He Loves Him Read online

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Thank you. Do you want me to leave you in peace and disappear to my room or can I hang around out here?”

  “You can hang around,” I said. Having this conversation with my Dad was going to be nerve-racking, and maybe having Kit nearby would help ease that a little.

  “I’ll be in the kitchen then, if you need me,” he stood back up and started walking away, “oh and stop scowling at your phone like it personally insulted you.”

  “It did insult me,” I muttered as I looked back down at the screen. It wasn’t a bad phone. It was a great phone. It just didn’t have any personal touches to it yet. I had no pictures, no text history, nothing except my contacts which had been the only thing backed up on my phone. I missed my old phone’s background. The picture I had taken earlier of Kit after he just woke up to replace it was a good picture of him. It just wasn’t wallpaper worthy.

  The phone vibrated and then lit up in my hand. Incoming video call and my Dad’s contact flashed at me. I clicked answer.

  “Hey Dad,” I said, inwardly grimacing as I watched his eyes widen in concern.

  “What happened to you?” he asked immediately.

  “I got jumped in the parking lot the other day,” I said honestly as I looked down to my lap instead of at him. The look of concern on his face was too much. I had enough of that face from Kit and my friends.

  “Your phone?”

  “Yeah, my phone,” I replied.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

  “At the time I just didn’t have the energy,” I said.

  “And the day and a half since then?” he asked.

  I finally looked back up at him. “Didn’t want to bother you with it.”

  “For the record, telling me stuff like that will never bother me. I want to know when my boy’s hurt.”

  “I know. Sorry I didn’t tell you earlier,” I apologized.

  “You’re okay though?”

  “Yeah I’m okay. Jake and Jermaine showed up and stopped them. Jer looked me over and made sure I was okay.”

  “You didn’t go to the hospital?” he asked, concern flashing through his eyes again.

  “No, despite everyone here’s best efforts,” I said with a minor scowl, even Kit had tried to insist I go to the hospital, but, “I couldn’t Dad.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’d ask what happened,” I said. It should’ve explained everything, but apparently it didn’t.

  “Yeah, that’s what they’re supposed to do. You gotta explain to me, Rike, why that’s such a bad thing, because I don’t get it.”

  I glanced slightly away from the screen so that I didn’t have to look him in the eye when I said “It hurts Dad. It hurts to admit what happened. That they targeted me for who I am, for who I love. That hurts, worse than being beat.”

  He sighed, “Riker, I know I’ll never understand everything you boys go through with this, but you can’t just risk your physical well-being. I hear you, it hurts, and I don’t want you to have to go through that, but you could’ve had a concussion, or internal bleeding, or something else. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  “Yes,” I replied, feeling entirely admonished.

  “I’m sorry it happened, Rike. I’m sorry you had to go through that, and I’d give my life for it to never happen again, but if, god forbid, it does and you take a hit to the head promise me you’ll go get checked out. I can handle you not going to get your ribs checked or anything else if you don’t want to. I trust you to know when you’re hurt enough to need to get treatment for the rest of your body, but don’t take a chance with head injuries,” he pleaded with me.

  “I promise,” I said quietly.

  “Thank you. Now, you’re taking care of yourself, right? You’re not pushing yourself too hard or anything, are you?” he asked.

  “I’m taking care of myself, and Kit’s taking care of me. I’m not over here making myself suffer.”

  “Is Kit there right now?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Can you get him on for me?” he asked.

  I rolled my eyes then turned to Kit in the kitchen and called him over. He walked over behind the couch and leaned over, draping his arms over my shoulders.

  “Kit, is he taking care of himself?” Dad asked him.

  “Yeah, he’s being good,” Kit answered.

  “He’s not going out to play soccer or anything is he?”

  I huffed, but Kit chuckled and said, “No, just class and the apartment.”

  “Good,” Dad said.

  “Hello, I am right here,” I mumbled, not liking that suddenly I apparently wasn’t able to take care of myself. Which, okay, was fair. I had been needing a lot of help just getting around the last few days, but that didn’t mean I didn’t know what was or wasn’t a good idea for me to be doing in my current state.

  “Sorry Riker, I just had to be two hundred percent sure. Rike, I uh, I need to know…” he trailed off. I knew this was hard for him too, and he didn’t want to say anything that would upset me, but honestly I needed him to say what he wanted to say instead of censoring for me.

  “What do you want to ask me, Dad?”

  “Was it just a random attack or no?”

  “Not really, no,” I answered. The two guys hadn’t really known me, so I suppose in that sense it was random, but they had seen me before, they knew about me and Kit, so I doubted they just saw me standing there and decided to take the chance.”

  “What does that mean Riker? Did you know them?” he questioned me.

  “No, I didn’t, but…” I sighed and shook my head slightly. “It doesn’t matter Dad.”

  “It does matter,” he insisted. “If you can figure out who they are, you can press charges.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” I said firmly.

  “It’ll help, kid,” he said.

  “No,” I snapped. “No, I’m not talking about this.”

  “Okay. Okay Rike, okay. We don’t have to, but if you want to talk later, I’m here.”

  “I know,” I said quietly, feeling a tiny bit guilty for losing my cool at him.

  “Alright, well, I need to go. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “Bye, Dad,” I said with a faint smile.

  He smiled back at me. “Bye, Rike.”

  When the screen went blank, I just sat there staring at it. There was a weight growing behind my eyes and I was afraid that if I moved or said anything I would start crying and I wouldn’t be able to stop. I really didn’t want to cry. It was just that having said it out loud made all the emotions I was trying to ignore come back to the front. That it wasn’t just random. That there was a reason behind the attack. It wasn’t that I didn’t know those facts before, but none of us had acknowledged the fact since it first happened.

  “Ri? You okay?" Kit said softly. I must’ve been sitting there too long without realizing it, because he was kneeling in front of me again, this time looking up at me in concern.

  “When do we get to stop looking over our shoulders? When do we get to stop worrying about something happening to us?” I whispered, scared to say it any louder even though I didn’t understand why.

  Kit gently started running his hands up and down the sides of my calves. “I wish I knew, my prince. I wish I knew.”

  “We shouldn’t have to be scared because of who we are.”

  “No, we shouldn’t, but short of getting into politics I don’t know how to stop it.”

  I shut my eyes and ducked my head.

  “Hey, that doesn’t mean we have to let them stop us from living our lives. You know that as well as I do.”

  I did know that. I knew that this could be the last incident for the rest of my life, or it could happen a hundred times more. There was no way of knowing. We’d both gone through it before, and we both got back up and lived our lives. We had to. It was the only method of fighting back we had. It didn’t make things any easier though.

>   “I know,” I said. I felt a tear escape from beneath my eyelids. Trying to calm myself down I took a deep breath. It came out shuddering. Then the hands on my legs disappeared and Kit’s hands were framing my face, his thumb swiping the tear away.

  “I know you don’t want to cry, but you can. It’s okay,” he said.

  More tears spilled out and before I knew it, I was sobbing. Kit surged up and took me into his arms. It hurt a little, his arms were in just the wrong places and just a little too tight for my bruised body, but I didn’t care. The sobbing hurt too. In his arms though, the pain didn’t matter. I was safe and loved and that was enough. I could cry about everything that was wrong and that hurt me, and not have to worry about it because he was there. He was there to make sure I didn’t break.

  Chapter 32 - Kit

  January 24th, 2017

  It had been a few days since Riker had been attacked. He was doing better. He wasn’t grimacing every time he moved anymore, and he was walking without leaning on me or the furniture. Of course, every time he did move it was at half of what I would consider a normal speed. Fast or sudden movements still made him want to curl up into a ball to ignore the pain. But he was doing better.

  The bruising all over his body was probably at its worst as far as looks went. Whenever we got his shirt off and I saw the bruising I wanted nothing more than to throttle the guys responsible. It made me feel sick having to look at it all, knowing how much pain he was in. I wanted to wrap him up in fluffy blankets, hold him in my arms and never let go, so that I knew no harm could come to him. If only it was like when you’re a kid and all it takes to make it better is a kiss wherever you were hurt. I’d give anything for that to be true, but it wasn’t. Maybe I’d try, anyway.

  The water in my shower cut off and I shut my laptop off and put it away. A couple minutes later Riker came out and stretched out on the other half of my bed. He was only wearing his pajama pants, having taken to not putting a shirt on to avoid the extra movement and pain that came with it. I wish he did have a shirt on. The bruising was horrendous and even though I wasn’t looking at it for the first time it still made me sad and angry. That was it, I was going to kiss him better whether it worked or not.

  I inched down the bed just a little and started kissing every inch of bruised skin on his chest.

  “What are you doing?” Riker asked, amused.

  “Don’t worry, this isn’t going anywhere,” I looked up and assured him.

  “Good, because everything hurts too much, but I really didn’t think that’s what you were up to anyway,” he said.

  “This is going to sound stupid, but I just wanted to kiss it better,” I admitted.

  He chuckled a little. “What are we? Five?”

  Inside I was laughing at that and saying, ‘yes you are,’ but on the outside I was just smiling and saying, “Sometimes, I think we are.”

  “Well, by all means keep going.”

  “Is it working?” I asked.

  “No, but I like it,” he said.

  “Good,” I said and got back to kissing his chest. That lasted about ten minutes before he started getting cold and complained it hurt to shiver. I did in the end get him wrapped up in the fuzziest blanket we had in the apartment and curled up in my arms.

  “Ugh,” he groaned suddenly. “I left my phone in my room.”

  “Actually, I have it,” I said and rolled away just enough to snatch his phone off my nightstand. I rolled back to my previous position and handed it to him. He was looking at me, perplexed, as he took it, but once he unlocked the screen a giant smile crossed his lips and he looked up at me, eyes wide in wonder.

  “How did you do this? I thought it was lost forever,” he said in absolute awe.

  “Well turned out, with the help of Google, that your old phone was alive enough for me to salvage a couple of pictures off of it. Not many, and you got lucky that that was one of them,” I said.

  “Oh my god, Kit, thank you.” It was one of the sincerest thanks I had ever heard from him, towards me or anyone.

  “You’re welcome, Ri.”

  He wormed his way in even closer to me and stared back down at his phone, smiling like he was the happiest man alive. Maybe he was. He loved that picture probably more than most people would be attached to a picture. At least he’d stop scowling at his phone. I watched him in amusement. Whatever he originally wanted his phone for was clearly forgotten.

  Chapter 33 - Riker

  October 23-25th, 2012

  “Riker Alexander Shahayer!”

  I sighed and dropped my backpack at the bottom of the stairs. This was breaking a record. Usually, I made it up the stairs at least before she started yelling for me. I walked into the kitchen to find her flipping through a cookbook.

  “What, Mom?”

  “What happened to your face?” she said and took a step towards me to gently prod around my eye where I was sporting yet another black eye.

  I stepped away. “Connected with a fist. I’m fine. What do you want?”

  She went to the freezer and pulled out an ice pack and tossed it at me. I caught it and held it to my eye. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t really need it, but it was easier than arguing about it.

  “Listen, your father and I can’t keep watching you get treated like this. You keep coming home bruised and beat up Riker, and it’s only getting worse,” she said.

  “I can handle it,” I said.

  “I’m sure you can, but we can’t risk it. You might get really hurt, and it’s our job to take care of you. So, we decided that once the semester is over, we’re transferring you to Oakley Prep,” she said in a tone that meant there would be no negotiating on the manner. Didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try anyway.

  “No,” I said.

  “It’s already settled,” she said.

  “No, I’m not going,” I stressed.

  “We’ve already talked to the school, they have a spot for you. We made a decision, you’re going.” She kept saying we, but dad wasn’t here, and that usually meant I still had a chance of winning.

  “You mean you made a decision. Dad wouldn’t do this to me. If he had agreed to this then you would’ve waited until he was home to tell me.”

  “Riker,” she started, but I didn’t let her finish.

  “No,” I said. I threw the ice pack onto the counter and turned to walk away.

  “Riker, get back here!”

  Choosing to ignore her I kept walking, only stopping long enough to pick up my backpack, all the way up to my room. I locked the door behind me knowing full well that would get me in trouble later. Thus started my three days of not speaking to my mother, and not answering my dad’s phone calls. I talked to Jordan briefly over the phone until he brought the topic of the transfer up and I realized he was basically fishing for my parents. Ashley knew better than to try. And in my effort to not talk to anyone I spent a lot of time sneaking around the house to avoid Mom, which meant I was skipping out on meals here and there and basically living on snacks. She would try to talk to me through my door, yelled a few times even, and really didn’t make anything better.

  By the end of day three, I was curled up in my bed doing my math homework when suddenly there was a knock on my door.

  “Riker, can you open the door, please?”

  Well, shit. This was a plot twist. Dad wasn’t supposed to be home for another three days. He hadn’t come home early from a trip since I had appendicitis a few years back. Honestly though, it wasn’t about making them feel bad or annoying them or anything because I wasn’t happy. I just wanted to be left alone.

  “Kiddo, you know I have a key to your door, right?” he called softly through the door.

  When I didn’t answer after a few seconds, I heard the doorknob rattle. I put my homework off to the side and rolled over to face the wall, my back to the door. When it finally clicked open, I tugged my blanket up further and held it tight. The bed dipped.

  “I’m gonna be honest with you here,
Rike. I don’t know what to say right now. Your mom called me because she was worried about you, and I came back because honestly, I am too, but now that I’m here I don’t know that I can make this better for you. I know you want me to tell you that you don’t have to change schools. And I know you want me to tell you that it wasn’t my idea, but I can’t. I don’t know what to tell you, I really don’t. And even if I did, I can’t force you to listen, just like I can’t force you to talk to us. All I can say is that I love you son, and if you want to talk, or listen, or if you just don’t want to sit by yourself anymore then I’m here.”

  He stood up and started to walk away. Then he said, “Dinner’s on your desk if you want it.” When my door finally shut again, I rolled over to see the plate of food on my desk. It was stir-fry, one of my favorite meals Mom cooks. Reluctantly, I climbed out of bed and sat down at my desk to eat. I was really hungry, and normally I would’ve enjoyed that meal a lot, but this time my mind was just distracted. All I could think of was what Dad had just said.

  He all but admitted he had agreed with the idea of transferring me. That was the one thing I had been counting on, that he would be on my side. He was always on my side. Normally he always knew what to say to me, normally he wouldn’t come home early for something short of a hospital trip. Even after I finished eating and went back to my homework, I was still thinking about it. After an hour I decided I didn’t really want to think about it anymore and that yeah, maybe the only way to get the answers were to go and talk to him. So, I headed downstairs not even sure if he was still awake or not. There was a good chance he wasn’t if he just got back from a trip.

  I went to the kitchen first to drop off my dish only to freeze once I walked in. Mom was still in there doing dishes. For the first time since the whole thing started, she didn’t say anything to me.

  “Is Dad still—” I started, but she cut me off by stepping forward and taking my dirty plate from me.

  “—He’s in his office.” I thought she’d be mad at me, but there wasn’t a single hint of that in her voice. I really didn’t know what to do with that information though, so I just sort of smiled shyly then walked back out and towards the office. The door was open, it almost always was, but I could hear him on the phone. I curled my arms around my middle and stepped in anyway. He looked up immediately.