Chapter 6-01
1258 Words
Chapter 6-01
"I'm sorry, Joel."
The worlds lingered in the air, filling the space between us. He looked up, his eyes gleaming in the artificial glow of the kitchen light. I couldn't tell what he was thinking; in a millisecond, more emotions played across his face than those in the entire time I had known him. Eventually, he sighed.
"You were stupid last night, Asa," he said, flipping the cover of his puzzle book, pushing it into the middle of the table.
"I'm sorry," I said repeated. A lump welled in my throat, the overwhelming sensation of letting him down filling me. "I shouldn't have called you, I should have-"
"Don't be ridiculous," Joel cut me off. "I meant you were stupid for getting that drunk in the first place. You were outside when I found you. Do you know the things that could have happened to you if you started wandering the streets like that? God, Asa, you..." He shook his head, trailing off.
"Oh." A tiny frown furrowed my brow. "So you're not mad cuz I was annoying?"
I didn't remember much from last night. Snippets and flashes. I remember waking up scared and alone and curling up at the bottom of the sofa where Joel was sleeping. I remembered some of the car journey. The rest was more like a fading dream that I couldn't quite hold onto.
A ghost of a smile curved the edges of Joel's lips; he looked tired and weary but the expression had his usual mischievousness seeping back into his face. He was twenty-five but his face had the ability to look either younger or older depending on his expression.
"No. You were actually quite amusing. You're like this giant baby when you're drunk. I think you even called me Daddy at one point," he laughed.
I didn't. I froze. I hadn't, had I?
I racked my brain trying to think of when but it came up blank. I knew what I was. I knew what I liked. I had come to accept that maybe I would never come to have a Daddy of my own; it was my most guarded secret. It was great in a way because it kind of hid in plain sight. The way I was, even when I slipped, a lot of people didn't notice.
"Were... were you a good Daddy to me?" I tried to joke, eyes dropping down to the mug of tea in front of me. It was milky and sweet, just the way I liked it. I had thrown up a lot when I had woken up and the breakfast Joel had made me, though I had to force myself to eat it, had really helped. The shower I had helped, too.
Joel didn't answer straight away. The smile had slipped from his face a little and a considering twist had pulled his face; his brow had burrowed and his head tilted.
"Do you like..." He trailed off, shaking his head.
"Do I like what?" I asked.
"I have a brother," Joel said, almost hesitantly.
I blinked then smiled. He already knew that I only had one sibling but since we were sharing, I said, "I have a sister."
He smiled then scowled, shaking his head once more. "I just... I don't see him that much. He doesn't live around here. I moved away a few years ago so I only see him at Christmas and sometimes birthdays."
"I live with my sister. I see her all the time."
"Last time I visited, I found out something about my brother."
"Was it that he had a pet caterpillar? I've always wanted one of those... but... but I wanna pet dino more. I wanna be like the cute one from Jurassic World and have pet raptors."
"Your head must be an utterly exhausting place to be," Joel commented dryly. "No. Last time I visited Lucien I found out—accidentally—that he liked... he liked acting younger than he was."
He looked at me expectantly, like his words were meant to make sense to me. "That's... nice?"
Joel sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. "I found baby stuff. He likes being treated like a baby by his boyfriend. He calls him Daddy... he tried to explain it to me, said that he was something called a Little, but he was my brother so I found it weird and didn't really... are you like my brother, Asa?"
I didn't answer right away. I sat there, staring at him wide-eyed. I had never met another little before. In fact, I wasn't even convinced that they were real; part of me was wondering if the Internet had tricked me and it was a super-extended April fools joke and I was the only one ever. I knew that wasn't the case. I knew that my mind was just being stupid but that was the way it felt sometimes.
"Can... can I meet your brother?" I asked at last, already trying to picture what he was like. Did he like dinos too? Did he have ten toes like I did? Did he like sippy cups? I wanted one of those but I wasn't sure how to smuggle one home. I could explain my dummy, but not that.
"Do... do I take that as a yes?" Joel asked hesitantly. I froze a little. I had answered in a way that had completely skirted over his question, but at the same time kind of gave the answer away.
"Do you hate me now and not want to work with me? Are you gonna tell Graham that he has to fire me and Kyle and Florence that they can't be my friends?"
"I need to find a way to put you into slow motion," Joel grumbled, ragging his hand through his dark hair. "I'm not going to tell anybody, okay? I'm not going to stop working with you. I just need you to... do you have a... do you have anybody to look after you?"
"Asa looks after Asa."
"Then Asa needs to look after Asa better," Joel said. "You need to consider your health and your safety. You shouldn't have drunk as much as you did last night. You were in a strange place with people you barely knew; you needed to be able to think clearly enough to know how you were going to get home."
"I didn't know how much I was supposed to drink," I admitted. "I'd never done it before—well, my mom let me sip some of her wine when I was little but that doesn't count—I just drank what Flo gave me to drink. It tasted sweet and nice so I drinked more."
"Florence should have known better," he grumbled. "But why would she?" he then asked, more to himself.
"I didn't know that it would make me feel like that, Joel. Or make me that sick. I don't want to be sick like that again."
Joel nodded. "Next time they ask you to drink with them, you tell them no, okay? Not unless I go with you. They obviously don't care whether you're safe or not."
"And you'll stop me from drinking too much so I don't get sick?"
Joel nodded.
"And you promise you don't hate me?"
"I promise, kid," he said. "I care about you. I haven't known you long but I don't want to see you getting hurt because you're making bad choices."
"You can help me make good choices," I offered, beaming at him.
Silence.
- Writer
