Page 22 of Forever We Fall

He spoke those words more than any other. They took the place that should have been reserved for I love yous. He spoke them in Japanese only.

Kido men don’t stoop to speak foreign tongues. We know them, so that we may know our enemies. We do not speak them.

Right now, I feel Arlo’s devastation deeper than my own.

Maybe it’s an innate need to protect his vulnerability. To allow him the simplest comfort of sharing his emotions, his fears, his hopes. I couldn’t do it for myself or my mother, but I can do it for him.

I never thought I could say something to shock the guy who seems to know everything and can do whatever he wants without guilt or self-doubt. Turns out I can. It just means exposing my sensitive underbelly when that’s all I fucking am.

Exposed. Weak. Vulnerable.

“Who is he to you?”

My burning gaze finds his. As usual, his aim is true. Get this kid to the Olympics. He’ll bring home the gold every time. That he’s made the leap from what I said to my uncle makes me want to shed my skin.

The problem is I’m not a snake.

I shift to leave.

“Don’t.” Hota kicks off his shoes, crisscrosses his legs tight, and then motions to the foot of his bed. “Come on. I promise to keep my hands to myself.”

I just stare at him.

He tosses an extra pillow at me, and I catch it. “Up you go.”

The material is soft and cozy. Nothing like the stiff pillow and scratchy case that comes with the room. I stare some more.

“If you don’t get this out, it will only get darker, deeper, and it will corrode you from the inside out until you do something you’ll regret.”

I blink at him and wonder how he knows. How could this guy, who’s barely through puberty, understand what I’m going through? How can he see so clearly that I was inches and seconds away from strangling the life out of him for doing nothing more than holding up a mirror and making me look at my terrified reflection?

“How…” I choke on the word. Tears welling up like this is a catastrophic, world-ending level event.

“How do I know?” His vibrato is gone. Vanished as though it never was.

The sorrow in his voice mars his pretty face and shadows his dark eyes. He’s always so confident and calm. I never could have imagined him possessing such sadness. But there it is, raw and real.

It slices through me. Compassion, something I thought had vanished within me, swells, overshadowing my fear, if only for a moment.

“Yes.” I squeeze the pillow in my hands in a pathetic attempt to ground myself.

“My mother,” he breathes.

I stand there and hold my breath. I will him to continue. Because if he has a story, if he has trauma, then I’m not alone. And I am so alone in this world.

“She…” It’s as if he’s transported to a different time and place. His eyes go blank, like he doesn’t see anything in front of him. The rich color leaches from his cheeks.

“She didn’t let anything out. Not a peep, until one day she detonated.” He visibly shivers. “We didn’t know.” His head shakes in a slow back and forth. “No one knew she’d been abusedat boarding school in every horrible manner a person can be abused.”

It’s possible that I nod. Possible I don’t either, and I just stand here like a living scarecrow.

“Years of keeping terrible secrets and self-medicating caused a break in her reality. There was a triggering incident.” He buries his face in his hands as if he can bury his reality. Finally, his hands slip away, and he looks me in the eyes. His long lashes are clumped together as though he cried.

I see no tears.

He points at the foot of his bed again. “You don’t have to let it all flow, but you have to loosen the tap.”

I climb onto the cushy mattress. The plush comforter cuddles my thighs. I brace my back on the wall. My legs dangle off the side of his bed, and I stare at the wall, hugging the pillow in the cross of my arms.

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