Chapter Six
Everett Young
Rockhill Heights looks like a typical suburb for the most part. The outskirts of Sinclair can get a bit shabby, especially the further you go east, but our neighborhood and most of the central part of town are palm trees, green grass, and ocean water.
Rockhill is huge—big enough that it takes a good ten minutes to walk from my house all the way to Skylar’s. It’s one of the biggest neighborhoods in town, and it’s always bode well for me. It made it easy to keep him from coming inside.
My childhood house, and unfortunately my current residence, is a two-story, four-bedroom home. There is one bathroom on each floor, with white paint and brown trim on the outside. The staircase has a step—the fourth stair from the top—that creaks when you put your full weight on it.
The dining room table seats six, though it’s only ever been the three of us.
Felicita has been meticulously keeping up with the rose bushes out front since I turned thirteen, and the grass is always perfectly cut. The two-car garage is forever neat and tidy, just as it always has been.
I stare at the front door, doing my best to mentally prepare for another encounter with my adoptive parents.
I’ve spent the last few days bouncing between Henry and Skylar’s apartments—anything I can do to avoid coming here.
It’s easy to make excuses when the drive is thirty minutes, and I can use the early lecture card.
“Everett.” Ash Carmichael opens the front door, his face stern as he waves me inside with a single gesture.
His black hair is peppered lightly with specks of white, his brown eyes so dark they resemble tar. His white button-up is taut over his shoulders and tucked snugly into his slacks.
With no patience, he turns on his heel and walks back into the house as soon as I acknowledge him. I take a deep breath, will my headache to take a backseat to my fear, and follow him inside.
Felicita is in the kitchen preparing breakfast as I come in; biscuits and gravy, her Sunday ritual. She floats around the kitchen in her Lululemon leggings and her tank top. Her blonde hair is in a tight French braid, her toned arms tanned, and her hands covered in diamonds.
Felicita played the game of life strategically—she was smart. As a personal trainer, she makes decent money, but not white picket fence money. Not diamond ring money. So, she married a lawyer.
And as time passed and wealth and vanity were no longer enough, they desired to keep up with social appearances, to appear as the perfect all-American family.
To do that, they needed a child—one Felicita did not want to ruin her body by bearing herself. So they adopted a blond-haired mutt.
Me.
Ash takes a seat at the head of the table, opening his newspaper and donning his reading glasses. I don’t even think he’s actually reading it, and if he is, it must be the obituaries or the weather report.
“Here we are,” Felicita says sweetly, resting the pot of gravy on an oven mitt in the center of the table, a tray of biscuits already set out.
A bottle of orange juice is placed next to it, and I pour some into my glass, doing my best not to draw too much attention to myself.
“How are classes?” Ash asks, ignoring his wife as she sits, preparing his plate.
“Fine,” I reply. “I have midterms soon; I’ll let you know how they go.”
“You’ll pass.”
I say nothing. I have nothing I can say. If Ash Carmichael says I will do something, I will, or risk meeting the back of his hand.
I was adopted at a very young age. They received me from the orphanage at six years old, and Ash began to discipline me at nine. I’m unsure if that’s how his father raised him, or if he’s just a cruel man, but it has always been my reality.
Felicita was no help—she’s a mean girl at heart. She gets off on the violence and has always thought that I am worth less than the two of them. I could see it from the very first day, from the moment they picked me up and eyed my ragged shirt and overgrown hair.
The abuse was always easy to hide. I could either blame bullies from school, or, since middle school, I could use baseball as an excuse; I think that’s the only reason Ash has supported my love for the sport all the way through college.
But I know—I know that as soon as I graduate at the end of the year, I will be cut off and out of their hair, just as they desire. They will do everything in their power to make sure I do not embarrass them when they push me from the nest, but will not care to see if I survive the fall.
But at least I’ll be free. I’ll get away from his hands and her cruel gaze.
“Look here, Felicita. They’re reporting about that march from June.” Ash turns the paper toward his wife just as she slides his plate toward him.
She sounds a humph of acknowledgement. “Those gay marches?”
I squirm in my seat, willing the conversation to turn in a different direction. But just as it always has been, my mental superpowers do not manifest, and Ash begins to speak again.
“Yes. Those homos are trying to make waves again. Did they not get enough when we gave them marriage rights? Jesus. They’ll ruin this country.”
It’s silent for a moment before Felicita speaks, and I take a bite of my breakfast. “What about you, Everett?”
I choke, grabbing for my juice to swallow around the food I’ve inhaled wrong. I can suddenly feel Skylar’s hips pressed to mine, his hot breath on my face. My head pounds aggressively, and I fear I’ll throw up the little bit I’ve managed to eat.
“Me?” I force out.
She raises a brow. “Yes. Do you have a girlfriend yet? It’s about time you stop sleeping around and get serious. You’re 22 years old.”
“Listen to your mother when she speaks,” Ash commands, placing his paper on the table next to him before picking up his cutlery with proper posture.
“Oh, yes, sorry.” I clear my throat. “No, I do not have a girlfriend.”
Ash narrows his eyes as Felicita makes a disappointed noise, so I add, “But I, uh, I am seeing someone. Could be serious soon.”
Lie. I’m not even sleeping with someone right now—unless you count Skylar rubbing himself all over me and shoving his tongue in my mouth.
I seriously doubt they would.
But Ash nods his head in approval, going back to ignoring me with no more need to acknowledge his son.
The rest of breakfast is quiet and tense, a great homage to what it was like to grow up within these four walls; the way living here still feels. And after, just as we always do on Sundays, we sit in the living room as Ash turns on Wheel of Fortune for background noise.
“How is Skylar?” he asks, watching Felicita through the window that shows a large section of her rose bushes out front where she’s tending to them.
“He’s good; just won a game.”
Ash nods, hands clasped together as he leans forward, his elbows on his thighs from where he sits on the couch.
I sit in my place on the recliner, watching the colors flash across the TV.
“Good for him. He chose a good career path.” There is a beat or two of silence before he speaks again. “He’s a good influence on you, Everett. Unlike that Kelly girl.”
Ash and Felicita have only met Kelly once. Well, more of demanded that they meet her, so we had to attend a slightly awkward dinner my junior year of college. They had already met Henry, as we were high school friends, so I already knew of their distaste for him.
“He comes from nothing,” they had said. Being an art student did him no favors in the eyes of the Carmichaels, not that they’d ever show him that. To everyone else in this world, they are perfectly acceptable and completely accepting.
But Kelly, with her pink hair and punk rock attitude, was immediately on the hate list as far as my adoptive parents were concerned.
“Okay,” is all I say.
Ash turns those black eyes onto me, disapproving and angry.
“Skylar has gone into the medical field—even has a job. He’s an outstanding boy.
You would be smart to keep him around, to keep him close.
But those other two—you need to stop wasting your time.
I did not spend all of these years and all of this money raising you for you to roll around with a mutt and a delinquent. ”
I can feel my blood boiling.
I wonder what he’d say if he knew what Skylar and I did last night. If he saw how tightly Sky clung to me, or the sounds he made as he groaned against my skin.
“They’re just friends. They won’t get in the way of my education, Dad,” I promise him.
He assesses me for a moment before lecturing, “I think you should find better company. Why aren’t you befriending kids in your own major? I’m sure there are some wealthy business heiresses or heirs in your classes.”
I shrug my shoulders, looking at his leather shoes to avoid his cold stare as I say, “It just didn’t work out that way.”
“You didn’t try.” His voice grows louder and more demanding. “You intentionally disobey me. I can make things difficult, Everett; I can take your car, cut off your living expenses. Is that what you want?”
I shake my head. My heart rate is skyrocketing, my blood pumping faster and faster. Why won’t this fucking headache go away?
“No, it’s not,” I concede. “It’s just that I’ve been friends with them so long now. I don’t want to—”
I feel his hand before I register that he’s standing. Ash is always so quick—almost as if he must catch me off guard. But I think he knows that even as I’m a buff, strong guy, I won’t defend myself. Not against him.
I have no one else to love me, not really.
“Do not disrespect me. I have done too much, sacrificed way more than you deserved, for you to be treating me this way. I am a revered man; you will treat me as such.”
“Yes, sir,” I whisper.
I can’t disagree with him; I can’t tell him no. That’s not how being a Carmichael kid works. It does not matter that I’ve kept my own last name; it does not matter that he is not my blood.
I am allowed to cower; I am allowed to bow and kneel and submit. Nothing else.