Bombora (44 page)

“I’m just here,” says Phelan at last. He lifts his eyes to meet mine, and no, that definitely isn’t coquettishness I see. It’s insecurity. Fear. Whatever reasons compelled Phel to darken my doorstep, he came with an as-yet-undetermined heap of personal reservations.

Don’t you go getting your hopes up, asshole
, I order myself.
Hope is the kiss of death.

The thought is enough to sober me, snap me out of my mind’s sex- and Phel-deprived musings and back to the situation at hand. I take a step back, away from him. My mistake has always been that when I get too close to Phel, I’m incapable of seeing anything else clearly. Naïve though it might be, I tell myself keeping a safe distance will calm my racing heart and racing thoughts, will settle the desperate urge to fling myself at Phel’s feet and beg and beg and beg. For what, I don’t know. That’s sort of part of the problem and always has been. “You sure are,” I answer with my best shot at keeping the quiver out of my voice. “Again I ask: why?”

Phel laughs self-consciously and finally manages to hold my gaze, miserable but resolute. As he opens his mouth to speak, he also wrings his hands, and the small action draws my attention down to his fingers, makes me see how badly they’re trembling. His teeth, too, are chattering. A voice in my head, which mysteriously sounds like a combination of my mother, father, brother, ex-wife, and every Southern-blooded, etiquette-obsessed woman I’ve ever met, chastises me for being such a shitty host that I’d let a guest stand outside in the cold garage and freeze his nuts off. Even Liam would probably know better than that. I know Phel isn’t shaking just from cold, but it’s enough.

“Come on, we shouldn’t be talking out here,” I say before he can begin to elaborate. Sighing, I strip off the protective gear I’m wearing and slap my gloves down on the workbench, then take Phel’s elbow to lead him back to the house. “Let’s go inside where it’s warm,” I tell him.

Lips pressed into a bloodless line, Phel nods and allows himself to be led. But he knows the way and ultimately doesn’t need my guidance, and pulls away to reach the living room before I do. For a moment he stands there staring off in the opposite direction, which happens to be out the front window. Snow has started to fall gently. It blankets white over everything, except there’s already so much snow on the ground that it does little more than disappear and fade into the landscape like nothing has changed.

Pausing to watch Phel, I swallow hard around a sudden blockage in my throat that would probably give me away were I to speak. Phelan looks so small there, silhouetted by the window, thin and hunched and silent, and yet somehow he still manages to block out everything else in my life by his presence alone. But I guess even the moon eclipses the sun sometimes. “You should sit down,” I suggest, my voice rough. “I’ll make some coffee.” Caffeine is the currency of stalling and bad news.

Since I’m the only one in my family who drinks coffee, Emilia purchased one of those single-cup coffee makers that come with the little discs. Normally I get kind of excited over the process, because I’m easily impressed that way, but at this very moment I curse the machine’s existence. I wish it took longer to brew a couple of cups so I’d have more time to think.

I tap my fingers anxiously as I hear the hum and bubble of the machine, the tinkle of steaming liquid into the cup. Once the drinks are ready, I can’t help but feel I’ve squandered the opportunity to figure out what the fuck Phel is doing in my living room. Despite my every instinct, hope still clamors in my chest like a canary down the mine, desperate to burst free. I tell myself this visit isn’t like the last one, isn’t Phelan come to patch things over and get us back on the right track. A lot has changed since then. For one thing, I’m not the one who fucked up. I left, yeah, but leaving was the best and smartest thing I’ve done in a long time. Refusing to believe otherwise is the only thing that’s kept me remotely sane since I left California behind in Lucy’s rearview mirrors.

After dumping several teaspoons of sugar and half a cup of cream in Phelan’s coffee—it’s hard not to remember just the way he likes it, even now—I reenter the living room and see him fumbling with an orange bottle of pills, struggling to remove the childproof cap. Startled by my reappearance, he curses and drops the whole thing just as he pops the lid off, sending the plastic bottle and a couple dozen tiny salmon-colored pills scattering across the surface of the coffee table.

“Fuck.” Lurching forward onto his knees, he attempts to gather them all up before I can make it across the room.

I set the steaming mugs of coffee down on the table. Although he manages to chase most of the pills into the cupped palm of his hand, I kneel beside him to snatch the bottle up off the floor.

“Xanax?” I read off the label. Busted. Phelan’s eyes drift guiltily closed. “Phel, what the fuck? I thought you stopped taking this shit?” I don’t mean for it to come out that way—I know Xanax helps people and has helped Phel in the past—but drugs, prescription or otherwise, have done so much to fuck up the lives of the people I love that I can’t help but be a little distrustful of them in any form.

“Easy for you to say,” he snaps, and finally, there it is, some of that old fire coming back into his eyes. I want to snort at how predictable and unpredictable Phel is all at once. His mouth hardens. “You’re not the one who just flew across the country to make an ass of yourself.”

At that, I grunt. “No, but I guess that brings us right back to the question of
why
you are
here.”

As I pass over the prescription bottle and watch Phelan deposit the pills back into it, I can’t stop myself from reaching out to cover his hand with my own, if nothing else to stop its shaking and fumbling as he attempts to replace the cap. At least he’s not trying to dope himself up anymore. The whole scene is a little pathetic and a lot absurd, considering the terms we parted on, but he’s such a mess that it makes my heart hurt.

Keeping my voice gentle, I urge, “Phel, talk to me.” The canary’s all but in my throat now.

He looks up at me.

“I assume that’s what you came for, right?” I ask. “To talk?” About what, I can’t fathom. There’s a distinct possibility Phel spent the last month and change cataloguing everything I did wrong and is here to read me the riot act. Get in the last word, as it were.

“No.”

Wait… no?

A bone-weary sigh hisses out of Phel as he carefully withdraws from my grasp. As if not knowing what else to do with himself, he stuffs his hands between his knees and sits there. The two of us kneel together on the floor until he feels comfortable enough to talk again. No more than a couple of minutes tick by. “I didn’t come to talk, because there’s nothing to talk about,” he says at last. He sounds awkward but resigned. “You said everything there was to say in Cardiff. Not much else for me to add, really.  I just… I came to apologize. Set things right.”

Intrigued, surprised, hopeful, disbelieving—my emotions run the gamut from one extreme to the other in the space of seconds. All of them must show on my face as Phel watches me guardedly. His expression most of all lets me know I didn’t mishear him.

“Try not to look so shocked,” he deadpans. Giving a weak chuckle, he pries his hands out from between his knees and wipes his palms on the legs of his jeans. Nervous. “I don’t know where to start. I know I’m doing a shitty job of this, on top of showing up out of the blue. But I’m trying to make it right. In whatever way I can, I want—I
have
to try.”

The earnestness of Phelan’s words and the sudden ferocity in his eyes releases some of the knot in my chest, lets me draw a proper breath for the first time this evening since I turned around and saw him there. Maybe even since the first time I turned around and saw him, period.
What the fuck are we beating around the bush for?
I finally ask myself.
You know what he wants to say, so why are you letting him choke on it?

I guess the simple answer is that I’m scared. And I’m not so great a person that I can swallow down the months of sadness, anger, confusion, and loss I’ve suffered over this man, as much for him as because of him. I’m not so forgiving that part of me doesn’t want to hear those two little words come out of his mouth, not after the months I’ve spent screaming myself hoarse to make him hear my own apology. It has to end somewhere, but not yet. Leaving California didn’t end shit, and Phel knows it too.

Squaring my shoulders ever so slightly, I find his gaze and hold it for as long as I’m able, ignoring the quiver in my gut. “Why?” I ask him with an edge of belligerence. “You made it pretty clear, Phel, where you stood on the whole issue of you and I. So why do you gotta try now, after everything?”

I expect the question to cow him or embarrass him or
something
, make him blush and stutter at the very least, but to my surprise he seems galvanized, a deliberate straightness creeping into his posture. Not unlike the day we first met, Phelan’s eyes are the softest thing about him, so deep and blue that I want to tumble into them from a great height.

“Because I love you,” says Phel, his voice clear as day and without a waver or trace of uncertainty. With a tiny tilt of his head, he searches my face momentarily before fixing back on my face. “And because I was so very, very wrong.”

Thousands of tiny razorblades slice down my throat when I attempt to swallow. I want to speak, even though I don’t know what the hell one says to that, and something in Phel must recognize that only I could try to make a joke or a derisive comment when I ought to be verklempt. He places a hand between us on the edge of the sofa cushion as though he wanted to reach out and then thought better of it.

“I—I’ve been so sharp,” he continues. “This whole time you’ve been cutting yourself on me like I’m covered in shells. It’s no wonder you left, Nate, and in the end, I—I don’t blame you for that. It’s what I deserved. But I should have stopped you from going. I should have known it was time to give up the fight and put my fucking knives away, and for that, for everything, I’m asking you to forgive me.” Biting down on his bottom lip to stop it from trembling, he leans forward slightly. “Even if you can’t take me back, I need to know that at the very least, you don’t hate me. Selfish, I know, but I have to hear it from you either way.”

I twitch back in surprise. “Phel—how can you.… Is that why you think I left? Because I
hate
you?”

A shoulder lifts, his gaze drops, and I sigh. Unthinking, I reach out and take his hand again, the one on the sofa cushion. This time he lets me keep it, lets me curl my fingers around his palm and hold it tight. The brief squeeze I give startles a little gasp out of him, and he looks up—not at me, but up somewhere into the middle distance—with moisture glistening against his bottom lashes. As he tightens his jaw to stave off further tears, the cleft of his chin seems even sharper than normal.

I suppose I should take a stronger stance here, gather together all the angry thoughts that have crept up on me in the last few months and finally let Phel have it, but all it takes is a quivering lip for me to realize how fucking stupid that would be, how totally beside the point. Because Phel is
here
, and God damn it if I’ll allow either one of us to walk away again, not without letting him hear the one freaking thing that matters.

Emboldened, I reach out and cup his face in my hands, then draw him closer so our noses are only a few inches apart. “No matter the stupid shit you say or do, I could never hate you,” I hiss at him, resisting the urge to shake him. “Sure, I left, but it was for the exact reasons I told you, Phel. Because I didn’t see a way forward the way things were going. Feeling like you hated
me
almost as much as you hated yourself. You just…. Nothing I said or did seemed enough to get your to put your goddamned fists down. I couldn’t stick around and watch you keep beating yourself up, and me in the process. Not with a son waiting on me back here. Not thinking we could still be in the same place fifty years from now and none of it would matter. It wasn’t fair to anyone.”

“I don’t want to fight anymore,” Phel whispers. “I’m so tired. I’m so
sick
of missing you all the time.”

Our foreheads press together when I incline my head just the slightest bit forward. He leans into me like every ounce of energy has flown out of him. “Then stop.” I feel the tickle of lashes as he squeezes his eyes closed, and he exhales a shaky breath against my face. It is surprisingly cool, and I realize it’s because tears have started to leak from my eyes. “You’re the love of my fucking life, jackass, and I surrendered to you a long time ago. So just… stop attacking me, yeah?”

Phel’s nod registers as a rushed bob of the head, followed by a loud sniffle and something that resembles a choked laugh, a little hysterical, by the sound of it. I try to squash down my nervousness that Phel will suddenly freak out at me again, and put my arms around him, holding him tight. He allows it, melts into the hug like muscle memory hasn’t let him forget how good it feels for us to be together like this. His hair, when I bury my nose in it, smells like minty shampoo and snow.

“I’m sorry, Nate,” he says again, his voice muffled in my shirt. A shudder runs through him before he lifts his head, showing me his wet eyes and lashes spiked together with tears.

Christ, he looks so goddamned beautiful like this, and I don’t feel guilty for thinking it, for relishing the delicious ache that springs up deep in my chest over the knowledge that his tears are
for
me, not because of me. I know what it feels like to see someone cry on account of something horrible I’ve done, but I never gave much thought to how good it would feel to have them cry for joy. Saying that doesn’t feel arrogant, since I’m crying too. Maybe Phel is a little sad right now, yeah, but he’s here, and I’m here; he’s asking me to keep him, and there’s no way in hell I’m turning him away.

“Can I kiss you?” Phel brushes at the tears on my cheeks with his fingertips and meets my eyes, not even bothering to hide the hopefulness of his gaze. A look like that, so much love and expectation all wrapped up in one devastating expression, would knock my feet out from under me was I not kneeling already.