He Loves Him Read online

  “I’m going to have to call you back later… thanks… bye,” he said to whoever he was talking to then hung up. I sunk into the chair across his desk and bent one of my legs up as well. For a few seconds I stared at my knee and he just sat there silently in return.

  Then finally I said, “It’s not easy being a parent is it?”

  He huffed, amused, and said, “No it isn’t, but we sign up for the hard stuff when we decide to be parents.”

  “I don’t think you signed up for dealing with this particular brand of problems,” I muttered.

  “I did, Riker. I signed up for every possibility the universe could have ever thrown at me. The universe gave me you and I wouldn’t change that for the world. I might not like what’s happening with you, but I accept the fact that I have to help you through it.”

  “But I didn’t ask for help.”

  “I know you didn’t,” he said softly.

  “Then why did you agree to send me to Oakley?” I asked, desperate to understand how he could betray me like that.

  “Because this time, helping you means making sure that nothing can happen. I know you can handle everything that’s been happening to you so far. I do believe that. And maybe nothing any worse than that will happen to you, but it could, and no matter how strong or brave or capable you are, things can still happen. My worst nightmare, Riker, is losing you or your sister, and unfortunately the reality is that there is a greater risk of that happening to you. I can’t take that risk. I can’t just wait and hope that the people who are only shoving you into lockers now won’t decide they dislike who you are enough to make my worst nightmare a reality. I can’t protect you from everyone in the world who would want to hurt you, but I can protect you from these people. So, if I can do that, if I can lessen that risk, then I have to. I don’t like that it’s going to make you unhappy. In fact, I hate that, and I’m sorry I’m doing that to you, but I have to. Your mom and I have to.”

  I rested my forehead on my knee and threaded my fingers through my hair. It wasn’t that I had never thought about that before. I had—I wasn’t stupid. It was just that I had never heard either of my parents say they were scared because of all this. Everything they were going through for me, because of me. I had never really thought of any of that before. And that sudden realization had me starting to sob.

  My Dad was out from behind his desk and kneeling in front of me before I knew it. He gently pulled my leg back down so that he could see my face. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

  “What for?” he asked. “None of us are mad at you for how you handled the last few days.”

  “No. It’s all my fault. You all have to worry about me and jump through hoops, because of me. If I was just… I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I said and started sobbing again. He folded me into his arms. I tucked my head into the crook of his neck the way I used to when I was real little. He slid his hand up to cradle my head there and held onto me as strong as he could as I shook in his arms.

  “Listen to me. It’s not your fault. Not in any way, shape or form. There’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing wrong with who you are. Just because some of the world is full of hatred and not accepting doesn’t mean you aren’t perfect. It’s not your fault people think the way they do. You’ve never cared about what other people thought before. Please, don’t start now. Their thoughts don’t matter okay? Never apologize for who you are. Not to me, not to anyone. We love you just the way you are, and we will gladly jump through millions of hoops for you if we have to. That will never change, no matter what, we will always love you. You’re never alone, okay? You’re never alone, and you’re always loved.”

  I nodded minutely against him and clutched at the back of his shirt. I just knew that I was still going to be crying for a while, and if that was the case then I wanted to cry in his arms where it was safe.

  “I love you, kid. I love you,” he said softly and earnestly. That was the last thing either of us said for fifteen minutes while we waited out my sobs. Eventually I calmed down though and pulled back to quietly ask, “Stay home for a while?”

  “Yeah.”

  Maybe I really didn’t need him there. There wasn’t anything he could do between now and the end of the semester anyway, and I had been doing fine up until this point on my own. Except, now that he was here, now that I had those thoughts and he said everything he did, now I didn’t feel too great, and having him around would make me feel better. I had a feeling that was really the only help, the only comfort I was going to have until I came to terms with switching schools and everything else.

  Chapter 34- Riker

  January 25th, 2017

  “Kit?” I called out. There was no response. That was concerning. I walked to his room and pushed the door open the rest of the way.

  There were papers all over the place, like a tornado had come through. He had his hands in his hair, rocking back and forth, sitting cross-legged in the middle of his bed surrounded by textbooks and his computer. He was hyperventilating.

  Rushing forward, only slowing long enough to relocate his laptop to his nightstand and shove some of his books aside, I climbed up onto the bed in front of him. I placed a hand on the back of his neck and urged him to lower his head until he was bent forward with the top of his head connected to my chest.

  “Breathe Kit. Deep breaths. You’re okay, just keep breathing.” I kept up the litany of words, while I gently massaged his neck and ran my other hand up and down his spine. It was a long couple of minutes, but he started breathing normally again. One of his hands found its way to my thigh and he lifted his head up to look me in the eyes.

  “So, that’s what a panic attack feels like,” he said.

  “Yeah, unfortunately. You okay?”

  He nodded. I didn’t entirely believe him. He was still shaking a little, and there was a hint of fear in his eyes. He didn’t let me bring any of that to attention though. “Thank you, by the way. How did you know what to do?”

  “Panic attacks are a part of the fabric of private school,” I said. I reached a hand up and weaved my fingers in and out of his hair.

  “Well thank God, I never went to one of those, right?” he said as he turned to reach for his laptop. I grabbed hold of his arm and stopped him before he could grab it.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, no you don’t,” I said.

  “I have to finish all this, Riker,” he said and tried to pull his arms out of my grasp.

  “I know, and I promise you will get it all done tonight, but,” I said as I manhandled him into my lap, “you just had a panic attack. You need to take a break.”

  “I don’t have time for a break.” He was trying to pry my arms away from his stomach.

  “I get it, I do, but believe me if you keep going right now, you’ll just keep breaking down. You have to stop for a bit. You will finish everything, I promise you, but right now you’re going to take a break alright. You trust me?”

  He settled suddenly and said, “Of course.”

  I smiled, squeezed him a little, and kissed his neck.

  “Come on, we’re going to the living room.” I climbed off the bed, keeping hold of one of his hands, and then pulled him after me.

  I was sure he was going to feel exhausted in another minute or two. Panic attacks like that had a way of sapping up all of your energy. The best thing for him was going to be to get a little bit of sleep in if he had to do hours’ worth of work still, so I led him to the couch, picking up the remote from the coffee table as I went, and sat down in one corner.

  “Lie down,” I said.

  He didn’t hesitate before lying down across the couch, resting his head in my lap, and facing the TV. I draped one arm over his chest, and he reached one hand up to hold onto me. I switched the TV on to the cooking channel then relaxed back into the couch. Thankfully, Beat Bobby Flay was on. I picked the channel for Kit, generally I found the channel boring, but this was one of the few shows I genuinely e
njoyed.

  “Lucky you,” he said smugly. What was he a mind reader now? I spread my fingers across his chest and rubbed a little. He held on tighter to my wrist. I smiled, feeling him relax even further against me as he said it and hearing the tiredness seep into his voice. “Do you want a blanket?” I asked quietly.

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  My plan was to keep him there for no more than an hour. I was hoping he’d sleep for at least half of that. We slipped into a relaxed silence. He laughed a couple of times at the jokes the contestants were making. Then ten minutes later he released my wrist and carefully rolled over. He wormed one of his arms behind my back and pressed his face into my stomach, then he was asleep. I smiled, waited five minutes, and then changed the channel to sports.

  Chapter 35 – Kit

  January 25th, 2017

  Riker had finished the French flashcards and moved on to coloring my geography maps for me. He was sprawled out on my bed surrounded by colored pencils and various maps. His inner child was showing again, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen him more concentrated on a piece of schoolwork than he was with that coloring. I kind of felt guilty about that.

  “You know you really don’t have to stay. You’ve already done enough work to make up for the hour you took away from me.” It was my work. It was my problem to sort out how to get it all done, not his.

  “I said I would help all night if that’s what it took for you to finish everything, so I’m staying.”

  “Riker, seriously, you can go if you want. You hate doing schoolwork.”

  “Seriously Kit, I’m going to stay. Now, what can I do next?”

  I sighed and gave him my chemistry lab report to proofread while I moved onto my history paper. It wasn’t long before he had discovered three glaringly bad mistakes and had to work me through fixing them. It was nine pm when we had finally worked through all the chemistry issues and he dragged me out of the room again, this time to eat something, because somehow, we had both forgotten to eat dinner up until that point.

  Then we were back in my room working on the history paper again.

  I sighed heavily thinking about how much more work I still had to do. “I’m not going to finish all this. I’m twenty pages short and its due first thing in the morning and I still have that photography project to finish.” It wasn’t like I had procrastinated on any of this. It was just that I had been working a lot of shifts recently, and half these assignments had been handed out in the last couple of days. Everything had been under control, and then it hadn’t been anymore. I really, really didn’t like when I didn’t have my life under control.

  “You’ll be fine, you’ve got plenty of time,” Riker said.

  I scoffed. “By your standards, maybe.”

  He smirked playfully and said, “Well lucky for you, I’m still here to help.”

  He took my books and set to work on finding relevant examples and quotes for me to use while I carefully crafted my main points. He had cleared all the other work and notes off my bed and was laid out on it. The stack of books was on one side of him and I was sitting cross-legged next to him. His head was just barely touching my thigh as he read and marked pages of the books. Eventually he had, magically as far as I was concerned, gone through all the books and was now reading off material to me whenever I needed it. I would tell him what I was trying to get across in whatever section of the paper I was in and he would instantly pull a book back out from the stack and flip to the perfect example out of all the ones he had marked.

  Occasionally, he would get stuck on how to phrase something or how to connect two sections of the paper or two ideas and he would ramble off the perfect sentences without having to think for more than a couple seconds. It was during one of these ramblings of his that I thought how amazing it was that he could do all this perfect work and that he was perfectly content and determined to be there doing that work because it was for me, but if it was his own work the situation would be far from the same.

  “Earth to Kit,” Riker said snapping me from that train of thought.

  “What?”

  “Did you hear anything I just said to you?”

  “No, sorry,” I said.

  “Why are you smiling?” he asked.

  “It’s nothing,” I said then leant down to kiss him. “Will you repeat what you said, please?”

  Riker just affectionately nuzzled my thigh for a second before repeating his earlier statement for me to type down. Somewhere along the lines he started getting restless and kept moving around and changing position until he settled for lying next to me on his stomach head propped up on his arms and whatever book he had at the time open in front of him.

  “How much more do you need?” he asked at some point.

  I quickly checked my page count, amazed out how fast I was working with his help. Normally, this long of a paper would take me days to finish. “Just three more pages.”

  Without lifting his head to look at me he brightly said “See, you’ve got plenty of time to finish this then do whatever else you have. What else do you have?”

  “I need to finish that photography project and I have some French worksheets.”

  He said smoothly switching to the language with a near perfect accent, “Combien?”

  “Cinq,” I replied in my own fumbling accent.

  “Is that it?” he said sounding completely bewildered by the fact that I thought it was a lot.

  I chuckled and reached over to run my fingers through his hair. “Yeah that’s it,” I said in complete awe of his ability to make everything seem so minor.

  We continued working on the paper and eventually I was on the last page. I needed one last quote to finish the paper off and then a conclusion. I asked Riker for a fitting quote only to be met with silence. I turned to look at him and couldn’t help the smile that instantly formed. He had fallen asleep. It was three am and honestly, I was surprised he had lasted that long. I moved the books away from him and whispered my thanks to him even though I knew he couldn’t hear it.

  Thankfully, we had been citing and removing his page markings as we went or I would’ve been forced to wake Riker up to help with that, and I much preferred to just let him sleep. He deserved it, I could finish the rest of my work on my own and if a worksheet or two didn’t get finished then, oh well. Riker was always telling me one bad grade wouldn’t hurt me after all, and the worksheets were a small grade anyway.

  I found one last quote out of the remaining marked pages Riker had made for me and finished off the paper. When seven am rolled around I had just finished the last worksheet. Gently I freed myself from Riker, who at some point had pressed his face to my thigh and managed to wrap one arm around my leg and packed all my work and books and notes back into my backpack. I was cutting time really close, but I had just enough time to change, leave a note for Riker, straighten the blanket over him, and brush a kiss to his forehead before I rushed out the door.

  Chapter 36 - Riker

  February 20th, 2017

  I woke up ages before my alarm was set to go off, which I normally wouldn’t have minded. The problem was my head hurt and I felt like I had been to hell and back. And I was shivering. I curled up as tight as I could and pulled the blankets closer. It didn’t help, but at least it made me feel safe. I reached out for my phone, with every intention of disabling the alarm and texting Kit and Jake that I was sick, but all I managed was knocking the phone off the side table. I made a pathetic little noise at my own failure and tried to curl up tighter and fall back asleep.

  Sometime later the alarm went off and I knew I needed to get up and shut it off, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. The door opened and shut then there was Kit’s tired and angry voice, “Are you planning on turning that off anytime soon?”

  “Dropped it,” I mumbled then regretted it. My throat felt all gravely.

  “Jesus Christ, Riker, pick it up,” he said, but I could already hear him moving. In a few seconds the alarm was off, and I fel
t the phone land on my bed.

  I meant to apologize but what came out instead was, “Don’t feel good, Kit.”

  He sighed and the next thing I knew the blanket was being pulled back off my head. Slowly I turned my head out, from where I had buried it in the mattress, to look at him. He had knelt next to the bed and reached a handout to touch my forehead.

  “I’m sorry I got mad at you,” he said with a smile. I leaned into his touch a little, “’s okay.”

  “I’ll get you some medicine and some juice.” He brushed the hair off my forehead and said “Just hang in there a minute.”

  I pulled the blanket back up to my face and closed my eyes as he left. I didn’t realize I had drifted off until he was back in the room shaking me awake.

  “You can go back to sleep after you take this,” he said as he lifted me up enough and handed me the pills and a bottle of orange juice. I swallowed the pills and took a few swigs of juice before leaning into him and closing my eyes.

  “You’re warm,” I said as I rubbed my cheek against his chest.

  “Would you like me to stay until you fall asleep?”

  Well, that sounded glorious.

  “Please.”

  He climbed onto the bed, pulled me in close to him, and started playing with my hair.

  “I hate being sick,” I mumbled into his chest.

  “Everyone does, my prince.” His voice was soft. He was soft.

  He pulled the blankets up and held them around me. My shivering stopped, the combination of him and the blankets was finally enough to keep me warm. I could hear his heartbeat under my ear. It was soothing and it distracted me from my head and all the other aches. Maybe the medicine was setting in, but as far as I was concerned it was Kit that was making everything better. I closed my eyes and focused on him underneath me until I drifted off to sleep.