Page 63 of Yard Sale

“I’m not biologically related to my dad,” I said from behind a heavy breath. “My mom had an affair. He knew about it. They both decided it would be better for the family if they just pretended I was his.” I twisted the shell between my fingers. “I didn’t find out about it until one night when my dad got shit-faced and started throwing insults at me about me not being his.” That memory was sharp, and I was still tender. “My mom denied it and said he was being a drunk moron, but in all honesty, it confirmed what I always suspected.”

Aravind was quiet for a long moment. “You don’t look like them. Like any of them.”

I couldn’t help a small laugh. “I know. I asked them both to do genetic testing for RP a few years later. There was a treatment available, but it was for a specific type. My mom refused, and my dad laughed in my face and said there was no point since I wasn’t his, so it couldn’t have been his problem. My mom didn’t deny it that time.”

I hated that in the silence, I couldn’t tell what Aravind was thinking. He was so…so still. Then suddenly, there was a warm touch on my wrist, then fingers between mine.

“Honey? That is so fucked.”

I froze, then burst into laughter. I’d told a handful of people my story. Some guys on the team, some friends. A drunken night with Bodie, Tucker, and Ford once where we toasted fucked-up childhoods.

But I had never been so raw and vulnerable before. Or sober.

I squeezed his fingers back. “Yeah. It is very fucked.”

“Can I ask a super-blunt question?”

Biting my lip, I reached forward and eventually found a shovel and a couple of bits of plastic molds that felt like they were towers. This conversation would be easier building a sandcastle. “Go for it.”

“Why are you here? Like, why subject yourself to shitty family like this?”

I blew out a puff of air as I filled the first tower and packed it down. “Because I’m a sad sack of shit who still craves acceptance, even though they’ve made it clear that I’m the walking icon of family shame.”

“You are not a sad sack of shit,” Aravind said quietly. I could hear him shoveling his own sand now. “I get the craving acceptance thing. I had a rough patch with my dad when I was a teenager. He was kind of the, you know, frat-boy type. He was really into assimilating into white hockey culture. He didn’t want to speak Bangla at home, so I wouldn’t default to it. He didn’t want me to be a silk-loving queer kid who wanted to kiss big-muscled guys twice my age.”

That didn’t sound like the Rohan I knew, though to be fair, I didn’t know him well. But I could hear the hurt in Aravind’s tone. “What changed?”

“My mom died. Which is a super-fucked-up thing to say, you know? It’s like those horrible made-for-TV movies or comic books where the wife has to die so the hero can have motivation to finish his journey.”

“You’re a comic book nerd?”

“Fuck off,” he said with a genuine laugh, then snatched the small cone-shaped mold out of my hand. I let him take it, and then I felt along my tower to make sure it wasn’t crumbling to bits before I found the one shaped like a wall. “I’m a huge comic book nerd. I about lost my goddamn mind when they gave Clark Kent a bisexual son. But the point I’m trying to make is that as much as it fucking sucks, when my mom died, my dad was forced to pull his head out of his ass. In our little family, it was just her, and him, and me. And now there’s just the two of us.”

“You must miss her.” It felt like a terrible and obvious thing to say, but I didn’t try to walk it back.

“It’s hard to describe how bad it feels.” He was quiet apart from the sound of him packing his sand molds. “Missing her doesn’t really cover it. It’s like…having a phantom limb. I keep picking up the phone to call her or saying her name around corners like I’m expecting her to be there. And it’s been years since she passed. Someone once told me that your grief doesn’t get smaller, but the place you hold it in gets bigger over time. That feels pretty accurate.”

I wanted to pull him into my arms and kiss him until his tone lost that twinge of pain, but I didn’t. Maybe he needed to feel it.

“Was she—ah…different than your dad? About you wearing pretty things and not being straight?”

He huffed a small sigh. “Not right away. She had her own ideas about me getting married and giving her grandchildren, but she was also Pakistani, and I don’t know if you know about the clashes between India and Pakistan, but neither family was thrilled about the match. She got cut off from her family for marrying my dad, so she was a bit more understanding about choosing happiness over social propriety or whatever.”

I didn’t know what to say, but his tone was also a little dismissive, like he was wordlessly asking me to drop it.

“Anyway,” he went on, “that was a very clever way to pivot the conversation, Tiago.”

I grimaced. “Sorry.”

He laughed. “Say that again.”

Dropping my shovel and mold, I reached for him and managed to catch him on the first try. Rolling him to the ground, I pinned him and stared down at the blurry bits of his face that I could make out with my back to the sun.

“Sorry. Let me borrow your mouth for a second, eh?”

He laughed harder. “I love it.”

My whole chest went hot, and I kissed him just so I didn’t say anything I really, really didn’t need to be saying in this moment. His tongue was warm against mine, and he tasted a little bit like old coffee. And his hands were so, so warm when they brushed up and down my back.