SULLIVAN #2
“The possibility of one? Sure. But I don’t need to be out with him to love him. I honestly don’t really know why he’s doing this, other than he’s sick of keeping secrets, which I guess I can relate to.”
Deandre hums softly. “Yeah, I guess you can. Was I too much of an asshole down there?”
I shrug. “You were being honest. Can you still be friends with him after this?”
“Look, I love the guy. He’s one of the best people I’ve ever met. I’ll support whatever he wants to do. I’m a hundred percent in his corner. Always. And yours, too.”
I nod.
“But I don’t think he should do it.”
“Be with me?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Be out. Is that what you want? All that attention?”
“Not really.”
“And he knows that?”
I nod. “We talk a lot.”
“Good. But you know…if you ever need someone else to talk to…”
“Thank you,” I say to him again. “That means a lot.”
“You mean a lot,” he says with no explanation, and I don’t ask for one.
“You, too.”
“I’m gonna go talk to him. You okay up here?”
Am I okay in Knight’s bed with sheets that smell exactly like him and little bits of him everywhere in the room from his Heisman trophy on his nightstand to the picture of his high school football team hanging on the wall? “Yeah, I’m good.”
He gives me a quick shoulder rub before leaving the room and going back downstairs.
I grab a pillow to hold against my chest, then turn to lie on my side, the Knight-scented pillowcase jammed up against my nose.
I take long, deep breaths of it, and eventually I must fall asleep because I don’t remember Knight coming in here, or getting into bed with me, but there he is when I open my eyes, asleep, breathing evenly, looking unbothered by anything.
His door is closed, but sound carries in the house, and I hear the TV from downstairs and one of the twins calling out a food order. And the other one asking, “Do you think they want anything?”
They, I guess meaning us. Me and Knight.
A phone buzzes, and he reaches for his front pocket, his eyes still closed. I’m guessing it’s a text from downstairs. But then it buzzes again, and it sounds more like a call.
He fishes the phone out of his pocket, sees me looking at him before he sees the screen and gives me a slight grin. He glances at the phone when it rings a third time. “My sister,” he says before swiping to take the call. “Hey Kor.”
We’re close enough that I hear her on the line, as if she were on speaker.
“Dad’s dead, Knight.” A wail. “Dad is dead.” Sobbing takes over from there.
Knight’s face falls into a confused frown. “Hey—hey. What are you talking about? Dead how? Like—what do you mean?”
“He had a—a heart attack.”
“What?”
“He’s dead, he’s really dead.” Another high-pitched, keening sob. “I can’t believe it. I was talking to him last night. He sounded fine. And now—there was nothing they could do.”
Knight pushes himself up on an arm, and it still looks like he’s not understanding.
I’m not sure I’m understanding. I find myself mirroring his movements.
I also want him to hang up and call someone else who isn’t sniffing and wailing, but if Eric Winters is actually dead from a heart attack at the age of fifty-something, I can’t imagine who that person would be. The entire town is probably hysterical.
Knight’s voice has an edge of anger I’ve never heard before. “Can you put someone else on the phone? I don’t understand a fucking word you’re saying.”
There’s a few moments when the sobs aren’t quite like they’re as close to the speaker anymore, and then a calmer woman takes the phone. Much calmer. Way, way too calm.
“Knight?” she asks.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“My name is Doctor Chang. I’m the physician who was here at the hospital when they brought your father in. I’m so sorry but there was nothing we could do. The damage to his heart was too extensive. He’d gone without oxygen for too long. I offer you my deepest condolences, and if you have any—”
Knight hangs up abruptly. He’s looking at the phone screen and the smiling photo of his sister—the doctor sister I’m guessing because she doesn’t look at all like a ballerina—until the screen blinks off. “What was that?” he asks in quiet disbelief.
I take a shaky breath, the pure shock of it all pouring through me, lighting all my nerve endings with warm, unpleasant sparks. “I think…I think your dad died of a heart attack today.”
“But how?” he asks softly and so sweetly it makes my heart hurt.
Because this wasn’t supposed to happen to him.
It was supposed to be me getting that call.
My father was the junkie. My father is the one with the heart condition.
When I got the call, I would have nodded along with whoever called saying, yes, yes, I understand.
Thank you for letting me know. And I would have believed it, because of course he died.
It was never going to happen any other way.
I’ve prepared for that call for half my life, but Knight? “I don’t know.”
“It’s just not possible,” he’s saying.
I swallow hard, unsure how to respond.
“I need to talk to my mom. She wouldn’t joke about something like this.”
His phone screen is open again, and when his mother answers with a shaky, baleful, “Knight, baby…” my boyfriend’s face—his life—breaks.