Root Problems
:: foundation damage or erosion caused by an unwanted, intrusive source
David
Monday, May 1st, 7:03 am
Foster Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland
Josh flips our closet light on and nearly collides with me.
“What the f—”
“Go ahead,” I say. “Punch me. You know you want to.”
He just gapes, all flush and dripping wet from the shower. I was going for the element of surprise. It seems to have worked.
“You’re an idiot,” he grumbles, and I shrug.
This tension with him is unbearable. I’m willing to hide in the closet and sacrifice my dignity if it will make things right between us again. It’s my fault, after all. I knew it would infuriate him when I went to church yesterday, but I wasn’t ready to hash out the situation with his father. Plus, I sense it means a lot to Bennett when I go.
It’s impossible, really, keeping everyone happy. Even Kate.
I’m sure she’s wondering why I stayed out all day, why I didn’t answer last night when she knocked on our door. I don’t even have a good reason. Just overwhelmed, I guess.
I lay in bed thinking about them. Josh, all confused and hurt on the couch. Kate, alone in her room, worried. She feigns oblivion, but Kate absorbs everything. She wears her emotions. Literally. She has mood shirts.
There’s one he and I really hate. The Everything hurts and I’m dying shirt. It’s black with creepy white lettering and a skeletal corpse hanging from the words. We avoid her like the plague when that thing makes an appearance.
Thinking about that shirt reminded me of another shirt, a gag gift from Josh last Christmas. It’s inappropriately tight, Pepto-Bismol in color, and says I Love My Paramedic in flowery red lettering across the chest. He thought it would be funny, then resented her for not wearing it.
I’m not even kidding. It’s kind of a standing joke that next Christmas he’s going to buy me a matching one. So, I figured maybe seeing me in her shirt would give him a laugh. And maybe a laugh is just what we need. Which is why I snuck into Kate’s room early this morning, hoping to grab it real quick.
At which point, I tripped. Over Kate. Sound asleep on her closet floor. I helped her back into bed where she mumbled something about street noise and her closet being quieter. Kate’s a heavy sleeper, though, and I’ve never known her to care about noise. It’s a little concerning. Actually, a lot concerning, but I can only handle one problem at a time.
First, Josh.
He gapes at me. “What the fuck are you wearing?”
I’m wearing Kate’s pink paramedic shirt. And I’m pretty sure it’s cutting off circulation. But I’m in it, I’m committed. Go big or go home, right? Josh can’t resist when I make a fool of myself. So, I grin broadly, throw my hands to the side, and do a little jig.
He cracks up.
“All right, stop,” he says after a minute. “I actually want to punch you now.” He gives me a gentle shove. “I am never going to un-see that.”
“What? I think I look pretty good in this shirt.”
“Yeah? Well, someone ought to wear it.” He smirks as I attempt to wrestle the thing off. The fabric is stuck around my head when I realize it’s snagged on my cast.
“A little help here, J?”
“Nah. I’m enjoying watching you struggle.”
“Perv,” I mutter, twisting to free myself. Only, my foot gets caught in a shoe and I pitch forward, slamming into him. We stumble backward and land on our bedroom floor with a thud, his body cushioning the fall.
“What are you, trying to break your other arm?” he chides softly as we lie there, his voice a low, husky rumble. It vibrates his chest and tickles mine and feels so good, I don’t want to move. But my face and arms are trapped.
“Kind of suffocating in here,” I tell him.
He pulls the fabric away from my mouth and nose. “Hmm. That’s unfortunate. I think I like you like this.”
He would.
“What, helpless and dressed like Kate?”
He runs a lazy finger along my collarbone. “Not helpless. Maybe dressed like Kate, though. I could get into that.”
I groan and wiggle my arms around, but the shirt isn’t budging. “Don’t count on it,” I tell him. “We might have to cut this thing off.”
He laughs, and it’s a beautiful sound that melts the tension and helps these last few weeks to fade. I stop fighting and turn to him, suddenly desperate for things to be right and whole between us. And the words just pour out.
“I’m so sorry about this last month, Josh. I should’ve stayed and talked yesterday. And I didn’t tell you about Nick sooner because I knew you’d be upset, and it’s just—”
“Don’t talk,” he says, nuzzling my cheek to stop me. He lifts a hand to my chin, palming it, turning my face so our lips brush and slide together, all soft and sweet. He tastes like wintergreen toothpaste and something pure and namelessly safe that will forever be Josh to me. I feel his grin.
“You really are an idiot,” he murmurs, biting at my lips, gently teasing, holding fast as he flips me onto my back in one move, straddling my hips like we’re wrestling. As if I can fight him with my arms and face trapped in this ridiculous shirt.
Not that I would. The firm, weighty press of his beautiful body, the heat of friction when we move? It feels good.
Too good.
He spreads over me like a blanket, hovering so we’re chest to chest, fully aligned, nothing between us but a thin bath towel, boxer briefs, and the painfully hard evidence of what we’re both wanting. It’s a bit jarring after all these months avoiding each other.
And a clear mistake, but I can’t find strength to stop him.
He must sense my hesitation, though, because he sits back a little, breathing slow. His fingers trace a reverent trail down my chest and stomach, and I feel the appraisal. His concern. “You’re so thin,” he says plaintively, gripping my waist, thumbs gently rubbing.
I have lost weight. Poor Julie bent over backwards the last few weeks, cooking for me. I just didn’t have an appetite. But I don’t want to get into it. “I’ll eat more now that I’m with you,” I tell him, sucking in a breath as his hands edge lower, tugging at my briefs, teasing the narrow patch of hair trailing beneath.
“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” he says thickly, his touch light and soft as a feather.
Too soft.
Ticklish.
He knows what he’s doing.
“Josh, stop!” I gasp, laughing so hard I can barely get the words out.
He lets up a moment, leaning close. “It’ll cost you,” he warns.
But before he can make good on the threat, we’re interrupted by a loud, familiar, popping sound, followed by a woosh of silence that can only mean one thing.
“Oh, for fuck’s’ sake, not again,” he mutters over the sound of Kate shouting from the other room.
He’s pushing off me seconds later as our door creaks open. She hurries in. “Sorry boys! I blew another fuse with the curling iron. Joshie, you have got to get the electric looked at because I can’t—” She stops abruptly. “Oh! Are you guys okay? Why is there a shirt over David’s face? And his arms? What are you guys doing in here?”
There’s a moment of interminable silence before Josh responds. He clears his throat. “Um. We were just, you know, getting ready for work and stuff.”
“Yeah, work,” I echo, a little too swiftly. Traitorously.
“Right,” she says. “Work.” I hear her move closer. “Those don’t look like work clothes.” She nudges my shoulder with her toe. “Is that my shirt, David?”
“What, this old thing?” I make a futile attempt to wiggle free.
I feel her grip the hem and tug fiercely. Kate’s tiny, but shockingly strong. All the massage, I guess. The stupid thing comes off in seconds. I blink up at her, then turn to Josh, who’s seated beside me, towel still cinched around his hips. She looks back and forth between us, a strained expression on her lovely face.
“Kate,” I begin, struggling for explanation. I have no idea what to say.
Neither does he. I stare at the floor and Josh bites a nail, both of us sick with guilt. I don’t think it’s obvious what we were doing, exactly, but that doesn’t make it any better.
“Looks like you guys made up,” she says in a tight voice. “Good for you.” She then throws the shirt down, bursts into tears, and runs from our room.
Josh and I regard each other shamefully, a wordless drawing of straws. We should both go after her, but I’m generally better than him at handling emotional diplomacy. And that’s not saying much. Meanwhile, we’re both struggling to come back from whatever it was we weren’t about to do.
He helps me up and I feel the need to say something. Anything. But I’m at a loss. I squeeze his hand instead.
“Breakfast?” I ask, lacing our fingers together. Our list of complications may be multiplying, but at least I can come clean with him about Nick.
8:30 am
Sip & Bite Diner, Boston Street Baltimore, Maryland
An hour later, we’re seated in a tiny booth at Sip & Bite, Josh’s favorite local diner.
We dropped Kate at work on our way, everything seemingly fine. She repeated her noise excuse from earlier when I grilled her about sleeping in the closet. She made me promise not to tell Josh, though, which is concerning, but understandable. He’d overreact.
With everything else going on, I’m inclined to believe her. Besides, Kate reminded me she used to sleep in her closet as a kid all the time. Which is true. She had a giant walk-in. I even slept there once with her.
And it turns out, her tears were happy ones, kind of. She was, according to her, so happy our tiff ended it made her angry or something. I don’t know. She was mad we made up and didn’t include her, which makes no sense to me, but we hugged, and she cried and went on and on about needing Josh and I to be stable because she’s not. Worlds colliding, pending doom. You know, positive, uplifting stuff. I just held her and listened, riddled with so much guilt I couldn’t meet her eyes.
Kate’s no fool. She’d have to be blind to miss what’s going on between him and I. Though, to be fair, him and I have no idea what’s going on. So, how can we possibly explain it to her?
We can hardly acknowledge it.
“You know, we’ve never been on an actual date,” I muse, staring at him overtop my menu.
He kicks me under the table. “This isn’t a date, moron. It’s breakfast.”
“You’re paying, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Just answer the question.” I don’t have cash on me, which he knows.
“I guess.”
“And you drove us here?”
“Because you don’t have a car,” he reminds me. I wave this off, grinning.
“Semantics,” I say. “You’re paying. You drove. It’s a date.”
“Call it what you want, I’m still mad.”
“Please. You’re incapable of staying mad at me.”
His cheeks instantly crimson. “Whatever you say, Princess.”
This Nick-inspired jab should bother me, but it just doesn’t. I flick a sugar packet at him. “So that’s how it is, huh?”
He rips open the sugar and dumps it in his coffee. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
It feels, for the first time in weeks, like we are back to ourselves. I gaze longingly out the window, wishing we didn’t have to do this.
He’s not having it. “Come on,” he snaps. “No zoning out.”
I sigh, forcing my attention back to him. Then I scoot closer, tangling our legs beneath the booth. He scowls but doesn’t pull away. I shift my knee back and forth, so our calves rub together, soothed by the warmth of his skin.
What if the power hadn’t gone out this morning? If Kate hadn’t come in?
It’s no secret Josh and I are close. Kate, our families, friends—everyone knew growing up. We were practically inseparable. But they didn’t really know.
I suppose we could blame our fathers, throwing us together as they did. They accelerated a bond that should’ve taken years to form. But either way, we would’ve ended up here. Whatever is between us was there from the start.
Like two sides of a story.
Only, it’s a complicated story with no clear protagonist, lovers masked as friends, and a heart split right down the middle. Because our story is incomplete without Kate. No him and I apart from her. Which is why we should have told her everything years ago. The trips with our fathers, what we did, what grew between us, how we felt. Everything.
But how do you explain what you don’t understand? What you can’t even bring yourselves to talk about? And so, him and I became another well-kept secret.
Until moving in here, we generally avoided anything physical if either of us was in a relationship. Part of the reason I’ve never fully committed to Kate, shameful as that is.
But when we bought the Canton house, he and I agreed, no messing around. We owed it to ourselves, to our friendship. To her. A fresh start. I wanted a chance at something real with Kate. A future. And for Josh to find that, too.
It sounded so good. In theory.
But it is so far beyond physical with him, deeper than a childish bond, larger than the secrets we carry. I’m not sure we ever untangle from one another. I’m not even sure I want to. But then, where does that leave me and Kate?
I heave a sigh. Those are thoughts for another day. Right now, we need to talk about Nick. “All right,” I tell him. “Let’s do this.”
He pulls out a crumpled sheet of paper and smooths it on the table. I’m generally amused by his obsessive list-making, but this has my eyes rolling.
“Put that thing away,” I chide, flicking it from his hand. “We don’t need a list.”
“Yeah, well if you would’ve talked to me Saturday…”
I hang my head. “I’m sorry you were blindsided, Josh. I should’ve told you what was going on with him.”
“So, it’s true, then? Nick was here, in Baltimore? At our house?”
I nod. “A few weeks ago. That weekend with Claire, remember? You and Kate were at softball.”
It takes a moment for him to digest this. He’s so hurt. “But we spent that whole day together. And you told me it was nothing, remember? That you two just talked.”
“I know, I’m sorry. It’s just, you were upset and hungover from the night before. And Claire was coming. I didn’t want to make it worse. And then,” I pause, not wanting to bring up Kate and the miscarriage.
“And then you left for a whole fucking month?”
Yeah, that too.
“Three weeks,” I remind him.
“It makes a hell of a lot more sense now.”
“That’s not why I stayed away.”
But it was a factor.
The waitress mercifully arrives with our food and I’m glad for the interruption. He’s glaring, so I busy myself reading her shirt. It says, Spooning leads to forking, so use condiments. She’s like a sweet little old grandmother type. The incongruity of her wearing this shirt cracks me up. I have an urge to text Kate; she’d love that.
Probably not the best time.
“Did you read her shirt?” I ask once she shuffles off.
His nostrils flare like an angry bull’s.
Okay. Maybe not. “What? It was funny.”
“A little fucking focus would be nice,” he growls, and I look down, fidget with my napkin, push some food back and forth on the plate. I feel his eyes on me and can practically hear his mind churning.
Might as well come out with it before he gets more worked up.
I proceed to tell him, in detail, about Nick’s visit.
About the new show and stumbling across his interview a month before, only slightly downplaying how upset I’d been. I explain how his father received a suspicious envelope with photographs of us, briefly describing each. How there appears to be someone out there, watching, waiting, wanting God knows what.
The longer I talk, the more tension creeps onto his face.
“So,” he begins slowly, “you’re saying we’ve been stalked and photographed for the last two months?”
I nod, swallowing a painful lump of remorse. It sounds awful when he puts it that way.
“And you’ve known about it. The ENTIRE time?”
“Well, not the entire—”
His face turns an unhealthy shade of red. “Un-fucking-believable! What the hell is wrong with you, David? All this time, and you just let Kate and I…” He clutches the table, nearly choked with rage. “You just let Kate and I think everything was fine?”
An elderly couple a few booths down glances at us disapprovingly, but he’s past caring.
I watch his eyes grow wide as realization dawns. “That interview. February? That means you knew what triggered the first episode.”
“Not technically—”
“And your fall in the closet, too. Oh my God! Those ER doctors were right! It probably is some kind of psychogenic response. Maybe even a seizure. And here Kate and I are worried sick, wondering what’s wrong with you. Have you lost your mind?”
Possibly.
I need to calm him down before this really escalates. “I didn’t want to worry you guys. It’s not like the show is a guarantee. It could get canceled. And the photographs?” I fight off my own anxious shudder. “They’re nothing. Some asshole messing around.” I lower my voice. “No one knows anything damaging about us other than Nick, and he won’t incite a scandal unless we do. Besides, he knows we could implicate him. I doubt he’d risk it. We just have to ride this out and hope nothing comes of it.”
I think he’d pummel me from across the table if people weren’t around. If this were a cartoon, smoke rings would be billowing from his ears.
“We’re being stalked, David. How the fuck are we supposed to ride that out?” His head swivels from one side of the restaurant to the other. “Someone could be in here,” he whispers. Then his eyes widen. “That’s why you were acting so strange in Home Depot, isn’t it? You’ve known since then. And you left! Oh my God! You left Kate and I alone like sitting ducks without telling us?”
I don’t want to bring up the miscarriage, but I have to explain. “It’s not like we’re in danger, or something. Besides, random pictures aren’t the problem, it’s the ones of us together that can be manipulated.” I push egg around on my plate, unable to eat. “I figured after our talk and the whole miscarriage thing you were more likely to be careful. And with me gone,” I shrug, “there wasn’t much worth photographing.”
He goes quiet, processing this, sweat beading at his brow. I hate myself for lying to him this long.
“Josh,” I say, reaching for his hand. He slaps me away.
“Wait a second. That was a month ago, right? If he already warned you, why was he texting us both last week? Why come to the station if he thought I already knew?”
Yeah. About that.
I grimace. “Well, there is one more thing.”
A second envelope.
Nick received it last week. He called while I was at Bennett’s. We spoke briefly, but then I ignored his messages. A mistake, clearly. And probably the reason he decided to harass Josh. Because the second envelope’s contents are far more damning.
A single image of Josh and Kate outside our house, on the front step. It was taken the day I broke my arm. Kate’s all dressed for that meeting she had. I vaguely recall Josh following her outside when she left. They’re holding each other. Faces close, eyes shut, lips parted as if about to kiss. Not just a tender moment, but unmistakably, intentionally, intimate. And if I thought the Target image of them was bad, this is far worse. And if it ends up in the public arena?
Well, we just better hope it doesn’t.
“That’s ridiculous,” Josh sputters, blushing feverishly, as together we examine the photo on my phone. Nick kindly emailed me copies of all six. “I was just hugging her goodbye. There’s nothing like that going on, D. I mean, obviously.” He makes an abortive gesture between himself and I. “You know that, right? You have to know that.”
I do know that.
My thoughts wander back to this morning with him, and the kitchen a few weeks ago. And Kate. In bed, on the couch, how she kissed me. What she said.
No. I don’t think anything is going on between the two of them. And I don’t doubt how either of them feel about me. I just don’t know what to do about it.
Josh spends the next hour alternately stressing about his father and berating me.
We google Nick’s interview and watch the highlights. His reaction is similar to mine and, despite his anger, he rests a comforting hand on my leg, squeezing as he launches into a rant about his two-faced, lying, cheating, detestable sociopath of a father.
I couldn’t agree more.
He pays the bill, and we walk to the Jeep, together deciding Nick is a washed-up pseudo-celebrity and the new show probably won’t even get picked up. As for our stalker? Josh vows to hunt him down, beat the shit out of him, and mail his shattered camera to Nick with a yellow “fuck you” ribbon.
I’d settle for just finding the guy, honestly.
We discuss Kate and what to tell her, ultimately agreeing to wait for now. Why worry her needlessly? I almost mention finding her this morning, but decide against it for the same reason. No use upsetting him for nothing. Besides, I promised her.
He pulls up at school as the third period bell rings, and we both just sit there.
“I should head in,” I say, finally. “The sub only agreed to cover my first three classes.”
He nods. “Yeah. I’ve got to be at work in an hour.”
I reach for the handle, but then turn back. “Josh—”
At the same moment he grabs my arm. “Wait.”
Neither of us move. The motor hums. I stare at him as this awful sense of foreboding settles in. We drove here in good spirits, but my façade is fading fast. Despite what I told him, I sense this thing with his father is a ticking time bomb.
Forgetting our surroundings and any pretense of calm, I lean over and hug him, embarrassingly wrecked. I bury my face between his shoulder and neck pulling so tight his breath hitches and my lips press hard against his skin. My heart pounds like it’s escaping me.
“D,” he says, brokenly, the weight of that one syllable heavier than I can bear. He peels away, confused.
“We should talk about this thing between us,” I blurt, still holding him, reluctant to let go. It’s not the time or place. I don’t even want that conversation. But the words form on their own.
He leans against his door, reddening, mouth agape. “Um. What thing?”
He knows what thing, but his eyes plead for me not to let the pretense drop. I sense we, too, are a ticking time bomb, but I’m not ready to light that fuse.
And so, I laugh.
At myself. At him. His loveable complexities. The heartbreaking absurdity of life. He just shakes his head, watching as I climb from the Jeep. I make it several yards before he calls after me, as I knew he would.
“Just promise me, David. No more secrets.”