Page 67 of Keep Me

We stop at a coffee cart next to a playground, full of kids running and climbing and playing and laughing. I watch them while Reggie orders our drinks. Something I’ve heard a dozen times before, to no comfort, rings again in my head: You were just a kid.

“Thank you. Sit with me.” I pull us over to a bench where we can watch the chaotic play. A toddler runs after a butterfly and trips, tumbling in the wood chips. Another kid goes down a slide and flies off the end, scraping his knee. A bigger kid, maybe seven or eight, pushes a little guy to the ground. What the fucking hell is he thinking? The kid he pushed barely reaches his chest. My blood thrums as I imagine this playground bully growing up to be the kind of man who hides behind a black mask…

I jump up and stomp over to them.

I pick the smaller kid up off the ground, then smack the baseball cap off the other’s head. “You’re twice his size. Don’t be a jerk.” I want to do more. I want to shake him and shove him to the ground and see how he likes it.

But when I look down in his watery eyes, his bottom lip already trembling, all the hot air deflates. He’s just a fucking kid.

I stalk back over to Reggie, shaking my head. “Fucking kids.”

“Bet that boy is going to think twice before picking on someone half his size again.” She gives me a warm and proud smile, like I’m some sort of hero. That familiar guilt and crushing sense of failure comes knocking. I take a deep breath, then try to count the colors around me, a mindfulness technique Dr. Wong taught me.

Green. Brown. Yellow. Blue. Red. More green.

“God,” Reggie scoffs a laugh. “Look at them, they’re tripping over themselves, falling over nothing.”

I swallow and tilt my head, staring at the playground with a new perspective. Two kids playing tag run in opposite directions around a climbing wall to hide from the other, but then collide face-first. An unexpected laugh comes from me. “Damn, they can barely breathe without hurting themselves.”

For the first time, you were just a kid finally strikes a part of me that just might believe it. I take Reggie’s hand in my lap, lacing her fingers with mine.

She turns to me with a softness in her eyes, as if she can feel the shift in me. “What’s in your head?” She brushes an eyelash off my cheek with her thumb and holds it out for me.

I blow it away with a silent wish. A wish for the strength to face my demons and a prayer of gratitude that I have her by my side while I do it.

I pull her thumb to my lips and press a kiss to where the lash used to be. “I still got a lot of shit to work through, but I think I’m starting to get it.”

1. Get You The Moon (feat. Snøw)—Kina, Snøw until end of chapter

Epilogue

Reggie

Four months later

“Are you finally going to take the Sold sign down before people get here?” I ask Roan, who is setting up the grill in the side yard of our new house. He turns around, wiping the sweat off his forehead with his shirt, and I temporarily forget my question.

“I like seeing it.” He shrugs, then tugs me into him with one arm around my waist. “It reminds me that this is real.”

My heart squeezes, and I look up at him wondering how I ever thought he didn’t have a heart. “Okay.” I give him a quick kiss, and then pull away because I have an idea I think we both will like.

I head inside, looking for the drill. I know it’s around here somewhere since we’ve been hanging curtains and art over the last few days to get ready for our housewarming party. I find it along with a box of screws on the dining table. The vintage photo of McGregor’s is on the wall behind the table. Looking at it stirs something sweet and nostalgic in me. This photo is of the past. Not only the past history of the Den, but also Roan’s previous isolation and struggles to forgive himself, to feel worthy.

Next to it is a framed photo of the current pub. Stella snapped it one day after a family brunch. The brothers are lined up along one wall, smoking, and Effie, Harlow, and I are laughing about something at one of the bistro tables. This is the future. Happiness, laughter, family.

I grab the drill and screws and head out to the front lawn. It’s easy to unhook the Sold sign, but it’s harder to pull out the post buried into the grass. By the time I wrestle it out and toss it on the curb with our trash cans, I’m sweating and ready for a cold beer. But I have one more thing to do.

I gather up my supplies again and cut through the house to the backyard so Roan doesn’t see me with his precious sign. There’s an old garden shed out here with heavy doors and thick walls of wood that have weathered the test of time. It’s where we keep our “boring suburban yard equipment” that Roan likes to pretend he doesn’t love using, and is only occasionally used for bloody interrogations.

I drill two heavyweight screws into the wooden doors and hang the sign on them, then step back to check out my handiwork.

“Lookin’ good, Cortez.” I jump at Roan’s voice. He wraps an arm around my shoulder, handing me a cold Corona. I lean into him despite our sweatiness, and we clink our bottles together before taking a sip in unison, admiring the new sign location.

A few hours later, the back is swarming with our friends and family, the smell of carne asada fills the air, and reggaeton plays loudly from our outdoor speakers.

“I can’t believe you were faking it that whole dinner! You sure convinced Stephen and me,” Matt says in disbelief.

“Yep, we hated each other.” I laugh, remembering how angry I was with Roan and my own flustered reaction to his performance.

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