“You can refuse to believe until your dick comes liquid gold, bruh. That’s not going to change facts. You have no fucking idea what my relationship with my parents is like.”
“Clearly,” he snarked, “it’s shit.”
I sat back and gritted my teeth, trying not to grind them down into nubs because technically, I needed them to eat and chirp. And to tell his guy what a dick he was. I took a deep breath and counted to ten. When that didn’t work, I counted to twenty. That also didn’t work, so I tried it in French. Then in Russian.
After Japanese and Cantonese, my heart was no longer racing.
“You’re not wrong,” I finally said.
“Sorry?” he asked, a little too loud, which instantly pissed me off.
I didn’t call him on it. I just lowered my voice and hoped he’d follow suit. “My relationship with my parents? It’s shit. Fora good reason. But if I had known what was going on, I would have been here.”
He grunted like he didn’t believe me, but luckily, he kept his mouth shut, so I didn’t have to threaten to kick his ass in the parking lot. Which wouldn’t have gone my way, I was pretty sure, though I had won plenty of drunken bar fights in my rookie years.
The drive only took another five minutes before I felt the car start to slow, and then Alexio turned into a parking lot, rolled forward a few hundred feet, then stopped.
“So, you’ll have to help me get him to his place.”
“You can’t do it?” he asked, sounding annoyed.
“Well, no. I don’t know where he lives, and I don’t trust him to tell me. I don’t want to spend the night trying his key in every door, and?—”
“Fuck’s sake. Fine.” The car rolled forward again, and then I felt it turn into a parking spot, where he threw it in park and turned it off.
Fucker.
I unbuckled myself, then got my dad’s undone too. By the time I was standing at the curb with my hand on his arm, the mood had shifted to something a little less hostile. Not by much, but manageable.
“How can I give you proper directions?” Alexio asked gruffly.
“Is that rhetorical, or…”
“So you don’t get lost next time,” he clarified.
Oh. Well. I cleared my throat. “Just lead the way, I guess. If you see any landmarks, let me know.”
“Landmarks.”
“Mailboxes or…I don’t know, bushes or whatever. Something I can touch.”
“There are two massive turtle statues right when the sidewalk turns toward his building,” Alexio said. “Do you need my arm, or…?”
“No.” I unfolded my cane and dragged my dad by the wrist as I tried to keep one ear on him and one ear on Alexio. It went as well as it could. I tripped into the grass twice, but I managed to find the turtle statues. They were rough concrete with maybe some paint over the top. It was hard to tell, and I wasn’t going to ask.
The sidewalk curved at ninety degrees to the left after that, and everything was great until my temple met with something very sharp and very hard.
“Fucking fuck!” My cane hit the ground, and I lost my grip on my dad as my head swam and my knees threatened to buckle. Before I could hit the ground, strong hands caught me, and I fought the instinctive urge to shove him away. “A warning might have been nice.”
Alexio huffed. “I forgot you couldn’t see it.”
I couldn’t even be angry with him. I could be angry at the fact that men like him never broadened their social circles beyond what felt safe and familiar, but he was a drop in the goddamn ocean, and I couldn’t fight the sea.
“I’d say remember it for next time, but if the universe has any kindness at all, we won’t have to cross paths again.”
“Best thing you’ve said all afternoon,” Alexio muttered, then let me go as I caught my dad’s arm again.
This time, I managed to get around the stairs and into the elevator, but as we approached my dad’s apartment, I felt something dripping down my face. “Am I bleeding?”
