“Me too.” I laugh quietly. “Picturing you searching for a bowl in the dark wearing your jammies is so funny for some reason.”
“Sure, if I wore pajamas.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not sure why I assumed otherwise. What kind of cereal? I’m guessing Lucky Charms.”
“Nope,” he says through another yawn. “Only had Cheerios at the group home and it’s the only kind I like now.”
My brows draw together, and my eyes flick to his without fully turning my head. He looks like he didn’t mean to say that. I don’t want to make him uncomfortable, so I almost act like I didn’t hear it. My heart won’t let me, though.
“Were you adopted?”
He puts a hand behind his head and pulls the blanket up his chest with the other. “Nah. Didn’t get put in the system untilI was almost two. Most people want little babies to adopt, so I jumped around from place to place until I was old enough for the group home. You know the one on the edge of the city? You can kind of see the barn from the highway.”
The spring air slips through the screen door, but I savor the cold mixed with his honesty. I play back his words in my head, searching for evidence that this sudden topic change is normal for him. All I heard in his tone was quiet grief—almost unrecognizable compared to his typically humorous cadence.
I think for a moment about the group home he referred to, then realize I know which one he’s talking about. My mom has mentioned it a few times because the baseball team does their community service there. I raise my head slightly when the pieces in my head connect.
“Oh my gosh,” I gasp. “Yes, I know which one you’re talking about. That’s why you played catch with those boys in the outfield last month.”
He nods but doesn’t look away from the TV. It’s bright enough for me to see the crease in his forehead in the dim light.
“We don’t have to talk about this,” he says with a half-teasing tone. “I never tell anyone that stuff.”
He doesn’t want sympathy. But he’s my friend, and he just admitted that he never talks to anyone about how he grew up. I’m not about to make him feel like I don’t care about this. I care very much.
“Sure, we do,” I say, scooting closer. “I want to know all about it. My dad abandoned me and left me with a male attention disorder. See? Trauma bonding. Hurts so good.”
I peer up at him to catch his smile before cautiously resting my cheek on his shoulder. If his voice wasn’t so laced with sadness, I never would have chanced snuggling up to him like this. But his reaction proves I made the right move. His chest instantly deflates, and the contact seems to ground him.
It feels old and familiar somehow, trading confessions like this with him. My head spins with ways to make sure he knows he can talk about this stuff with me anytime he wants.
“So, your dad fumbled your mom and missed out on a great kid? What a fucking loser.”
My chest vibrates with a deep laugh. “Truly.”
“You still turned out alright, I guess.”
I swat his arm. “Hey.”
“I’m kidding,” he laughs. “You turned out good. I like”—he pauses to clear his throat and lean his head on the back of the couch—“hanging out with you. Sometimes I feel like my other friends wouldn’t understand this stuff if I talked to them about it.”
“That’s because Gage, Warren, and Heston are men. Most of the male species is emotionally inept.”
He shakes his head, giving up on keeping a friendly distance when he scoots his hips toward me and drapes his arm behind my back. I burrow right into his side. Most of his bare skin is covered by his blanket, but I press the side of my face against his exposed pec.
His heart doesn’t race, and to my shock, neither does mine. In fact, I’m not sure mine has ever been so calm and steady except for when I sleep.
Tripp’s voice is softer when he finally speaks again. “You ever pretend nothing bad ever happened in your life? Just lay there at night, making up alternate realities? Wake up the next day and go about your business like it doesn’t affect you?”
It kills me to hear him ask that. I thought I came to know him pretty well recently, but I hadn’t even scratched the surface until now. The version of him that everyone gets is funny, bright, and wild. Never sad.
This version? I don’t think it’s easily accessed. My chest feels light, hoping I’m seeing a part of him right now that most people don’t get to.
“All the time. In my head, my dad never left. It’s a lot more fun to make up memories that don’t actually exist where we’re super close and he worries about where I am or what I’m up to. Holds a shotgun in the doorway when my prom date picks me up.”
He lifts his hips and angles his upper body so that he’s lying back on the armrest. I stay glued to his side.
“Is it a red flag if I told you I’d kick his ass if I ever met him?”
