Darren’s death wasn’t just hard on Felix. It changed him.
He got the call late one night while Jared was still sleeping. Darren had drunk too much, driven home from his friend’s place, and hit a power pole. Felix went to identify his body, deciding not to tell Jared until he got home the next morning.
He refused to let me go with him and came home as the sun was rising, drunker than I’d ever seen him. But I wasn’t mad; how could I be? He’d just seen the man who he thought of as a father in a way that no one wanted to remember seeing someone. Let alone someone they loved.
I supported him as best I could, picking up even more shifts at the diner when he stopped going to work. Jared was quiet, but he kept working at the garage, doing his best to make sense out of a business that was never really all that successful. I tried to help when I had the time.
“God, I don’t think Darren filed anything.” I closed the drawer and leaned back against it, looking around the dingy office. Which was really more of a sectioned off corner in the shed created by miscellaneous car and bike parts and tool boxes.
It gave enough privacy away from the few other workers, though, to discuss how bad things were.
“Right.” Jared sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Christ, I don’t think he ever picked up a calculator in his life. Shit.” He smirked sadly with a huff, looking over at the tax statements on the desk. “I’m surprised he even paid his damn taxes on time.”
They weren’t on time, but he did pay them. “What do we do?” I asked.
Jared frowned, his eyes softening as he stared at me. “It’s not your problem, Mags. We’ll figure it out.”
I shook my head with a humorless laugh. “We? Felix isn’t—”
“Isn’t what?” said the man himself.
Jared and I looked over at him. He was here, and that felt huge after a week spent wondering what I could do to get him to talk to me.
“Hey. You’re here,” I breathed, feeling kind of dumb afterward.
He shrugged, straightening from the makeshift wall. “Well, I’m not fucking anywhere else, am I?”
“Dude.” Jared scowled. “Why bother if you’re just gonna be an ass?”
Felix gave him a hard look, and my insides started to knot. “Fuck off. And because the funeral’s over, it’s time to get this shithole sorted.”
Neither Jared nor I argued with him. I think we were both just relieved he’d shown up.
We spent that afternoon sorting through boxes of receipts, client information, and trying to work out payroll before Felix decided he’d had enough.
“Going out. I’ll be home later.” He then left without a backward glance or before we could even say a thing.
I looked at Jared with my heart sitting in my throat.
He worried his lip between his teeth. “He’ll keep coming around. Just give him some more time.”
I didn’t know if I believed him, but I wanted to.
Over the following week, he kept going into the garage during the day, and I thought things would get better.
But he still went out every night. Still was distant and would barely say two words to me.
Two weeks after the funeral, I woke up one night to the sound of giggling coming from somewhere. Felix wasn’t in bed, he hadn’t come home yet, but I tried not to let that worry me. It was sadly kind of normal behavior for him at the time.
I slipped my robe on and padded out of the room to get a glass of water. But what I saw in the kitchen stopped me in my tracks.
“Come on, just have a little. Ryan said it was really good shit.”
Sam was sitting on the kitchen counter, swinging her legs back and forth as she used a credit card to scoop some powder into a tiny pile next to her bare thighs. Her denim skirt had ridden up, exposing some of the green of her panties. I didn’t think she was in any state to care.
My pulse was stampeding in my ears. Felix was standing between her and some other guy I didn’t know, sipping on a bottle of beer.
I didn’t know what to do, so I simply walked my numb body over to the sink and got a glass of water, feeling their eyes on me the whole time I chugged it down.
“Mags,” Felix slurred. “What’re you doing up?”
Spinning around, I stared at his bloodshot eyes and the small smirk on his lips. Figures, he could give me some semblance of a smile while he was drunk.
“I heard laughter and woke up. I think the better question is, what are you doing?”
Felix’s jaw clenched, his features hardening with annoyance.
Sam cleared her throat. “Sorry, Maggie. He said it was cool to come back here after the party at Ryan’s.”
I looked at her then, the way she swayed on the counter, a tiny smile on her pretty face and her blue eyes hooded with intoxication. “Ryan’s?”
Her smile grew bigger. “Yeah, his birthday bash was tonight.” She frowned then, looking back and forth between Felix and me. “Wait, you didn’t know?”
I glanced down at the scuffed floor, shaking my head.
“Oh, sorry. I mean, Felix said you couldn’t come, so I just thought—”
“Shut up, Sam. She’s not my fucking keeper.”
Ouch. Okay, well, I’d had enough.
Tears stung my eyes, so I kept my head down and walked out of the kitchen, waving goodbye over my shoulder. “Have a good night. I’m going back to bed.”
Jared found me sitting on the bed a few minutes later. I guess he’d woken up, too. I couldn’t hear anymore laughter from the kitchen, but I knew they were all still out there from the hushed murmurs and the occasional clinking of glass.
He plonked down on the bed beside me on an elbow. “You okay?”
I looked down at his sleepy green eyes, willing myself not to cry, and shook my head.
“Who’s Ryan?” I asked after I thought I had my emotions in check.
Jared cursed. “He has been hanging out with him again, then.”
I picked at my nails in my lap. “Apparently. Scored some coke from him. It’s on the kitchen counter if you want some.” My sad attempt at sarcasm didn’t go unnoticed.
“Hey.” Jared sat up. “Look at me.”
I did, still trying not to cry as Felix’s harsh words bashed into each other in my head, trying to make a home for themselves among all the softly spoken declarations of love. He could be short, easy to piss off, and quiet at times, but he’d never treated me like that before.
It hurt. It hurt so badly that I didn’t know what I would do to fix it, or if I could handle it if it happened again.
“He hung out with him when we were younger, doing some dumb shit. It wasn’t long before he met you, actually, that it all got straightened out.” I frowned, and he continued, “Ryan’s bad news. Drug dealing, theft, you name it, he’s either done it or is doing it.”
Oh, God. “What happened? Felix did that, too?” I couldn’t imagine that, but then again, thinking back to the boy I’d met all those years ago at a party, maybe I could.
Jared nodded. “Yeah, they got caught stealing cars. Felix almost went to juvie.”
At my wide-eyed expression, he told me what happened, how Felix ended up getting roped into stealing cars and how Darren got him out of trouble.
“Holy shit.” I stared at the blue sheets on the bed in a daze. Angry he’d never told me and scared out of my mind about what might happen if he was hanging out with that guy again.
“You got that right.” Jared sighed. “So this? Well, it isn’t good. I know he’s in a bad place, but fuck, this is really stupid of him.”
“What can we do?” I looked up at him, desperation strangling my vocal cords.
He chewed his lip, staring at me for a beat. “It needs to be you. You’ve gotta do something. I know he’s hurting, I fucking am too, and hell, I’m sure you are as well. But he needs to wake up.” He gave my shoulder a light punch. “And there’s no one left who can really do that besides you.”
He was right. Only, I didn’t know if I was enough.
My stomach curdled, knowing he was out there with Sam. I didn’t know what it was that made me believe it, but I just didn’t think he’d ever cheat on me. I also didn’t want to take the risk that things could get any worse, though.
Jared left a minute later, and I could hear him saying hello to Sam and that guy before telling them it was time to go. The voices faded. The front door closed. And I wondered if Felix was even still home.
He was. And lying next to him later in bed while he snored and stunk of beer and weed, I tried to think of what I could do to bring him back to me.
The next day, I worked until nine. By the time I got home, I found Jared half passed out on the couch and Felix was nowhere to be seen.
Jared was usually out on the weekend, so to find him home on a Saturday night surprised me. But I think a part of me had realized he was waiting for me to get home, seeing as that was something his brother would usually do.
“Hey.” I slumped down on the couch next to him.
He blinked a few times, sitting up and stretching his arms over his head with a yawn. “Work okay?”
I nodded, tossing my purse on the coffee table. “Yeah, it dragged as it usually does with the late shift.”
He stood. “Well, I’m gonna hit the sack then. I’ll catch y—”
The front door opened and slammed closed. We both turned as Felix stumbled into the room, and I mean stumbled. The only thing holding him upright was Sam and some guy with blond hair and a sharp face. He wasn’t the same guy who was here last night.
“Let go of me. I’m fine. Shit.” Felix shoved away from them and almost fell into the wall.
Jared was there then, holding his arm and giving his brother a tremulous smile. “Big night, eh? It’s not even ten; you’re getting soft in your old age.”
Felix chuckled. “Shut the fuck up.”
The blond guy smiled at me. “Maggie, I take it? I’m Ryan.”
I didn’t trust his smile, not with everything I’d heard about him. But I stood and walked over to them, giving him a small hello in return.
“Well, we’d better get going.” Ryan tucked his hands into his jean pockets. For someone who was supposedly on the wrong side of the law a lot, he seemed awfully sober. “This guy here tried to drive his drunk ass home. So I thought I’d better bring him home instead.” He winked at me, grabbed Sam’s hand, and turned for the door.
“Thank you.” I forced a smile.
Sam waved, Ryan nodded, then they were gone.
“Fucking hell, you seriously tried to drive home like this?” Jared hissed.
Felix ignored him and pushed away from the wall and his brother, walking unsteadily out of the room.
“Felix!” Jared hollered, startling me. I’d never heard him angry like that before. “After everything that’s fucking happened, you’d seriously do something that fucking stupid?” He followed him out of the room, and I started to do the same.
“Fuck off, Jared. I’m fine, aren’t I?” Felix grumble-slurred. “Go babysit my girlfriend. You seem to like doing that.”
I stopped in the hall, flinching at his venom-coated words.
“You fucking for real? Do you even hear yourself right now?” Jared groaned. “I’m trying to look out for her because you obviously don’t give a shit anymore.”
He looked over at me when I walked into the kitchen, wincing apologetically. I shook my head, trying to let him know it was okay.
He was right, after all. No matter how much the truth stung.
“Yeah, well, maybe Maggie should fuck off back home to Mommy and Daddy, save us both the trouble of having to give a shit about her.”
What? He didn’t just … he did. My heart met the pit of my stomach.
Tears leaked out of my eyes of their own accord, and Felix spun around from his perch against the kitchen sink, fear blanketing his handsome features. “Shit, no. I didn’t …”
My feet carried me out of the room before he could form any more of a response, my heart splintering with every move I made as I grabbed my old duffel bag from the wardrobe in our room and threw it on the bed.
“Mags, Little Doe …” Felix came barreling into the room, grabbing the bag and holding it behind him. “I didn’t mean it. I’m just … It’s all messed up.”
I sniffed. “What? Us?”
He shook his head, eyes pleading. “No, no. My head.” He groaned, closing his eyes briefly. “Fuck me. I’m too drunk for this shit.”
Snorting, I yanked the bag back from him. “When aren’t you drunk lately, Felix?”
He cursed. “That’s not fair. Come on.”
“No.” I threw the bag to the floor, anger and frustration granting me the courage to say what I needed to. “What’s not fair is having to sit here, night after night, wondering when the hell you’re going to come home.” He went to interrupt me, but I kept going. “What’s not fair is wondering what you’re doing all hours of the night while I stare at the god damned ceiling with my stomach in knots. What’s not fair is you hurting, and spiraling out of control, and not letting me help you.” I pulled in a trembling breath, tears streaming down my face. “What’s not fair is you breaking my fucking heart, Felix.”
His face paled as he stared at me for a long moment before sitting on the bed, hanging his head between his knees and running his shaky hands through his hair. “You can’t leave me. I’m not gonna let you do that.”
Sighing, I sat down beside him. “I don’t want to. Ever. But I don’t know what else I can do, Felix.” I stared at the carpet, trying to get the tears to stop.
His warm hand took mine, and I let it. It’d been too long since I’d had him willingly touch me like this.
He tugged it to his lips. “I’m sorry, so fucking sorry. It just hurts, Mags. It hurts so much, and I don’t know how to make it go away.”
His broken voice had my tears coming faster, and when I looked at him, his wet eyes had me climbing in his lap to hold him to me. “You need to let it out, big guy,” I whispered in his ear, placing a kiss on his neck.
A choked sound left him, and I held him tighter.
“Let it go. It needs to come out.”
And with his arms holding me so tightly I could hardly breathe, he finally did.