6
THORNE
I’d been following Junior’s advice, and he’d given a lot of it that night. I went to work, focused on myself, gave the players and management the best nutrition they could get while the food still tasted delicious, kept the kitchen staff happy and not overworked, and left everything at the door when my shift was over. When I went home to spend time with Rupert, I made sure he got my undivided attention.
It had been difficult, so hard I spent all my energy keeping it up and didn’t realize how taxing it had been on me until the team traveled and my hours were reduced.
Being home with Rupert, not worrying about turning the corner and coming face to face with the image of the person who hurt my brother so badly, was relaxing and fun. While Rupert was at school one day, I painted his bedroom his favorite color and made a pillowcase for his dad’s pillow, covered with his favorite cartoon characters.
I became “cool uncle” instead of de facto father. During that break, we went to the arcade after school, got him his brand-new library card, and signed him up for their reading program, whichearned him prizes, and bought him a huge LEGO set we worked on together.
Life was calm and happy, what it should’ve been. And then the team came back and it was back to my usual schedule, and my stress returned.
It wasn’t like Raff would just come and bother me all bully style. He didn’t. He left me alone. There were days when he didn’t even show up to the cafeteria. One of his friends took his meal to go because he was “working” or whatever excuse they made that day. It was always something different, and it always sounded like bullshit. I should’ve been glad he was keeping away from me.
And part of me was, but another part of me was upset by it. Trying to figure out how both those things could be true at the same time had my head reeling.
I pulled out the last of the chicken I’d made for today’s lunch. The guys loved steak and would love it if I made it every day. There wasn’t a scrap left on steak days. Unfortunately for them, their team doctor’s diet guidelines required they have it only once a week. I’d been working on ways to make chicken, their second favorite, more interesting. Today, I’d added a little southwest flare, and they liked it enough that people were already coming up for seconds only ten minutes into the meal. I set more on the counter and called to the line to let them know it was ready.
I went to the back prep area to work on dinner while they finished serving lunch. It was kind of endless like that: prepping for one meal as the team ate the last one I’d just finished. I could easily arrange it so that the same prep would count for both meals, but that would get boring for both them and me. Andas stressful as my job was, Junior had been right. This was the stepping stone I needed, and keeping the players’ bellies happy was in my best interest.
I was in the middle of dicing my bazillionth onion when I looked up to see Raff standing there, just watching me.
“Why aren’t you crying?” he asked.
“Huh?” It had been a long time since he’d so much as grunted at me, and now he wanted to know why I wasn’t sobbing in the corner? In what world did that make sense?
“I asked why you weren’t crying.” His eyes fell to the bucket of onions I’d already finished. “Look at all those.”
Onions. Of course he meant onions.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps years of cutting them? And these are sweet ones, so they don’t tend to hit as hard.” Not that any had ever bugged me the way they did some people, but this wasn’t a small-talk kind of relationship, and I figured the less I said, the better.
“Oh.” He folded his arms. I kept waiting for him to leave, but he continued to watch me in silence.
“An angel passed,” I said, and his eyes went wide.
“What did you say?”
“I said, an angel passed. But I guess the silence between us isn’t comfortable enough for that.” I was trying to lighten the mood and flailing.
“You say that too,” he mumbled, and it didn’t sound like he was actually waiting for an answer. But he wanted an answer to hisnext question, one that took me aback. “Tell it to me straight. Why do you hate me?”
Of all the questions to ask, why did he have to pick one with such a complicated answer. I didn’t hate him, but I kind of did at the same time because I hated who he represented, at least physically. Looking at him, I couldn’t see anyone but his brother.
“I don’t hate you.” I wanted to. This would be so much easier if my emotions were that clear-cut. “You just look like… you know… like?—”
“My brother,” he filled in for me. “You don’t hate me. You hate my brother.”
That was what I got for letting my guard down for even half a second. It was one thing hating his brother if he was alive, but when he was dead? In my experience, people often sugarcoated memories of awful humans. Slandering the dead wasn’t the way to go. But also, it felt important that he knew.
“Yeah, I hated your brother.” I waited a few seconds for him to explode, but he didn’t; instead he gave a single nod. “The first time I saw you, I thought you were him, and I didn’t know how to respond. But then I saw you didn’t have the scar, and I still didn’t know how to respond.” At least that was consistent, I supposed.
He looked at me, and I couldn’t tell if he was happy or sad or mad or confused, or all of them mixed together. So I tapped my chin. “No scar.”
“Got it.”
I picked up my knife to work again in the hope he’d leave. This conversation had been taxing enough already. I didn’t need it to keep going. He didn’t leave, and I set the knife back down again.
