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“What did yours look like?” I grumbled.
“At the Petersens’, the group home, or Dorchester?”
His body stiffened slightly, and the arms that had drifted down my back tightened to prevent me from sitting up to look at him. Shit.
“Um…”
“I don’t really remember the room at my mom’s place,” Brandon said quietly.
I lay perfectly still, silently urging him on.
“I usually shared a room with two, even three other kids at the other place. Ray and Susan have a house in Somerville. Nothing special, just a little colonial. My room was on the second floor and overlooked the barbecue in the backyard. They gave me a bunch of Ray’s old furniture from his grad school days. Susan took me down to Newbury Comics to pick out posters.”
I wanted so badly to sit up to see Brandon’s face while he was talking, but his arms held me still.
“She made me choose three,” he continued, “and when she realized I’d never listened to anything other than Kieran’s radio, she ended up buying me a cassette player and about twenty of her favorite albums.” His chest shook slightly with laughter under my cheek. “I thought, this lady is crazy, but I didn’t stop her. No one had ever done anything like that for me before.”
“Did you like her picks?” I asked. I hadn’t met Susan yet, but now I really wanted to. Her kindness was touching.
“Some of them. I wasn’t really into Carly Simon, but I did like Springsteen. I used to listen toThe Riverover and over again. Ray hated it, but Susan made him let me keep it on. Everyone else I knew back then was crazy about, I don’t know, Marky Mark or some shit like that, but I just wanted to listen to the Boss.”
I didn’t say anything, just imagined a twelve-year-old Brandon in his room, working hard at his new old desk, trying to impress his foster parents even while he was at odds with them. I wondered if he was tall at that age too, or if he was still small enough that only his toes touched the floor.
“That explains the Springsteen preference,” I said. “You sound like a model ward. I can’t imagine why Ray would have had such a problem.”
Brandon’s chest rumbled with a low chuckle beneath me. “Well, I wasn’t a bookworm most of the time. I liked school, but I also liked sneaking out to meet my friends. I got into more than enough trouble to earn Ray’s disappointment.”
“Well, you don’t now,” I said grumpily, recalling Ray’s attitude. I didn’t care how many things he had done for Brandon in the past—I hated the cold manner with which he treated a man who clearly thought the world of him.
“Maybe.” Before I could pursue the cryptic response, Brandon swiftly turned the conversation back to me. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a Smiths fan—that’s more for old people like me. I was thinking more like Dashboard Confessional.”
I shrugged. “He ripped off Morrissey anyway. Besides, what The Smiths lack in composition, they make up with ironic lyrics. So, is that all you like about my house? My old concert posters and flea market furniture? It’s basically a garage sale compared to your house.”
Brandon’s fingers drifted over my shoulders until they clasped together over my back. I could feel the soft rhythm of his breath in my hair. Eventually, I started to wonder if he had fallen asleep.
“No,” he answered at last. His voice was low and distant, a contrast to the immediacy of his body. “I like it because it feels like you.” Brandon took several more breaths, and then said so low I could barely hear it: “It feels like home.”
Thirty-Two
Bubbe’s feet on the stairs woke us less than an hour later. Brandon and I jumped out of my bed like guilty teenagers and stumbled around, pinching at each other in between bouts of laughter. I quickly dressed in jeans, a thin black sweater, and my worn, black motorcycle boots before we left to see Dad.
Brandon stayed in the hospital lobby to work while I took the elevator up to where Dad was. He’d been moved out of the ICU, thankfully. I found him lying in bed, flipping through the TV channels. A curtain was pulled around the bed of the other patient in the room.
I knocked lightly on the open door, and Dad looked up. His face still had a gray pallor with purple circles under his eyes and a bandage over his nose, but it brightened when he caught sight of me.
“Pips!” he croaked with a hoarse, strained voice.
I winced as I sat down in the seat next to him. “Hey, Dad.”
He turned off the television and allowed me to set the remote on his side table. Then I squeezed his good hand. The bruises on his face were already turning a mottled mix of purple, yellow, and blue, and it looked like the swelling around his cut eye was going down. He gave me a sheepish grin and grimaced when the movement jogged the mask over his nose.
“Careful, old man,” I said, though I couldn’t stop my voice from wavering. Before I could stop them, tears welled up and started to fall down my cheeks. I buried my face in his leg. “Oh, Dad.”
He didn’t say anything, but I felt his good hand stroke my hair. My sobs came, hard and heavy.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered over and over again. “So sorry, sweetheart.”
His words only made me cry harder, and I didn’t stop until a nurse bustled in, announcing with some awkwardness that she needed to take his vitals.
