“So, basically, Dad lost his shit and tried to kill Niall, but that’s been going on for a while and we all should have stopped it,” Cameron said as she listlessly pulled a slice from the pizza in the center of the table.
“I mean, I love Dad, but he was being a fucking monster, and not just that, but he was smoking Niall’s weed.”
Gilead and Russell looked at each other quickly.
“So Uncle Dave said Niall was staying with him from now on, which I guess means I am too. And so is Mom, because last night Mom gave Dad her wedding ring and said it was all over.”
“Do you think it really is?” Mark asked.
“Yeah,” Cameron said. “I really do. I mean, I think it should be.”
Then she said, “Dad left in the middlfe of the night, so I assumed he would be back here. But I didn’t see his car in the driveway.”
“We haven’t seen him,” Russell said. “No one’s come back to your house.”
“I didn’t want to say anything,” Cameron said, “because I was hoping you wouldn’t say that. Where the fuck is he?”
“Oh, oh God. Oh, shi—”
He is taking her from behind. The way he wants her is like this, on hands and knees. Who is the dog? He thinks it’s him. He wants to fuck her like a dog, with this fierceness, plowing her from behind tugging her hair. Lynn Draper shouts out as he pushes his cock into her.
“Whaddo you want?” he breathes.
“Fuck me.” she says.
“Tell me what you want?”
“I want you to fuck me.”
It’s never been this hard, not the way she makes him longer, thicker, veins bulging out of his cock like in the pornos, so sensitive to the touch, almost so hard that it hurts. Her hands, her mouth, her pussy always do this.
He wants to fuck her. He wants it to be like rape. Part of him pictures Dena refusing him again, pictures himself slapping her and bending her over the sofa, burying her face in a pillow, the rage in his chest and behind his eyes traveling down to his shaft and driving it into her until he explodes like fire in her cunt. He pictures that proud bitch humiliated as she once was, moaning and weeping at once, her voice thick and humbled from the fucking.
Still clinging to him, sore, half out of her body and half out of her mind she says, “Come to bed.”
Bill’s face is pressed into her shoulder. He’s still hard inside of her. He knows they aren’t done.
“We could have taken my car,” Mark said.
“We could have taken mine,” said Ralph.
“We could have taken the hearse,” Rob said, “but we didn’t do any of that. Keep walking.”
“You’re getting more and more like Chayne.”
“Thanks,” Rob said.
Russell cleared his throat.
“I know you didn’t mean it as a compliment, but I’m gonna take it as one.”
Rob turned around and winked, his bright blond hair and almond shaped blue eyes making him look like a Christmas elf.
“Is it always like this?” Mark wondered beside Gilead.
“Like what?”
Mark’s hands were jammed in his pockets as he trudged down Colum Street. They all moved aside as a car slowly rolled past them.
“You all just marching around town in a clump on a mission?”
Gilead thought.
“Sort of. Sometimes. I shouldn’t have dragged you along.”
“No,” Mark said. “I wanted to be dragged along. This is great.”
“Being dragged along is just what I needed,” Cameron agreed.
“What are you going to do tonight?” Russell asked her.
When she looked at him he said, “Where are you staying?”
“I don’t want to be with Mom in my aunt and uncle’s house. But I don’t want to be alone in my house, either.”
“Why don’t you get some of your stuff and stay with us,” Russell said. “If Mom explains it to them, your family’ll totally be okay with it.”
“Yeah,” Cameron said. “Thanks, Russell. I think I’d like that.
“Where are you staying, Mr. Story,” Mark murmured, kicking up snow as they entered what was definitely the shabbier part of Colum Street.
“Whaddo you mean?”
Mark bumped his shoulder into Gilead’s.
“What?”
Mark whispered, looking at Gilead, “I want you to stay with me.”
Gilead tried to keep himself from smiling, and studied the snowy ground before him.
“You always go away or I go away. We had that once or twice. I’d like you to stay with me tonight. Get your stuff. Have breakfast together and all.”
“A sleepover. A slumber party.”
“There’ll be a little slumber. Lot more party if I have anything to say about it.”
Mark hooked his arm through Gilead’s
“I love when you look embarrassed,” Mark said.
He breathed into his ear: “Stay with me,”
“You don’t have to convince me,” Gilead said, and then realized, “But I don’t like leaving my mother alone. That’s silly of me, though…”
“I’ll stay with you, then,” Mark said.
“No, no,” Gilead said. “I need to grow up a little. I’m always so… I’m a mama’s boy.”
“You look out for your mom cause your dad didn’t, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Mark said. “Look, it doesn’t matter where we stay as long as we stay in the same bed tonight. Cool?”
“Yeah,” Gilead said. “Cool.”
When they arrived at the house on Colum Street, Jill was putting on her coat and pulling her red hair out from under it.
“It’s a good thing you’re here, Russell,” she said. “Cody could use conversation. The rest of you…” she looked over them. “This is one hell of an entourage.”
Now that Jill said it, Russell realized it was so.
“We could go,” Cameron suggested.
But Gilead said, “We’ve walked about a mile, maybe more. I’m not going anywhere.”
He sat on the couch, and Mark waited a second before joining him.
“Well,” Jill said. “Make yourselves at home, but don’t touch Mom’s Hennessey.”
“I’m not going to make myself at home,” Russell said. “I’m going to go talk to Cody.”
He’d expected Cody to be angry or sullen or something he never was, but when Russell tapped on the door and entered, Cody, in jeans and tee shirt, threw himself on Russell and embraced him.
“I was so worried about you,’ he told him. “I should have called. Are you alright?” He looked a lot like Thom right now, stroking Russell’s hair, holding him.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“If we… hadn’t gone out last night… nothing would have happened.”
“Something already happened,” Russell said, stopping himself from saying, “We made out and blew each other last summer.”
“Yes,” Cody remembered. “Yes. That’s right. I’m sorry, Russell.”
“I’m not,” Russell said.
“What?”
“I’m not sorry. I’m glad. I’m glad we went out, and I’m glad we didn’t know because if he had nothing would have happened, and I wanted to be with you. I love you. I’d be so mad if we found out the truth early and we could never say we’d been together.”
“But now we know what the love was. We’re brothers.”
“That’s part of it,” Russell said, “but I don’t really love you like a brother.”
“But it doesn’t matter,” Cody said. “Because all of that, all we did, is over.”
“But why does it have to be?” Russell wondered.
“Because, and I feel like you may have missed this, you are my brother.”
“Half brother,” Russell dismissed this, “and it’s not like we could reproduce and make retarded kids.”
“I am your half brother,” Cody said. “Who is five years older than you.
“Seven actually.”
“Fuck. See what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” Russell said. “And I know what I’m saying is crazy. I’m just…. I’m just tired about lying about my feelings. And I know how I feel about you. How I felt when we finally got to be together. I’m not telling you what to do. I’m just telling you that for me nothing had changed.”
They came downstairs because they heard horns honking. Outside was Chayne’s hearse and Brad’s van.
“What the…?” Cody started.
“I wasn’t walking back,” Gilead said, “so I called them.”
Cody and Russell did not sit together. Chayne had driven. Rob was beside him, and Russell suspected Cody needed to talk, though what he was going to say he couldn’t tell. Russell wasn’t sure how he felt. He did think that if he was older, maybe even three years older he would have been hopeless. He had a feeling that being sixteen made him hopeful and the younger you were the more you could do and the better you could survive.
“I have to talk to you,” Russell said, not even paying heed to Ralph or Mark.
“Sure,” Gilead said, sounding more casual than he felt. Russell did not have to talk to you about casual things. “Wherever we end up, let’s talk.”
They ended up at Noble Red and Ralph steered Mark away saying, “Gil and Russell are going to pow wow. We’ll just be in the way.”
Noble Red was nearly empty. Mark was looking at Gilead. On the stage, Cody was playing guitar with Brad. Gilead said, “We will only be a minute.”
“We may be several minutes,” Gilead said to Russell.
“Now what’s going on?”
“It’s Cody.”
Gilead looked at the handsome guy on the stage who was built like Thom only taller, but had Russell’s manners.
“Isn’t it a good thing that you all are brothers? No matter what it might mean for your dad. Or your mom.
“It’s more than that—thank you,” Russell said as the waitress brought them their coffees.
Neither one of them looked at sugar and cream as they stirred them in.
“I’m in love with Cody.”
Gilead raised an eyebrow.
“He’s in love with me.”
There was no point in voicing the obvious, so Gilead didn’t.
Instead, Gilead said, “How long?”
“Always. Since the night I met him.”
“Wasn’t that the night you and Jason…?”
“Yes. I like Jason. I was mad about what he did, but… I love Cody.”
Gilead nodded and drank his coffee.
“Here’s the thing you need to know…”
“I thought you had told me the thing I needed to know.”
“No,” Russell shook his head.
“Dad only told me about Cody this morning.”
“Yeah?”
“But me and Cody had sex last night.”
Gilead’s heart went heavy like a hot stone. His whole body tingled with dread. He had stopped his mouth from falling open, but not his eyes from bulging.
“And here’s the thing,” Russell continued, “I’m glad it happened before we knew, because if we had known it wouldn’t have happened, and I would be sad my whole life that it couldn’t happen.”
“But now you’re sad you’re whole life that it can’t happen again.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“What?”
“Who gives a shit?” Russell hissed.
“Russ, just alone the fact that you’re still sixteen and Cody’s an adult—”
“I don’t care about any of that! If you only knew what it felt like to love someone like this. But, you do,” Russell said, pointing to Mark. “Everyone in the fucking world can see how together the two of you are. What if someone told you Mark was your half brother?”
Gilead snorted, then remembered they were in a serious time, remembered also that this would not have been impossible.
“His kiss, the way he looks at you, the way he touches you,” Russell said. “The way you want to be next to him…. Would you give it up just because of some dumb shit your dad had done?”
