Chapter Six
AARON
Hearing Frankie spillall the shit I pulled that night made me physically ill. “I’ll be right back.” Before Frankie could stop me, I ran into the bathroom and hurled up my lunch. Without bothering to rinse my mouth, I huddled in a ball on the bathroom floor. The tile felt cool against my heated face, and I drew in several deep breaths, wondering how I’d go back out there and face Frankie.
“You’re such a fucking loser,” I whispered, drawing my legs tight to my chest.
“No, you’re not.” A cool hand touched me. “You have a problem that you let get out of control. And I allowed you to do it. But no more. Not for either of us.”
A bit shaky still, I sat up, and to my surprise, Frankie wrapped his arm around me so I could lean my weight on him. For all his fun and frivolous ways, Frankie was strong. And, I now understood, he’d grown even stronger in the months I’d been away.
“I’m gonna get up and brush my teeth.” With his help, I stood and first rinsed my mouth out, then brushed my teeth, taking my time with the steady up-and-down motion. When I finished, I faced him. “Okay. I’m ready.”
With his arm around me once again, Frankie and I walked back to the living room and sat on the sofa. I took both his hands in mine and gripped them tight.
“I know I said I was sorry for what I did. And I also know sorry ain’t enough. I took what you gave me and hurt it so bad, I almost destroyed it. And if I could erase what happened, make it go away, I would, but I can’t. So the best I can do now is make you a promise.”
Seeing Frankie’s big brown eyes fill up, the words rushed out faster than I thought they could. I’d never been so desperate in my life.
“I promise to treat you like an equal and not take you for granted. And I promise not to put you down and call you names. I know you got a life and you don’t answer to me. No more name-calling and cursing at you when I don’t get my way. You don’t got to be a better boyfriend. I gotta learn to be a better person.”
“Can I ask you something?”
Those words I thought would make everything better didn’t bring a smile to Frankie’s face.
“Yeah, of course.” My heart began to slam in hard, painful beats, and my breaths grew short.
“Tell me about your parents. You always brush me off, and I don’t know nothing about them—whether they’re alive or dead even.”
My immediate reaction was to do what I’d always done. Hide. Brush it off. Lie. Start the cycle all over again. Goddamn it, I was tired. Frankie sat waiting, his face impassive, yet tension seemed to pin him to his seat. If I didn’t feel safe here with Frankie, who knew me better than I knew myself, where could I? But not everything. I couldn’t. Not even for Frankie.
“My parents…it’s almost like a cliché. Would you believe I don’t know who they are? I was abandoned as a baby in the bathroom of a movie theater.”
“Oh, my God. Did you ever find your birth mother?”
“No, and I don’t wanna know. Why would I wanna see the person who left me? I coulda died. Eventually I got placed in a foster home when I was two. I had a mom and a dad—the Ruizes. I even had a puppy I called Rocco.”
I shuddered and wiped at my eyes. I hadn’t thought of that dog in years. Frankie stroked my back. “I was born with a dependency that made me go through withdrawals. Growing up, I always felt stupid and slow, but I tried to work hard. I got Cs and Ds mostly, but sometimes even a B. They were proud of me no matter what, and every report card I’d get ice cream.”
“What happened?”
“They both died. When I was eight, my mom got breast cancer. Two years later, my father had a heart attack while driving his bus, crashed it into a pole, and got killed.”
“Oh, baby.”
I didn’t want pity, but Frankie’s arms around me felt so damn good, I leaned into his strength.
It was as if I was outside my body, hovering above, watching myself tell this story. “Next up was another foster home. I had two little sisters there, Carmela and Jasmine. I was their big brother. I watched out for them. I really tried.”
“I bet you were a wonderful brother.”
“They looked up to me. Ain’t nobody ever looked up to me for nothing.” Their sweet little faces appeared before me, and my heart hurt. I tried so hard to protect them, but I was only a kid myself.
“These foster parents, the Blackmuns, they used to smoke weed together, and when my foster father got hurt on his job and went on disability, he got hooked on pain meds and dragged my foster mother down with him. Almost every day, I’d come home from school to find them zonked out on the sofa. And if they weren’t high, they were always fighting—screaming and hitting each other.”
Frankie continued to hold me, murmuring soothing words in my ear, but it didn’t matter. My foster parents always said I was a failure, and “Look, Ma!” I’d proved them right.
My shirt was soaked with sweat, and I was hot as if I ran a fever yet chilled to the bone. Why did I have to relive this? I tried to forget it every day. But Jasmine and Carmela deserved more. “I…I don’t even know where they are.”
