Page 67 of Floodgates

“No. He counts on you for his emotional support and me as a sounding board.”

“I worry about him.”

“Hell, so do I. I’d really like him to quit.”

“He’s like Cord, though—fat chance of either of them ever quitting.”

We were quiet then, and I realized how sick I felt thinking of all the things I couldn’t fix or change.

“Say something else.”

He lifted his left wrist. “You want this?”

Alex and I had banned Evan from buying us things, gifts, because he didn’t have to, we loved him no matter what. What he wanted was to pay off my mortgage, Alex’s, and to send my father around the world. None of us allowed that, not wanting to take advantage. So lately, he had started to leave things when he visited or swap Alex a Ralph Lauren leather jacket for whatever he had in his closet, and steal my bracelets and watches and apologize by sending ridiculously expensive replacements. At the moment he was tempting me with the black-faced, distressed-brown-leather strapped Luminor Panerai he had on his wrist.

“No,” I lied.

He took off the watch, which cost more than I made in a month, and passed it to me. “You could just borrow it.”

“Evan, you don’t––”

“I’ll get it at Thanksgiving.”

Arguing was futile. He knew me, had seen my eyes light up, and I recognized in him a desire to make me even a little happy. When I put the watch on, his smile made his eyes glow.

“It looks good on you.”

He was so transparent.

“So now you wanna hear about this movie part I read for?”

“Oh fuck yes.”

And so I listened for hours about the war movie he was excited about that sounded horrific to me. There would be sacrifice and unrequited love and death, lots of that, all in the future where World War III was a done deal. The longer he talked, the worse it sounded. I liked the other one he had already signed up for—a big sprawling urban-fantasy epic, steampunk vampires, lots of layers, some of them good, and some bad. He made it sound like a cross between Underworld and The Matrix with Hellboy and Firefly thrown in for good measure.

“So do you get to wear leather?”

“Lots.”

“Awesome.”

“I’m leaving Cape Cod too.”

“No shit.”

“Yep. I’m moving back to regular TV.”

His new show sounded a little spooky and a lot graphic. In fact, it was going to have to have one of those cool disclaimers at the beginning of each episode that warned you to get your kids the hell out of the room so they didn’t get the crap scared out of them. I was pleased with him and his choice. I’d been worried that he would forever be cast as the pretty boy, and his latest choices were not that.

“You’re gonna do more than show off your abs.”

“Oh, I suspect the abs are still damn important.”

“You know what I mean.”

His smile told me he did.

I TOOK a shower around five, and right after that Matt called to check in on me. He had called before I woke up and I had missed it. I stayed on the phone for an hour and was surprised how much easier it was to tell when I wasn’t living through it at the same time. Even a little bit of distance helped.