“When you feel like eating, there’s still some of that salad, and we can make sandwiches or something,” he said, as he sat down. “Have you sobered up enough to check my laptop?”
Emil grinned. “Yeah, let’s see….”
THEY HADa really nice afternoon and early evening together, after all the funk of digging into their pasts faded a bit. Emil should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy.
Makai drove him home, saying that he wanted to drive around a little. It might’ve been an excuse to spend a bit more time with Emil, or so he hoped anyway. When Makai parked in front of Emil’s house, they sat in the quiet for a while. Then Emil reached a hand to touch Makai’s gently.
Part of him wanted to stay with Makai. Despite all that had happened, Makai still felt like safety, like comfort. Eventually Emil pulled his hand away from where it’d rested on top of Makai’s and cleared his throat.
“Thanks for the nice day,” he said quietly.
Makai flashed him a small smile. “You too. Have a good night.”
To Emil’s surprise, he didn’t feel like anything was missing. He didn’t think they should’ve kissed or even hugged. Instead, he got out of the truck and waved, and Makai lifted his hand in response before driving off.
Emil went to bed early, feeling tired as fuck from all the socializing and angsting, and fell asleep immediately.
He woke up gasping, with his mother’s terrified voice ringing in his ears.
“Emil, Emil! Thank God, you’re awake!” she sobbed, hands grasping the doorframe as if physically holding herself back from coming closer.
He was soaked in sweat, and his throat felt weird. “W-what…?” He blinked at the light Mom must’ve turned on, and sat up in his bed.
“You werescreaming, Emil,” she hiccupped, looking scared out of her mind.
“Oh no.” Emil closed his eyes for a moment, waiting for his heartbeat to get back to something resembling normal. “I’m so, so sorry, Mom,” he said quietly, at once feeling like he should be comforting her and wanting to crawl onto her lap to be comforted and loathing the fact that he could do neither. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, baby, it’s not.” Her tone was fierce now, and the mama bear she could sometimes be reared its head. “I got scared and worried, but we’re fine, we’re all fine.”
“Dad?”
“He’s at work, got called in for a car accident.”
“Okay. What time is it?”
“A little after three, honey. Do you want a drink?”
“Y-yeah, I think so. Let me come to the kitchen.”
He needed to walk a little, to loosen the weird not-quite-there tendrils of the dream he couldn’t really remember but had experienced enough times to know inside and out.
“Okay,” Mom said and went to pour him some orange juice.
It had been a thing, in the first couple of years after he’d gotten out of the hospital. His screams waking them all up, and Mom bringing him juice or him going to the kitchen. She’d been so scared back then too.
Emil was pretty sure she hadn’t really understood the trauma he’d suffered, the way his mind had warped to cope, before the first ten or so times he screamed in the night. Afterward, since it probably felt like the only thing she could do to help, she’d started this tradition. One they’d thought they didn’t have to go through again.
“What prompted this?” she asked quietly as she handed over the glass.
He sat at the breakfast table, and she took her old spot, leaning to the island nearby, but not too close. Distance. It all boiled down to distance.
“Talked with Makai,” he said hoarsely. Then he drank some of the juice, feeling it coat his mouth and hoping it helped his throat. “I told him a lot of things. Stuff he should know if….”
“If you become more than friends,” she stated, nodding slowly.
Nora Newman had gone through some shit. She’d married the sheriff’s deputy at twenty and had Emil at twenty-two. Giving birth to him had almost bled her to death, and she’d had to have an emergency hysterectomy right there and then. When Kalle had gotten shot at work only six months later, she’d gathered all her courage and strength and taken care of her son and husband, until everything was fine again.
She was… not soft. Not in the way some people perceived her. And then the kidnapping happened, and it nearly broke her. Emil knew this because they’d been in family therapy a few times, until he’d told everyone, including the shrink appointed to them, that he wouldn’t talk about it with his parents. None of it.
