Last Chance

Chapter 11:

Jamie and Sam come down at around 4:00 pm.

“Do you want to stay for dinner, Sam?” Joel asks.

“Sorry, I can’t. I have work,” Sam hastily explains.

Jamie says goodbye to Sam and closes and locks the door after he’s left.

“Did you enjoy your time with Sam?” Joel asks.

“Yeah, thanks for letting him come over,” he replies gratefully.

“You’re welcome,” I reply smiling gently.

“How did the appointment go?” he asks.

“I feel a bit better so who knows,” Joel replies probably not wanting to feed into his hope too much either.

“That’s good, I guess,” he replies. “Are there more appointments?”

“Next Sunday there’s another,” I answer. “He’ll have one a week for the next few months.”

“What about your honeymoon?” he asks.

“We can go after the treatments,” Joel replies. “We have to plan the wedding anyway, it’ll take awhile.”

Jamie nods and we have dinner together. The rest of the weekend passes without incidents, none of Joel getting headaches or getting dizzy and collapsing onto the floor. He gained a pound or two by Monday and didn’t look quite as pale anymore.

On Monday afternoon, Joel is sitting on the couch watching TV while I’m fixing up more of the computers Wyatt dropped off on Friday. Jamie was supposed to be home fifteen minutes to half an hour from now when I and Joel hear a knock on the door.

I and Joel glance at each other when another slightly louder knock sounds again. I set the laptop aside and get up to see who it is. I suspect Joel’s parents or Charlotte but it’s the two young kids from across the street.

They’re bundled up obliviously for the cold weather outside. The kids are talking to each other and one, the older one turns and looks around behind them back towards the street as if looking for someone. I decide to open the door because what harm could it do? Considering the kids came here and not their next-door neighbour’s house or someone they knew they must have had a good reason for knocking.

I open the door and look down at the kids curiously. They look up at me nervously before the older one opens their mouth to speak.

“Um…sir. Our house key broke in the lock. It’s cold out here, we were wondering if we could come inside?” the child looks inside unsure about his question.

The younger child holds up the snapped in half key, for proof, I guess.

“When do your parents get home?” I asked.

“At 4:30 pm,” the older one answers.

I guess I couldn’t leave them outside for the next forty-five minutes and since I had no way of contacting their parents, these kids looked too young to have their own cell phones, so I had to let them in. I just hoped they let me get a word in edgewise to explain why the children were in my house rather than in their own.

“Okay,” I reply.

I open the door more and let them in. They shuffle inside and I close the door behind them. The older of the two starts to remove their boots while the younger looks around still unsure of being in some stranger’s place, I guess that’s a good thing.

“What are your names?” I ask.

“Troye,” the older answers, placing his boots beside mine and Joel’s footwear.

“Nial,” the younger answers.

“Take your shoes off,” Troye tells Nial.

Nial sits down and removes his boots.

I take a step back into the living room where Joel is.

“Who is it?” he asks.

“The kids from across the street. Their key snapped in the lock,” I explained.

Troye and Nial came around the door into the living room.

“Hey,” Joel said. “I’m Joel and this is Luka,” he points to me.

“Do you want to watch TV?” I ask.

“Yes,” Nial says excitedly.

Troye shoots Nial a look.

“Please?” Nial continues more quietly.

Joel presses the guide and starts flipping to the kid’s channels. Nial sits down beside Joel and Joel starts inquiring about what the boy wants to watch. Troye watches them for a few seconds before sitting down.

“Do you want a snack?” I ask going into the kitchen.

“Sure,” Nial says not looking away from the TV show he and Joel have chosen, Wipeout, I think?

Troye eyes him again but this time he’s not paying attention, not that I expected these kids to have perfect manners anyway.

I walk into the kitchen and open up the cupboard and look at the snack options we have, we had a lot of jello thanks to Joel’s nausea and inconsistent hunger, some cookies, crackers, granola bars, etc.

I grab a pack of mini-cookies for each child and go back into the living room. I hand one pack to Nial and hold the other out to Troye expecting him to take it regardless of what his parents told him about taking food from strangers because one, it was sealed and two, it was cookies. What kid doesn’t like cookies?

He glances at the cookie pack and then up at me.

“You don’t want cookies?” I ask.

“No,” he replies looking away toward Nial maybe with a hint of jealousy.

I set the cookie pack aside on a side table and go to sit on the other side of Joel but a safe distance away, maybe picking up on what Troye was being so conscious about, maybe he knew or suspected we were gay.

Troye was most likely at that age where children are teased for being anything other than the norm of their part of the world. Maybe it was due to his parents, maybe that was why they’d avoided us since we moved here, or maybe it was due to his friends talking bad about minorities or bullying he’s endured. I felt bad for the kids that this was still the reality for kids nowadays even after gay marriage being legal for five years in this country.

I watch out the window for their parents’ car. Joel and Nial are laughing at the show and the people tumbling and being smacked around by the obstacle course into the water. The current Wipeout show ends fifteen minutes later and another starts. Troye is eyeing the cookie pack but I pretend not to pay attention.

Troye sits staring at the cookie pack for another fifteen minutes before he caves and picks it up and rips it open. He starts inspecting the cookies one by one on his lap, probably to see how many chocolate chips are in each cookie before he starts eating them from the one with the least chocolate chips to the most. It takes about two minutes for him to consume them. Their mother shows up about ten minutes later. Troye sees this and gets up. Joel bids goodbye to the children and the three of us get our boots back on. I open the door and let them out and follow them down my sidewalk and across the street to their house to explain the situation.

“Why aren’t you inside?” their mother asks.

“The key broke,” Troye explained. “None of the neighbours were home so we asked Luka if we could stay in his house until you got home.”

Nial holds up the broken key again. Their mother looks at me, I’m standing on the sidewalk not wanting to get too close in case this went wrong.

She walked down the driveway to the sidewalk. I mentally braced myself.

“Thank you for letting them inside. I guess I should have plans set up for them in this situation,” she says quietly.

“It’s fine, they’re good kids,” I replied pleasantly.

“Now I need to call a locksmith to fix the door,” she sighs. “What did you say your name was?”

“Luka,” I reply.

“Thank you, Luka. I’m Alexandria. Maybe you’d like to come over for dinner as a “thank you?” she replies.

I guess this was the moment of truth. I couldn’t exactly leave Joel alone to starve in our house well I got dinner.

“My boyfriend is sick, I usually make dinner for him. It’s not necessary but thanks and you’re welcome,” I reply nervously.

I said boyfriend instead of fiancé because fiancé is gender-neutral and probably would have gone over her head and she might have just invited us both to dinner without any preconceived notions and been surprised when I brought Joel instead of a woman.

“He can come, too,” she said without another beat.

Troye’s nervousness must have come from being in a stranger’s house or his classmates.

I hesitated.

“I’ll ask if he’s up to it,” I reply quietly.

“Okay,” she replies pulling out her phone to call the locksmith, “Thank you, again.”

We both wave to each other and then go our separate ways. She goes to her side gate probably to allow her children in through the back so they didn’t have to sit out in the cold anymore. I went back inside my house and into the living room once I removed my boots and coat.

“Everything go okay?” Joel asked, having already changed the channel from wipeout to some crime drama.

“She invited us to dinner as a thank you, I told her I had to ask if you were up to it,” I reply looking out the window back at their house.

“Sure, we’ll have to tell or bring Jamie, though,” he reminded me.

I wasn’t sure Jamie would appreciate the questions about our odd family if he came. Two gay guys, (who are in a relationship) and one teen who is too old to be their biological child living under the same roof was a little odd.

“Maybe just tell him, I’m not sure he’s ready to explain his situation to the neighbours,” I answer. “When do you want to go?”

“Maybe Wednesday?” Joel replies.

“Okay, I’ll go see if that works for her,” I reply and step back outside in just my boots without my coat this time to see the locksmith pulling into their driveway.

Alexandria opens the door to let the locksmith do his thing and steps past him to talk to me.

“Would Wednesday be okay?” I ask.

“Sure, that’s my day off. Are you guys okay with anything?” she asks.

“Yeah, we’re not picky normally unless Joel’s stomach acts up. In that case, he normally eats soup,” I reply not wanting her to see Joel as rude if his stomach was having a bad day that day.

“Do you mind me asking what he has?” she asks timidly.

If I didn’t tell her now she’d probably find out over the dinner conversation and it would just be awkward then so I decided to tell her now.

“He has a brain tumour,” I reply quietly.

“Is it cancerous?” she asks quietly.

“Yeah, it is,” I reply.

Nial is watching the locksmith with fain interest.

“Is there a cure?” she asks.

“Not really, he’s in a drug trial but we just started it so we don’t know if it’s working,” I answer.

“I hope he gets better,” she continues.

“I do, too,” I answer quietly.

“Where do you work?” she moves on.

I think she’s just making conversation at this point.

“I’m a computer tech, I fix computers,” I reply.

“What does Joel do?” she continues.

“He was a teacher at a middle school until he fell ill,” I answer.

“Do you have any kids?” she asks.

“No, we’re looking after Joel’s cousin right now though,” I explain. “He’s seventeen.”

I figured she’d seen Jamie coming and going from our house recently.

She seemed a little less willing to ask about why Jamie isn’t being looked after by his own parents.

“Are you enjoying the teenage phase?” she asks. “It’ll be interesting when my boys get there.”

“He’s actually a pretty good kid,” I reply.

I guess I had fewer things to worry about, like Jamie getting a girl pregnant or him disobeying us seeing as if we kicked him out he didn’t have many other options.

The locksmith had disconnected the doorknobs, and the one on the outside falls with a clang and rolls off the front step into the snow. He retrieves it from the snow and continues to install a new lock on the door.

“I have to get dinner ready for my boys, I’ll see you two on Wednesday, bye,” she replies.

“See you later,” I answer.

I walk back across the street to my house. Jamie is home by now and he’s brought Sam with him. But there’s something different with their demeanour.

They slink away upstairs at the sight of me.

I go into the living room to ask Joel what had happened.

“What’s up with them?” I question.

“Charlotte showed up at the school,” he replies. “She said he needed to come home but the legal age is seventeen so the principal and assistant principal said they couldn’t really do anything,” he explains.

I guess that was a good thing because now we didn’t have to worry about k********g charges.

“She just called me, too,” Joel continues holding up his phone with the alerts: 1 missed call and 1 new voicemail both from Charlotte. “That can’t be good.”

“She can’t legally do anything though, so, why call us? Just to leave empty threats?” I ask.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he replies calling his voicemail.

“Joel, I know Jamie is there, if you don’t tell him to come home I am reporting you to CPS for abuse, k********g, negligence and other things you could never dream of, I will wait forty-eight hours, if Jamie is not back in my house by Wednesday I will be calling CPS,” the ends abruptly there.

Charlotte just had to foil our dinner plans.

“I’m calling the lawyer and explaining things to him to make sure we’re in the clear,” Joel continues.

I sit down with him as he calls the lawyer. He talks the lawyer through the situation and what has been said, happened and threatened. He explained to Joel that if CPS or the police did show up, to let them see Jamie so they knew he was fine but to direct any further questions or if Charlotte showed up to direct her towards him in the future if they had questions or messages.

He told Joel to calm down, that since Jamie was over the legal age and had made his own decision to leave that we were pretty much in the clear. Joel expressed his concerns about Charlotte’s husband, (Jamie’s dad) working for the state police. He also told Joel that if he showed up to arrest either of us to call the local police as he had no authority to do so because we hadn’t done anything illegal.

After all that Joel calmed down but he wasn’t interested in dinner. I guess now it was a waiting game to see if Charlotte would do what she said. Sam left at around seven, and Jamie still seemed shaken.

“Don’t worry kid, we won’t let anything happen to you,” I inform him hoping to ease him.

Jamie probably didn’t have a lot of people that he trusted or at least not in his family anyway, and since those were the people he grew up around he probably had issues coming to trust new people like I and Joel who he’d just met.

“I know,” he replies watching Sam walk down the street.

He loved Sam I swear, considering he was his main support system until recently I didn’t blame the kid.

“We’re having dinner at the neighbours on Wednesday just so you know, you don’t have to come just so you’re not wondering where we are when you come home on Wednesday, if Joel didn’t already tell you,” I inform him.

“Okay,” he replies and turns to leave.

“Hey, Jamie,” I call him back.

I remembered I had some movie tickets that Joel and I had never used seeing as he normally couldn’t eat the food there and he never really felt well enough to go. They’d most likely expire if Jamie didn’t use them before Joel felt well enough to use them, too.

“Here, go with Sam or something,” I reply handing him the tickets.

“Thanks,” he replies.

He goes back to his room and I join Joel now in the bedroom for an early turn-in.