Page 62 of Inescapable Ties
He was hard to read today. I couldn’t tell if he was amused or upset.
“Really? It looks like you’re thinking really hard about something.”
“I was just zoning out,” I lied.
I had to sit on this information for now. It was too soon to decide; I had to wait longer and weigh the pros and cons.
“Why are you lying to me again, Jaws?”
“Huh?”
“The other day, when I picked you up from your parents’ house. You were keeping something from me,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “And now you’re lying to me again. Is it about the same thing?”
Frick. He could tell how upset I was over finding the symbol. Not that I had been good at hiding it, but I had hoped it would go unnoticed.
I had planned on keeping the information about Emilio’s mother to myself, but now I had to spin the conversation as far away from that as possible. For some reason, I didn’t want Emilio to know about the symbol. He would probably never let me near another abandoned building again, and I wasn’t even sure what it meant yet.
“Well,” I hesitated, really trying to sell it. “I sort of got nosy.”
“And?” he said.
“I went looking for information about your mother.”
His eyes widened slightly, surprise flashing in his gaze before it quickly turned into a steeled look. His mouth tightened and the jovial atmosphere that was present moments ago seemed to have evaporated.
“Jaws, why would you do that?” he asked, his voice laced with an emotion I couldn’t identify. It wasn’t anger though, or at least not entirely.
I stared at him for a moment, my heart pounding hard in my chest. This wasn’t the reaction I had been expecting. I was expecting shock perhaps, maybe even some anger, but this... this felt different.
“I... I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m sorry, Emilio. My curiosity got the better of me.”
He didn’t say anything for a while, seeming to ponder on his thoughts. His silence was disconcerting, and the room felt too quiet for comfort.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” He finally asked, his voice cold and distant.
I swallowed hard, feeling the lump in my throat. This was the moment of truth. Do I tell him about his mother’s death? Or do I keep that to myself, protecting him from the pain?
“I found…some information,” I said, purposely not revealing everything.
There was another long pause. At first, I thought Emilio might not ask any more questions. I thought he would choose to accept what he knows of his mother and move on.
“And?”
Feeling a knot tighten in my stomach, I tried to break the news as gently as possible. “She died, Emilio. Looking at the date, it must have been right after she left.”
His face was a mask, the playful glint in his eyes gone. His jaw set as if he physically braced himself against the weight of my words.
Did he want comfort? Did he want space? I wasn’t sure. This had been my fear - that telling him would cause more pain than relief.
“I think,” I said, at the severe risk of putting my foot in my mouth. “She was going to come back for you. The day she died was so close to the day she left.”
A myriad of emotions flickered across Emilio’s face before he closed his eyes, his fingers clenching into fists at his sides. He was silent again, a silence that filled the room and hung heavily in the surrounding air.
“I see,” he said at last, his voice strained. He took a deep breath, opening his eyes again to look at me. There was a new depth in his gaze, a mixture of sadness and raw vulnerability that tugged at my heart.
“I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear, Emilio,” I said softly, reaching out tentatively to place my hand on his arm. He didn’t pull away, his skin warm under my touch. “And I’m sorry for putting my nose where it doesn’t belong.”
Emilio managed a half-hearted smile, an attempt to reassure me more than anything else. “It’s okay, Jaws,” he said, though I could hear the tremor in his voice. “I always knew she wasn’t coming back. It’s nice knowing that if things had turned out differently, she may have come back for me.”
