Page 87 of Just a Footnote

“Cookies.”

Aiden rests his chin in his hand, watching as Liam moves around the kitchen. He’s so good in the kitchen. Whether it be dinner for them or breakfast, he knows what he’s doing. Aiden wonders if his mom taught him. Is that okay to ask? Liam seemed okay talking about his mom last night and Aiden likes listening to Liam talk about her.

“Did your mom like to cook?”

Liam turns to look at him, surprised. “She did. She liked to bake the most. My dad was more of the cook.”

“What was her favorite thing to bake?”

He smiles as he cracks eggs into the bowl one by one. A warm smile stretches his lips while he whisks. “Banana bread.”

“Oh, I bet that was good.”

“It was,” Liam says with a wistful smile. “She would addchocolate chips for me sometimes. She’d take it right out of the oven, cut me a slice, put butter on it. It reminds me of home. I’ll make it for you one day.”

Aiden doesn’t respond. He just watches Liam move around the kitchen, making chocolate chip cookies. If only the magazines and social media knew that Liam Walsh, famous hockey player, likes to relax by baking cookies for his male lover. He doesn’t know if people would lose their shit or if the girls online would go rabid at the idea. Good thing it’ll never happen.

Liam puts a batch in the oven, prepares the next batch, and it’s a cycle until they have three dozen cookies cooling around the kitchen. Aiden grabs one when Liam isn’t looking, taking a big bite. It’s delicious. He’ll forever associate the taste of warm cookies with Liam now. The domesticity of the moment hits him square in the chest.

They spend the rest of the day like that. Just being lazy around the cabin, munching on cookies, talking about shit that doesn’t really matter. But when he talks about it with Liam it does matter. He feels like he’s sharing parts of himself. The feeling is so foreign that it makes the itch under his skin flare to life.

Later in the evening, they fall into bed. After giving each other lazy blowjobs, they lay side by side to stare up at the ceiling of the cabin. Liam hooks his pinkie finger around Aiden’s, like a tether, like a life raft keeping him to the surface when he feels like he might sink.

“What happened?” Liam asks slowly, deliberately, tone carefully even. “That year you and Archer were separated, what happened?”

Aiden feels the air dry up inside his lungs. Darkness invades his vision, his fingers tighten into fists without him meaning to do it. Liam gently rests the palm of his hand over one of Aiden’s balled up fists. He takes a steadying breath.

“My mom got me back. She’d gotten out of jail, convinced a judge she could play happy family again. Archer…he was on that hockey team. The one in San Bernardino? They were doing really well. He convinced the judge he needed to stay at that home. He had hoped…they wouldn’t separate us.” Aiden swallows, rubbing at his chest. “They still separated us. It wasn’t far but four hours is far enough apart to make it hard to see each other when you’re that age. Plus, our mom didn’t want him to see me. She knew he’d know.”

Liam’s thumb rubs a circle against his wrist. “Ten months?”

“Yeah, from February to December. She was clean for about the first month. Which means she was nice for a month. That was our only Christmas we’ve ever spent apart. Our birthdays that year too.”

Liam presses his thumb onto Aiden’s pulse point on his wrist. “Archer never talks about it.”

“Probably because his year was okay. Mine, not so much.”

Liam’s eyebrows furrow. Aiden knows, he knows Liam is going to ask and he’s going to tell him. And then…he doesn’t know what he’ll do after that. Only Archer knows, by extension Miles. Because Miles was with Archer during the lost year. He supposes the doctors and his caseworker know too.

“What happened?” Liam asks again, softly, voice too sweet.

“Did you know when a kid has more than a reasonable amount of broken bones in a year, the hospital has a duty to report?”

Liam frowns, deeply. “I didn’t know that.”

“Well, she always took us to different hospitals. So that they couldn’t keep records and match it up. But...that year she messed up. She didn’t know the hospital chains had merged. First it was my wrist. Then it was my arm. Then, it was three ribs. Almost punctured a lung. They made her wait outside with the ribs. It was an older doctor, he had grandkids, and he asked me and Ijust…cried. He held me. No one had ever really held me before? Anyway, they took me away from her and I went back to the home I’d been with Archer in before going back to her. They were nice people. I think Archer and Miles still talk to them.”

“Aiden…”

“When it was us against her, it was easier. Archer always talked her down when I would rile her up. And when she’d take a swing, we’d protect one another. They took us away when we were eight, so those memories aren’t too bad. It was smaller things then, more bruises and shitty words and yelling. I learned to lie for her to keep us in her good graces. Archer hated it but I did what I had to do.” Aiden laughs bitterly, feeling the awful sickness well up inside him. “I ran my damn mouth too much during that year. I think, deep down, I wanted her to kill me. I was so alone and tired and ImissedArcher. I lied on every phone call with him. He didn’t have a clue until the social worker dropped me off with him. He’s the only home I’ve ever known. The only person that’s never hurt me on purpose.”

Aiden can’t look at Liam. The room is quiet. Too quiet. But Aiden can’t say anything else to fill the silence.

“Aiden.”

It’s so quiet, so soft, too tender. Aiden closes his eyes firmly shut. Lips graze a kiss to his wrist, then to his arm, finally to the ribs that took way too long to heal.

“The worst part is that the broken bones didn’t even hurt the most. It’s what she said while she broke them. I can forget the pain of the breaks but not of the words. I can be having a normal day and then they just pop up, echoing in my head.” Aiden sits up abruptly, jostling Liam in the bed, and hangs his head in defeat for a second before quickly standing up. His hands tremble at his sides, his breathing harsh. “I can’t do this,” he says brokenly.

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