Felix and Kaleb both give me skeptical looks, but Kaleb merely asks, “Do you have a towel we can dry off with?”
“I’ll get one,” Donovan answers, striding out of my room like he owns the place-- and really doesn’t want to be part of this conversation.
“I’m fine enough,” I argue stubbornly, crossing my arms over my chest.
“I believe you,” he replies, running his hand along the top of his head like he’s trying to dust out the water droplets. “You promised to tell us if there was something wrong, so if you say you’re fine, then you must be.”
Felix gives me a wide-eyed expression, flicking his gaze to Kaleb and back to me in the clear tone of, ‘You should tell him what happened.’
Pulling my knees to my chest, I wrap my arms around my legs and send a squinty glare at Kaleb, my lips pressed tight in a pout.
“Alright fine, I’m not fine,” I grumble, gripping the fabric of my flannel pant legs. “Someone lit my damn backyard on fire, and I freaked. But I’m not catatonic and I’m not sobbing… anymore, so I’m calling it a win. And don’t think I don’t know what you just did.”
He shivers, running his hands up and down his arms, while a breath of a smile pulls at his full lips. He replies, “I agreed with you.”
“Uh huh,” I mutter, then glancing at my open bedroom door, I ask, “Where’s Donovan? How long does it take to get a towel?”
“About the length of time for you to talk through the emotional half of what happened, but before you get into the concrete details of what actually happened,” Felix answers cheekily, leaning back on his elbows.
Rolling my eyes, I get to my feet and head toward my dresser, pulling out a random t-shirt. I toss it to Kaleb. “Here use this.”
“Thank you, and you know, it’s okay to not be okay,” Kaleb assures, while he uses my shirt to dry off.
“Yeah, well, I’m getting tired of not being okay,” I huff, flopping back onto my bed. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m worse now than I was when the abuse was actually happening.”
Felix gets up to lie next to me at the foot of my bed, his head propped up on his arm. Now that I understand how much effort it takes for him to do that, I’m properly impressed. He has sad eyes, and I know what he saw in my head is now running through his.
“That’s because you’re safe now,” Kaleb counters, hanging my t-shirt over the bed’s lacquered, wooden footboard to dry. He pulls a dove grey, long-sleeved shirt from his pocket, flaps it a few times in the air to try and get out some of the wrinkles, then while putting it on, continues, “Before it was about survival. Now, you know that you’re safe from… him, it’s understandable that all you were suppressing is making its way to the surface.”
Oh good god, I hope not. There’s a lot of shit down there locked away with only a tight smile and heavy doses of denial.I think about all the things I’ve blown up or broken or in some way destroyed because of losing my shit.Okay, maybe denial isn’t working so well for me anymore.
“She may be safe from that asshole,” Donovan comments, barging back into the room, dressed in a black Henley that’s damp in a few spots and holding the now unnecessary hand towel, “but someone did just build a fucking bonfire in her backyard. Which means the fuckers are back.”
“We don’t know that…” Kaleb counters.
“So before we get into all that,” Felix interrupts, falling to his back and raising a pointed finger into the air. “Are we going to talk about the feathered elephant in the room?”
“The what?” Donovan questions, with a familiar confused squint that I’m noticing happens every time Felix says something he doesn’t understand the reference to.
Kaleb sighs. “It was faster to fly, and the mist was thick enough that no humans could see us. You told us it was important, and considering you braved potentially getting caught by my parents, we got here as fast as we could.”
“You flew. Just busted out your wings and flew right over,” Felix declares with exaggerated hand gestures, then rolls onto his stomach, barely stopping before my arm goes through him. “Do you have to start from high up and jump, or can you achieve lift off when on the ground?”
Taking in his enthusiasm, I can’t figure out which one of us is reacting correctly. He just heard the people that killed his family might be back, and he’s focused on how Kaleb and Donovan flew here. Whereas this is the first time I’ve ever seen them fly, and I was only able to conjure mild shock, too focused on my own fucked up past biting me in the ass again. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe there isn’t any right way to react.
“Is this the first time you’ve seen them fly?” I ask, shifting so Felix has a little more room.
“Yes. The jerks kept putting it off for the ‘right time’,” he replies with finger quotes.
Donovan throws the towel over his shoulder, then dips his hands into his pockets. “I would’ve done it already if K didn’t say he’d rat me out to Keziah.”
Kaleb snorts and crosses his arms. “I said that if you got caught, I wasn’t going to bail you out.”
“He’s scared of getting his ass chewed out by Kaleb’s mom,” Felix stage whispers. “To be fair, she’s a real nice lady until you get her mad… kind of like Mildred, now that I think of it.”
When did he see my aunt mad?
“Can we get back to the point of why we’re here?” Donovan groans.
