Carver could not and did not respond to this.
Chip’s phone rang, and he picked it up and said, “Yeah, I’ve got him, he’s fine.” He paused while someone spoke on the other end. “Yep, everything’s good. You’re welcome. I’m driving him back in his car, I’ll call you later.” He hung up.
“Was that them?” Carver said.
“Yeah, they’re all worried about you.”
“Like they care.”
Chip snorted. “No, they care. Their problem is not that they don’t care.”
“Yeah.” Carver let out another sigh. Each one felt like it cleared a few milliliters of toxins from his body. On a sudden impulse, he said, “Do you, uh… do you know what their problem, like, actually is with me?”
“Huh?”
“Sexuality aside… is there something else? It’s just always felt like there is, but nothing I could put my finger on.”
Chip didn’t respond. Carver looked over at him and saw that he was staring at the road with his brow knit. Passing streetlights and headlights washed over his face, illuminating him for a moment before leaving him in shadow again.
“Yeah,” Chip said in a strange voice, just as Carver had given up on him answering. “Yeah, now that you mention it, I actually do know what their problem with you is.”
Carver went very still. Chip never sounded so sincere and circumspect — it was unnerving. He sounded the way he had when he’d called Carver from the ambulance during Doug’s cardiac scare, which turned out to just be intense heartburn and a panic attack.
“So there actually is something?” he said.
Chip blew out a breath. “Yeah.”
“You’re serious?”
“I’m serious.”
“Then could you, like, tell me?”
“I will,” Chip said, still not taking his eyes off the road. “When we get back to the house, alright?” He reached over and patted Carver on the shoulder. “They’re gonna cut my nuts off and fry them in a little pan for telling you, so I need something to take the edge off, first.”
Carver sat up with a stab of anxiety. “Jesus, how bad is it?”
“Shh,” Chip said. “Relax, sit back. We’re five minutes away.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They weren’t five minutes away, they were eight minutes away, and Carver felt every single second of those eight minutes. Once they were back at the house, he dogged Chip’s heels as he went upstairs to toss Conway’s luggage in search of weed. This took three additional minutes. Carver spent the duration standing in his sister’s doorway with his arms folded, thrumming with impatience. The golden retriever emerged from their parents’ bedroom, wagging his tail, and nosed the back of Carver’s knees until he bent down to stroke his head.
“There we go,” Chip said, finally unearthing a large joint inside a Ziploc which had been tucked into Conway’s makeup bag.
“Okay, let’s go,” Carver said, stepping back out into the hall.
“Don’t be impatient,” Chip said. “You’ve waited your whole life to hear this, you can wait a little longer. And I need a lighter.”
His whole life. His whole life? Carver strode over to a credenza in the hallway which sat under an array of framed family portraits and upon which rested a large bowl of potpourri and a half-burned 21-ounce Diptyque candle. He opened one of the drawers, grabbed the pack of matches his mother used to light the candle, returned to Chip and slapped it into his hand.
“Solid,” Chip said. “Let’s go up on the roof.”
Chip’s old room had roof access through its window; this fact plus Doug’s 24-foot ladder for cleaning the gutters had facilitated his sneakouts all through high school. This part of the roof had a very gentle slope, so it wasn’t unnerving to sit on, although the asphalt luxury shingles weren’t comfortable.
As soon as Chip took his first drag, Carver said, “Tell me.”
“Hang on.”
