Chapter Text
Jonah doesn’t dream about the day his parents died much anymore, which he figures makes sense because it’s been, like, 12 years, but when he does, the dream is always the same.
He and Leo are sprawled on the floor in front of the TV at Leo’s house. They’re giggling and trying to mimic the accents while they watch an episode of Bluey, the one where the family plays Bus and Mum is secretly in love with the bus driver, played by Dad. Then Leo’s mom walks in and she’s crying. She wasn’t crying in real life – he doesn’t remember much from those first few days, but he remembers that – but she does in the dream. She tells him that Mommy and Daddy are dead, which she didn’t do in real life either, but his subconscious probably has to take shortcuts where it can. He knows he went to a foster home after that. It was only overnight but he’s glad his subconscious leaves that bit out. He doesn’t remember anything about it except that the family had a cat, but he knows he must have been scared and he doesn’t want to have to relive it in his sleep. The bit that his dream always gets right is when someone opens a door and TK is there. In the dream, as he was in real life, TK is crying and that scares him more than anything else because Mom always said that TK was the strongest, bravest person she knew. But then TK kneels and folds him into a hug and the fear disappears. It wasn’t that straightforward in real life but the dream gets the gist.
The dream lingers as his eyes blink open on the morning of his 18th birthday. It’s hazy in that way dreams are when you wake from them, but he can still picture Bluey on that TV screen and TK opening his arms to draw him in.
He rolls onto his back and winces when the edge of his phone digs into his spine before he contorts his arm and wrestles it out of the tangle of bedsheets. He holds it over his face to unlock it and immediately smiles at the last text from Charlie.
I’m gonna kick your ass 😉
It’s been their tradition for as long as they’ve had their own phones to stay up until midnight so they can message each other the moment the clock ticks over to their birthday. As they’ve gotten older, those simple “Happy birthday!” messages have turned into them staying up later than they should while they text about whatever random shit is on their minds. Neither of them are supposed to stay up that late, and Jonah is pretty sure TK and Carlos know (and Judd and Grace probably do too), but they let it slide for this birthday tradition. Not that it matters now, though. Today he’s 18 – an adult. What are TK and Carlos going to do? Ground him?
Last night’s conversation ended with their plans for bowling tonight, which they, Seb and Mia are doing to celebrate his birthday. He’s pretty sure she is gonna kick his ass, but she could probably kick his ass at pretty much anything. He wouldn’t even mind that much.
He’s scrolling through the other birthday messages that came in while he was sleeping, from his friends and a bunch of people from his large, super weird family situation, when there’s a small scratch at the door. He stretches and stumbles out of bed, half-tripping on a bedsheet that trails after him, and opens the door to find Maggie waiting for him. She’s nine now, but she still taps her front paws on the wooden floor in excitement at the sight of him. He rubs a hand over the white stripe down the centre of her otherwise brindle head and she closes her eyes, one blue and one brown, in delight. She follows close at his heels as he grabs some clothes and heads for the bathroom, the same way she’s done since they first brought her home as a puppy. It still makes him feel like The Chosen One.
TK and Carlos’s voices are murmuring in the kitchen by the time he’s making his way downstairs, Maggie still trailing after him. The scent of egg, onions and peppers wafts up to him, a sign that Carlos has made huevos rancheros for breakfast, so Jonah picks up the pace because huevos rancheros is his favourite.
“It’s just a lot, Carlos,” TK says. “I mean… a lot .”
“You’ve known that this whole time, though,” Carlos says.
“But now it’s different!”
“What’s different?” Jonah asks as he thumps down the last couple of stairs.
They turn to look at him, TK from where he’s setting the table in the breakfast nook and Carlos from the kitchen counter where he’s plating up.
“Happy birthday!” they chorus and meet him to give him a hug each.
“What’s different?” he repeats as he takes a seat, while TK pours coffee for everyone and Carlos brings their food to the table.
TK and Carlos share a look, one of those ones that Jonah has never known how to read, then TK turns back to him with a teasing smile.
“Nothing really. Just that you’re 18 now. Lots of responsibility. Not that you’d know, seeing as how you decided not to get a job this summer.”
Jonah rolls his eyes and digs into his food. They’ve had this conversation, or a version of it, before.
“It’s my last free summer. I don’t want to waste it working.”
“You know summer still exists after you go to college right?” Carlos asks with an amused smile. “You’ll have others.”
“Yeah, but summers when you’re in college come with more responsibility. What if I decide to take summer classes? Or get an internship?”
TK snorts. “When have you ever wanted more schoolwork?”
“I guess there’s no reason for you to be surprised then. Besides, in a few hours it won’t matter. Once you transfer my dad’s trust fund to me, I’ll be set.”
TK’s mouth tightens at the corners and he shares another look with Carlos. There’s a moment of silence as they all continue eating, broken only by the sounds of cutlery on the plates and Maggie’s discontented huffs under the table because no one is slipping her anything.
“Your dad’s instructions were to release your trust fund on your 18th birthday so it could help you with college,” TK eventually says. “Ease the pressure so to speak. Of course, once it’s yours I can’t stop you from doing whatever you want with it, but you’re going to be in a very privileged position and I know it will probably be exciting to have access to that kind of money. Just try to be responsible and remember that I’m not releasing your share of Mom’s assets until you’re 30, so you have to make the inheritance from your dad last.”
Jonah blows out an impatient breath. “I know. You’ve told me this a hundred times.”
“Well, make it a hundred and one. My special gift to you as you enter adulthood.”
Jonah barely holds back another eye roll but he doesn’t want to push his luck. There’s always the slimmest possibility that there’s some clause attached to the trust that says TK can change his mind and hold onto it for another 18 years if Jonah pisses him off. He just hates when TK gets like this, acting like his dad instead of his brother. Jonah doesn’t really remember his dad but he had one once. Aren’t he and TK supposed to be on the same team? Them against their parents? Even if the only parent they have left between the two of them is Owen?
Carlos squeezes his arm. “TK just wants to make sure you think about your future. It can be hard at your age to remember the big-picture stuff. He wants you to be prepared.”
“Right.” TK shoots him an apologetic smile that looks more like a grimace. “Because I was really irresponsible with money when I was younger and I had nowhere near what you’re going to have. I want you to make better choices than I did.”
The very uncharitable thought pops into his head that he’s already made better choices than TK did at his age. TK has always been open with him about his substance abuse, why and how it started, how it continued, how it ended and the ongoing consequences of it. Some people might have said TK was oversharing, but Jonah never thought so. TK never shied away from sharing the ugly parts of his addiction and Jonah respected him for it. In return, Jonah promised himself that he would never touch drugs and he’s stuck to that promise. He’s never even smoked weed and he limits himself to one beer when he goes to parties, which isn’t exactly difficult because it tastes like piss anyway. The point is that Jonah already has a few years’ worth of better choices under his belt than TK did when he was 18, but he’s not shitty enough to throw that in TK’s face. There are some lines that you just don’t cross.
“I know,” he says instead and shovels the last of his breakfast into his mouth. “I just wish you’d stop treating me like a kid.”
“Just because you’re 18 now, it doesn’t mean you’re not a kid.” TK stands to start gathering the breakfast dishes. “Besides, you’ll always be a kid to me.”
Jonah smirks. “Because you’re old?”
TK makes a swipe for the back of his head that he ducks with a laugh. “Excuse you. I’m not even 45.”
“Not for another six months anyway.” He takes the stack of plates and cutlery from TK’s hands and loads them into the dishwasher. “Can we go now?”
“What’s the rush? Is there some large financial purchase you need to make this afternoon?”
Carlos chuckles and fills the sink with water to soak the frypan. “Give him a break. He’s excited.”
“See?” Jonah says. “Even Carlos is on my side.”
“Don’t push it,” TK says, pointing a finger at him. “But yes, we can go.”
Jonah tries not to loiter in the kitchen while TK kisses Carlos goodbye with a “See you later, babe”. He scrunches up his face but it’s more for show than anything. Some of the kids in his grade complained about how gross their parents are but Jonah rarely joined in. Yeah, TK and Carlos are kind of gross sometimes – they still look at each other with those lovey-dovey eyes that he remembers from when they told him they were dating, even though they’ve been married for eight years now – but it’s actually kinda nice.
They make small talk while TK drives them to the bank, mostly about the plans Jonah has with his friends that night and the family birthday party happening tomorrow. When they’re turning into the parking lot, TK asks, “How are you feeling about college?”
Jonah shrugs, watching a woman wrestle one of those double baby strollers into the boot of her car. “It’s almost two months away. I haven’t really thought about it.”
“No regrets about staying in Austin?”
“No,” he says slowly, shooting a narrow-eyed glance across the centre console. “Why? You trying to kick me out of the city or something?”
TK chuckles and slides his car into a parking space. “Of course not. I’m glad you’ll still be able to come home on weekends. I just thought you might have wanted to go somewhere else, see new things, you know?”
Jonah shifts in his seat. A lot of people his age are excited about the prospect of being so far away from everyone and everything they know, but the thought of it makes his stomach lurch. He can’t imagine ever wanting to live anywhere else, but it’s possible that maybe one day he will. For now Austin suits him just fine.
“Carlos went to UT Austin.”
TK shoots him an amused look as they get out of the car. “Carlos got homesick on our honeymoon.”
Jonah huffs a laugh but doesn’t say anything else and TK lets it drop as they walk towards the bank. He, TK and Carlos had several conversations about where he should apply for college. Neither of them pushed him towards UT Austin or any other school in the country, and in the end he applied to a few different places, including NYU to honour the city his parents and TK loved so much, but he always knew that he wanted to stay in Austin if he could. Somewhere else in Texas would do if UT Austin didn’t take him, but luckily it hadn’t come to that.
Jonah had assumed their time at the bank would be quick and easy – a signature on some forms and that would be it, but it’s a bit more involved than that. There’s a lot to go through, and TK asks several questions about financial advisors who might benefit Jonah moving forward, but in the end the result is the same. TK’s hand lingers over the papers in the briefest hesitation but then he signs, and so does Jonah, and then everything in the trust fund is his.
“How do you feel?” TK asks as they leave and turn up the street to stop at the coffee shop through mutual, silent agreement.
Jonah shrugs. Honestly, he does feel any different. There are a lot of zeros in the folder of information he’s clutching and he wasn’t expecting TK’s earlier words about responsibility to hit him so hard. He feels so weirdly grown up all of a sudden and it itches under his skin. He was a high school senior less than two months ago and now he has access to more money than some of his former classmates will ever see. He can’t say any of that, though, because he has to act like an adult if he wants TK to ever treat him like one.
“Fine,” he says. “I didn’t realise it would take so long.”
TK glances at him suspiciously as they enter the coffee shop but only says, “There was a lot to cover. You should speak to a financial advisor about investing.”
That knocks him out of his weird mood, because the thought of talking to anyone about investments is boring rather than something to weigh him down. “You sound like Carlos.”
TK grins. “Thank you.”
The morning rush is over so the shop is relatively quiet. There’s a book club gathered around a table in the back corner, and two teenagers talking at a table near the window. TK orders an iced caramel latte, and Jonah gets an iced mocha, and they’re waiting for the barista to prepare their drinks when TK’s phone rings.
“It’s Tommy,” he says. “I better take it. She said there might be a change to the schedule this week.”
Jonah nods and leans against the counter as TK steps outside. He flips idly through the information he got at the bank. He’ll have to read through it properly at some point; it’s the responsible thing to do, and knowing that brings the weird, uncomfortable feeling back. He lets the folder fall shut. He doesn’t have to think about any of this right now. He’s been 18 for less than 24 hours and the money isn’t going anywhere. Maybe if he just gives it a few days, the discomfort will go away and he can go back to enjoying himself. After all, he only has so many weeks before the summer is over and he’s off to college.
“Iced mocha?” the barista says behind him and he turns to grab it. “And the iced caramel latte for your dad.”
He laughs and shakes his head, even as he tucks the folder under his arm so he can carry both drinks. “Actually he’s my brother.”
“Oh.” Her face twitches as she glances out the front window to where TK is ending his call. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Thanks for the coffee.”
He can feel the amused smirk lingering on his face when he steps outside and hands TK his drink.
“Something funny?” TK asks, tucking his phone in his pocket and pulling out his keys.
Jonah shrugs and takes a sip, wincing as the intense cold hits him all at once. “Just something the barista said. It’s nothing.”
TK doesn’t press and Jonah doesn’t offer anything else. It was funny in the moment only because the idea of TK being his dad is so crazy. It would lose something in the retelling.
The clatter of pins falling and the overbearing scent of too much floral air freshener greets him at the bowling alley that night. He collects a pair of shoes and wanders down to the lane at the end, where Mia is standing on a chair and waving to catch his attention.
Sebastian is lounging in one of the chairs when he arrives, long legs stretched out in front of him, but Jonah doesn’t even have a chance to greet them before Charlie leaps up. She beams up at him with a smile as wide and bright as her mom’s.
“Happy birthday!” she says and throws her arms around his neck in a hug.
“Let’s play,” Mia says, as soon as they’ve all exchanged hugs. “And then let’s eat before the second game because I’m already halfway to starving.”
They play and Jonah is terrible, but still not as bad as Seb, whose hand-eye coordination is atrocious. If he hadn’t known Seb since they were six, he might have thought that Seb was playing a deliberately bad game in honour of his birthday. The heckling they throw at each other is good-natured in the way it only can be with friends you’ve known more than half your life, which is why Jonah chose to do only this small thing with these specific people for his actual birthday.
Jonah wouldn’t say he was popular in high school but he was well-liked enough and he could have thrown a bigger party with more people, but these three are the only ones he really wanted to celebrate with today. He and Seb have been friends since Carlos buddied them up on Jonah’s first day in his class, and Seb introduced him to Mia that same day. He’s known Charlie even longer than that, although only by a few weeks.
He’d been in Austin for a week when TK decided they needed to get out of the house and that Jonah needed a friend so he took him to meet Judd, Grace and Charlie. Jonah had been six for all of three months, but Charlie was still a few months away from turning six, so of course he thought she was a baby. That only lasted until she showed him the playground that Judd had built for her in the backyard, which was the best thing Jonah had ever seen in his life up to that point. Now, he’s 18, and she’s a few months away from turning 18, and he’s never had another friend like her.
No one is surprised when Charlie wins the first game. She takes an early lead with a strike on her first bowl that makes them all groan even as she laughs, giddy with success.
“Your mom would tell you to be gracious in victory,” he tells her as she returns to her seat beside him while Mia steps up to bowl.
“My mom is the one who taught me how to bowl and she would tell me to wipe the floor with all y’all. And then be gracious in victory by treating you to milkshakes later.”
She does exactly that when they break to eat after their first game. Their plates are loaded with burgers and fries and they get a plate of mozzarella sticks to share.
“So?” Seb asks through a mouthful of double patties. “Are you a millionaire now?”
Mia elbows him in the side and he grunts. “Way to be sensitive.”
“I was just wondering! He said that TK never told him how much was in the fund and I bet it’s accumulated interest. It must be a lot, though – both his parents were attorneys in Manhattan.” He turns back to Jonah. “Was it more or less than you expected?”
He drags a fry through the pool of ketchup on the edge of his plate. He knows that they’re just curious – even Mia and Charlie, even if they would never say so – but the thought of admitting how much money he has access to now makes him want to squirm.
“It was more,” he eventually says, although he doesn’t say it was a lot more. “But don’t think I’m going to buy a mansion tomorrow or something. I won’t get the inheritance from my mom until I’m 30 and TK says I have to be responsible with what my dad left me. I think he wants me to spend most of it on college.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t spend some of it on something cool,” Seb says and then snaps his fingers. “You should get a new car. Something hot, like that Camaro Carlos used to drive.”
Around the last mouthful of her milkshake, Charlie scoffs and says, “And do what with it? Drive it for six weeks before he goes to college and has to leave it in the garage at home? TK is right. This is basically a free ride through college. Most kids would kill for that kind of freedom.”
It goes without saying that that certainly applies to everyone else at the table. Seb has a partial track and field scholarship, but Mia is paying her own way. Charlie still has to get through her senior year of high school, and she’s smart enough to get some kind of academic scholarship, but there’s no guarantee about that. If thinking about his new privilege compared to his former classmates made him feel weird before, comparing himself to his actual friends now is downright uncomfortable.
“He could go out of state for college,” Mia said. “I would have, if I could afford it. It’s too late now for the fall semester, but he could transfer somewhere for his second year.”
Something in him lurches. It’s too close to the conversation he had with TK that morning, but it also goes further than that. It’s one thing for TK to suggest he leave Austin for college, but it’s another thing for his friends to talk about it as something he should consider because he actually has the means to do it. Just because he can doesn’t mean he should.
“I’ve had access to this fund for less than 12 hours,” he says. “At least give me a chance to sleep on it before I go making any major financial decisions.”
Seb lets it go as Mia turns the conversation to the fast food place she’s working at this summer, but Charlie remains silent as she studies Jonah carefully. Her eyes are dark and fringed with long lashes, and Jonah has always felt like they can see right into the depths of his soul. He assumes that she’s going to let the money conversation slide, because she doesn’t say anything else about it while they play the second game and then hang out in the arcade afterwards, but he realises how naïve that was when they get in his car later so he can drive her home.
They’ve barely pulled out of the parking lot and he can already feel the weight of her gaze on the side of his face.
“Something to say?” he asks over the low murmur of a country song playing on the radio.
He sees her give a half-shrug from the corner of his eye. “Just wondering how you really feel about all this newfound wealth. I know you were trying to blow us off before.”
The corner of his mouth pulls tight into his cheek. “I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. I know how lucky I am.”
That’s weird to think about. His parents died when he was six and he had to move across the country to live with his brother, but somehow he’s the lucky one.
“That’s all the more reason for you to have all these mixed up feelings about it. What did TK say?”
He looks at her as they roll to a stop at a red light. “That I should be responsible and think about my future?”
“Not about that.” She sounds impatient, but in the good-natured way that he’s used to, like she doesn’t quite understand how he makes it through the day without her constant guidance. “Did you ask him how he felt when he got his share? I know your mom divided her assets evenly down the middle, but your dad left him some money too, right? And TK got it all at once, which must have been a lot to come to terms with on top of everything else he was dealing with at the time. He was in his 30s when it happened, but he probably understands some of how you feel.”
Sometimes it’s annoying how sensible she is, but his stubbornness is probably equally annoying to her so he supposes fair is fair.
“We didn’t talk about it.” He accelerates through the intersection when the light turns green. “I would like him to see me as an adult sometime before I’m 40 so I’m going to handle it on my own.”
Her face twists with confusion. “You can still ask his advice, though. Isn’t that what parents are for?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
He means it to be self-deprecating but there’s something heavy in her lack of response. A frown is creasing her forehead when he glances across at her.
“It’s fine,” he says. “I’ll probably be super boring and just spend the money on college and maybe an apartment in a few years so there’s really nothing to talk about. Don’t worry about it.”
She hums and nods, and then turns the radio up so she can sing along to a song she likes for the rest of the drive.
The blinds are lowered at the Ryder house when they pull up, but bright light shines around the edges, indicating that Judd and Grace are still awake and probably waiting for Charlie to get home.
“Say hi to your parents for me,” he says as she slides out of the car.
“I will. See you tomorrow.”
The light by the front door is on when he gets home, a moth fluttering around the glass that he bats away when it flies at his face. He lets himself in to find TK and Carlos reclined on the sofa watching a movie that’s older than Jonah is. TK is leaning against Carlos’s chest with Carlos’s arm slung around the front of his shoulders and Maggie is sprawled half-under the coffee table. When he enters, they all look up and TK pauses the movie.
“Have fun?” Carlos asks.
Jonah nods. “Charlie was right – she kicked our asses.”
TK and Carlos laugh knowingly and Maggie scrambles to her feet to follow him as Jonah heads towards the stairs.
“Hey!” TK calls and Jonah turns back to see him propped over the back of the sofa. “Did you have a good day?”
It’s on the tip of his tongue to say something about how strange he’s felt since their trip to the bank that morning but that doesn’t really answer the question and he meant what he said to Charlie in the car: he can handle it. Yeah he’s just come into a tonne of money, but so what? Most people wouldn’t call that a problem and would probably laugh if he wanted to talk about how he feels about it.
“Yeah,” he says instead, because he did have a good day, despite everything else. “I’m going to bed. Night.”
They say good night, but Jonah can feel TK’s gaze on him as he pulls himself up the stairs.
Jonah’s family situation is complicated. Technically, TK is the only person he’s related to, and even then, they’re only half-brothers, but beyond that it all requires a bit more explanation for people not in the know. Owen, Andrea and Gabriel are the closest Jonah has ever had to grandparents, even before his parents died, and Carlos’s sisters have always treated him as another nephew. After them, though, there’s also the crew of Owen’s original 126: Paul, Marjan, Mateo, Tommy and Nancy, and of course Judd and Grace, who was his most regular babysitter until Carlos officially landed on the scene. Most of them have partners and kids of their own now, if they didn’t already, so Jonah’s official family birthday party is going to be packed with people.
Andrea and Gabriel arrive first, while TK is still sipping his morning coffee, because Andrea and Carlos always take it upon themselves to cater every family event.
“Hi, Ma,” Carlos says as he lets them in. “Hey, Dad.”
“Good morning, Carlitos.” Andrea kisses his cheek in greeting and then beams when she sees Jonah. “There he is! ¡Mi niño!”
As Jonah gets wrapped in a massive hug, Carlos takes the bags of groceries Gabriel is holding and says to him wryly, “I thought I was her boy?”
Gabriel laughs and jerks his head in Jonah’s direction. “Your reign ended the day she met this one.”
Even if it does take a lot to explain how his family works, Jonah is more than happy to have been unofficially adopted by them all. Andrea and Gabriel have never treated him any differently than they do their real grandchildren, and all his Reyes family “cousins” welcomed him into the fold with little more than the regular curiosity of children. It’s always sort of made him feel a bit special – none of these people needed to love him, but they do anyway, and not just because they loved TK and Carlos first.
Once she’s gone halfway to squeezing the life out of him, Andrea breaks the hug and takes over the kitchen like she owns the place.
“¡Fuera de aquí!” she says, shooing her hands at TK, who abandons the kitchen with all the appropriate haste owed to his mother-in-law. “There’s so much to do and we’re already behind!”
Jonah doesn’t know if that’s strictly true, because Carlos has already got the brisket going and TK prepared a few things yesterday, but he and TK have learned not to question her. She and Carlos get to work in the kitchen, communicating with a rapid-fire mix of Spanish and English that no one else can really follow, and Jonah, TK and Gabriel just try to stay out of their way. As the scent of spices and various meats fill the house, and the clock edges closer to noon, other people start arriving.
Owen shows up next, bearing the cake he insisted on contributing, then Carlos’s sisters and their families, and then various members of the original 126 filter in until there are so many people milling around their lounge room and spilling onto the back deck that Jonah is having a hard time keeping track of who he’s said hello to.
The Ryders show up last, with Judd carrying two bags of ice and Grace and Charlie holding large dishes of cornbread and potato salad.
As soon as she’s deposited the cornbread on a free corner of the kitchen counter, Grace turns to him with her arms wide open, which he steps into for a hug.
“Happy birthday, sweetheart. I can’t believe you’re 18 already. I swear it was just last week TK brought you ‘round to meet us.”
“You were just a little bitty thing,” Judd says. “All eyes and cheeks.”
“Not so little anymore,” TK says from where he’s plating an enormous party-size serving of latkes. “I’m still offended that he ended up taller than me.”
“My dad was tall, though, right?” he asks, because it’s hard to judge from photos and he always soaks up every piece of information TK shares about him. “Taller than you too?”
TK hums and nods. “Not by much, but yeah, I guess he was around your height.”
It makes something in him swell with a pride that he can’t quite explain and he stands straighter. “So he was an impressive figure then? Like, in court I mean?”
TK glances at him curiously but shakes his head as he covers the latkes with foil to keep them warm. “Enzo was an IP lawyer. He didn’t go to court very often. Neither did Mom, actually.”
“Oh.”
It’s unexpectedly disappointing. He’s known his parents were attorneys since he was a kid, even if he didn’t really understand what an attorney was until much later, and he’s always had this mental image of them commanding a courtroom like the lawyers on TV. Learning that that wasn’t true makes him feel kind of like he’s been lied to.
“But they were both still very impressive,” TK says hastily. “And very good at their jobs and very well-respected.”
He feels weirdly like TK is trying to placate him, which is stupid because, yeah, maybe the image he had of his parents as professionals wasn’t accurate, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just means he didn’t have the full picture. And why should he? TK has told him lots about his parents and he always answers whatever questions Jonah asks, but he’s not a mind-reader. He can’t correct assumptions that he doesn’t know Jonah has made.
“Yeah, okay.” He grabs the plate of latkes so TK doesn’t feel like he has to keep trying to explain. “I’ll take these outside.”
He feels Charlie follow a step behind him as he moves through the crowd and out to the back deck, where a long table has been laid out with all the food, a mish-mash of the Spanish foods Carlos and Andrea like to cook, and the Jewish foods that TK learned from their mom, and the various contributions their guests insisted on bringing. Tommy and Trevor are seated there and chatting with Nancy and Mateo, and they ask him about his plans for the summer and college before he and Charlie pile two plates with food and escape to the shaded table and chairs at the bottom of the yard. The combination of learning more about his parents’ jobs and the recent talk about college coalesce as he bites into a knish.
“Do you think I should go into law?” he asks through a mouthful of dough and mashed potato.
Charlie pauses the tilt of her head to bite into her taco and arches an eyebrow. “Do you want to go into law?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. But my parents did and you heard TK – they were good at it. Shouldn’t I want to follow in their footsteps?”
“Why?”
“Because they’re my parents?”
“I don’t think that’s a good enough reason.” She lowers the taco back to her plate. “I know I don’t know as much about them as you do, but I know TK and they raised him, so I think they would probably just want you to do something that will make you happy. You’re not obligated to do the same thing your parents did. My parents are a firefighter and a 9-1-1 dispatcher and I’m definitely not interested in being either one of those.”
“You’d be great at those things,” he says, even though he has a hard time picturing her slight frame clothed in turnout gear.
She rolls her eyes. “No, I wouldn’t. The point is, my parents want me to do something that will fulfil who I am, the same way they do for themselves. Has TK said he expects or wants you to become a paramedic?”
“No, but that’s different.”
She’s silent for a long moment. “Because he’s your brother?” She sounds vaguely unimpressed, but he can’t say why.
He nods and pops the last bite of knish in his mouth before picking up his own taco.
“Right,” she says and makes a start on her own food. “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You have time.”
“Yeah,” he sighs. “It just kinda feels like time is running out. High school felt like it was going to last forever, but it was over so fast and now I’ll be going to college in less than two months. Everything is changing.”
Her mouth twists in sympathy. “Change is a good thing. Imagine how boring life would be if it was always the same.”
It’s easy for her to say. For Charlie, with her stable, steady life, change is good, at least most of the time. It keeps things interesting. It’s never been that simple for him. Change is always something that’s been forced upon him. Yeah, most of it ended up being okay in the end, but those moments were also accompanied by uncertainty and anxiety until the dust settled. He’s better at handling it now that he’s older but he can’t help the way his mind still spirals.
“Do you want to hang out sometime this week?” he asks. He doesn’t want to talk about this anymore, at least not until he’s had more time to think about it.
She eyes him, because she recognises his avoidance tactics, but she doesn’t push it. “Sure. I can’t after work on Wednesday, though. I’m hanging out with Dustin.”
He frowns. “Who’s Dustin?”
“He works at The Daily Scoop with me,” she says, naming the ice-cream shop she works at every summer. “I’m sure I’ve told you about him.”
He casts his mind back over the work stories she’s shared since the summer began. “The new guy?”
“Yeah.” She wipes the corner of her mouth with a napkin and then folds it onto her empty plate. “He’s cool.”
His stomach clenches and he forces his voice to steady before he asks, “What, is this like a date or something?”
“No,” she says, but then she blushes. “We’re just hanging out.”
No one in their right mind would “just hang out” with Charlie Ryder. She’s perfect. Beautiful and smart and so kind. Maybe this Dustin guy hasn’t officially asked her on a date, but there’s no way this hang out isn’t a lead up to it. And Jonah should be happy for her, but all he can think about is how she won’t be around as much if she starts dating this guy and the time they have left before he starts college already feels like it’s passing too fast. She dated a guy for a few months last year and that had been hard enough when they were at the same school all day every day.
“Jonah!”
They both turn to the house at the sound of Carlos’s voice and see him standing on the deck, waving them back to the house.
“We’re going to cut the cake,” Carlos says when they join him and see that everyone else has moved inside. “Your presence is required.”
He ushers them through the crowd to the kitchen island, which has been cleared to make room for the cake. Jonah groans when he sees Paul and Gabriel pouring glasses of sparkling cider and Marjan, Luisa and Owen passing them around. TK, with a glass already waiting nearby, is securing the candles into the cake.
“Please tell me you’re not going to make a toast,” Jonah asks when he reaches him.
“No can do,” TK says with a smirk.
Jonah turns to Carlos, ready to plead to be spared this embarrassment, but Carlos holds up his hands and shakes his head.
“Sorry. He’s been thinking about this all week. I can’t tell him no.”
Jonah sighs but accepts the glass handed to him and tries not to squirm when everyone confirms they have a drink and the room falls silent.
TK taps his fingers on the side of his champagne flute and looks over the crowd before he speaks.
“Jonah was six when I brought him down to Austin. I didn’t know if I should. New York was all he knew and he’d already lost so much that I thought it might be cruel to take his home away too. But it would have been just the two of us up there and I didn’t want to be alone, even if that made me selfish.”
Jonah’s hands squeeze around the edge of the island as he glances at TK curiously. His memories of the weeks immediately following his parents’ deaths are spotty at best and TK has filled in the blanks when Jonah has asked about them, but he’s never thought to ask about what those weeks were like for TK. Now he wonders if he should have. This is the first time he’s ever heard TK say that he thought about them staying in New York, and it’s hard to imagine what life would have been like if they had. They would never have met Carlos; he would have a best friend who isn’t Charlie.
“I’m glad now that I let myself be selfish,” TK continues, “because if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here with all of you. I’m so grateful for all the ways you’ve supported me over the years, but more than that, I’m grateful for how you’ve all accepted Jonah into your lives and loved him like he’s your own.”
TK looks at him and Jonah’s breath catches at the moisture in his eyes.
“You’re 18. An adult. And I’m so proud of the person you’ve become, but I still remember the kid who built Lego towers on my dad’s coffee table, and laid out streets on the floor to race firetrucks and ambulances around, and laughed at the dumb jokes I made while I tried to cook something that you wouldn’t hate for dinner.”
A laugh rumbles through the crowd and TK’s mouth lifts into a smile.
“I hope you know that you can still be that kid, because life is hard but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be fun, even when everything feels impossible. And during those times, you have all these incredible people who love you and will support you in any way they can.” Then TK shrugs, almost self-consciously. “And you’ll always have me.”
Jonah’s chest tightens and he drops his gaze to the cake, because if he looks at TK any more he’ll start crying too.
TK clears his throat and chuckles. “I got a bit off track. The point is, you’ve grown into an incredible young man. You work hard, you’re smart and generous, and I know you’ll succeed at whatever you choose to do with your life. Carlos and I are so proud of you, and Mom and Enzo would be too. Ad meah v’esrim.” He raises his glass and everyone around them does the same. “To Jonah.”
The crowd echoes him, Carlos lights the candles and then they all sing while Jonah tries to compose himself. He catches Charlie’s eye at the front of the crowd and she smiles softly, like she knows the way his mind feels like it’s tumbling over itself. Jonah has always known that TK loves him. It was probably the only easy thing about the time when his parents died and he left New York. Nothing made sense and everything about the world was suddenly terrifying, but TK was always there and he knew that TK loved him and would keep him safe. Hearing him put it all into words for everyone to hear is different, though.
He has a lot to think about, and it’s all still turning over in his mind that evening after everyone has gone home laden with leftovers. He’s sitting in a chair on the back deck with his feet propped up on the railing when Carlos slides the back door open and steps out to join him. Carlos hands him a glass of iced tea and then knocks his feet down with a raised eyebrow.
Jonah heaves a sigh but sits up straight, mostly because he doesn’t want to have to repaint the railing like TK made him do when he was 15 after he flaked half the paint off by scuffing his shoes all over it.
“You’re quiet,” Carlos says and settles into the chair beside him with his own glass of tea. “Did you not have fun today?”
Jonah’s relationship with Carlos has always felt like one of the more unusual relationships in his life and it took them a while to find their rhythm after they all moved in together. Jonah was used to thinking of Carlos as an authority figure at school, but it didn’t translate as easily into their life at home. But they worked through it and he’s glad they did. As much as Jonah loves TK, sometimes Carlos has felt like a steadier presence. Carlos was the one who worked a job with regular hours, and was there to make him breakfast and dinner every day, and Jonah has always felt like Carlos really listens to him and takes his problems seriously.
“Did you know that TK thought about staying in New York with me?” he asks instead of answering Carlos’s question.
Carlos rubs his thumb around the rim of his glass and looks out into the darkness. The edges of their garden furniture are lined in light from the windows, and a dog is barking a few houses down. “We didn’t talk about it a lot, but he mentioned it once a few years ago. It was right before we went to New York for the tenth anniversary of your parents’ passing.”
How many other things related to Jonah has TK told Carlos? Probably a lot, which he guesses is fair. Carlos is TK’s husband after all, and they’ve been together since Jonah was almost seven. It bothers him that he doesn’t know what those things are, though. Maybe they’re mostly small, innocent things but what about the bigger ones? There must be some of those too.
“Does it bother you that he brought you to Austin?” Carlos asks when Jonah has said nothing for several minutes.
It’s a brave question. If TK had kept them in New York, he and Carlos would never have met.
Jonah shrugs. “No? I guess it doesn’t really matter. If anyone had asked me then, I would have wanted to stay but that’s just because it was my home. My friends were there, my school. I wouldn’t have understood why TK wanted to live here. It’s just weird that he never told me.”
Carlos sips his tea. “You think so?”
“Yeah? Why wouldn’t he?”
“You were a kid. You still are.” Carlos smirks when Jonah groans. “TK has always wanted to make things as smooth and easy for you as possible. He was the adult and it was his job to take care of you, so he handled things in the best way he could.”
Which means there are definitely things that TK experienced that Jonah knows nothing about. That’s probably true for every adult he knows, but it’s weird thinking about it in relation to TK, who probably had a whole life of his own before Jonah got dumped in his lap. Something like guilt twists his stomach at the thought that he’s never wondered about any of this before. Does that make him a bad person? He and TK are brothers. Shouldn’t he have tried to support TK in the same way that TK has always supported him?
He’s still thinking about it a few days later when he meets up with Seb at a local outdoor basketball court. Seb is terrible at ball sports and Jonah started playing when he was ten, which is probably why Seb is so concerned when he manages to steal the ball from Jonah and score two goals in a row.
“What’s up with you today?” Seb asks, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead.
Jonah bounces the ball from one side of the free throw line to the other as he considers. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
Seb sort of nods and shrugs at the same time. “Sure?”
Jonah chews the inside of his lower lip and then says, “Do you ever think about your dad?”
Seb snorts. “Not if I can help it.”
Which is fair. Seb’s dad has been long gone since before Jonah even met Seb. When he started going to Seb’s house for playdates, he assumed that Seb’s dad was dead, because his mom was the only parent he ever saw and Seb never talked about having a dad at all. Having a dead parent was something six-year-old Jonah understood. But when he asked about it, Seb told him that he didn’t have a dad. He didn’t understand until he was much older that Seb’s dad left him and his mom when Seb was a baby, and Seb just doesn’t remember him.
“Why?” Seb collects his water bottle from where it’s sitting near the baseline and takes a drink. He sounds like he can’t imagine why anyone would give his dad more than a single thought, let alone ask about him.
“You never wonder about what he’s like?”
“He’s the kind of person who walked out on his baby and the woman he knocked up – I know what he’s like.”
Jonah grimaces and shoots a shot from the three-point line, but his heart’s not in it and the ball doesn’t even make the distance.
“What’s this about?” Seb collects the ball and bounces it back to him. “You don’t care about my dad.”
“I guess I’ve been thinking about mine the last few days.” Jonah shoots another shot and this one bounces off the backboard. “You know a barista thought TK was my dad the other day? Crazy, right?”
Seb spins the ball idly between his hands. “Is it? That’s the assumption I would make if I didn’t know you. It’s probably what most people think when they see you together.”
“But I look nothing like him!”
Seb makes an “eh” sound. “There’s a resemblance. It’s in the eyes. And what does that matter anyway?”
“It’s just weird. I have a dad and it’s not TK, but TK is the one who shaped my life. Like, you know he thought about moving back to New York after my parents died? I didn’t until he mentioned it during his birthday toast. My life would have been completely different.”
“And his too.” Seb lobs the ball up at the hoop and then has to duck away before it hits him on the head when it comes back down. “Raising you was probably hard enough here. Imagine how much worse it would have been in New York.”
“‘How much worse’?” Jonah repeats and then huffs a laugh. “Wow. Harsh.”
“I just mean that everything must have been ten times harder for him when he suddenly had a kid to look after. It’s not like he planned for you. Even meeting people is hard for single parents. I think I can count on one hand the number of people my mom has dated in my life, and most of them she only met because they worked together. You think TK and Carlos would have gotten together if you weren’t put in Carlos’s class?”
Kinda, yeah. If there are two people on Earth who were born to be soulmates, it’s TK and Carlos. He’s pretty confident that they would have found each other even without him, and it probably would have been easier for them without him too. He’s never thought of himself as something that TK had to factor into his relationship, but he must have been. He doesn’t remember TK not being around that year he and Carlos were secretly dating, but he can put two and two together: they must have been sneaking around behind his back. A couple of years ago he might have felt betrayed that they lied to him about it, even if he was seven at the time, but now that he thinks about it, he mostly just feels bad that they had to.
What else is there about TK’s life before that Jonah’s never thought about? There must be other things and he can’t believe it’s never occurred to him before. TK was in his early 30s when their mom and Jonah’s dad died – the prime of his life. He must have had friends and hobbies and boyfriends that Jonah has never even heard about, things and people that got dropped because TK suddenly had to raise a kid instead. The knowledge settles uncomfortably on his shoulders and sits there for the next hour until he and Seb can go meet Mia and Charlie for lunch.
They end up at a taco truck, the same one that Carlos has been bringing TK and Jonah to for as long as Jonah can remember. The large outdoor fans squeak as they cycle but don’t do anything against the mid-summer Texas heat.
“What do you think?” Seb asks the girls as they all sit around a table with their food. “Jonah looks like TK, yes or no?”
Charlie and Mia scrutinise him like they’ve never seen him before. Eventually Mia nods and says, “It’s in the eyes,” but Charlie cocks her head as her forehead furrows.
“It’s more than that.”
“Please don’t say it’s my energy,” Jonah says and stuffs the end of a taco into his mouth.
Charlie looks unimpressed. “It’s not actually. I’ve always felt like TK’s energy is calmer than yours.”
Jonah pulls back, vaguely offended and not sure how he feels about that. “I’m calm!”
“Mhm. Sure.” She pulls a strip of lettuce out of her taco and crunches down on it. “It’s not your energy. It’s more like… the way you move. Your mannerisms.”
“Oh, my god, yes!” Mia says. “It’s the…” And then she makes a strange, snappy motion with her hand that TK does all the time when he’s making a point.
“I do not do that.”
Seb snorts. “Yeah, you do. All the time. You probably don’t even notice.”
“The sassy hand,” Charlie says solemnly and nods in agreement.
The words “I’m not sassy!” hover behind his teeth but he fights them back, feeling like they might not add as much to his point as he wants.
“It’s okay, though,” Charlie continues. “It makes sense.”
His lips twist hard but in the end he can’t stop himself. “It makes sense that I have a sassy hand?”
Mia chokes on a laugh and Charlie’s mouth twitches. “Well, yeah. You organise your tools or utensils in the same way Carlos does before you start working on something, too. We pick up gestures, mannerisms and phrases of speech from our parents because they’re what we grow up seeing and hearing as normal. It’s not a bad thing.”
This again.
“Except that TK and Carlos aren’t my parents.”
She watches him carefully and he wonders what she sees on his face, if it’s as calm as he wants it to be. He suspects it isn’t; he feels vaguely queasy but there’s also something like a tide of betrayal rising in his chest, but he doesn’t know who it’s directed at.
“I had parents,” he says, fighting to keep his voice steady. “They’re dead.”
“Sure,” she says slowly, like he’s a wild animal that she’s trying to keep calm. “Your birth parents. But TK and Carlos can be your parents too. They love you. They raised you. They kept you fed, and supported you, and they’ve always been there whenever you needed them. Adoptive parents are still parents, even though the kid they’re raising isn’t biologically theirs.”
“They didn’t adopt me.”
She shrugs. “So? Maybe they had their reasons for that. It doesn’t mean they didn’t do everything else.”
What reasons could they have had? The thought is unexpected but powerful. He can understand why Carlos wouldn’t have adopted him, but why not TK? Was it one step too far for TK to handle? It’s like Seb said: suddenly having custody of Jonah and being expected to raise him was hard enough. What kind of burden would the formality of adoption have added? Nothing probably would have changed in practice, but maybe adopting him would have made it feel too real.
“I don’t get why you’re having such a hard time with this,” Seb says, wiping his fingers on a napkin. “Who cares if TK and Carlos are your parents? At least you have parents.”
“So now I’m being ungrateful?”
“No,” Charlie says hastily and reaches across the table to touch the back of his hand with her fingertips. “It just seems very…”
He can feel his face hardening. “Very what?”
She glances at Seb and Mia helplessly but he keeps his gaze on her so he doesn’t know what she receives from them.
“Short sighted?” she says.
In a way that feels worse than being called ungrateful, like they don’t think he understands his own life the way they do. His skin prickles. None of them have any idea about what his life is like, and neither does anyone else. Sure, the rest of the world probably does look at him and TK – and Carlos – and make assumptions, but there’s nothing he can do about that. It’s not like he can walk around wearing a “This isn’t my dad” T-shirt 24/7. But there’s something about the way no one he knows has ever said anything about it to him before, like they assume he thinks the same and he doesn’t know how he feels about that.
In his mind, there’s always been a very clear line: his parents on one side and TK on the other. His parents are his parents, even if he doesn’t remember them; TK is his brother, even if he’s been raising him for the last 12 years. It’s different. It has to be. If TK is his parent, where does that leave his actual parents? It’s like everyone is saying they never mattered at all.
There’s a tense moment of silence and then Charlie says, “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have said anything.”
“It’s fine.”
The words escape automatically, because they always do. Whenever anyone has ever asked, Jonah has always been fine: when he had to move across the country; when he had to start at a new school where he didn’t know anyone; when TK told him that he and Carlos were dating; when he and TK moved out of Owen’s house; when TK and Carlos went on their honeymoon for two weeks and left him with Andrea and Gabriel; when his first girlfriend broke up with him. So many other times that he’s probably forgotten most of them. Jonah is always fine.
None of his friends look like they believe him but they’re kind enough to let it go. Mia very determinedly turns the conversation to parties she’s heard some people are planning for the next couple of weeks. Most are being thrown by recently graduated seniors, but there’s one being held by a kid in Charlie’s class and they all look to her for the goss. Jonah tunes in and out of the conversation, picking at the remains of his tacos because he’s not so hungry anymore.
He feels pulled between two extremes in a way he’s never stopped to think about before. On one hand he knows he’s made TK’s life difficult and that he should be grateful that TK took him in anyway. But on the other, he feels like he’s betraying his parents. He might not remember them, but he’s sure they wouldn’t have wanted to be replaced. Who would want to feel like that? Especially by their own kid? It puts him on edge and his initial annoyance has turned to something that feels like anger simmering in his chest by the time he gets home later that afternoon.
Carlos is out, but TK is around and Jonah can feel his gaze on him as he wanders around the first floor and then up to his bedroom and back down again. He’s restless and doesn’t know what to do with all this energy. He and Seb managed to beat the heat to play basketball earlier in the day, but now it’s too hot out to go for a run. Carlos usually keeps a punching bag in the garage but it’s worn and he took it down and hasn’t replaced it yet. For a lack of any other options, he decides to clean the upstairs bathroom. It’s mostly his anyway, because TK and Carlos have an ensuite, and Carlos always cleans when he’s stressed so Jonah figures it might work for him too.
TK corners him as he’s scrubbing the sink.
“Jonah?” TK says, leaning in the doorway with his arms folded. There’s a pinch between his eyebrows that looks like concern. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve never willingly cleaned a bathroom in your life.”
Jonah shrugs and goes back to scrubbing the sink, which wasn’t even that dirty to begin with. “Maybe I’m just being more independent. You know, before I go to college.”
“Yeah, maybe,” TK says, in a tone that indicates he’s never believed anything less. “Or maybe something’s wrong.”
“If something’s wrong, maybe I don’t want to talk about it.”
“If you didn’t want to talk about it, you would have gone to your room and not drawn attention to yourself.”
Jonah’s hand tightens around the sponge so that suds ooze out over his fingers, then he drops it into the sink and turns so he can watch TK’s face.
“Did you ever think about adopting me?”
It’s not quite the right question, but there are so many thoughts and questions tumbling around in his head, and he doesn’t know where else to start.
TK goes very still. His mouth opens a couple of times like he’s about to say something before the words die. “Once, in the very beginning, before I’d even brought you to Austin. I wasn’t sure if I needed to and then I wasn’t sure if I should.”
“But you decided not to.” He makes it a statement, but the question is implied.
“Right. It wasn’t necessary for our situation and at the time it wasn’t something I felt emotionally ready to do. Mom and Enzo had just died and adopting you felt like I was trying to erase them. I didn’t think about it again after that. There were other things going on and by the time those had settled it just felt like something that might confuse you.” TK bites his lip and then pushes off the doorframe. “Did you want me to adopt you?”
Jonah shrugs, because it’s not that simple but he doesn’t know how to put that into words. “I never really thought about it.”
“So what made you think about it now?”
He folds his arms across his chest and grimaces when the leftover suds on his hands leave a wet patch on his shirt. “Just something people have been saying. It wasn’t anything bad,” he rushes to add.
“Do you want to tell me what they said? You don’t have to.”
Jonah shifts his weight. Part of him doesn’t want to say anything because that would be easier than whatever this conversation is going to be, but TK was right: he would have stayed in his room if he didn’t want to talk about it.
“They all say that you’re my parent,” he says all at once, and then forces a chuckle because if he tries to pass it off as a joke then maybe TK will see it that way too.
TK doesn’t laugh. “And how do you feel about that? Does it bother you?”
What kind of question is that? What is Jonah supposed to say? There’s an emotion rising in his chest that he doesn’t know how to name, and it throws him back to being a child and Carlos telling him to take his time to identify what he’s feeling. Right now, though, he doesn’t want to think about it.
He throws his hands up and goes back to aggressively scrubbing the sink.
“I mean, it’s weird,” he says. “It is weird, right? Yeah, you’ve raised me for basically my whole life, but you’re my brother. It’s not like you’re my…”
“Dad?” TK offers gently.
It’s like a stab to the chest and tears prickle at the backs of his eyes, but he doesn’t know why.
“No! You’re not my dad.” He shakes his head violently and ignores the way TK’s face twitches. “I had a dad. He’s dead. But he still existed. I still loved him, even if I don’t remember him outside of pictures.”
TK holds up his hands in a placating gesture. “Take a breath.”
He does. One of the earliest memories that he has is TK teaching him how to breathe to calm himself. He remembers being in his bed at Owen’s house, wearing his Spider-Man pyjamas, so he must have been woken by a nightmare. TK had come in, dried his tears and held him while he counted him through the breaths. He’s lost so much from those early days, but he can still hear the measured cadence of TK’s voice and he still remembers the counts. He’s done this so many times over the last 12 years that it’s easy to find the rhythm now.
“You’re my brother,” he insists when he’s calmed down. “It’s not the same.”
TK is quiet, his hands now hanging at his sides. Eventually he nods. “Okay.”
Jonah’s eyes narrow. “‘Okay’?”
“Okay,” TK repeats. “If that’s how you feel, then that’s how you feel. I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise.”
He should be glad that TK is respecting his feelings, but for some reason it makes him feel worse. Shouldn’t TK want to convince him? Shouldn’t he feel like he has something to prove and try to make Jonah admit that he’s wrong?
“Why not?”
TK slumps back against the doorframe. His usually lively face seems to have dropped all emotion, and it makes him look older than Jonah has never seen before. Not that TK is old – he’ll be 45 in December, which is younger than his parents were when Jonah was born. It’s more that Jonah is finally seeing the weight on him after all these years. Did he always carry that weight or did Jonah put it there?
“I’m not your father,” TK says. “That’s true. And if you don’t feel like I’m a parent to you at all, then that’s true too. I can’t tell you it’s not the truth if that’s how you’ve experienced it. What I can tell you is that being a parent doesn’t just mean being responsible for the creation of a child. Your dad was a father to me the same way my biological dad was. In some ways, Enzo did more to raise me than my dad did, but I love them just the same. I can’t tell you how to feel about me but I see myself as a parent to you. You’re my kid and you also being my brother doesn’t change that.”
It should be good to hear. Most orphans would be comforted to know that someone loves them enough to think of them as their child. Instead, Jonah feels… angry and betrayed. It’s like he’s been left out of a secret that everyone else has always known.
“How can you say that?” He throws the sponge into the sink, where it lands with a loud splat and sends suds flying up to the mirror. “How would Mom and Dad feel about you saying this shit? Like you’re trying to replace them?”
For the first time, TK’s face tightens around the eyes and mouth. It’s a face Jonah recognises: TK is angry and trying to keep him from seeing it. It hits him with a stab of satisfaction.
“They would feel pretty happy actually, and probably grateful.”
“Grateful? Because you so selflessly gave up your whole life to raise a kid who isn’t yours?”
“Yes! I didn’t ask for any of this, Jonah! But I did it anyway and it’s not like anyone thanked me for it, least of all you!”
Jonah recoils as TK’s eyes widen. It’s exactly what he’s been thinking: TK was happy and living his life, and then Jonah got dumped in his lap and it’s not like TK would have been able to say no – that’s not who TK is. And that’s not to mention the judgement he would have faced from everyone else about abandoning his six-year-old brother. The choice to take Jonah was no choice at all.
There are still soap suds up to his wrists but he pushes past TK into the hall. TK says his name and follows, but Jonah doesn’t even slow his pace. He stops in his room only long enough to grab his keys, wallet and phone, and then he heads downstairs with TK trailing in his wake.
“Jonah, please stop,” TK says as they hit the first floor. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“You did mean it, though.” Jonah spins and rears back at how close on his heels TK is. “But you don’t have to worry about it anymore. I survived to 18. You’ve done your duty. I don’t need you.”
Maggie is whining anxiously at their feet like she knows something is wrong and it kills him to ignore her, but Jonah turns and leaves the house, slamming the door on his way out. His car is in the garage and he doesn’t want to go back into the house to get to it, so he storms down the driveway and then turns onto the sidewalk.
He thinks that he walks aimlessly for the first five minutes but when he slows he realises he’s heading in the direction of the Ryder house. He can’t go there. It’s the first place TK will think to look for him, and Judd and Grace would rat him out anyway. Owen’s house is out for the same reason. In fact, everyone in his weird extended family is off the list. All they’ll do is try to convince him to go home, or let TK or Carlos come to drag him back.
It leaves only Seb and Mia as options. It’s not ideal, but there are only six weeks until he goes to college anyway. He could probably stay with one of them for at least a couple of nights and then find a hotel with long-term rooms available until he has to leave for his dorm. Thank god he has his dad’s money; without it, he’d be in real trouble.
He calls Seb, because at least he’ll be able to borrow some of his clothes until he can buy new things. There’s so much he’s going to need, not just clothes; there’s probably a whole list of things that he’s never even thought about buying before. It’s fine, though. He’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.
Seb sounds confused on the phone but agrees to come pick him up and says he can stay over for a few nights if he needs to. It’s a load off Jonah’s shoulders, and he stands in the shade of a tree hanging over the sidewalk as he waits. By the time Seb’s car pulls up, Jonah’s phone has already rung several times. It’s TK for the most part, but then Carlos starts trying. Jonah rejects every call until he finally blocks their numbers while they’re driving to Seb’s house.
Seb glances over at him at a stoplight, his hands clenching and unclenching around the wheel. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I had a fight with TK.” It sounds so small and innocent, completely at odds with how monumental it feels. “I’m not going back.”
The car stutters as Seb tries to hit the accelerator but freezes at the same time. “What? Like, ever? Are you crazy?”
Maybe. But this is better for all of them. TK never wanted him anyway, and Jonah doesn’t need him anymore. Carlos only got dragged into all this because of TK.
“It’s fine. I have money now. I can take care of myself.”
Seb’s eyes are almost unnaturally wide but he drives them to his house. Camila, his mom, is at work but Seb sets up the guest room so at least Jonah will have somewhere to sleep for a few nights while he gets his shit together.
The phone calls continue throughout the evening, from various members of his family but primarily Owen and Judd. Jonah rejects them all and doesn’t listen to the voicemails that start piling up. After a dinner that Jonah mostly just picks at, Charlie messages him.
What’s going on? TK is here talking to my parents. He’s a mess.
we had a fight
His phone immediately lights up as she calls, but he rejects it because he doesn’t know how to put any of it into words. He can’t tell his best friend that his brother didn’t want him without wanting to hit something. Or cry. Maybe both.
I don’t want to talk about it right now. I’ll be fine. I’m at Seb’s til i work things out. Don’t tell anyone
He doesn’t have to be able to see her to know how much she’ll hate that response.
OK. But let me know if you need anything, even just to talk.
He reacts with a thumbs up and lets the phone fall to his side where he’s lying on the guest bed. It’s not as comfortable as his bed at home and he misses Maggie’s warm, heavy weight tucked against his side.
The only call he answers is the one that comes through from Grace. She’s the closest he can remember ever having to a mother, and he can’t reject her.
“Hi, sweetheart,” she says when he picks up. Her voice is even more gentle than it usually is.
“Hi, Grace.”
“We’ve all been really worried. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m–” He frowns suspiciously. “Is TK there?”
There’s a pause in which he can imagine her thinking through what she should say.
“He is.”
“You won’t tell him where I am, right?”
She sighs, sounding tired and a bit sad. “I won’t if you don’t want me to. But, honey, he’s just worried about you. He wants to know that you’re safe.”
“I’m at a friend’s house.” He doesn’t tell her about his plans to find a hotel before he overstays his welcome because he knows she won’t be happy about it.
“Okay, that’s good. You know you can go home anytime. Or you can come here if you don’t want to go home. Or to anyone. We’re all happy to have you, and you can stay as long as you want. No one’s angry at you.”
The backs of his eyes prickle with tears that he blinks away. “I’m okay for now.”
“Alright.” He can tell by the reluctance in her voice that she both wants to keep him on the line and doesn’t want to push him too far. “Will you do one thing for me? I know you don’t want to talk to TK, and that’s your choice, but will you let me know every day that you’re okay? Just send me a message and I’ll let him know. And you call if you need anything – it doesn’t matter who. Just call. Will you do that?”
He nods, even though he knows she can’t see him. “Yeah. Thanks, Grace.”
“You’re welcome, sweetheart. Get some sleep, okay?”
He makes a noise of agreement and they say good night before hanging up. He’s left with a feeling that he hasn’t had often in his life: a want for his mom. He doesn’t know why; he barely remembers her. Sometimes in those moments before sleep he thinks he hears her, humming a song that he doesn’t recognise. He knows TK’s stories about her, though. There’s no one in the world TK loves more than their mom. Part of him hates that TK got so much of her while he got so little. It’s not fair. He doesn’t know how she smiled when she looked at him, or how she smelled, or how warm her hugs were. He’ll never know how it felt to be loved by her.
He rolls onto his side and curls around the pillow. It’s still early enough that the sun hasn’t set yet, but he’s so tired he could fall asleep now, if his mind would just stop turning.
When he finally does sleep, he dreams about the day his parents died.