Wicked Boy (35) (Patreon)

(This is not an exciting chapter and I APOLOGIZE I hope you guys still like it 😭🥺)

Ez watches me for a minute, eyes shifting down to my hold on the fabric of his shirt a second time, then he shrugs.

When he does, his shoulder touches mine.  I chew the inside of my cheek, staring at the screen in front of us.  I don't move away from him.  His warmth permeates, and I allow it to.  I suppose he does too.

“Keep tuggin’ on me and you’ll stretch my shirt out.”  He flicks his tongue out across his teeth, the ball of metal there clicking.  Then he smiles and I don’t think to let go.

“So… What else?"  He asks. 

He takes another bite of popcorn, and for once, food looks — good.

I realize then that I'm still fidgeting.  Fidgeting is something that my parents frowned upon, said it was disrespectful, squirrelly, and dishonest — that it showed a lack of focus.

The what else feels more like what's wrong.

Ez smells nice underneath the cigarettes.  There's a distinct near electrical whirring from the porch light outside, croaks of crickets, and songs of katydids.

To fight through my anxiety, I preoccupy myself with that.

"Well.  The rest of the house. Can I see it?"  I suddenly feel self-conscious of the request.   I wave a hand towards the hallway before touching the back of my neck.  I touch the baby hairs there.  

Ez's brows shift like he hasn't thought of that. 

"... If that's alright."  I tack it on for politeness‘ sake.  I don’t think Ez really cares much if I’m polite or not, but I feel as unsure of myself as I always do.

"You serious about this?"  Ez and I catch each other's gaze again.  I think to let go of him, only then.

"Yes."  I nod.  I rub at a frayed flower embroidered on the couch.   "You can finish first, though.  Or — the movie.  We can do that first.  I have — time."  I motion towards nothing.  Nothing is keeping me in one spot or another.

This feels a lot like freedom.  Ez glances towards the hallway and his lip turns like he’s considering something.

”…Guess ya’ should know where you’ll be sleepin’,”  He says simply, a smidge of teasing too it.

”Maybe.”  I nod.  I don’t want to sound too forceful. I don’t want him to feel rushed.

“…How’s your popcorn?” It’s a stupid thing to say. I’m preoccupied.

Sleeping.  

That’s another thing I haven’t thought of.  Living includes sleeping.  It includes eating and bathing and hobbies and just existing — a lot of things I hadn’t considered.  

I’ll be doing them in Ez’s home, soon.  In Huxley — smog forgotten, with birds and crickets cooing in the sun outside. Whether Ez is ever home or not…

It’s a crazy thought.

A bat-shit crazy thought.

"... There's enough butter in this shit for a clot, dunno what the fuck they were thinkin'."  Ez stands, roughly swiping the grease off his fingers and onto the sides of his thighs.  My nose wrinkles at the thought of stains, and he cocks his head towards the unexplored territory.

“Where are you —“

"Ya' want a grand tour or what, pretty boy?"  Ez balances his bowl of popcorn on the little coffee table in front of us, sighing as he turns off the television.

"Oh.  Now?"  I look up.  I try not to seem too eager, tug a piece of hair self-consciously, then follow him when he nods.  It's dim-lit in the dark.  There are only shadows from the porch lamp, a pale white from the television.

"There's just a bunch of shit in there."  Ez reads my mind and flicks on the overhead light near a door that I assume leads to the garage, if only for the oily fingerprints near its edge.  "Parts and pieces.  I've got a project that I half-assed and gotta fix."

My eyes roam past it, but the walls are mostly sparse, with a few family photos scattered around, frames old and repurposed like they may have been someone else's, but moved with Ez.

I wander with him down the hallway, and with it comes more pictures.  I can’t pay attention to much else. Daphne is in most of them, younger and less tired-eyes, crowned and covered year after year with the title of,

Huxley's Beauty Queen

Huxley's Darling

She’s young. She looks impossibly young with an even younger Ez at her side.

"Wow, your sister is..." Amazing.  I want to say.  Maybe I really am soft on her for those nights of conversation months ago. “How many did she win?”

She's stunning under stage light, tanned skin, primped dark hair, every dress from coral to sunshine yellow.  Everyone around her looks proud. 

But especially Ez.

"Lots. Got good fuckin' genes."  Ez grins back at me, hand on the knob of a closed door.  My gaze flickers from his fingers and back to the photos.

He's only in a couple of the others. I guess it would be weird to hang photos of yourself, though my parents never understood that.

“You’re so — little.” In one, in particular, he's much younger, thin, and not quite so imposing. 

“Little?” Ez snorts, offended.

In the Polaroid there, there's a man who looks a lot like a father — his father, maybe. The man has a father's rigid grip on Ez's shoulder like he's pushing him down, trying to keep him in place, and Ez's smile is tight.

EVE'S TRUCKSTOP

They're outside of what looks to be a dive bar or a diner, too fuzzy to make out the details, but it's so sunny and bright that the trees nearby look near neon.

"Yes. Little. Is that your dad?"

Ez catches on at the start of my sentence, sees me staring and his expression shifts into careful blankness, turns from relaxed to something rather frighteningly guarded.   He opens the door, shifting inside a dark room.

“Sure."  He says.  There's nothing more to it.  "You comin'?"

Shouldn't be more to it.

I glance at his father again. 

I really look at him, all clean-cut, with his white polo tucked into his buckled khakis. He doesn’t look like Ez.

Not really.

I'm reminded of the blown, near-painted-looking portrait of me above my family's fireplace.  We're all wearing dark and matching formal wear, in that one, like it's a funeral, with a grey backdrop, tight-lipped smiles, and artificial tungsten lighting sprouting from our middles.

We don’t look like each other there, either.

They stood posed behind me in that picture. My father's hand hovered above my mother's, almost touching but not quite.  He didn't care to touch her, said she was spoiled and dirty from booze and coquetry.  Each of my parents had a palm on my shoulder there too, tight like the candid of Ez, heavy like they were each part of a weight.

Like ownership.

A photograph can say a lot. My stomach turns.

"... So. You’ve um… You told me the good."  I backtrack—something unspoken changes then.  Something — in me, fluctuates.  I don't feel so pathetic, or the sting of being pitied.   “About Huxley.”

“Aren’t you gettin’ chatty?” Ez teases from somewhere distant. I follow his voice. “You a night-owl or some shit?”

“Not really.” It’s not that. It’s just that unexpectedly — I feel understood.  There's a strange peace with that and my voice cracks with it.

“Damn. We’d get along real good if ya’ were.”

Something about his tone makes me flush. I reroute back to my question with sloppy navigation.

“What’s your least favorite thing about living here?”

I follow Ez into the room. 

It smells like his cologne, of sheets left in the sun, of pollen, trees, and car exhaust.  He huffs and juts a thumb towards his bed.  His sheets are grey like mine, with an unexpected southern-style quilt thrown at its edge, a handmade gift.

"Pillow is always too damn hot."  Ez regards me for a moment, quiet and intense like everything else he does.  Then he hums.  "Air conditioning bills,"

I glance up at the brown and tan wooden fan that adorns nearly every light in every room.

"... And potholes."  He snaps his fingers, turns, and my eyebrows raise.  "Everyone will tell ya' snakes, but I like 'em."

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