CHAPTER 11
BACK HOME
Newark felt smaller when they got back, the way home always does after you've been somewhere it costs something to leave.
Varnell noticed it in the scale of the buildings, the familiar cracks in the sidewalk, a version of the city that used to feel like the whole world and now felt like just one piece of something bigger he'd started building.
Chucky J noticed something else changed in him too — quieter in the car ride back, more inward, the weight of Moose's words in that diner still sitting somewhere behind his eyes even weeks later.
"You good?" Chucky J asked, watching the city blur past the window.
"Yeah," Varnell said, and left it there, not ready yet to unpack everything Miami had cracked open in him.
? ? ?
They stopped for food that first night back at a dive bar Chucky J favored on the edge of downtown, low light and old wood and a jukebox playing something from before either of them was born.
They hadn't been sitting long before a commotion broke out near the bar — raised voices, a man leaning too far into a woman's space, her posture stiff with the particular tension of someone trying to stay polite while every part of her wanted to be somewhere else.
Varnell was moving before he fully decided to, sliding past a security guard distracted by his phone, coming up beside the man at the bar.
"She good," Varnell said, casual, letting his hand rest against his own beltline in a way that communicated more than the words did. The man's eyes caught the gesture, read it correctly, and scuttled off toward the door without further argument.
The woman turned to look at him properly for the first time, something between gratitude and curiosity in her expression. She was maybe nineteen, dark hair pulled back, sharp eyes that took him in with more scrutiny than most people bothered with.
"Didn't need saving," she said, though there was no real heat in it.
"Didn't say you did. Just didn't like how that looked."
She almost smiled at that, arms crossing, studying him a beat longer. "What's your name?"
"Varnell."
"Angellisa." She tilted her head, taking in the rest of him — the way he carried himself, older than his face quite matched, though she couldn't have said exactly why that struck her. "You always slide in on other people's business like that?"
"Only when it's worth sliding into."
Chucky J called him back toward the door, some errand pulling them out before the conversation could stretch any further, and Varnell left quick, scrawling a number on a bar napkin and passing it to her without breaking stride.
"Use it whenever," he said. "No rush."
She held onto the napkin longer than she meant to that night, turning it over once or twice, telling herself she probably wouldn't call.
It took her the better part of two months to use it anyway.
? ? ?
The sit-down with Demarcus happened a few days after they landed, in the same office above the cleaning service storefront, Demarcus listening to a full accounting of Miami with the same composed attention he brought to everything.
"You did good work down there," Demarcus said once Varnell finished, some real pride evident underneath his usual restraint. "Moose ain't easy to impress. You impressed him."
"Moose sent me down there 'cause he don't think I got much time left to waste," Varnell said, flat, watching Demarcus's face for the reaction.
Something dangerous flickered behind Demarcus's composure, jaw tightening. "He said that to you?"
"Didn't have to dress it up. Just said it plain."
Demarcus was quiet a long moment, some private calculation happening behind his eyes that Varnell couldn't fully read. "I'll deal with Moose in my own way, in my own time. Right now I want to focus on you. How you feeling? For real, not the version you give everybody else."
Varnell considered lying, the way he'd gotten used to doing with most people, before something about Demarcus's directness made him choose otherwise. "Tired. Some days more than others. Larkin got me on something new, said it might help some of the worse symptoms."
"You seeing him again this week?"
"Supposed to."
"I'll come with you," Demarcus said, not a question, already deciding it the way he decided most things. "Time somebody in this family started keeping closer track of what he's actually giving you."
? ? ?
Vanessa was waiting at the apartment when Varnell finally made it home that evening, and the conversation that followed carried none of the sharp edges their last real talk had held.
She hugged him tight enough to hurt a little, holding on longer than usual, and when she finally pulled back, her eyes were wet.
"I'm sorry," she said, before he could say anything himself. "For how I acted, finding out about Ivo and Demarcus like that. Wasn't your fault you went looking for answers I should've given you myself a long time ago."
"You don't gotta apologize, Ma."
"I do. You deserved better than secrets, whatever my reasons were for keeping them.
" She reached up, smoothing down his hair the way she'd done since he was small.
"Demarcus and I talked. Really talked. There's a lot of years between us I can't fix overnight, but we're trying. That's something, right?"
"That's something," Varnell agreed, something in his chest loosening at the sight of her looking lighter than she had in longer than he could remember.
They sat together that night longer than they had in months, talking about nothing important, the kind of ordinary conversation that felt more valuable now for how rare it had become.
? ? ?
Larkin's office looked the same as always when Varnell returned, though the doctor's expression shifted slightly at the sight of Demarcus walking in alongside him, uninvited and clearly not there for pleasantries.
"Mr. Miller," Larkin said, careful, recalibrating. "I wasn't told you'd be joining today."
"I wasn't told a lot of things," Demarcus said, taking a seat without being offered one. "Figured it's time that changed."
Larkin's composure held, professional as ever, though something behind his eyes moved quicker now, recalculating whatever plans he'd been running in the space between visits. "Of course. I'm happy to walk you both through his treatment in full detail."
He did, methodical and thorough, answering every question Demarcus put to him with practiced ease, the meeting unfolding smooth on the surface even as an undercurrent of scrutiny sat beneath every exchange — Demarcus watching Larkin the way a man watches something he doesn't yet trust but hasn't found the leverage to challenge outright, and Larkin, for his part, giving nothing away beyond the warm, careful attentiveness he'd always shown, betraying nothing of whatever calculations were running behind that practiced calm.
Varnell sat between them, quiet, watching two men size each other up over his own body like it was a piece of territory yet to be claimed, and wondered, not for the first time, how many more people were going to end up with a stake in what little time he had left.