It’s hot but not so hot that I can’t hold it. I grab a spoon from the drawer and return to the table.
I can tell Lucas is watching me from the corner of his eye, so I start eating. Lucas relaxes. Everyone relaxes, including me.
***
Lucas and I are in the downstairs gym lifting weights.
He’s not happy about it because he thinks I’m injured, but I’m not.
Bruises aren’t injuries, and I don’t want to stiffen up.
You never know when the next fight will be.
Vitali says the DiMaggios are finished, but conflict is built into this life.
Besides, I really don’t like that enemies came into this house. I can’t trust it anymore. I’ve barely let Lucas out of my sight for two days.
I know that things were in place to keep him safe. Sasha. The contingency plans that Vitali had already worked out with her and Quinn. I know nothing happened to him.
But I need him where I can see him.
That’s one reason that I’m watching him in the wall of mirrors.
The other reason is that it helps me avoid seeing myself.
I thought I’d gotten over my aversion to my reflection, but it’s obvious, sitting here on the bench, that I haven’t.
I hate these fucking mirrors. They’re standard for a space like this, but they’re one of the reasons, I realize now, that I prefer the punching bag and sparring mats.
Something about my face bothers me.
But it’s my body that Lucas is worrying over. I keep catching his eyes on me. I’ve taken to wearing a t-shirt because the bruises upset him so much, but he’s staring like his eyes can x-ray through the white fabric.
At my light grunt, he gets back to work on his shoulder press. I watch him for a second, then I get up and walk behind him. I take hold of his wrists and correct his form.
He finishes his set and lowers the weights to his thighs. “You’re oddly particular about some things,” he says, sounding amused.
“You could hurt your shoulder,” I tell him. I’ve told him that before.
His amusement vanishes. He scowls at me via the mirror.
I almost walk away because I know this is about the bruises, but I don’t like the idea of walking away from him.
As I stay, as I wait, his expression changes.
The anger dissolves into something else.
Watching it happen, especially through the indirectness of the mirror, makes me see how anger can hide something else. Lucas isn’t really angry. He’s scared.
It doesn’t matter that the danger has passed. He’s still thinking about what could have happened. I pet his hair to soothe him, but it just makes him more upset. I take the weights from him and set them on the floor.
“Those were bullets,” he says.
I take a deep breath and pet his hair again.
“I can’t lose you, Roman. I can’t .”
“I know,” I say. I’ve thought a lot about our argument the other day, when he said he’d go with me, when we talked around a subject that I still don’t know how to really think about, not directly.
There’s so much I don’t know how to think about. My hands get shaky. I settle them on his shoulders. He puts his hands over mine.
I catch movement in the mirror and look up to see Quinn walk into the gym. He halts at the sight of me and Lucas, like he thinks he shouldn’t interrupt. But when Lucas calls out, “Hi, Quinn,” he lifts his hand in greeting and goes to the treadmills.
Lucas is so good at seeing what other people need. I pet his hair again then return to my bench.
When Quinn is done with his warmup, he comes over and starts loading the leg press. I like Quinn, and I can’t stop thinking about my realization the other day that we wouldn’t have gotten along in the past. It bothers me.
A lot of things bother me, I’m starting to realize. I can’t get clarity. Everything is too jumbled.
Quinn says, “So I have an idea for you guys. If you’re interested.”
“An idea?” Lucas asks.
“Yeah, so. Um …” Quinn loads another plate. “I’m not using my room anymore. So I thought maybe you guys might want it. I mean, there are other rooms if you prefer, but I feel like you’d like that room for the same reasons I do.”
Lucas looks startled. “Wow. Huh. I hadn’t thought about …” He trails off and looks at me, his thoughts redirecting. “Roman, are you wanting a different room?”
The way Quinn’s eyes flick to me in the mirror tells me that Vitali relayed to him something of our conversation. It makes me uncomfortable to think about them discussing it, but at the same time it means that Vitali heard what I said. He understood. He worked out a solution.
Lucas is waiting for my answer. For some reason, I find it hard to give. “I … No, I don’t like our room.”
Lucas frowns. “You never told me that. We could’ve moved ages ago. God, Roman, you should’ve told me.”
“I thought I would get over it. But I just … didn’t. ”
“You don’t have to get over something like that,” Lucas says sharply, almost snapping. “We could’ve moved. We can makes changes, Roman.”
Lucas rarely gets like this with me. I don’t quite know what to do, so I deal with Quinn instead. I ask, “Are you sure about giving up your room?”
Quinn says, “Vitali will never move down there, and I …” Quinn gets visibly uncomfortable, but he admits, “I do better with him. I feel better. So yeah. I’m sure.”
Lucas looks at me. “Roman?” His voice is softer. I can tell there’s effort in it, so I make an effort too.
“Yes,” I say. “That’d be … really nice.”