Chapter Eight
EMIL WENTinto the kitchen, reeling with the conversation. He knew his own shit was horrible—he’d accepted it and learned to live with it to a point. Hearing Makai’s full story, even part of it, was different.
For the first time in a long while, Emil felt like he wanted to hurt someone. This time it wasn’t for himself or for the hurt someone caused his family through him. No, this time it was for Makai.
When he’d told him about being raped, Emil had felt such pure rage that it had scared him a little. If those men had been there and he’d had a weapon, the men wouldn’t be breathing anymore.
He looked into Makai’s fridge and most of what was in there was food he liked and could eat. “Panfried chicken and rice with some salad?” he asked over his shoulder, where Makai was holding his distance.
“Sure, do you want to make the salad?”
“Yeah, I can do that.” Emil took the ingredients and the chopping board to the counter.
He liked that the ingredients for the salad were exactly his favorites, and as he was mixing the arugula in with the other greens, the reason for that came to him.
“You… you’ve been buying things I like to eat?” He looked at Makai, who blushed and ducked his head.
“Uh… thought it would be easiest way to make food you like?” He tried to sound like it wasn’t a big deal, organizing his meals around Emil’s issues.
Emil abandoned the cutting board, took the few steps separating them, and laid his hand on Makai’s abruptly tense shoulder.
“Thank you,” he said, and stayed in Makai’s bubble as long as he could before moving away. It felt like a long time, but it was probably more like five to ten seconds.
He chopped the ingredients and made the salad, and while they waited for the rest to cook, Emil sat on the chair Makai had left in the kitchen.
“She starved me on purpose,” he said quietly. “All they fed me were leftover pizza and stuff like that. Things they didn’t want anymore. I still can’t eat pizza five years later.” He remembered the feeling of hunger so intense he’d thought he’d literally die. He also remembered the smell of the slices that had started to spoil already, but someone thought to feed him.
“So, no pizza, then,” Makai said seriously, even though he could’ve joked about it. “Anything else that’s triggering?”
“Uh…. Nothing else on that level. I mean, I still can’t eat a lot of things, but that’s the PTSD in general. They had to tube-feed me in the hospital because I refused to eat anything. For about a month or so.” He looked away. He didn’t have many memories of those times, and he preferred it that way. “It’s been a long way to get to even this point.”
“I can understand that. I got scared by a shopping cart once,” Makai said, but this time there was humor in his tone.
“What?” Emil chuckled.
“About a week after I got out. I’d just parked my mom’s car. We were going to Target. Anyway, got out of the car, and at the same exact time, someone pushed their empty cart into one of those collecting spaces. I guess it rattled against the side rails or something, but suddenly I was in my cell when the door closed.” Makai tilted his head from side to side, as if working out kinks from his neck. Emil figured it was his way of fidgeting. “The sound must’ve been similar. I froze completely, started to shake, and my mom freaked out. That’s what snapped me out of it, Mom opening the car door and pushing me back in and hysterically trying to get me to look at her.”
“Jesus….” Emil could see the situation in his head. It wasn’t unlike things that had happened to him and his family in the beginning. “At least a big part of my shit was handled in the psychiatric hospital after the actual hospital,” he said without thinking. Then he flinched when he realized he’d outed his nuthouse stay.
Makai seemed to catch his expression. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said quietly. “Whatever made you survive, right?”
Emil swallowed hard and nodded. Yeah, that wasn’t a bad way to think about it.
Makai pointed him toward the plates and utensils, and he grabbed them both another beer to drink, not particularly caring if it went with the meal or not.
Once they sat at the small table by the living room window and started to eat, it seemed like most of the heavy stuff was put on hold for the moment. Emil didn’t feel the slightest bit uncomfortable sitting with Makai like this, and the table was smaller and Makai bigger than Evy had been at the diner what felt like only days ago.
“I need some Tylenol after we eat,” Makai said when they were halfway through the meal.
“Back getting sore?”
“Yeah. There’s bruising there, and I got knocked pretty well by the debris, even where it didn’t pierce skin.”
“I can understand that. I fell from a tree once as a kid, and I was sore for days,” Emil said, the memory coming to him from somewhere far. “I was a pretty active kid.”
Makai smiled. “I was a total geek.”
“Really?” Emil would’ve pegged him as a jock.
