Page 92 of After We Fall

Luke nods, scrolling through his phone. We both return our headphones to our ears, and he presses the screen, then sits back and closes his eyes.

Through the speakers sail the opening a cappella measures of Kansas’s “Carry On Wayward Son.” The electric and bass guitars, drums, tambourine, and electric organ notes drift through my ears, and my heart aches for the boy who identified with these lyrics and the man who continues to hold on to the song.

Without looking at me, Luke shifts me forward to put his hand around my waist and guides me to rest my head on his shoulder. The headphones make it a little awkward, but the Lovesac gives in at just the right places to allow me to sink into the warmth of all that is Luke for five sublime minutes.

The final, eerie note screeches into the silence, and I push up on my elbow, turning to Luke in time to see him shift his gum to the side of his mouth. He must have something to say.

My hearing sensitivity is like having an unfortunate superpower. When Luke chews on anything, the sound grates right through my ear and scrapes its nails down the chalkboard of my auditory canal. When we figured this out, Luke announced he would only chew on things when I have my headphones on. If I focus on the positive things resulting from my injury, this is at the top of the list.

He pulls my headphones off and curls a stray hair behind my ear.

I pull his headphones off and ask, “Why that song?”

“My grandma paid for me to get drum lessons. It’s the first song I learned to play on the drums.”

“The same grandma with headaches?”

“Yes.”

“You must have been close.”

“I wreaked complete havoc in her life. The drum lessons were because I apparently had a lot of restless energy.”

I cock my eyebrow. “Had?”

He attempts a grin, but by the somber expression in his eyes, he isn’t serious about it. “She was my paternal grandmother.”

“Oh?” I ask, remembering the scandal his birth brought upon him and his mother.

He draws me down to him, and I rest my head on his shoulder and curl my arm into myself. “She didn’t live in the trailer park. But once a week, she would pick me up in her giant, gas-guzzling Buick and take me back to her house. She said she wanted me to know my heritage, but I think she’d heard the rumors. My mom worked all the time, had a string of men in and out of our trailer. She also knew her son was taking no part in being my father, and I think she felt guilty. Maybe a little responsible.”

“And so you learned how to play the drums, as well as how to care for someone with headaches.”

“Something like that.” His voice rumbles from his chest, straight through me.

“What about the shooting? An Olympic bronze medal in the fifty-meter rifle doesn’t just appear around your neck.”

“Robert.”

I smile, remembering Luke’s words. “Heart and a rifle.”

“Yeah.” He runs a hand through my hair. “Heart and a rifle. Robert and a couple of others from his church would come into the park several times a month. They’d play with the kids, bring snacks, offer donated clothes. One time, he and my grandma had a disagreement about who was going to get me that day.”

“Yeah?” I prompt after a few beats of silence.

“It was the first time anyone had fought over me.”

I place my hand over his heart and rub my thumb back and forth.

“Anyway, I think my grandma realized she had an advocate in Robert. He took me to church, fed me lunch, then we’d go out to her land and shoot his rifle.” Luke shrugs. “The shooting just kind of came naturally to me. Then the two of them paid to send me to marksman camps in the summers, and I got some exposure. With a scholarship to college and a trip to the Olympics, it was my ticket out of that trailer park.”

“How’d you start LG Security?”

“My senior year in high school, a buddy of mine from the park was accused of trespassing on someone’s property. Minor vandalism. Killing a few of the livestock.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Worse. A kid from the park has no credibility. We were considered lowlife, and my friend was about to go down for it. But I set up a cheap secondhand security camera and staked out the situation. I got solid proof the vandal was a guy who lived two counties away. Apparently the ranch owner had told the guy to stay away from his daughter.” He shrugs again. “Over the next four years, I’d come back to visit my ma, and different ranch owners would approach me about taking a look at a problem on their property. I started to get a reputation for knowing what I was talking about, and it stuck.”