KNIGHT #2
The cut on his lip is dark and shiny like he’s got ointment on it, and the bruises are all yellowing at the edges, meaning this happened days ago. Was this why he wasn’t responding Friday? Did all this happen Wednesday? Thursday? What day did he leave for Detroit?
Monday. Wasn’t he supposed to go on Monday?
I need to stop assuming shit. He could have been in a car accident.
He could have gotten jumped on the street.
None of that makes me feel any better or less homicidal, but there could be some alternate explanation other than what seems incredibly obvious.
That his obligation to Adrian may be over, but he had to pay a price for it.
Done with all his busy work, he looks at the other chair at the table, hesitates a moment, but then walks over and sits down in it next to me. “I know I look like shit, but I did shower last night.”
I press my lips together, not trusting myself with any words.
“You look tired,” he says. “Have you not slept much? Did you have to sleep in the airport?”
“Yeah. They didn’t cancel our original flight until midnight, and by then we were pretty stuck.”
“Anticlimactic after a win like that, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
I set my open hand on the table, wondering if he’ll take it, but needing to try.
He rests his left hand inside it, and I wrap my fingers gently around his, giving them a light squeeze. “Let me drive you home tomorrow. We can take your car. I can fly back after Christmas.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
I grin. “That was easy.”
“I think I’m really glad to see you or something. I mean, I was trying to avoid it for obvious reasons, but now that you’re here… Yeah, I’ll let you drive me home.”
“I needed to see you,” I say.
His eyes widen like I’ve said something startling. “Is everything okay?”
Is he serious? I have no idea what’s going on right now.
Whether he’s in denial, or he just really wants to be, or if it’s something else entirely.
I try my best to think back to why I showed up here in the first place other than that red alarm bell and missing him in general. It was something to do with us.
Then I remember. “So, it’s been a summer and a whole semester. How’s this just being friends thing going for you?”
He lets out a soft huff that’s almost a laugh. “I mean, it’s got its pros and cons, I guess. I like getting to see you more often.”
“But?”
“How’s it going for you?” he asks instead of answering, an echo of the day we met and so many conversations we had that first summer.
It makes more sense to me now. He does. He doesn’t want to give too much without knowing what he’ll get back.
He’s shy, and somewhere along the way his confidence got shaken, if he ever had any in the first place.
“Good,” I say. “Hard sometimes, but good.”
“Why is it hard? Am I a bad friend?”
“No. You’re a great friend. Maybe a little too good.”
A half smile. “I know what you mean.”
Does he? I wonder. “Do you ever want…more?”
He and I look at each other for a long time before he says exactly what I knew he’d say. “Do you?”
“I always did,” I say in barely more than a whisper.
His nod is subtle, but his hand squeezes mine. “We can’t have that though, right?”
“Can’t we?”
For a decent amount of time, I think he’s thinking about it, but then he glances away from me and says, “I think the coffee’s ready.”
“Let me get it, okay?”
“I can do it.” He starts to let go of my hand, but I grip it more firmly.
“Please,” I say.
“Okay.”
We let each other go. I pour us each a mug, ask him what he wants in his, and he tells me a splash of cream and one of the pink sweeteners. I make mine with more than a splash, and no sweetener. With both mugs in hand, I ask, “Is there a couch somewhere?”
He stands and leads the way into the living room. The house is shaped like a lodge with a lofted living room and a set of stairs that run along a visible hallway to all the bedrooms up there. There’s a very large brick fireplace beneath the staircase and a long couch opposite it.
After I set the mugs down on the coffee table, he gestures for me to sit on the couch first. I do, in the dead middle of the cushions, which is exactly how I sit on the couch at my house whenever he’s over playing video games.
It always meant I got to be a little closer, that we could speak a little quieter, but to everyone else it only looks like I’m trying to take up more space than is polite.
He sits on my left, which leaves his own left arm able to reach for the coffee on the table. What surprises me is how close he sits, tucked neatly into himself with his knees on my thigh.
Close-up, his face, which has always hurt somewhat to look at, makes my own cheekbones throb at the sight of the bruises.
The cut on his lip is ragged, though it is healing.
I can’t imagine how much it must have bled.
The rage is back, and I’m twitchy with it.
I let him take a few sips of his coffee while I examine the rest of him.
His uncasted arm has some dark yellowish-brown spots all up and down it—more bruises.
His left hand looks good though. No cuts, no cracked knuckles.
No sign that he fought back, and that fucking breaks something inside me that I’m not sure I can live without.
Quietly, I say, “Adrian and Quinn Frazier. Now tell me who did this to you.”
His throat jerks with a rough swallow, and he sets his mug down. “Quinn. He was drunk.”
“When?”
“Monday night. It was late. I was going to sleep. He hurt Adrian, too, but just…not this bad.”
“Meaning what? He didn’t break any bones, or…?”
“Yeah, that, and…” Sullivan sighs heavily. Not looking at me, but rather toward the staircase, he says, “He had sex with me, too.”
I nod carefully while the rage crests, cracking through my stiff muscles and putting a toxin into my bloodstream. I try to work through the feeling by focusing on my breathing. Inhale two, three, four, exhale, two, three, four, five, six, inhale…
“Here’s the thing,” Sullivan says. “It was a bad night, but it was also the last time I ever have to be in a house with either of them. Adrian and I worked it out before Quinn even got home. School is paid for. I get to keep the car. Hopefully he won’t go on to molest any other promising young men, but it won’t ever be me again. I’m free. That’s what matters.”
“What about pressing charges?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t need to. Adrian—he apologized.
He texted me after I left. He’s gonna keep everything financially the same as it was before, so long as I don’t…
And that’s the way I want it, too. It’s over—I just need for it to be—it’s done.
It wasn’t anything different than what’s happened before, it just—it’s over. ”
“He’s hurt you like this before?” I ask, horrified. That wasn’t the impression I’d gotten. I know they’d used him, exploited him, even, but I didn’t get the feeling they’d been brutal.
“I mean, I never said no before, and apparently that wasn’t what he wanted to hear, so…”
It’s so very, very disconcerting how casually he’s talking about this—this thing that makes me literally want to commit a crime, but as I’m reading the field—reading him, I’m trying my best to match his energy. I cannot, however, match his seeming indifference.
“You really can’t go to the police?”
“They’ll just say I wanted it. Apparently there’s video of me not saying no, so…
Anyway, can we drop it? You know what happened.
I definitely don’t want to get into details because I feel like I’m a walking billboard of the details, and I really preferred what we were talking about in the kitchen. Can we get back to that?”
Okay, fuck, that was a lot to process. I pick up my own coffee. “You’re gonna need to give me a minute.”
“Sure,” he says, almost brightly. Well, brightly for him.
He gives me something like a minute before he starts talking again. “Being here with you like this reminds me of that first summer in all those houses. Remember?”
Of course, I remember. “Yeah, I do.”
“I was so miserable then. Such a dick to you. I don’t know why I was like that. I don’t think that’s how I really am. I don’t know. Hey, maybe I get to find out now.”
“Now that it’s over, you mean?” Sorry, I can’t let it go yet.
He sighs and puts his head on my shoulder. The smell of his hair takes me back to last spring in the woods. Warm vanilla. Cozy like cashmere and just as soft. I shut my eyes and breathe him in.
“Yes,” he says. “Now that it’s finally over.”