Page 85 of Running Feral

I take a deep breath before I continue. I don’t think this is the road Gunnar expected me to take when I started talking, based on his ‘oh-shit’ expression, but he’s still listening.

“Remember I told you my dad sucked? He left right after I was born, or maybe before. I don’t really know. Buthisdad was still in Mishicot, and that man basically drove us the fuck out of town. Racist fucking prick. He hated my mom and whatever ‘shame’ she had supposedly brought on his family. My mom won’t even talk about it anymore. I barely remember the details, but they weren’t good. We left when I was still in elementary school.

“I think it hit her hard. She was young, you know. And Lola couldn’t come with her because my grandfather was sick at the time. It was a whole thing. Anyway, when she met my stepdad, she threw herself so hard into her new life there was never a chance of looking back. Her kids may be half-native, but they’re raised 100% in his culture. Even she picked up a rez accent. Half the people there just assume she’s from Alaska or something. She peaced the fuck out of every other part of her life to make a new one, and it didn’t matter that I didn’t fit in there at all.

“So, I’m barely fucking Asian, except when I got shipped back to stay with Lola over the summers to keep me out of the way. I’m not fucking white, because racists still look at me and don’t like what they see. And I’m 0% native, unlike the rest of the people I grew up with. Basically, I don’t belong anywhere. I’m not shit.

“But if there’s any single part of being Filipino that got hammered into me, it’s that you take care of your fucking family. Especially your elders. I came here for her. She loves me. She needs me. I can’t give that up because she’s become inconvenient, or I’d be even more of a disappointment to my family than I am already.”

My breath is heaving by the time I finish speaking. It was a long speech, mostly coming out in run-on sentences while I waved my hands in the air and hoped I was making some kind of sense.

I’m expecting Gunnar to look at me with apprehension. Or second-hand embarrassment, because I just childhood-trauma vomited all over him. Instead, he’s giving me the same look he gave me before, downstairs.

The ‘poor Tobias’ look. The one that I mostly hate, but also sometimes kind of not, because it tends to come right before he gets all knight-in-shining-armor and fixes shit for me.

Which I’m probably supposed to hate even more, but I’m way too tired to pretend to have any pride left.

“What?” I ask, because he’s not saying anything.

He hesitates, like he doesn’t want to piss me off, but then his shoulders drop and he looks at me.

“She’ll still love you, even if you don’t physically take care of her every day. You don’t have to earn her love. I don’t know her well, but I’m confident about that. You take care of her by being around and being her grandson. The other stuff is just window dressing.”

Now it’s my turn for my shoulders to slump. That wasn’t what I was trying to say with any of that. The way he says it makes it seem like it was maybe what I was thinking, though.

I sit down on the couch next to him, because all my anger and hyperbole just ran straight down the drain. Gunnar picks up my hand, impossibly gentle as always, even though he should be too big to feel so delicate.

“I don’t know how it feels to go through the shit you just described. But I do know how it feels to be lost. And to feel cut off from your family, or your community. It sucks. Everything gets harder. I know you say that taking care of your grandmother is important, but when people say ‘take care of your elders’, they mean as part of a community. As part of a family unit. Not as one single person, trying to do it all by themselves with no support. Why is this burden on you but not your mom?”

“Dude, she has other kids. She deserves a chance at a real life after everything she went through to have me. It wasn’t her fault her baby daddy’s father was a psychopath.”

“I know. That’s my point: everyone has different circumstances. She does deserve a fresh start. But so do you. It wasn’t your fault you were born. Or any of the other stuff that came after. I wish you would stop trying to take on the burden of everything that happens as if it was caused by your personal, primordial sin.”

A wave of exhaustion hits me. He’s right. I know he’s right, and I’m too tired to fight him on it anymore. Knowing he’s right doesn’t make me feel any less guilty, but it makes me less interested in arguing about it.

Feeling a little pathetic, I lie down with my head in his lap. When his fingers push into my hair, like always, the tension starts to melt from my body, bit by bit.

“What do I do, then?”

“Talk to your grandmother. Ask her what she wants to do. Don’t worry about the money yet. Let’s figure the first part out and then we’ll deal with that.” He pauses. “Thank you for telling me, though. I kind of expected you to hang on to this for days.”

I almost smile, but not quite.

“Yeah, well, all the brooding was getting kind of tiring. You make things easier to deal with when I talk to you. I don’t know why.”

I hear Gunnar snort overhead.

“That’s what happens when you’re in a relationship. A healthy one, at least. I know it’s weird. I’m not exactly used to it either.”

I’m still lying in his lap, staring across the room instead of at him when I say the next words. It’s the only way I think I can do it, though. It’ll be easier next time.

“I love you, Gunnar.”

His breath catches, but he only freezes for a moment before he goes back to playing with my hair.

“Well, you better. You’re stuck with me.”

His soft laugh breaks the tension enough that I sit up, faking a glare before I also start to laugh. Gunnar grabs me, rearranging all my limbs until I’m straddling his lap, and pulls me into a kiss that goes from affectionate to devouring each other in roughly four seconds.

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