Page 57 of Flagrant Foul
I want to take him in my arms and hold him, and I want to fly to Alabaster right the fuck now and kick the shit out of his father. “I’m sorry, Sev. I didn’t know.”
“It’s not your fault. I didn’t want you to know, so I went out of my way to make sure you didn’t.” He smiles wistfully. “When I first started coming over to your house, I couldn’t believe how different it was from mine. It took me a really long time to trust the status quo, and especially to trust your dad. I remember this one time he got home from work, and your mom had been out and about, and she’d done a big grocery shop. There were bags and food all over the kitchen counter when he got home. I felt that…”
He spreads a hand over his chest and digs his fingers in, clawing at his heart. A lifetime of fear and uncertainty accurately represented in a single hand movement. “At my house, my dad would get super pissed if there was no food in the fridge… But he'd also get pissed if he saw a ton of food out because that meant my mom had been spending ‘his’ money. I knew it was weird and fucked up on some level, but I guess I’d never really given it much thought. It was just the way it was, you know? Anyway, your dad got home that day, walked into the kitchen, ruffled Nate’s hair, gave your mom a kiss, and said, ‘Wow, Tish, you gotsomuch done today. I don’t know what we’d do without you.’”
He laughs ruefully, and it’s the emptiest, loneliest, worst sound in the world. I want to reach for him, take his hand and hold on as tightly as I can, but I don’t because I know this moment is important and significant to him. There’s a heaviness in my chest that lets me know that, for him, it was a crossing. A watershed moment.
“It blew my mind,” he says, “because it was so far removed from anything I’d ever experienced. I didn’t know how to react. It happened years ago, but I still think about it randomly sometimes. You know that stool Nate likes in the kitchen? The one near the window?” I nod. “Well, Nate was sitting on it, and when your dad stopped talking, he said, ‘Thanks, Momma, I love you.’”
He smiles to himself in genuine amusement, but more than that, in deep, true fondness. “The funny thing was, Iknewhe was going to say it. I knew it before he evenopened his mouth because that’s one of the things I love about Nate. He’s predictable. It sounds like an insult, or that it makes him boring or something, but it doesn’t. To me, it’s the highest compliment I could ever give anyone. Nate is always the same. He’s steady. I know exactly what to expect from him, and heneverlets me down.”
We’re both quiet, and I watch motionlessly as Sev worries a seam of the couch. He uses the nails of his forefinger and thumb and a quick, picking motion. He doesn’t do it hard enough to make the seam come undone. Just hard enough to give him something to hold on to.
He smiles at me and shrugs, eyes a dark mass of rippling shadows. “Nate says I’m an elephant.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know those stories about captive elephants, right? The ones where they take a baby elephant and chain it to a big post. The baby elephant fights and struggles and tries to get free, but it can’t because it’s small and the post is big. Eventually, it gives up. Time passes. The elephant gets bigger, and the post stays the same. By the time the elephant is fully grown, the post is insignificant in comparison to the size and strength of the elephant. It could easily push it over and escape, but it doesn’t because it doesn’t think it’s possible.”
I’ve heard the elephant story before, and I passionately hate it as a story about elephants, but I hate it ten times more as part of Sev’s story.
He places his hands neatly in his lap and looks down at them. “I never raised a hand to my dad, d’you know that? Not once. Not to defend myself, not to stop him, not to attack him, and God knows he fucking deserved it. I was half a head taller than him and a professional hockey player by the time I left home, and I was still scared of him.”
“You’re not supposed to attack your father, Sev. It’s not a weakness that you didn’t. It’s how it’s meant to be. We’re not made to be like that.”
“I know, and I get what you’re saying, but Ishould’vebeen made like that because it was required of me. I was supposed to fight back, and instead, I ran. Do you remember how I used to crash at your house all the time?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that was usually when my dad had gone on a dark bender. That’s what I call it. A dark bender. A light bender is fall-down drunk but happy. A dark one is violent. When it was dark, I’d try to stay home for as long as I could for my mom, but when it got really bad, I’d bail and go to your place. After a couple of weeks, my dad would notice I was gone, and he’d come over anddrag me home. I was so fucking embarrassed by him that I went with him quietly, so he wouldn’t cause a scene. It was just how it always was. During my senior year, things had been particularly hairy, and I’d been crashing in Nate’s room for a while. There were bruises on my back when I got there, but after a few days, I thought they were gone, so I took my shirt off in front of him.”
He stops worrying the seam on the sofa and starts on the cuticle of his thumb instead.
I try to keep a handle on my face, but I’m not sure if I’m successful. For me, the thought of someone hurting Sev now, as an adult, is bad enough. It’s enough to make my skin crawl. To wake a dangerous fury in me. The thought of it happening in his own home, when he was a child, makes me feel physically ill.
“I'll never forget how Nate looked when he saw them,” he says. “I don’t know how to describe it other than to say he started to, like,vibrate. He went white. I tried to explain it away, obviously. I was used to making excuses from having to change in locker rooms and all that. I had a few go-to explanations, and I gave Nate a bunch, but he didn’t buy it. That whole day, he was quiet. He was being weird. It threw me because I’d never seen him like that, and like I said, Nate’s predictable. It’s his thing. He stayed really close to me that day atschool and answered when I spoke to him, so I knew he wasn’t mad at me, but he was so…other. It freaked me out. On the way home from school, instead of going to your house, he drove to mine. I tried to talk him out of it as soon as I realized what he was doing. Obviously, seeing my dad on a dark bender was the last thing I wanted for him, or for myself. Until then, Natekind ofknew my home life wasn’t great, but he didn’tknow, know. He definitely hadn’t seen anything like it in real time, if you know what I mean. Anyway, we got there, and I was shitting bricks doubly because I knew for sure my dad would be at his absolute worst, and I knew Nate would never see me in the same way again.
“I unlocked the door, and we went in, and my dad immediately started on me. ‘Where have you been? We needed you here. Don’t you care about your mother?’ All the usual shit. He wasn’t expecting to see Nate with me, as Ineverbrought people home with me, so he was taken aback when he saw him. He kind of gaped and took a breath, and that was all it took. We were in the entrance hall, and space was tight, so Nate had to get really close to him to get between us, but he did it. Fast.
“He didn’t even touch my dad, Tee. He just looked at him, and I swear to God, the threatradiatedoff him. He kind of sucked the air out of the room. He took allthe power my dad had ever had and crushed it with his mind. My dad’s eyes went really big, like he knew what was happening, but he didn’t move or say anything. He knew he was in danger and his lizard brain took over. He froze. And he was right. He was in danger. Nate didn’t touch him. He didn’t need to. All he did was talk. Really quietly. Really calmly.Reallyclearly. He said, ‘Touch him again, and I’ll kill you.’
“My dad jerked like he’d been shocked but didn’t do a thing to defend himself. He just stood there, gawking.” Sev tries for a laugh but can’t quite get there. “I guess people have an instinctive way of knowing when a threat is real because, after that, Nate asked me if I wanted to get any of my things and waited in the hall with my dad while I packed. They didn’t say another word to each other. Afterward, Nate stopped at Mo’s and got me a Pepsi, and then we went to your place, and I stayed there until I graduated.”
“Did it work? Did your dad leave you alone after that?”
“Yeah, it worked. It worked for fucking sure. My dad might be an ass, but he’s an ass that likes being alive. I haven’t spent much time at home since then. A day or two here and there during college to check on my mom, and I went back a couple of times the year I went pro, andhe was fine to me then. Drunk, but fine. I haven’t been back in years, but I’m pretty sure he won’t try that shit on me again. He’s a dick and a bully, and like all bullies, he’s a coward. It’s over for me with him, but not for my mom. She’s still there, and I live with that every day.”
The room falls silent.
It’s easily the most I’ve ever heard Sev talk in one sitting, and even the air around him seems to be in shock about it. I feel a million things at once. Deep, terrible empathy that he had to live through this. Violent, furious rage that men like Sev’s dad exist and treat their families like this. Helpless, powerless dismay that his mom is still there, still living in that life.
But mostly, I feel gratitude. Endless gratitude and admiration that my brother, even at seventeen, was more of a man than most men will ever be. I’m grateful he and Sev found each other, and even though it’s made me feel left out and less than more times than I can count over the years, I’m so fucking grateful they have each other.
“Tee,” Sev says, looking at me and letting me see all the things. Things he’s proud of and things he’s ashamed of. Things he keeps hidden and doesn’t talk about. Things he wishes were different but can’t change. My heart clenches again, and this time, it’s not for him. It’s because I know the next thing he says is going to hurt. “This thing with you and me…it’s not that you’re crazy or imagining it. It’s real. It exists, but other things exist too.”
I swallow down a sob. “Like what?”
“Like, when I told Nate I was bi, he didn’t say, ‘It’s cool, bruh, as long as you know I don’t like you like that,’ like most straight guys do. He hugged me really tightly and said, ‘I love and support you, bud, always… Just don’t fuck with Teddy.’”
