Page 18 of Brother to Brother

“Okay, what do you want for breakfast?”

“The kid likes pancakes,” he said and I nodded, “Then pancakes, if you’ve got the stuff for it.”

I hazarded a smile and said, “I bought mix, but forgot the maple syrup, so is butter and jam okay?”

“I’ll get some, we got some twenty-four hour places around here that’ll have it.”

“Far cry from where we come from, where the sidewalks roll up at eight.”

He grunted in agreement, “You ain’t lyin’, now get over here and do as I say, lock the door behind me.”

“Of course,” I said and he went out. I dutifully shot the deadbolt and twisted the little tab in the doorknob, too.

I went in to lay down, listening to the rap music thump and bump up through the floor. A car pulled up outside and was equally as loud. Laughter, shouting, a glass bottle breaking somewhere out in the parking lot… After an hour and a half of trying to sleep, I got up and peeked out the front blinds.

There was a glossy black, fancy new Dodge Charger with ridiculous looking rims on it down there, parked in the middle of the lot behind a bunch of other cars, all four doors open and the system pounding out into the night. I went back into the bedroom and hoped it would end soon, but I think I was just so tired that eventually it didn’t matter. I fell asleep, albeit a fitful one. I must have been woken a half a dozen times during the night. Once by a man shouting down to the Charger from right outside the living room window – which woke Noah up causing him to fuss.

I got him back down, and tried to go back to sleep, but I heard Archer come home when his second job was through.

“Hey, Little Man, what you doing up, huh?” I heard him say to my son, but I really wanted Noah to go back to sleep, so I stayed put. Maybe it was really because I was upset… I wasso tired. I was so tired I couldn’t sleep, so tired my eyes watered, the moisture slicking down my temples as I lay on my back in the dark. It was incredibly frustrating, but what could I do about it?

I think I fell into a light slumber, but it was shattered by my phone going off, the alarm I’d set so I could fix Archer breakfast before work, shattering the exhausted moments of calm I’d found. I got up, slipping into my flowered kimono-type robe, a deep blue with bright bursts of pink peonies on it. It’d been a gift from Grinder once upon a time… I felt a deep stab of loss borne of a longing to see or have something you would never have again but I stuffed it ruthlessly down.

I had a child to take care of. A son who was everything to me, and who I wouldn’t trade for the moonandthe stars, let alone the world. I couldn’t dwell on what could and would never be. I just couldn’t.

I stopped in the doorway to the bedroom and let myself fall into the doorjamb, my shoulder propped against the poorly painted wood as my eyes fell on my boy. He was sprawled over Archer’s chest, his little cheek pressed against Archer’s worn, light blue tee, his little thumb in his mouth. Archer’s lashes formed crescents against his much lighter skin, the last year or so out of the Arizona heat greatly diminishing his once golden-bronze tan. He had one hand on Noah’s butt so my child wouldn’t slip but both of them were fast asleep. I couldn’t help but indulge myself in the moment for a little while.

This is what I had wanted, so badly, for my son. For him to have a father, a man to look up to and who would look out for him. I thought that Grinder would have come around. I thought that his father would be that man eventually, but Grinder hadn’t come home and when things got so bad, and I’d gone to find him… I felt my eyes mist, but not from loss this time.

I could put up with Archer’s cold, his hatred of me, his caustic dislike… I could put up with being single and alone for the rest of my days, as long as he treated my son like he was now. I could do this. I could do this for as long as it took, for the rest of my life, as long as Noah had men to look up to. As long as my son had every idea of what brotherhood and family wassupposed to be.

For the first time since arriving here, in this strange town, so very far away from anything and anyone I’d ever known, I knew no fear and had no regrets. I stood in the doorway of Archer’s bedroom and drank every detail of this morning in. The light growing, and casting lines across the man and my boy through the slats of the blinds.

You can do this Melody. You have to… for him.I thought, and as I ever did, took strength from it, I took a picture, and I did what every mother before me had likely done… I went into the kitchen, forgot my tired, made coffee, and started breakfast like it was just any other day and I hadn’t just seen something that profoundly changed me, or mattered to me.

Chapter 10

Archer

I woke up with the boy on my chest and to the quiet sounds of Mel moving through the kitchen. My stomach growled and I looked down, but the boy was still out cold. Kids. They could sleep through a nuclear holocaust and this particular kid was no different.

I sat up slowly, carefully, and got up, taking Noah to his crib and laying him down. He didn’t so much as stir. Might as well have been comatose. When I turned to look, Mel was watching me over the stove, spatula in hand. I raised an eyebrow at her somber, almost sad, expression and realized – she looked like shit. Like she hadn’t slept in a fucking age. I didn’t comment on that, I just waited her out because it looked like she had something to say.

“You can treat me however you’d like,” she said softly, flipping the pancake she had going in the skillet. “As long as you don’t do it in front of him and as long as you treat him the way you just did, always… Am I clear?”

I frowned, “Where the fuck did that come from?” I asked.

She shook her head, “Never mind that, I just need to know, am I perfectly clear on this?”

Truth be told, her intensity was kind of freaking me out, so I nodded and when she raised her eyebrows I realized she wanted to hear it, or maybeneededto hear me say it out loud… “Yeah, Mel. You’re clear, I get you…”

“Thank you,” she uttered and flipped the pancakes she had going in the skillet onto a plate after a few heartbeats more.

I just wanted to get off this super fucking weird bent she was on, it was seriously creepy as fuck, so I asked, “Is there coffee?”

“Absolutely, still take it with cream and no sugar?” she asked and again I blinked. I hadn’t realized that she’d ever paid that much attention to anything that weren’t my brother Grinder’s dick.

“Yeah.”

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