Page 90 of Bring You Back

My stare drifts to Naomi and the knowing grin she’s giving me makes me realize I’m tapping my nails against the wooden table. Wood is one of my triggers. I slow the pace, stopping with a smile of my own and a pitter-pat with the pad of my fingers as I catch Julian’s questioning stare.Always looking.

“See, dude,” Banks breaks through the silence, drawing Julian’s attention. Leave it to Bozo. I cringe as he smiles through a mouthful of chocolate. “The gang’s back together!”

“Yeah,” Julian says, his voice flat, his eyes landing on Banks’s nearly empty plate before landing back on his own.

Yeah.I glower at Banks.A member ofthe gangis missing, and you’re in his seat.

We fall back into silverware scraping, mouths chewing, eyes roaming silence.

“What do you think?” Naomi pipes up with a smile around the table, and she’s answered with mumbles ofgood,great,delicious.

Silverware scrapes, mouths chew, eyes roam.

I’m licking icing off my finger when I feel a certain set of eyes back on me, and I meet them. Julian’s stare drags from mine to the finger still in my mouth. He doesn’t avert right away, holding his focus on my mouth a few seconds longer before finally finding interest in his plate of nearly untouched cake. I see Tommy shake his head in my periphery, prompting me to remove my finger before I look at him. But he’s now looking at Reyna who’s eating her cake, oblivious to the exchange.

The unfortunate one whowasn’toblivious watches me with disgust before smacking Reyna’s arm for her attention. “Why don’t you do that?”

Reyna stares at Banks in her oblivion. “Do what?”

“There’s some chocolate on your shirt, man,” Julian cuts in, diverting Banks’s attention to his chest.

“Ah, shit. Where?” he says, on a frantic pull and shift search for black food on white tank. He scoots back from the table, hands out. “Dude, this is my favorite shirt. Where is it?”

“It’s youronlyshirt,” I comment around a sip of milk. He’s out of the chair and racing through the hall to the bathroom. Reyna’s silent laughing behind her fork. Julian cracks a smile and we lock eyes.Well played.

“So,” Naomi chimes with a smile around the table. “What have I missed?”

The question is innocent enough, but another silence falls, smiles fade as we all look to Julian. Naomi’s trying to play round table, attempting to find out how our weeks have been and if there’s anything she can help us with. But things aren’t exactly the same. Too many reasons to stay closed-lipped.

Naomi senses the lack of motivation to engage, but she eyes her son, still waits for him to say something. He’s not going to. She needs to talk first, and the conversations they need to have are too heavy, too personal for an audience.

To save face and keep our mouths moving, she shifts to Tommy, pausing to think of the right question, something she doesn’t already know. She smiles when she finds it. “How’s basketball going? Getting ready for Blareton?”

Tommy looks down to his plate, his jaw working around possible responses, his eyes scrutinizing what’s left of his cake like the answer lies in the icing. Clearly, that isn’t the right question. It’s the right one to me, because I’ve been wanting to ask it myself.Where’s your ball, Tommy?

“I’m not … really loving it right now,” he says.

“What?” Reyna asks around a look of shock. The only one not sharing that look—aside from me, I had my suspicions—is Julian. His stare is knowing as he watches Tommy with understanding. They’ve talked about this. I’m almost offended. But not as much as Reyna whose face can’t decide between showing the sting or the concern.

The lines between Naomi’s brows crease with her worry. “Is everything okay?”

“I don’t”—Tommy shifts, eyes finding ours—“really wanna talk about it.”Again,I mentally add as he gives Naomi a small smile to soften the shut down.

“Later,” Reyna says, putting him on the clock, and he raises his brows with a small laugh and nod of agreement.

Naomi directs her stare to me next, but she doesn’t get to ask me a dreaded question, because Banks saunters back in with a hard stare on Julian.

“There’s nothing on my shirt,” he says, and we all break out in laughter. Before he can sit back down, Tommy says, “You’re inside out,” attempting to shoo him off again.

“And backward,” I add as I take in the tag dangling directly under his neck.

Banks draws out a groan and stalks back to the bathroom.

“Why doesn’t he fix it here?” Reyna questions with a face.

“No one here wants to see that,” Tommy says at the same time I say, “There’s not a mirror in here.”

No one wants to see that except Banks.

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