Page 54 of Fear
Roger was number two on the speed dial. Four rings in, Jake decided no answer was probably for the best. No one should get in his way tonight, as one drunk would-be tough guy and his own blood alcohol level proved. He was fucking everything up and couldn’t even remember it going by.
Then Roger picked up. “Jake Hawthorne, that had better be you.”
Thank God. Hearing that gruff, uncompromising voice broke down every defensive instinct he had. “Rog.”
“Are you on your way yet? Don’t tell me you’re a mile outside town ’cause you figured I never get company. Or did you get lost?”
“Lost. Yeah. I wish. Fucking lost. No, we’re still in Boulder. I just . . . I can’t, I can’t fucking do this, Roger.” That confession broke down every wall Jake had, everything he’d been holding inside for the last few days. Words tumbled out, slurring and twisted and hardly comprehensible even to himself. He barely had enough to time to wonder if they could do as much damage to another person as they did to him. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, and I don’t know how to stop. And it fucking hurts to watch him . . .”
“Jake, what happened?” He wasn’t so drunk that he didn’t hear Roger’s sharp tone. “Did he hurt you? Fuck, Jake, are you—”
Easy to reclaim the rage when it felt so much better than gnawing despair. “Fuck yourself, Harper,” he snarled into the phone, getting a couple worried glances from the bartender and his closest bar mate. He pushed himself off his stool, stumbling only a little as he moved toward the door. “Tobias, Tobias’s no . . . he’s not the one. I’m not hurt, he’s . . . you should see him, Roger. He’s terrified. Of me. Fucking petrified. Calcified. Dinosaurified. I’m hurting him.”
“Jake, pull your shit together.” Roger’s voice had enough command in it that for a moment, Jake almost thought it was his father on the other end. “Freak Camp is a shithole. Nobody’s got the full picture, and what he’s been through . . . It’s not just gonna go away in a couple of weeks.” Jake thought he could hear secrets in Roger’s voice, but he didn’t have the energy to hunt for them. Not when he would follow any voice and take any advice that would dampen the fear and rage tangled up in his chest.
“Fuck that place,” he said. “And fuck the government. I can’t do this, Roger. Yeah, not goin’ away in a week, shit like that, but this is Tobias, and every fucking time I try, he just . . . fuck. Fuck.”
Jake could practically hear Roger processing that through the airwaves, maybe trying to parse what Jake couldn’t say. He wondered if he was making any fucking sense through the booze and the pain. Probably not. What the fuck else was new?
“So, what’s the plan?” Roger’s voice was neutral. Absently, Jake wondered why he cared. Yeah, Roger had helped him through a lot of the shit he’d done in his life, and he’d co-signed the paperwork to get Tobias out, but this was the first time Jake had heard that wariness in his voice. “Take him back?”
“Fuck no,” Jake snapped. “Never. I just—I can’t even tell if he should be around me. I . . . fuck, if there was anywhere else . . . if I could do anything better, but everything I do just fucks it up more. There’s got to be someplace else, someone—”
“Shut up, get a grip, and listen,” Roger snapped. “There ain’t. There’s nowhere else. You’re all he’s got, and he trusts you.”
“No, he doesn’t!” Jake’s voice cracked like he was fucking thirteen again. “He doesn’t trust me—he’s fucking terrified every day that I’m gonna start beating him or kick him to the curb and I don’t know why! I’m—I’m fucking losing it here, Rog!”
The silence stretched for a long time. Uncomfortably long. Jake was trying to remember through the alcohol haze what he’d said, maybe muddle backward until he figured out where he’d put his foot in it, what he’d said to fuck up this relationship, when Roger spoke.
“What’s the worst part? What gets under your skin the most?”
Jake thought. It wasn’t like it was a hard question. He knew. But it took a second to get it out. “He looks at me like I’m gonna hit him,” he said dully. “Not just sometimes, but . . . fuck, Roger, every day. Sometimes . . . sometimes that’s the only thing I can see on his face.”
Another silence. “Jake. It’s . . . it’s not personal. He’s not afraid of you, he’s afraid . . . hell, he’s just afraid. You . . . you care about that fr—that kid more than anything but maybe that damn car of yours, and that means you’re the best chance he’s got. Where’s he now?”
“Back at the apartment,” Jake mumbled, cradling the phone against his chin, sure he’d done something wrong but not sure what or how bad it was.
“Then the first step is to get your ass back so he knows you ain’t gone. You can’t do a damn thing for him from some seedy bar, moron.”
Jake nodded, even though Roger couldn’t see. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Like fucking always. Thanks, Rog. I’m goin’ back.”
“Drive safe,” Roger said, and then Jake cut the call and pulled himself to his feet, one hand fumbling for his car keys.
AFTER JAKE LEFT, TOBIAS stared at the door. Somewhere in the course of five minutes, his world had shattered to pieces. He had no idea how it had gone so wrong so fast, nor did he know where to begin picking up the broken shards, or if there was any point to it.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there. He hadn’t thought to check a clock when Jake had come into the kitchen, and after that he . . . hadn’t been able to think of much of anything. But finally, he got himself moving, fixing on the last orders Jake had given. He could no more stop himself from following them than he could have disobeyed Jake and slit his wrists.
Watch TV. Eat pasta. Do whatever the fuck you want . . . until I come back.
Tobias turned on the television with shaking hands—he kept the volume down, he didn’t care what the plasticized, smiling people with the shiny machines were saying—and went to the kitchen. Eating was almost impossible, even though the pasta was soft and bugless, the sauce without taint or rot. Both were almost unpalatable with the ragged hole Jake had left behind him, the front door’s slam still echoing in his ears. But he choked it down because Jake had told him to. His body needed the food, and it tasted good, but the only way he could keep chewing and swallowing was by remembering Jake’s voice, his promise to return. He had to meet Jake’s expectations to make that happen.
Cleaning the meal up after that was almost easy. He stored the extra pasta and sauce in Jake’s plastic containers, washed the pots, and carefully swept up every last soggy, half-frozen pea. He was numb enough by that point that dumping the peas into the garbage can almost didn’t hurt.
Then he collapsed. Not literally, he wouldn’t do that to Jake, but he made it as far as the couch before the energy that had driven him, the resolution to obey, gave way to confusion and despair.
Jake had been so angry, and definitely at Tobias this time. Tobias knew he should’ve been more careful with the peas, fucking freak hands shaking too much at the wrong time. But he wasn’t convinced that Jake had actually been angry about the logical thing. He had shouted, and threatened to throw Tobias out, and had shaken him—though less than Kayla had done most Thursday mornings. Tobias didn’t know if this was just another strange real thing that Jake was doing, another thing that he was too stupid to understand, or if this was the breaking of the floodgates. Would Jake beat him when he came back? Would he continue avoiding him like he had for the last few days?
Of the two options, Tobias knew which he preferred.
