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Jeremy can admit dinner wasn't going great even before the yelling started — and to say it failed to get better after Kevin swept Abby's glass of wine to the kitchen floor and shattered the shaky facade of normalcy they were all trying so hard to preserve would be an understatement.
Growing up, family meals at the Knox household were like a cranked-up radio whose volume dial turned incrementally lower with each graduation, each eighteenth birthday, college move-in day, until it was just static. The four-year age gap between Jeremy and his older siblings sounded like three forks scraping against plates, the low hum of Wheel of Fortune playing in the background, fourteen-year-old Jeremy kicking the underside of the kitchen bar with socked feet. (He and his parents didn't sit at the huge oak dining table after Hannah moved out.)
It was only during holidays, when everyone squeezed and stretched their schedules into alignment, dumping out backseats full of carsick kids and dogs and road trip weary siblings-turned-adults-turned-parents that that old song, turned up to eleven, seemed to play again.
The point is, though Jeremy's family can be loud, he can handle silence. He's worked the knots of tension in a doomed conversation loose with enough patience and good will, navigated the specific awkwardness of a first meeting-of-the-parents, but he knows how to sit and eat in the static of amicable quiet,
Nothing about the situation of Jeremy's first dinner with Kevin's family has gone at all like anything he expected.
He's sitting in the rental car outside the house. The tub of Blue Bell is sweating in the passenger seat, moisture contorting the smiley face shopping bag as the plastic sticks to the carton — a necessity in order to properly enjoy the apple pie Abby has warming in the oven according to the baker herself.
It was in the shocked aftermath of the crash of crystal hitting the tiles, splashing purple-red up the baseboards and littering glittering shards everywhere that Abby made the declaration that it was time for dessert. She handed out orders in the manner of a general directing her troops, clearing out her kitchens so tempers could cool and the mess could be swept away. Jeremy was given the task of ice cream store run and even if he thought he could have refused, he wouldn't have; he needed his own moment. Maybe more than that, under the fluorescent lights of the ice cream section, pulling handles on the freezers just to feel the puffing cool breaths roll over his skin in contrast to the sticky summer heat of South Carolina.
There's another bag on the floorboard at Jeremy's feet, nestled between his shoes and against the pedals, filled with peppermint chocolates and a bottle of wine wrapped in brown paper — as much of a sorry-my-boyfriend/your-son-acted-like-a-total-dick present Jeremy can offer, given the circumstances.
He just needs to get out of the car. Before the ice cream melts, at least.
The past several weeks since the surgery have been filled with moments like this: talking himself into the next step, the next room, the next five minutes. Just get past this. Just make it past this exact moment and it will get better. Going forward is healing. It was something his mother used to say. Maybe he should call her when they get back to California, whenever that will be; go back home, recharge himself under the sun in the backyard with the smell of sage wafting over from his father's garden, the grass poking at his back.
Jeremy knows how to sit in silence, but he's never had the silence seep into his bones like this, press in on him from all sides, deafening, the static on full-blast. And he doesn't know how to turn it down.
He lets his hands tighten on the steering wheel for a count of five, then he lets go. He gets out of the car.
It's only as he walks up the cracked path to the front of the house, bags looped over his fingers, that he sees the figures sitting on the porch. The sun dropping below the treeline has submerged everything in deep purples and blues. There are no street lights on this sleepy suburban cul-de-sac. The glow of a lamp through the living room window halos everything in gold.
It highlights the slope of Dan's shoulders, weaving metallic scribbles through her tightly coiled hair. It catches on David's jaw, scruffy with stubble, and on the edge of the calloused hand that brings a cigarette to his mouth. There is no blood relation between the two of them, but the resemblance is in the way they occupy the sun-bleached porch swing: legs spread, hands in between their knees. It's in the spark behind Dan's dark eyes and the quirk of David's mouth as they watch Jeremy approach.
"We were starting to wonder if you got lost," David says in a deep bass, smoke unfurling around the words. "Guess it was too much to hope you did the sensible thing and decided to slip away when no one was looking."
"Coach," Dan says, nudging David's shoulder. It's said like, Dad .
Jeremy steps onto the porch, pulling his face into a smile at the same time as he lifts the shopping bags, one on each hand. "I was told this would play an essential part. I couldn't live with myself if I disappointed the host."
"Don't take it too personally that Abby sent you away," Dan says. "She was playing favorites and gave you the nicest option. It got you out of the house, at least."
"Out of lecturing range," David clarifies, cigarette pulsing orange as he takes a drag, turning his head to blow the smoke away from their direction. "That woman knows how to keep us in line. Usually. I would say that emotions are running high right now... but I don't think I need to tell you that."
"No," Jeremy agrees, smile still hanging on the corner of his mouth somehow. He rustles the bag with the wine and chocolates again. "Actually, this is sort of an apology for you guys. Mostly Abby. I feel bad that her meal was cut short. She's a great cook."
Dan lets out a low whistle. "You really are the golden boy."
Jeremy keeps his wince mostly internal, shrugging one shoulder helplessly.
"I have a hard time believing any of my kids could even think the word thoughtful," David says, earning him another hard nudge from Dan that he accepts without protest, barely moved. He flicks ash into the pale blue tray resting on the arm of the porch swing. "I pity your folks if they're anything like you. Can't imagine Kevin would be the easiest person to accept into the family.
"Oh, my family loves Kevin," Jeremy says. "Mom and Dad try to make it to as many home games as possible. They're actually pretty insufferable about it. I'm just butthurt that they didn't show nearly as much enthusiasm for any of my high school theater productions, but I guess I understand."
Cast almost all in shadow, it's hard to make out the expressions that cross over Dan and David's faces, but the lack of response to Jeremy's words doesn't seem to be wholly because his joke wasn't that funny. It hits a second later, and his stomach flips over. It's probably not the best idea to brag about the great relationship Kevin has with the Knoxs when Kevin himself hasn't seen his own family in almost a decade.
To make matters worse, there won't be any home games. Not anymore.
"Well." The popping joints of the swing breaks the moment as David gets to his feet, stubbing out his cigarette and discarding it in a little bucket filled with sand and previous butts. He towers over Jeremy, black flame tattoos snaking up his arms like shadows. Like with Dan, his resemblance to Kevin isn't necessarily in his looks, but in the way he stands, the tilt of his chin as he nods toward the bags still in Jeremy's grip. "I should get those inside to the missus."
"Oh. Yeah, sure." Jeremy hands them over, his fingers red and numb from where the plastic dug into his skin.
As the door swings shut behind David, Jeremy wonders if he should have followed him in. He'll have to eventually — talk himself into it — but somehow staying out here, even in the lingering tension his words caused, seems like the more preferable option at the moment.
A car comes down the street, a rare occurrence from what Jeremy's noticed. It's only long enough to use the curve of the cul-de-sac to turn around. The headlights arc over the front of the house, illuminating Dan's face, her furrowed brow and pinched lips, before it finishes its maneuver and disappears, leaving everything darker than before as the sun dips fully below the horizon.
"I guess this answers one of the questions I've been asking myself for years," Dan says, bitterness biting at the edge of her tone. There's a soft scraping sound as she digs her nail into the arm of the porch swing, flicking away a flake of white paint. "What would it take for Kevin to come home? The end of the world."
Another scrape. The paint falls like snowflakes onto the porch. "His world, anyway. The perfect one he built in California without us."
Jeremy doesn't say anything. He doesn't have a defense for that. It's not something he understands either.
Before his plane touched down at Upstate Regional Airport, Jeremy wasn't sure what to expect from the family Kevin hadn't said more than a few sentences about in the years that they've been dating. Then Wymack picked him up from arrivals in his beat-up pickup truck, he met Abby whose hug took Jeremy's breath away, and Dan and her husband Matt greeted him with smiles and genuine warmth — and things made even less sense.
Jeremy knows families can change after kids leave. Parents and siblings could use the time and distance to morph the past into something trivial, use it as an opportunity to pretend like they'd never been terrible. Jeremy has nothing to go on, and maybe he's naive, but he thinks their kindness is genuine. They're pissed at Kevin, of course, but even that is full of so much love. He can hear it, the painful edges of it in Dan's voice as she says, "He never would have brought you here. He never wanted to come home."
Jeremy leans back against the porch railing, bracing his hands on the edge, the wood still warm from the day's heat. "It wasn't shame, if that's what you think," he says after a moment. "He might not have talked about this place, but he didn't stay away because he was ashamed. Not of you, anyway. I think it just hurt too much to think about anything, you know? Even the good parts. Maybe especially the good parts."
Dan snorts derisively. She doesn't say it but Jeremy knows what it looks like. It looks like Kevin went off to be a big exy super star and never looked back. Jeremy can't believe that's true, not after everything. There's been little pieces of Kevin's past he's picked up over the years, tiny sharp terrible parts Kevin let slip that Jeremy put in his pocket like glass he cleaned from the floor so neither of them would step on them and hurt themselves. There's been a specific quietness about this place, but someone must've put the joy back into him, made him capable of living a happy life — because that's what they had, until everything went to shit.
Dan stands with a creak, the porch swing knocking into the side of the house. She dusts her hands off on her jeans, and it's like she's dusting the conversation away too. "You like ice cream, yeah?" she says. It's not really a question. "We're going to a local place with some friends."
"Oh." Jeremy straightens, instinctively following as she opens the front door and steps into the entryway. He thinks about the bag of classic vanilla he handed off to David. "What about the pie?"
Distantly from the kitchen, there's the sound of clinking dishes and running water, Abby's laughter and Matt's buoyant tone. Through the archway, Jeremy can see that dinner has been cleared away, the table wiped down and shining, centerpiece and placemats perfectly arranged. The floor is spotless, the only sign of the earlier incident a thin layer of baking soda over the grout lines, trying to soak up any stains before they set.
"Abby will understand," Dan says, not pausing or looking back as she heads for the living room. "I don't think anyone wants to go for round two of the shitshow, do you?"
She walks into the room without waiting for an answer and without hesitation, easily taking the two steps down into the space like this is the most familiar thing. It probably is, this is her home. Jeremy, on the other hand, pauses just before he rounds the doorway, just as he has been for weeks. The next room. The next moment. Keep going.
He's eye-level with a couple of picture frames hanging against the tastefully beige walls. There are no photographs of either Dan or Kevin as kids in the house —Jeremy hunted them all down his first day here and checked— but there are a few of them as teenagers, lining the hallways with their braces and bad 90s hairstyles. Most look like they were printed off a phone or taken from online articles, but the later ones are of the whole family; all four of them squeezed together around the dining room table, birthday cakes and graduations, Dan sticking her tongue out as she ruffles a fondly annoyed looking Kevin's hair.
There are ones without Kevin too, the ones depicting more recent events, but his presence is everywhere in the house. They never stopped calling this his home, even if he did.
Jeremy looks at the picture directly in front of him, the largest one in the entryway, in a place of pride above the small table holding a bowl of keys and wallets, loose change and business cards — the first thing you see when you walk in. This one shows the whole team, the Palmetto State Foxes, a line of orange and white with Abby and David bookending the players. It must've been taken Dan's graduating year. She's standing in the middle, her grin fierce, the C on her uniform gleaming as she holds the championship trophy in one hand and has her other arm slung around a stooping Kevin, whose expression is unsmiling but undeniably radiating pride.
Jeremy takes a breath and follows Dan's steps into the next room.
The TV is on but muted, the program stuck silently acting out a gimmicky advertisement for car insurance. Against the opposite wall is the couch, currently functioning as more of a sickbed with its mound of blankets and pillows, the surrounding collection of little orange pill bottles and tissue boxes, and glasses of water lining the coffee table that reflect the whited-out images flashing on the screen.
"Are you done sulking yet?"
Dan is standing in the middle of the room, directly in front of the couch, arms crossed. Her face is all hard lines in this new lighting, uncompromising.
Kevin's eyes remain fixed to the screen, trailing somewhere over her shoulder in disinterest. Maybe it's because he was only just looking at a picture of Kevin before , only a few years ago, but the changes that just a handful of weeks have made to Kevin seem starker to Jeremy with every passing day. In all their years of dating Kevin's never let his facial hair grow out to more than a slightly scratchy stubble, but now it's pushed firmly over into beard territory, highlighting his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. His hair, usually cropped short, is now curling past his ears, hanging down across his forehead in greasy clumps.
The most drastic changes, of course, are to his body. It's unreal the way a single surgery and several weeks of limited mobility have whittled him down so much, carving out pointy elbows and collarbones, sharpening his ankles and knuckles to spear tips. His left knee is propped up on even more pillows, the brace only an outline through his sweats. It's noticeable like the epicenter of an explosion is noticeable, everything around it getting caught up in its blast radius — if you know who Kevin is, if you know what this kind of destruction means for him.
"We're going to Bee's. All of us," Dan continues, shifting her weight to one hip. She still looks every bit like the captain in the picture hanging in the entryway. "I assume you remember Betsy, or did your selective memory decide that she wasn't important enough to keep around either?"
Kevin does look at her then, hard stare meeting narrow-eyed glare. Jeremy thinks maybe he should step in before there's another glass thrown at the wall, another mess to clean up; there's a few cups in different stages of fullness and in easy reach on the coffee table between the two of them. He can't imagine the already fragile night can survive another break.
But neither of them move. Kevin is the first to look away. Whatever it was in Dan's words that made his shoulders bristle even as he's lying down doesn't have a long-lasting effect. He relaxes back against the army of pillows that surrounds him on all sides, the movement more insolence rather than defeat.
"What do you expect me to do," he says, attention back on the screen, hand lifting the remote from his lap to flip idly through channels. "Want me to tell you to have fun? Have a great fucking time."
"Gee thanks, dick." There's a level of sarcasm in Dan's voice only achieved when talking to a sibling. She shifts her weight again, shoring up against a foreseen reaction. "Come with us."
Kevin's grip tightens on the remote so much that Jeremy can hear the creak of the plastic from across the room. After a moment, he says, "I am not going to be lugged around like a lame dog for everyone to pity me."
"Good thing no one feels fucking sorry for you," Dan replies ruthlessly.
The room goes quiet like all of the air has been sucked out of it. Jeremy's heart thuds in the tips of his fingers that dangle uselessly by his sides as he watches those words strike somewhere fundamental in Kevin, his face crumpling the tiniest bit before smoothing out into a mask of no emotion.
"Fuck you."
Thudding footsteps sound from around the corner a second before Matt's head pops into the living room. "Hey," he says in an easy tone that seems wholly unaffected by the tension in the air or the night's previous disaster of a dinner. "I see we're having a perfectly calm and adult conversation."
His eyes sweep over Jeremy and Dan and land on the couch. His grin widens. "How's it going, sunshine?"
"Fuck you too."
Matt's grin widens and he slaps the doorframe like Kevin told a really good joke. "Almost ready to go?" he asks, his gaze doing another circuit of the room and landing on Jeremy this time. "You're going to love Bee's. You like ice cream, yeah?"
"Yeah." Jeremy thinks he feels eyes boring into the side of his face, but it's just wishful thinking. When he checks, Kevin's dulled gaze is back on the TV.
There's a moment where no one moves, anticipation like a string pulled taut between all of them. Dan breaks it with a pointed, "Well? Whining about it doesn't count as an answer."
Kevin's thumb presses down on the remote with a rubbery click, click, click. "Get out."
Dan stares at him for a moment longer, her fingers tightening on her biceps. Then she turns and walks away. Matt leans out of the doorway to let her pass, his hand glancing off her shoulder in a gesture of comfort as she goes by. He gives Jeremy a nod, knocking on the doorjamb once more before turning and following his wife.
The channel surfing pauses on a cooking show, the contestants scurrying around in silenced actions, flames reflecting in their sweaty faces. Behind him, Jeremy can hear muffled conversation coming from the kitchen, exchanged goodbyes. He waits for Kevin to turn to him, give him the barest of glances, but of course he doesn't. He barely looks at anyone these days.
It's never been like this. He's never felt so stuck before, in this limbo, between one place and another. He doesn't belong here, in Kevin's past, but the future is too unstable to hold him farther than minute by minute. And Kevin...
"You should go."
Jeremy startles at the sound of Kevin's voice, flat and toneless. His position hasn't changed, head not turning even a little even as he says again. "You should go. There's no point staying here."
Jeremy's pulse pounds hard, right in his palms like he's holding his own heart in his hands. "Why?"
That gets a reaction; a snort not dissimilar to the one Dan made out on the porch. "Why?" he repeats derisively, and then he is looking at Jeremy, green eyes flashing with a muted fury that's reflected in his voice as he spits, "Because what's the fucking point of staying here. Do you want to stay? Do you want to sit around in silence with your crippled has-been of a boyfriend? Watch me become fucking nothing? Is that what you want? Is any of this what you want ?"
He's shouting by the end of it, the force of it doubling him over, tilting him slightly off-kilter until he has to push himself back onto the couch with a hand to the floor which sets off a rattling domino effect of knocked over pill bottles. In the kitchen, the voices have faded into a damning quiet.
Jeremy watches as Kevin wipes his face with the back of his hand — spit or tears or both, Jeremy doesn't know. Kevin is fully turned away from him now.
Jeremy forces the words past the tightness in his throat. "Yeah," he says. "Let me know when you're ready to let me."
For the first time in a long time, he doesn't have to try all that hard to convince himself to walk into the next room, leaving Kevin behind.
Bee's, unsurprisingly, is an ice cream shop. Matt explains its significance as he drives the three of them in his big blue truck to the shop located in a line of other quirky storefronts on Palmetto Square, within walking distance of PSU's campus.
The routine hangout spot for the "original" Fox line-up, Bee's is neutral ground where they learned to actually like each other —"mostly, to an extent,"— though it took until almost half of their teammates graduated. "The first few years were rough," Matt says, putting the truck in park outside the shop. Dan mutters something under her breath as she gets out of the vehicle that Jeremy doesn't catch, but doesn't think is as good-natured judging by her tone.
Matt continues as he pulls open the door to the tinkle of a bell, holding it for Dan and Jeremy after her with a rush of cool, sweet air. "Since no one else was offered a pro contract—"
"Andrew was offered several," Dan cuts in, her eyes scanning the occupied booths and tables. "He just wasn't interested in earning millions of dollars every year hitting balls with a stick . Kevin hated that," she adds, sounding pleased.
"Anyway, the rest of us just kind of stuck around." Matt jams his hands in his jean pockets, rocking back on his heels and shrugging his broad shoulders in a casual, boyish gesture. "No one else wanted us. Most of us weren't quick to leave the first real home we've ever had, you know?"
Jeremy isn't sure what to say to that. "Makes sense," he offers lamely, and Matt is kind enough to smile at him, though Jeremy suspects Matthew Wilds-Boyd smiles at just about everything.
They collect their ice cream in pastel-colored bowls from a smiling older woman behind the counter. She greets Dan and Matt with familiarity, Jeremy with an open sort of warmth, and there's some small talk where Jeremy learns that this is Betsy, the owner of Bee's — oddly enough, also the Foxes' former therapist.
After paying and saying their goodbyes, Jeremy and Matt follow behind Dan as she heads off in the direction of a far corner of the shop, towards a booth at the edge of a row of storefront windows, crammed next to a shelf stuffed with second-hand books and board games and strange little knickknacks. The whole ice cream parlor is a hodgepodge of mismatched furniture and reupholstered booths and tables with chipped lacquer and legs balanced on slivers of wood to keep them from jiggling too much at any shift in weight.
There are three people sitting at the booth Dan leads them to: two women sitting across from each other, both blonde, though at opposite ends of the spectrum from golden to platinum. The third figure stands out just for his decidedly-not-blonde auburn hair. They're engrossed in a late-stage game of Jenga, the stack teetering precariously as the redhead coaxes a worn wooden block from the bottom and places it gingerly on top with steady, scarred fingers.
"You bitch," the golden woman says in something like admiration. She shoves at the redhead playfully and the gesture is enough to send the gently swaying blocks leaning, causing a collective holding of breath, but it somehow rights itself and holds. The caution goes out the window the next second as she bellows loud enough to shake the hanging lights in the ceiling. "Andrew Minyard, your boytoy just totally fucked you."
The entire shop turns toward them — except for a short blond man up at the front counter, who doesn't break away from the calm conversation he's having with Betsy behind the glass showcase of the different flavors as he flips a middle finger in their general direction.
"Jeremy, this is Allison, Neil, and Renee," Matt says, pointing with his spoon from gold, to dark red, to platinum.
"Hey," Jeremy says, holding up a smile and his own bowl in a sort of salute.
Allison gives him a pointed up and down once-over while Neil goes for a neutral nod, but Renee returns his smile warmly and scoots down the bench, leaving enough room for the three new-comers to join her on her side of the booth for only a slightly tight squeeze. Jeremy is lucky to be on the outside and tries not to rib Dan with his elbow as he settles, careful not to jostle the table and send blocks tumbling.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Allison opening her mouth to say something, but the blond man (he's somewhere in the middle of the spectrum) from earlier approaches with a bowl piled high with a multicolored array of different flavors skewered by a bright purple spoon. Without pausing to sit down, he deftly flicks a block out from the middle of the stack, the wood piece skidding across the table. The tower barely teeters even as he drops the block on top without flourish.
"Asshole," Neil tells him, but there's an amused tilt to his mouth that only goes more crooked as Andrew flicks him too, right on the nose, and settles down beside him in the booth.
Jeremy isn't sure whose turn it is next, and it doesn't matter because Allison throws the rules of the game and the sanctity of sportsmanship out the window as she knocks the tower over with a sweep of her arm, sending blocks cascading down onto the table and into laps and onto the floor with a thunderous clatter.
"That was nice," Renee says, picking a stray block out of her bowl, which was mostly empty anyway.
Allison takes Renee's free hand and kisses her knuckles in a gesture less of apology and more flirtatious mischief judging by the way she bats her lashes. "It was already falling, honey. I was just speeding up the process," she says. Then her eyes flick over to Jeremy. "Besides, we can't ignore the guest of honor."
Jeremy's ice cream was spared any wayward intrusions from the avalanche but he's gathered up three blocks from his lap and two from the ground that slid almost too far to reach underneath a neighboring table. He passes them to Dan who gives them to Matt who has teamed up with Renee as the collectors of the misplaced pieces from around the rest of the table. They neatly drop them back into the tin canister they belong in with a synchronized rhythm of clink, clink, clink.
"He doesn't have to tell us anything," Dan tells Allison pointedly, then she turns to Jeremy. "Ignore her. She just likes pushing people's buttons."
"I've been told my buttons are extremely hard to push." Jeremy shrugs, holding up another easy smile. "I pretty much expected a third degree anyway. Hit me with your best shot."
Dan pats his shoulder. "Good luck."
"Well, we've obviously heard so much about you," Allison says sarcastically, knitting her hands together and resting her chin on top of her linked fingers. "Feel free to get all the usual boring info out of the way —Your favorite color or the names of your family pets or whatever. And then we can get into the nitty gritty."
"Okay, well." Jeremy scoops up a spoonful of his triple chocolate ice cream, bouncing the weight of it in his fingers. "My favorite color is green. And we had a dog named Lacey when I was really little, but my parents gave her to a lady down the street because my older siblings wouldn't take care of her."
"Terrible." Allison unlinks her hands to impatiently motion at him. "Go on."
"I guess I should start with the fact that I'm from California. Born and raised."
"That is the one thing we did know. You haven't stayed completely under the radar," Allison says, rolling her eyes. Her expression brightens, sharpening. "Oh, but did you know that Andrew's also from Cali?"
Jeremy looks across the table at the man in question, perking up slightly himself. Maybe he is feeling a little homesick. "Yeah? NorCal? Or SoCal?"
Matt leans over to Dan to stage-whisper loud enough for the whole table to hear, "Do you think this is what Andrew could've been like if he didn't spend three years in juvie for killing a man?"
Jeremy blinks, unsure whether that's a joke.
Andrew stares back at him with a look of complete boredom as he shoves a giant scoop of ice cream into his mouth and doesn't answer.
Now that he's thinking about it, Jeremy remembers reading a few articles years ago about Andrew Minyard, published back when Kevin was a brand-new Fox and Andrew had only been known as the "psychotic goalkeeper" who somehow got Kevin to stick around after Edgar Allan. "The Prince and the Pauper" He remembers that article specifically because the title seemed crass even with Jeremy's limited knowledge. He hasn't learned much in the years since then, but he knows enough to know that whatever relationship Kevin had with Andrew, it wasn't nearly so clear cut.
"Okay. Lightning round." Allison leans back and drums her nails on the table top, long acrylics clicking. This is the Jeremy Knox show. Ready? And, go."
Jeremy tells them about his parents house, his three older sisters and subsequently their spouses and his nieces and nephews. He tells them he's a teacher, like his mom, and likes to garden with his dad on the weekends. He talks around the subject of Kevin, telling them about their apartment in West Hollywood but not about the way they wake up together to sit out on the balcony for morning coffee and watch the sunrise, their quiet moments of domestic bliss. The empty spaces, the blank slots in his sentences where Kevin's name should be make him ache with that homesick feeling again; for California, for their life there. For Kevin most of all.
It feels truly gone, separated by more than just thousands of miles, fading over the past several months like a dream that has been slowly overtaken by harsh reality.
As the mostly one-sided conversation goes on, Jeremy eats his ice cream between questions and feels happy to realize that he's not having a bad time. This is the closest thing to what he expected of going to his boyfriend's hometown (or the closest thing to it) and hanging out with his friends (or at least his former teammates), and even if Allison is prickly and Neil and Andrew are quiet, Matt and Renee even it out with their easy-going friendliness.
Only Dan grows quieter, grumpily smushing her ice cream against the side of her bowl until it resembles more of a milky soup as Allison begins the "nitty gritty" part of her interrogation: asking questions about his relationship with Kevin.
"How long have you been dating?"
"Almost six years. Sort of. Over seven if you count being mostly hook ups in the beginning."
"I always knew he was a fellow bisexual slut," Allison says. "How did you meet?"
"At a club downtown."
That gets snickers from Matt and knowing smirks and exchanged looks from Allison and Renee. Even Dan's mouth twitches.
Andrew, leaning back in the booth with his arms crossed over his chest drawls, "And here I thought he would never dance again."
"Maybe he got his confidence back up enough to try it in Cali?" Matt says with a grin. "People are more open-minded there."
There's obviously an inside joke —Neil seems to be the only other one not in on it— but the way they're talking about Kevin is fond and teasing, full of years of memories. Jeremy smiles along with them. "He definitely didn't want to dance at first," he admits. "Jean practically had to drag him onto the dance floor and I guess something about his vibes of total mortification drew me in."
The table goes abruptly silent, all the good humor stalling out into a strange sort of tension that's almost palpable. Everyone is looking at him. Dan has abandoned her cup of melted ice cream and even Neil has gone rigid in his seat. Jeremy stops smiling.
"Uh, did I say something...?"
"I think we just didn't realize he has been in contact with Jean," Renee says after a long pause. Her reaction is also off but subtler, her smile turned sad around the edges. "It's good that they found each other again."
"Did Kevin decide to commune with Riko's spirit as well on his journey of forgiveness?" Allison asks in a cutting tone. "He did tell you about that fuckface, didn't he? Or did he leave that part out of the pillowtalk too?"
Jeremy always knew about Riko and Jean's part in it all — it would be hard not to with all of the news coverage and documentaries. Kevin and Jean had worked through whatever happened between them and their experiences with Riko before Jeremy and Kevin started dating. Though Jeremy can admit that most of the sharp pieces of Kevin's backstory in his pocket have come from times with Jean when something was dug back up, memories exposed like a nail in the carpet or a loose floorboard popping up, warped by time, waiting to trip either of them up.
But he always maintained that it wasn't his place to say who Kevin got to forgive or not . He didn't live through it. But he guesses it was also totally different to live in the direct aftermath of it too.
The most interesting reactions from the Foxes are from the far side of the booth. Andrew seems wholly unaffected by the news, his bored gaze unchanged except for in the way its focus has shifted, laser-like, to Neil. Neil, not an original Fox, has only been around in the past year or so from what Jeremy has gathered, but he seems as accepted as anyone else. His reaction is the first thing he's done all night to draw attention to himself, to mark himself as different with that utter stillness and that faraway look in his eyes offsetting the more condemnatory mood of the rest of the table.
Jeremy watches as Andrew reaches over and pinches Neil's wrist hard, making Neil jerk his hand away. Andrew leans his head in and asks something in a low voice, inaudible to everyone else, but Neil shakes his head and says, "I'm fine." Andrew immediately goes to pinch his other wrist, and Neil stops him by grabbing his hand. Andrew doesn't pull it away, intertwining their fingers like this was his plan all along as he goes back to calmly eating his ice cream, and Jeremy, just now recalling the word boytoy , suddenly realizes he's the seventh fucking wheel.
The others pay no mind to this, still working through their own emotions. Dan's dark mood has stormed over her features once more. She stabs at her ice cream soup with vicious movements of her lime green spoon.
"So he's best friends with someone from the worst part of his life, but refuses to acknowledge his own family. Cool." She turns her head to level a steady look at Jeremy. "What was that you said about shame?"
Renee speaks up before Jeremy's mouth can form the words. "He's here now," she points out gently.
"Only because he had nowhere else to go."
"He chose to come here." Jeremy sets his spoon down, his other hand numb from where he had been gripping the bowl.
Dan's shoulders stiffen. "Abby called him—"
" He called her, right after he was told about the surgery. About how it and months or maybe even years of physical therapy could make him active again, but never at a professional level," Jeremy says.
Everything before that day was a slow downfall. It wasn't a quick change, not over in a flash or a blink. Jeremy's eyes were wide open as Kevin's knee got worse and worse after falling on it wrong one too many times, after one too many old scars and hard tackles until the only option to keep functioning was the surgery. But that day was a fracture, a bone snapping. Kevin's face had been white with the chronic pain but it had gone nearly translucent at the doctors' words, completely drained of blood.
Jeremy looks around the rest of the table. "You were all there," he says. "After his hand."
Something changes in the atmosphere again as the Foxes' eyes shift away, sharing more knowing glances with each other, more memories.
"He thought since he'd made one miraculous recovery, he could do it again. I think he held onto that longer than he would ever admit. He probably still believes that, even after everything."
Because who wouldn't when you've been told you're the star, the exception, the best player in the game for your entire life?
"He chose to come here because this place means healing for him. It's home, no matter what." Jeremy catches Matt's eyes, then Dan's. "I thought you guys would get that more than anyone else."
"Alright, alright," Allison concedes just as the silence hits its breaking point. "No need to lecture us, Mr. Teacher."
Jeremy feels his face heat. He opens his mouth, but Allison continues.
"We know about being fucked up. You got that right. If we didn't still give a shit about that drama queen, we wouldn't be here. Now..." She leans forward over the table, eyes glittering once again. "The real question is: how do you feel about rivers?"
Jeremy blinks and lifts his eyebrows. "They're... nice?"
Either this was a part of the plan all along or this is another part of the tradition of Bee's because no one seems surprised at the subject change and its vague purpose for the night. There seems to be a buzz of anticipation, enough to pique Jeremy's curiosity.
They finish their ice cream in short order, mostly because everyone had already scraped the bottom of their bowls or had resigned to leaving the melting remnants on the table. Jeremy was one of the latter, eyes always bigger than his stomach, the rich and creamy chocolate lingering on his tongue and leaving his throat parched.
He doesn't see it until they're leaving the shop in a haphazard line, trailing out the door single-file. Jeremy's following behind Matt, who is talking animatedly with Neil when Matt shifts to hold the door open once again and Jeremy sees the flash of titanium below the hem of Neil's shorts. Scars don't phase him — everyone has them, he knows that much; some are just more visible. And Neil's prosthetic doesn't shock him exactly, but his step falters, nearly making Renee run into his back.
He clears the doorway, stepping to the side. "Sorry," he says and Renee nudges the toe of her Converse to his as she goes by, her dark eyes knowing.
The group collects on the sidewalk in front of the shop in a tight, shifting circle, reorienting to the outside world before they continue their journey onward.
"Hey, Andrew," Matt says. "Do you still have your—?"
Andrew rounds the side of a monstrous looking black car and doesn't answer as he pops the trunk and digs around. Jeremy realizes he isn't ignoring the question when he pulls out a skateboard and drops it to the parking lot with the clatter and Matt lets out a whoop.
"Just like old times!"
Someone steps up beside Jeremy on the curb and he's a little surprised to see Dan, her mouth curling wryly at the corners. "Sorry, I guess this is now a trip down memory lane. It's been a while since we've all gotten together again."
"It's nice," Jeremy says.
Her expression softens into a real smile. "Yeah."
The others have gathered around Andrew's car, waiting to mess around on the board and almost break their necks in turn. Matt clamps two big hands onto Allison and Renee's shoulders for support as he mounts shakily, rocking back and forth and grinning over at Dan like a proud child showing off for a parent. When Matt steps down, he helps Neil on, who shifts his grip into Andrew's outstretched hands as Andrew walks him a couple feet up and down the empty parking space to the encouragement of the others.
"It would've been better if he were here." Dan's voice has lost the sharp bitterness for what seems like the first time tonight. "I just wanted everything to be normal again. I know it's stupid. It won't ever be normal again."
Something in Jeremy's chest goes tight. Don't give up on him. Please. Give him time.
He doesn't say it, not wanting to seem like he's "lecturing" again, but Dan seems to read it in his face, or maybe she's already thinking the same thing, because she says, "He's my brother. I hate him for leaving." She lets out a big sigh. "But all I've wanted is for him to come home. So I guess that's enough."
That something just below Jeremy's ribs loosens and he breathes out in a long breath, too.
Matt jogs across the lot over to them, slinging an arm around Dan's shoulders. "Ready?" he asks.
Foregoing their cars, the Foxes lead him on foot around the base of the hill a large portion of the campus rests on, heading down, following Perimeter Road towards the basketball stadium. Even though the sun has been set for at least a couple of hours by now, the air is still comfortably warm and is thick with the smell of damp earth. Moths flutter against the lampposts and tiny gnats swarm around puddles on the ground, invisible until you're in the middle of the swarm.
The group keeps up a steady chatter as they go, telling anecdotal tales of their college days. Jeremy doesn't know whether they're being shared for his benefit, a giving in equal amounts to make up for the words Jeremy gave them earlier, or if this is what always happens when they get together: rehashing the same old stories about leaking dorm rooms that flooded when a hurricane blew through town their first semester, the innumerable times the cops were called for some made-up meth lab rumor — or the less made-up parties they would have in the basement. The time that Aaron (whom Jeremy guesses by context is Andrew's brother) got so drunk he forgot to put the water in his microwavable macaroni and the entire population of their dorm spent hours exposed to the freezing night elements as the fire alarm wailed.
Kevin is there too, in the background of the stories; a serious voice of condemnation trying to keep the Foxes in line, but mostly a drunken mess right alongside them, with the occasional bursts of surprising courage. Jeremy holds this Kevin —the earnest, grieving college star he never got to meet— close to his heart, tucking him away as a sign, proof of the possibility of life maybe being okay again.
When the coast is clear of any oncoming cars, they step off the sidewalk to stroll in the middle of the street, under slow blinking traffic lights. Andrew weaves lazily and skillfully between them on the skateboard, always stopping when he gets a little too far ahead, hopping off and waiting for them to catch up.
Jeremy hears the rush of water before he sees it. Skirting the edge of the east side of PSU, cutting deep and quick through the tiny corner of campus before curving back out to converge with it's sister further down, the river trails off into the trees one way and ducks under the suspended Perimeter Road the other, dropping off into a ravine with a roar.
The Foxes lead him to a calmer part, before the drop-off, safe behind the grating that separates this part from the passages allowing the water to flow under the road. They walk through the grass to approach it from the side. Across from them, the dome glass of the basketball stadium is dark, but there is enough light from the surrounding lampposts to clearly illuminate everything.
The sides of the river have been shored up with concrete ledges, grass slopes turning into stone and then steps and pool ladders leading into the clear and deep water. It looks deceptively calm on the surface but Jeremy can see the shadows of algae streaming in a fast current on the bottom when he leans over to look down. You would have to hold on not to be swept away.
"Hey! Perfect timing!"
Jeremy looks up across the water and sees three figures coming down from the parking lot on the other side. Two of them look like they just got off from a long shift judging by their slumped shoulders and dark blue paramedic uniforms. The other, by contrast, is wearing pink sunglasses pushed into his hair and waves vigorously with the frisbee in his hand like he's trying to land a plane.
Jeremy waves back.
" Oh ." The frisbee man's eyes go so wide Jeremy can see the whites of them from all the way on the other side. "Damn, Kevin."
"Nicky." Matt steps up to the ledge, claps his hands, then holds them open.
Nicky flings the frisbee across the river and Matt goes for it, jogging slightly to catch it before it goes sailing into the dark. He grins and turns. "Neil?" He wags the plastic disk in offer.
Matt and Neil move off to toss the frisbee over in the grass while the girls sit on the ledge over the water. Dan and Allison's sandals get discarded off to the side so they can stick their painted toes in while Renee perches cross-legged beside them. The three newcomers —Nicky, Andrew's brother Aaron judging by the whole looking-exactly-alike thing, and the other paramedic who introduces himself as Seth— cross a pedestrian bridge further downstream and walk over to join them.
As greetings and introductions are passed around, Jeremy feels disconnected. Nicky's constant chattering and genuine enthusiasm at meeting him is refreshing, not that the other Foxes have been unwelcoming. Aaron and Seth are more mellow, dulled slightly by exhaustion. They don't say much to him. Seth bounces sharp barbs off Allison and ruffles Renee's hair and asks Jeremy a couple idle questions about surfing while Aaron and Andrew take turns trying out sloppy tricks with the skateboard in some kind of silent competition.
Despite all of this, the welcome and inclusion the Foxes have offered him all night, Jeremy feels a pit in his stomach. It's a mixture of guilt and the displaced feeling he's come to know intimately since his plane touched down in South Carolina. This is Kevin's life that he's standing in, his old one that he kept secret from Jeremy for years. It should have been Kevin showing Jeremy around Palmetto, taking him to Bee's, walking him to this river's edge to dangle their feet in the current.
He's a voyeur of Kevin's past here, watching everything from a distance, never able to really touch it or be a part of it in any meaningful way. Just a bystander, at best. An intruder at worst.
It's fitting that it's this separation that keeps Jeremy on the outskirts of the group, and so he is the first one to spot Kevin.
Leaning on his crutches the top of the grass slope across the water, on the edge of the stadium parking lot, he is just close enough that Jeremy can see that on top of changing into a new pair of sweatpants and a clean shirt, Kevin's jaw is clean shaven and his hair is combed back from his face.
Jeremy's heart skips several beats, then restarts with a painful thump against his ribs in a bid for freedom, trying to leap across the water to reach home. Their eyes lock and Jeremy thinks about the words Kevin yelled at him, his own offer.
This is Kevin's response. He should have known it wouldn't take long — Kevin Day is nothing if not decisive. It's just that a part of Jeremy got so caught up in all grief that he really thought Kevin would shut him out indefinitely, that everything was over, the dream of their life together destined to become nothing but a hazy memory.
Jeremy sits down, right there on the concrete, nearly sitting on Allison's hand as his legs give out in pure relief. He leans his head back, taking a deep breath for what feels like the first time in a long long time.
"Kevin?"
He drops his chin back down at the sound of Dan's voice. He can't see her face, but her tone is all surprise as her spine straightens.
"Did you walk here or what?" Seth asks, earning a hard smack to the back of his shaved head from Renee, of all people. "Ow, it was just a joke. Chill. Someone has to address the elephant in the room. I was just getting it out of the way."
Jeremy catches movement out of the corner of his eye and turns his head to see Andrew passing the skateboard back to Aaron. He walks calmly over to the edge of the grass and sticks his hand in Neil's hoodie pocket, emerging with a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. Neil watches him, one side of his mouth ticking up as Andrew reaches out and tugs at a lock of his hair before moving on. He crosses the bridge, steps slow and deliberate, then he's on the other side, in front of Kevin — then past him as he keeps going, black silhouette disappearing over the crest of the slope to the stadium parking lot.
Without a word, Kevin swivels his crutches and follows after him.
"He looks good," Nicky says into the silence that stretches out. And that's all that's said about it.
Dan glances over her shoulder, catching Jeremy's eye. She looks hollowed out with the same relief he feels. She smirks, then turns back to her discussion with Allison and Nicky like nothing happened, Renee picking up her cue and chiming in.
Jeremy stands and walks over to Aaron, and for a while he attempts to teach Jeremy and Seth how to do a kickflip. Matt and Neil abandon the frisbee to sit in the grass off to the side, their legs stretched out in front of them, and offer unhelpful but entertaining commentary.
After nearly busting his head open on the concrete for the second time in a row, Jeremy takes himself and the minor bumps and bruises he's acquired out of the equation and plops down in the grass as well.
"Giving up?" Matt teases.
"Yeah, I'd rather not end up with a broken arm tonight."
"At least we've got two paramedics on hand. Though it's no use if they take each other out trying to outdo one another," he adds as the skateboard goes flying out from under Seth's feet and he nearly yanks Aaron to the ground with him trying to stop himself. They erupt into bickering that Matt just rolls his eyes at and gets to his feet, heading over to the girls and Nicky by the water.
That leaves Jeremy with Neil — not somewhere he expected to be tonight. With the other Foxes, Jeremy at least feels like he has ground to stand on with their shared connection to Kevin, but Neil is completely unknown.
Jeremy hasn't realized his eyes have trailed down to that flash of silver at the hem of Neil's shorts, his left leg, just below the knee, until Neil speaks.
"You want to ask."
Jeremy blinks, then flushes and shakes his head. "Oh god, no. Sorry," he rushes to say, and when Neil just looks at him, face unmoved, Jeremy decides he does have something to ask. He swallows.
"Was it hard?"
Neil raises an eyebrow.
"Sorry," Jeremy says again, cheeks aflame under the attention of impassive blue eyes. "What I mean is —What would have helped? To make it easier?"
That does get a reaction. Neil looks blank for a moment before he frowns. "I'm probably not the best person to ask that. I didn't really have anyone. But..." He trails off, looking over in the direction where Andrew and Kevin disappeared. There's still no sign of either of them.
"Someone steady," Neil says finally. "I needed someone to ask me to stay. The rest was something I had to figure out on my own."
Jeremy nods, thinking, listening to the crickets chirping and the rush of the water in the distance.
Eventually, Andrew comes back. He's alone and nothing about his bored expression gives any hint about how that conversation went — not that Jeremy had gotten his hopes up. The man makes a beeline for Neil, pulling him to his feet and disappearing with him off further upstream without a glance back. Jeremy stands as well, dusting grass off the back of his jeans. No one asks him where he's going as he makes his way to the bridge and Jeremy doesn't stop to offer any explanation.
When he crests the slope on the other side, he's not surprised that the parking lot is empty save for one slightly beaten-up truck parked a few rows back, far enough that the river is just a slight buzz of static. The slap of Jeremy's shoes hitting the asphalt is the only sound that carries.
He walks up to the driver's side of Wymack's pickup. The engine is off, the window rolled down, and a figure sits hunched over in the seat, hands clutching the steering wheel and forehead pressed hard to his knuckles. Kevin's back moves rapidly up and down with his quickened breaths. It sounds like it hurts.
Jeremy rests an arm on the window frame and leans in. The cab smells strongly of cigarettes. "Love," he says softly.
"It's really over," Kevin says, his voice thick.
Jeremy's own throat feels tight, his eyes stinging. He brings his free hand up and rests it between Kevin's shoulder blades. The bones feel sharp and fragile under his fingers as he moves his palm slowly down the knobs of Kevin's spine and back up again.
"I don't know who I am anymore."
I needed someone to ask me to stay.
Jeremy pulls his hand away and steps back just far enough that he can open the door. Kevin's head lifts as if startled, his hair messy, his eyes red as he stares at Jeremy.
Then his face crumples and he shifts to fall forward into Jeremy's arms just as Jeremy steps in close.
He nearly collapses under the full weight Kevin surrenders to him, but he holds. He shifts his feet, clutches his fingers into Kevin's t-shirt that smells like the caramelized sugar from Abby's baked goods and unfamiliar body wash and underneath that, Kevin, always Kevin, home — and he holds.
"I've got you," he says, lips to Kevin's hair as Kevin shudders in his arms. "I'm here."
Above them, the stars begin to come out.