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“Choices you didn’t make,” Jessi commented. Seong felt his smile widen until it hurt. Her eyes seemed to stare into him, trying to find the reason he’d insist others make choices he didn’t. He wasn’t sure what she saw, but she seemed satisfied. “I’ll let you two talk,” she said, turning to Thomas and touching his arm. “I’ll be right by the door.”
“Wai- Really,” Thomas asked, sounding as surprised as Seong felt that she wasn’t going to at least stay within earshot of them.
She smiled, touching Thomas’s cheek where a fine layer of stubble was already trying to fill in. “This is your conversation, baby,” she said. “I just wanted to get a feel for him and-” she glanced at Seong, still smiling, “he seems like a man smart enough not to lie about something like this.” She let her hand fall. “You two talk and you tell me all about it later, okay?”
A small smile curled Thomas’s lips as he nodded, sending Seong’s heart fluttering. That slight upturn of his lips was somehow more captivating than his freckles and blushing combined. He wanted to see Thomas smile more. He needed to see a full, teeth-flashing, happy smile from the younger man before him.
Jessi walked away and Seong pulled himself back together quickly before Thomas could look at him. A voice that was a weird cross between Seong’s mother and Felinus— or maybe— Brutus reminded him that he had to mind his place in someone like Thomas’s life. He could be an adviser to him, perhaps a friend, but nothing else. Nothing more.
“Have a seat,” he said, retaking his chair and gesturing across from him. “Unless you wanted to order a drink first?”
Thomas shook his head as he sat down and gestured to where his aunt had entered the line of people. “She’ll order me something. She always does unless I insist I don’t want anything. …Then she still gets something for when I change my mind.”
Seong laughed softly as he glanced at the woman. “Moms and mother figures are like that. You should see how mine fusses over me whenever I try to take her out for dinner. Anyway, before we get started, do you prefer Tommy or Thomas?”
Shoulders rose and fell. “Either is fine.”
“I didn’t ask what was fine,” Seong told him, keeping his tone gentle. “I asked what you’d prefer I call you. It doesn’t matter to me which it is or if you’d rather I call you AlleyCat or some other name completely. I want the name you want to be called.”
Thomas stared at him for a long, silent moment, his eyes wide, then he swallowed, the knot in his throat bobbing. “Thomas,” he said finally. “I’d- I’d like to be called Thomas.”
Seong smiled as he nodded. “Thomas it is then. I’d like it if you keep calling me Seong. The other name should only be used when I’m working. This isn’t work. Understand?”
Thomas nodded quickly, his neck so tense that Seong was worried it was going to snap.
“You had a birthday around the time I saw you before, right,” he asked, hoping he could get the young man to relax a bit more. “The big one-eight? Did you do anything fun?”
“Uh, it was alright,” Thomas said, sounding confused. “My aunts and I went out to dinner and had cake at home… Pretty normal.”
Dread filled the pit of Seong’s stomach. “You didn’t do anything with your friends?”
“I don’t… really… have… any,” Thomas said, suddenly looking anywhere except Seong, like it was something he didn’t want to admit. “It’s… kind of… hard… talking to kids my age… with everything…” His shoulders slacked and there was a loneliness in his eyes as his tall frame seemed to fold in on itself— like he could disappear if he ducked his head low enough. “I don’t have… a lot in common… with them these days.”
Seong’s eyes darted down at a movement in Thomas’s lap and he saw how Thomas had pulled the sleeves of his hoodie half way over his hands, fingers tight. From how discolored and frayed the edges looked, he got the impression this was a normal gesture and he remembered that Thomas had been bandaged up that night.
It was heart breaking.
Heartbreaking to know that Finnegan had so successfully isolated Thomas that he didn’t feel like he could speak with his peers, more so to know that he was right. What could Thomas really say to the average eighteen year old about what he had been doing the last few years make a meaningful connection? It wasn’t as if he could tell them about what it felt like to save a man’s life by taking another.
God I want to hold him, he thought as he looked back up at Thomas’s face. Thomas looked every bit as lost and alone that he was sure he had looked the day he had met Felinus. But he restrained himself. For starters, it wouldn’t be appropriate. Plus he was fairly certain “Aunt Jessi” still could pull off some of those “classified” maneuvers he had found in her military records. He hadn’t opened them up. He didn’t need the FBI or CIA or any other letters coming after him for satisfing a passing curiosity about a war-vet-turned-housewife. “It sucks,” he said instead, offering him a smile as he tugged his mask down. “But you’ll be going to college soon, right? College is where you make your life long-friends anyway. At least, that’s what I’ve been told.”
Thomas glanced up at him, confusion wrinkling his brow. “You didn’t go to college? I thought… Isn’t it a requirement?”
The smile tugged a little higher. Finnegan may have been bending all the rules, but he hadn’t found a way around that particular rule. Every made man of the Three Rings had to be given a chance at being honest. The treaty the three leaders of the Rings had signed over fifteen years ago stated that the preferred chance was in the form of a college degree or a trade degree. Felinus held a bachelors in business. Brutus had a culinary degree. Bat had gotten one in Hospitality. Adrian, the Pakhan’s oldest son, and the majority of his crew had trade degrees to help with Adrian’s custom car garage. But Seong and Tiger technically had never stepped foot into a classroom or workshop. Loopholes. “My degrees are… honorary, in a way,” he explained. “I took all the tests and skipped the actual classroom learning.” He shrugged, still smiling as Thomas continued to look confused. “I don’t really recommend doing it that way. Like I told your aunt, my friends are also people I work with and while they patiently listen to me ramble… I probably could have made friends with people who know what I’m talking about if I had gone the normal route. And with your turn around over the last few months, you’ll have no trouble getting in. Few people could get that workload completed and ace every single one.”
Thomas stared at him, his eyebrows shifting in a way Seong found endearing as he seemed to puzzle on something Seong said.
Picking up his iced coffee, Seong waited for him. However long Thomas needed was fine.
“Did,” he said slowly, still adorably puzzled, “did you hack into my school and look at my report card?”
Coffee sucked down the wrong pipe, choking Seong. He managed not to spray it back over the table by doubling over.
“Seong,” Thomas said, anxiety in his voice as his warm fingers touched Seong’s arm.
“Sir, are you alright,” a woman’s voice asked, a cup thumping down on the table as Seong wheezed. A handful of napkins were offered out and he accepted them as he waved her off.
“Fine,” he managed, still wheezing, coughing again into the napkins. “I’m fine, thank you.” He glanced up to see a young woman who was probably around Thomas’s age, looking at him with concern.
