Scipio shrank down.
Tears rose in Tean’s eyes.He blinked them away.“I’m upset right now.And you’re not acting like yourself.I want to finish this conversation later.”
Yes, a voice said at the back of Jem’s brain.Yes, we’ll finish it later.Say yes.
But the other guy was screaming again.“We’re not going to finish it later.We’re going to finish it right now!I can’t believe you did something so stupid!”
This time, Tean couldn’t blink the tears away fast enough, and they spilled down his cheeks.“I’m going to the bedroom.I’m not going to do this with you while you’re on something.”
Yes, that voice said.It was relief, under everything else.Yes, go away.And I’ll go away too.And when I come back, everything will be better.
But when Tean nudged Scipio toward the bedroom, the panic squeezing Jem’s chest didn’t leave room for that little voice.And someone else was shouting, “Don’t walk away from me!Get back here!”
Tean kept walking.
“I’m not your dad, Tean!You can’t kick me out!You can’t make me disappear because you don’t want to deal with me anymore!”
The door shut.
And Jem was alone.
He howled—wordless.And then the words were there, forcing their way out, even though they sounded wrong, too loud, their shape not right: “I’m supposed to protect you!”
29
Tean sat on the bed with Scipio huddled between his legs.The Lab was plastered against Tean, trying to maximize contact.
Out in the living room, Jem screamed something.There might have been words in it, but Tean couldn’t make them out.He focused instead on running his hands over Scipio, stroking his head and ears, scratching under his chin, jiggling his scruff.He breathed in slowly.Breathed out slowly.
Jem’s bloodshot eyes.
Jem’s slack face.
Jem’s voice that wasn’t Jem’s.
A door slammed.
Tean and Scipio flinched at the same time.
And then Tean whispered, “It’s okay.It’s okay.You’re okay.”
The daylight streaming in through the windows was bright and colorless.It showed the dust on the nightstands; things had been busy lately.Daniel.Amy.The wedding.An engine started—the Subaru, Tean guessed—and then the sound faded away.Scipio started to pant.His fur felt smooth and rough at the same time, sliding between Tean’s fingers, leaving the faintest trace of oil.
He made himself get up and finish the laundry.Up and down the stairs still hurt because he was stiff after his fall from the night before, and he had to slide the basket from tread to tread because he didn’t trust himself to carry it.Scipio settled down onto the couch, head on his paws as he stared out the window.The day’s brightness continued to sharpen until it felt like they were under a magnifying glass.
In the bedroom, he took polos out of the basket and hung them in the closet.Some of them were DWR branded, which meant khaki and gray and navy, nothing too interesting.But some, the ones with floppy collars or cute little front pockets or one that looked like it had been knit, were ones that Jem had picked out for Tean—bought for him, in many cases, and presented as gifts, or as surprises, or occasionally as trophies.The image of Scipio bringing back a slobber-covered ball came to mind, and Tean had to stop and rub his chest.
There wasn’t any point thinking about it.He was too upset.He needed to calm down.And so, he took another shirt out of the basket.But he couldn’t stop his mind from replaying it: Jem coming home, and then his bizarre reactions, how he’d started shouting about Tean’s dad—
His dad.
Why had Jem been so fixated on his dad?
Because he was high.
Maybe.But that seemed too easy of an answer.Too facile.And itwasstrange, especially in retrospect.Everything had happened so fast that, in the moment, Tean hadn’t paused to wonder why Jem had gotten so upset about his dad being asked to leave.Or kicked out, as Jem kept putting it.You can’t kick him out—wasn’t that what Jem had said?Something like it, anyway.Tean’s own embarrassment over his behavior hadn’t helped either.He hadn’t wanted to talk about his dad.He hadn’t wanted to have to justify it.Some part of him had believed that Jem would be excited about it, even encouraging.Probably—and Tean felt a tiny, hurting smile creep across his face—too excited, because Jem was always excited for Tean.Always excited.Always supportive.Always proud.Except for now.
Tean dragged the basket to the opposite side of the bed, closer to the dresser.He sat, and their room was small enough that he could open the dresser without getting up.He folded a pair of jeans, and these were definitely ones that Jem had bought him because the denim was higher quality, and the stain was darker, and Jem had made him turn around so that he could check out Tean’s butt from different angles, wolf-whistling loudly enough that Scipio had finally come to investigate.
