“Hello?” Nate grimaced. As if he didn’t know who was on the other end of the line.
“Hello, Nathaniel.”
His father’s voice grated on Nate’s nerves. Every. Single. Time. Three thousand miles away… still grating. With those two words every failing, every fault, everything Nate had ever done wrong was remembered and recounted. Relived.
“Hi, Dad.”
“I called to wish you a happy birthday.” Nate briefly considered changing his phone number so he could cut that last tie between himself and his relatives.
“Thanks.” The line fell silent as Nate, at least, struggled with what to say. He and his father had never seen the world in the same way. Joining the Feds and subsequently moving to the “left” coast merely cemented what they both already knew. They were family by genetics only; they had nothing else in common. If he didn’t look so much like one uncle and a little like his sister Melody, he’d think he was adopted.
“How much longer is your assignment?” As if his father had known what Nate was thinking about.
“Dad,”—he tried patience—“this is a permanent assignment. I moved here, to Washington State, permanently.”
“You have a spot at the firm.” And now the conversation would take its traditional downturn. Yay. Happy birthday to him; Nate got to have the argument with his father.
Breathe in, breathe out. “Dad, I don’t want to have this conversation today.” Or any day. “I chose my career; I chose to move here to Skagit. I am not coming back or taking a place in the firm.”
His dad acted like the family firm was a thing to be proud of, and Nate supposed it had kept a roof over his and his sisters’ heads growing up, but an ambulance-chasing injury and liability law firm was not where Nate saw himself. Ever. And his dad just couldn’t understand why. The discussion was pointless. They had been over it so many times Nate was surprised they hadn’t worn holes in it.
“Money is money, boy.” Yeah, because the word “boy” didn’t send Nate into incendiary fury. “It’s not how you make it, it’s how you—”
“Dad, I’m hanging up now. Thank you for the birthday wishes.”
Nate stuffed his phone underneath the throw pillow so he wasn’t tempted to fling it across the living room and sagged wearily against the back of the couch. He’d woken up in a reasonably good mood, and now it was gone. Would these discussions never end? He’d stopped allowing the toxicity to interfere with his day-to-day life, but every once in a while it snuck back in, making him feel like complete shit.
He was pretty sure the real problem with his dad had started at birth, when Nate was born a day early instead of on Independence Day. Every day since, Nate had continued to disappoint his dad, and by extension his entire family. And, as the only boy, there were expectations, none of which he was going to fulfill.
The list of disappointments didn’t even cover the fact that Nate had never brought anyone home to meet the family. Probably they all thought he was such a loser that he would never meet anyone anyway, but as long as he joined the firm and acted respectable he would be forgiven for having zero social skills. Not to put too fine a point on it when he was supposed to be celebrating his birthday, but Nate and awkward were best friends. Plus, he was already married to his job and didn’t see that changing. He didn’t want a girlfriend or a wife.
In college he’d once experimented by going to a gay club near campus. It had seemed logical; he should see if he was attracted to men. He’d gone by himself. Remembering the incident made him feel like hiding under the covers and never coming out. He’d sat alone at a table, somehow invisible even with his hair and freckles, while club goers laughed, talked, made out, or headed to the bathroom for quick sex. Not a single person approached him. He’d been so humiliated he hadn’t confirmed if he was attracted to men or not.
An online dating experiment had, if possible, been worse. When XXXDick80 wanted to send a picture of himself in exchange for one of Nate, he’d panicked and canceled his newborn subscription. Nope. Online was not how Nate would ever meet someone.
Gomez was no help. She’d tried to convince him to rejoin and let her act as him until there was a date set up. First of all, he figured she was way more knowledgeable about sex and relationships than he was, so when he showed up for said date he would look like an idiot. Second, no fucking way. She was already way too much in his business to be worrying about his love life, or lack thereof. He threatened to call her mother and tell her Natalia was seeing someone, and she agreed to leave him alone.
Geez. Ten a.m. on his birthday and he was already depressed. Clearly it was going to be a great day.
Nate stared out the big picture window in his living room, watching the neighborhood come awake. A lot of folks were gone for the midweek holiday, but some kids were racing bikes up and down the sidewalk. A couple was loading up their minivan with camping supplies, and another neighbor was hanging red-white-and-blue bunting on their front porch. How had Nate managed to move into the most family-friendly, patriotic neighborhood in all of Skagit?
It was tempting to draw the blinds and stay inside all day. The only thing he needed was to have his phone close in case Gomez contacted him. Adam Klay had invited him to a barbeque tomorrow, but he had the third all to himself. As usual.
He dragged himself off the couch and spent a couple hours doing chores: laundry, cleaning the bathroom, taking the trash out. Whoop. Fun birthday. Instead of moping, he decided to go on a run. The walls of his house were too close; he was restless and still out of sorts from his dad’s traditional phone call. A run would sweep all that negativity away. He hoped.
The house was a one-story rambler. He’d bought it from the daughter of the original owner, who had changed nothing. The entire structure, down to the very appliances, dated from 1955. It didn’t even have a true garage; instead it had a carport. His bedroom, one of three, was at the other end of the house from the carport. His was officially the “master” bedroom because it had a tiny attached bathroom with a shower. The bathroom tile was a horrid shade of aqua blue; Nate adored it.
He found his running shoes tucked neatly under his bed where he’d left them, and after changing into shorts and a running shirt, he was out the front door, leaving his troubles at home where he hoped they would disappear.
It usually took him about a mile to get warmed up. A mile before he didn’t feel every ache and pain, before the endorphins started to kick in and he could just fly along, the pavement a blur under his feet. Needless to say, it was about a half mile later, when he was still wondering if going for a run was such a great idea, when he thought he recognized a familiar figure dragging boxes from the back of a car.
Slowing down, he peered across the street, trying not to be too obvious about trying to see if he really did recognize Miguel Ramirez. Nate didn’t officially know him, other than their interaction at the Swanfeldt-James wedding the weekend before. Before he could second-guess his motivation, he jogged across the street.
“Need a hand?”
Miguel started comically, banging his head on the open rear hatch. “Ouch.” His eyes widened in recognition as he rubbed the back of his head. “Oh, hi. Nate, right?”
“Nate Richardson,” Nate confirmed.
“From the wedding. I remember.”
“I wasn’t sure; it was touch and go there for a while.” He grinned and then wondered what the hell he was doing.
Miguel’s eyes narrowed as he faked annoyance. “I wasn’t that drunk.”
Nate raised a single eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
“By the time you ran into me, anyway. Before, sure.”
“You ran into me!”
“Whatever you want to think.” Miguel waved a hand dismissively.
Nate looked at the boxes sitting on the pavement and those still packed in the car. “Do you need a hand?” he repeated.
Miguel led the way to the midcentury elevator and then the third floor where, it seemed, Miguel was moving. The apartment was tiny, six hundred square feet if that, but for one person it was perfect. Much like his own house, Miguel’s new home had been built in the 1950s and was still appointed with fixtures and décor from the era.
Nate deposited the boxes he was carrying on the floor and peered around at the small space. “This is cool. I thought you were just starting to look.”
“Oh, I was that blabby, huh?” Miguel rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and shook his head. “I was, but this gal called me back and it fits the bill. Might as well tear off the Band-Aid. This way Buck and Joey will have the house to themselves when they get back next weekend.”
Nate thought about the room he’d seen the other day. “Is this everything? Anything left at the house?’
“Just the bed and bedding.”
Nate considered the small car parked in the loading zone in front of the building. “That’s not going to fit in your little car.”
“Don’t knock Sheila!”
“Sheila?”
Miguel sighed. “The car.” Like it was obvious he named his car. Then, reading Nate’s thoughts, “I didn’t name her, Buck did.”
“Well, we can use my car, if you want.”
When Nate had moved out to Skagit, one of the first things he had purchased, after his new home, was an SUV, so he could take advantage of the abundance of outdoor activities the region offered. One year and he’d done exactly nothing.
“Why are you being so helpful?” Miguel looked perplexed, like the idea that anyone would randomly offer to help him was out of his frame of reference.
“Um, why wouldn’t I be?”
Miguel seemed to genuinely wonder why anyone would lend a helping hand. Had life been that hard for him? Did he expect people to walk away from him when he needed help? The hard truth was probably yes, most people had walked away when Miguel needed them, and he had now come to expect it.
“Look, I’m offering my larger car to get your bed over here. Yea or nay?”
“Fine. Yes. Yea,” Miguel answered, his tone not exactly impatient, but maybe a little exasperated.
An hour later they were back at Miguel’s new apartment, muscling the bulky items through the doorways. The double mattress slipped with a thump onto the box spring. It took up 95% of the tiny bedroom, leaving a scrap of space at the end where the door opened in.
Miguel ran back downstairs to grab his bedding while Nate looked around in the boxes for a glass so he could have some water.
“Glasses?” Nate asked when Miguel huffed back in under a huge pile of blankets.
There was a muffled sentence Nate couldn’t understand.
“What?”
Miguel came back into—over to, really—the tiny kitchen area separated from the living room by a counter. There was room on one side for a couple of stools, and the other had drawers and cabinets for kitchen things.
“I don’t have any. I don’t have any kitchen stuff.”
Nate wondered what he had been expecting when he offered to go with Miguel to the local mall and shop for essentials. It became immediately clear that Miguel had no filter even when he wasn’t drinking, he had zero attention span, and his favorite color was sparkle.
He also had no interest in stocking his kitchen or apartment with anything practical. Nate sighed as Miguel held up a set of plastic kids’ cups. They were double walled, and between the walls glitter-goo oozed up and down as the cup was moved.
“These are so cool!” Miguel’s startling green eyes shone with humor and something else undefinable but that Nate found enticing.
“They’re for toddlers. Look,” he pointed at the cups, “they come with lids so the kids can’t spill anything.”
“Even better!” Miguel chortled.
A saleswoman walked past them for the fourth or fifth time, asking if they needed help. For Christ’s sake, they were the only people in the store on the day before the Fourth of July. Miguel sighed.
“You know, I get tired of it sometimes.”
Nate crooked his head at his new friend.
“The looks, the surveillance in stores, the sideways glances as if I might grab and dash at any moment. You know what’s worse, though?”
Nate didn’t get a chance to answer, which was good because he was too busy wondering where Miguel’s sense of humor and natural joy had disappeared to.
“I don’t speak Spanish.”
“Excuse me?” Why would that mean anything?
Miguel continued as if Nate hadn’t tried to interrupt. “When I’m at a Mexican restaurant or a taco truck, the staff often will ask me what I want in Spanish. My stumbling answers do not pass muster. I’m not even a real Latino.”
Nate had no idea how to respond to this. Sensitivity training had not prepared him for this type of conversation. And he felt useless. What was a white guy like him, one who had never had anyone (outside his family) look sideways at him in a store, supposed to say?
“Don’t worry about it, there’s nothing to say. I’m a whitewashed Mexican, and it’s too late to do anything about it.”
“So.” They navigated through an overstuffed display of pots, pans, knives, and decorative towels. “You grew up…?” In Skagit, was what Nate expected.
“In foster care. Not much pressure on care parents to encourage cultural diversity. They’re usually too busy keeping us from sneaking out and getting arrested repeatedly.” Miguel picked up a towel that had fallen on the floor and returned it to the stack. “At least in my case.”
“Yeah?” Nate didn’t have a hard time imagining that Miguel would have been a tough kid to keep up with. “Did you get into a lot of trouble?”
“Heh. Understatement. I think I singlehandedly made my various foster parents retire as I left each placing.”
“How’d you end up there?” Oh, god. Nate panicked. Should he have asked that question? Was it rude? Was he being insensitive?
Miguel didn’t seem to notice his discomfort. “I was in care almost my entire life.”
“Yeah?”
“My birth mother abandoned me at a Target, or someplace. When authorities finally caught up to her, she gave up her parental rights. But… and here is the stupid shit, my bio father was in jail. He refused to give up rights at first, so I was in limbo. And because our overburdened foster care system makes lots of mistakes, his rights were never terminated by the courts… so even though I was young, like two, I was never cleared to be adopted.”
Nate had heard plenty of horror stories about foster care but still had no idea how to respond.
“Don’t worry ’bout it. There really isn’t anything you can say. Seriously, there is no Hallmark card for ‘You had a fucked-up childhood.’ I’ve looked.” A grin spread across Miguel’s handsome face. “So, what’s your story, FBI? I share, you share.”
“I got nothing.” Nate thought a minute while Miguel scanned a wall of kitchen utensils. “One time when I was a kid, I didn’t have enough allowance for an ice cream at the corner store?”
“Tell me you didn’t shoplift ice cream. See, because sticking that down your pants is a bad idea.” He spied a weird flat thing held together by thick wire and began to fiddle with it.
Nate laughed. “No, the mom behind me in line gave me the quarter I needed. It was really embarrassing.”
The saleslady walked by them. Again. Nate bristled, wanting to call her out. Seriously? Two guys in a housewares store, one not white, the other wearing running clothes, worried her? She should be in Nate’s line of work if she wanted to be worried about the way human beings treated each other.
“Tough life, FBI.”
They stayed a little while longer. Nate thought Miguel was only looking now, considering that his cart was filled with enough basics to get him through each day. No sippy cup, but he had picked out bath towels in a shade of magenta Nate had never seen before.
At the cash register, Miguel pulled out a wad of cash to pay. Nate thought it was odd; who paid cash anymore?
Nate drove sedately through the pre-holiday traffic back to Miguel’s new apartment. Together they took the stuff upstairs, and in less time than an episode of Home Makeover or whatever, Miguel’s new home was stocked with day-to-day necessities.
Nate didn’t want the impromptu visit to end. Miguel was the first person, other than Gomez, he felt comfortable with in Skagit. Miguel didn’t notice or ignored the blips in Nate’s personality when awkward and Nate became one. Actually, he hadn’t felt uncomfortable except around the overly suspicious saleswoman.
“I should pick up Sheila,” Miguel said. “Let me buy dinner for giving a guy a hand?”
Dinner sounded fun, and Nate could pretend it was a birthday celebration. No one would be the wiser.
He made the turn toward his own house, first passing the freshly decorated porch of his neighbor, a garish display of red, white, and blue. They’d left Sheila comfortably parked under the carport. Nate parked next to the curb.
Glancing at the front of his house, Nate let out an involuntary groan and shut his eyes for a second. Maybe he could make it go away. He opened them. Nope. Miguel did a double take, first taking in the colorful balloon bouquet sitting on the doorstep and then looking back at Nate, his eyes wide with questions. The central balloon was a well-known cartoon character Nate had liked when he was much younger. Much.
“Uh, did you forget something? Like a five-year-old’s birthday party?”
“Nooo.” Nate opened his car door, wishing the ground would open up, a volcano would erupt, or a laser from a spaceship would zap down and whisk him away to the alien planet he belonged on. “It’s my birthday. I’m sure my sisters thought this was hilarious.”
“Why didn’t you say anything? I mean, it’s been your birthday all day and you spent it hauling a stranger’s stuff around?”
“Last year they had a cake made with He-Man on it. Their mission in life is to embarrass me at all turns.” He ignored Miguel’s comment.
They both got out of the car, and Nate approached the balloons with caution.
“So, FBI, are you going to let me treat for dinner, or do you have big plans tonight?”
Nate was saved from answering by a chiming sound. He was conflicted; yes, he wanted to spend more time with Miguel—he didn’t want the day to end. He couldn’t put his finger on what held him back. Maybe it was fear of a riptide dragging him into the unknown. His phone chimed again in his shorts pocket, and he knew from the tone it was Gomez. He pulled his phone out and read the text. Looked like he’d be doing surveillance for his birthday. “Can I get a rain check?”