#ch: daniel deluca

[motownfiction]

lick

Sam takes himself for a fool.

He doesn’t do it often. Sure, he slacks off in all his classes, but mediocre-to-shitty grades are never enough to convince him that he’s dumb. He could knock the brain out of just about anyone’s head at St. Catherine’s if he really tried. It sounds arrogant, but he knows he’s smart. Brilliant, maybe, on a good day, after a good sleep or a particularly revelatory listen-through of a great record. He knows he’s smart. He can spin an idea out of nothing.

But he can also observe things that go down right in front of him.

Nobody seems to remember that. They think that because Sam has all these fantastical ideas and jokes, that because his brain is made up mostly of popular and obscure song lyrics, then he must not actually see the things in front of his face. His own mother repeatedly says that Sam is confused by the shadow of his own nose. And of course there are times when he lets his imagination carry him away. That’s the best part of having an imagination. Letting it sweep you up and lift you out of whatever it is that’s scaring you.

But he’s not imagining this one.

How could he be?

It happens outside his own home on a hot Friday afternoon in July. He and Steph just got back from the mall, where she finally bought a pair of shoes she hadn’t been able to stop talking about for almost two months. They ran into Daniel, who had just successfully run away from Vicky St. John and her propositioning.

“I don’t get it,” Sam says. “I thought you liked hooking up with Vicky.”

“I do,” Daniel says. “I just have another thing later tonight. That’s all.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam thinks he sees Steph blush, but it’s probably just because it’s awkward to think of Daniel – sweet, quiet Daniel – hooking up with almost every girl in the Class of 1985.

“Damn, man,” Sam says. “A girl a day. That’s your limit?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Damn. Well, I guess you gotta preserve some tradition. Must make going to Confession a lot easier.”

Daniel laughs, and Sam thinks it sounds a little strained. Maybe he just feels awkward about how many girls he’s been with, too. If Sam were a different kind of guy, he might ask him why he’s garnered this specific reputation over the past year. But it’s probably not like that. It’s probably just that it’s fun, and if Daniel can swing it, why not? Everybody’s sleeping with somebody now. Even Lucy and Will finally got around to it. That’s probably all it is.

The ice cream truck comes by. Sam, eternally nine years old, hits his pockets for loose change. He’s got enough for two Bomb Pops – one for him, one for Steph. He looks at Daniel apologetically, but Daniel shakes his head.

“I don’t need one,” he says. “I don’t like how they turn my teeth blue once you get to the bottom of ‘em.”

“Shit, that’s the best part!” Sam says.

“Let him like what he likes,” Steph says, suddenly popping into the conversation out of nowhere. It shouldn’t feel surprising. Steph isn’t exactly shy. But whenever they get around Daniel … sometimes it’s like she is. Sam assumes she’s just matching him. That’s probably it.

Once they get the Bomb Pops, they stand outside in the heat of the day, just talking. Daniel mentions something about meeting up with Kim Campbell a few nights ago, and the story turns so unexpectedly salacious, both Sam and Steph forget they’re supposed to be eating popsicles. Sam watches as Steph looks down at her hand – a stream of red and blue juices falling around her wrist and between the fingers of her right hand. Instinctively, she raises her hand to her lips, and with a lick or two, the melted purplish stuff disappears.

But Daniel was watching her the whole time.

And it seemed like he liked what he saw.

Not in a way that you like just any beautiful girl, either. No. This was … this was like he had an agenda. Like he’d already crossed it – her – off the top of his “to-do” list.

Steph looks back at him, still blushing, even though they haven’t exchanged any words.

So, Sam takes himself for a fool.Because how could he ever take the alternative?

(part of @nosebleedclub june challenge -- day 4!)

[mayasdeluca]

[motownfiction]

and the rot sets in

About a month after his father’s death, Daniel goes to the cemetery to see him.

He thinks it’s a little weird that Frank was buried. Who was there to put him in the ground? He has siblings, but do they care? Maybe they’re all just so afraid of the pope they put their animosity aside to make sure none of them went to hell. That sounds about right. If Daniel remembers anything about his father’s brother, it was that he used the Bible to forgive himself for everything. No matter the shit he did, he thought that book was a forcefield.

You could say a lot about Frank, but at least he didn’t do that.

Daniel knows where they buried him. Lola went to the funeral, and she let him know. She even volunteered to come with him today, but Daniel wouldn’t let her. He knew he had to go alone. He always has to go alone. This is between a man and his father’s corpse.

When he gets to the headstone, he’s not really sure what he’s doing here. Either one of them, actually. Daniel didn’t go to the funeral for a reason. But he had to go today. Alone. In the extended winter that just won’t end, he had to come here, and he had to see this. To know that it’s nothing. To know that granite and dirt have no power over him. Not Frank’s granite or Frank’s dirt, anyway. Daniel wonders if he was afraid that his father’s wrist would shoot up from the grass and pull him under, below the earth, below Hell, where a guy like him belongs. He’s talking about Frank when he says a guy like him. Not himself. Not anymore.

He can’t think so badly of himself anymore. Not with three kids who think the world of him. Not with the life he’s lucky enough to have.

He looks down at Frank’s gravestone again.

No thanks to you.

Somebody’s listening to a radio somewhere in the background. A groundskeeper, cleaning up the place, taking advantage of the fact that there’s almost no one in the cemetery to offend. Daniel closes his eyes and tries to hear the song.

Drums keep pounding rhythm to the brain …

Daniel laughs. He doesn’t know why, but Sonny and Cher are the perfect singers for the first time a neglected son visits his deadbeat father’s resting place. Something about the irony.

He turns around and doesn’t look back. He does not need to come here anymore. Not for himself, anyway.

As he walks to his car, he passes the groundskeeper. For a moment, he’s horrified to be listening to pop music in front of a mourner, but Daniel shoots him a rare toothy smile. He relaxes. They both do.

And the beat goes on.

And the rot sets in.

The beat goes on.

(part of @nosebleedclub january challenge -- day 31! i'm pretty happy with the vignettes this month! in february, i'm splitting the time between prompts for this blog & my other blog, so stay tuned! i'm excited 💕)

[motownfiction]

frostbite

“Do you ever think you’ll get frostbite on your dick?”

Daniel looks at Sam on the other side of the booth in horror.

“What are you talking about, man?”

Sam shrugs like it’s the most innocent question in the world.

“I mean, you’re having sex with a lot of girls,” he says, and Daniel is disturbed by how much it doesn’t sound like a question.

“Yeah, and?”

��And … I mean, how much of it is taking place in the backseat of said girl’s car?”

Daniel can feel himself turning the ugliest shades of pink, red, and purple, in that order.

“Sam, I swear, if I thought I could get away with killing you … well, I actually don’t know which way I’d choose. There are so many I’ve had in mind for so long.”

“Keep making jokes,” Sam says. “I’ll find a good enough lawyer.”

“How will a lawyer help you when you’re dead?”

“I plan on being a very litigious ghost. Anyway. You’re not answering any of my most pertinent questions.”

Daniel sighs. He doesn’t want to answer any of these questions. There’s nothing less comfortable than talking about sex with your friends, especially when those friends are guys you’ve known before you could speak. It’s not that it feels “gay” or whatever stupid reason somebody like Crosby or Robby Blair would give. It’s that when you’ve known somebody for this long, it’s almost too intimate. Maybe it would make sense if Daniel was better with words, if he’d ever lean into the part of him that wanted to write poetry.

There’s also the matter of confronting all the reasons he hooks up with those girls. Girls he doesn’t like or dislike. Girls who don’t even look him in the eye in the school hallways. Girls he knows he couldn’t love even if he wanted to try. He doesn’t want to admit that it’s because he likes the attention. How would that look? A guy just wanting the attention? You hear about it all the time with girls, but you don’t suspect that’s what the guy could be doing there, too. Maybe it’s because he’s too embarrassed to admit it. Daniel’s pretty sure he’ll never find out.

“Less time in the car than you’d imagine,” he says, hurrying through the words with all the breath in his body. “My mom’s never home, man, and these girls’ parents … they don’t give a shit what they do.”

Sam nods.

“Lucy told me once that she has a theory that some of their parents want them to get knocked up,” he says. “So they can prove what good Catholics they are.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised. Not gonna happen with me, though.”

“Sure. But frostbite on your dick …?”

“Unlikely.”

“Good to know.”

Daniel sighs. He wishes he didn’t know Sam this well, but alas. No turning back.

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you ask me this question because you’re afraid you’re going to get frostbite on your dick?”

Sam’s mouth curls up into the most nervous smile Daniel has ever seen.

“I slept with Steph in my car last week,” he says. “It was … that was …”

Daniel knows he’d rather die than finish that sentence. It’s a good thing Daniel can finish it for him. Silently, of course.

That was his first time.

“You OK?” Daniel asks.

Sam nods.

“Very, I think.”

“She OK?”

“Yeah. I asked her first.”

“Good. Then I think you’re doing it right.”

Better than Daniel had it, that’s for sure. Melissa Kaminski just assumed. And he was OK, really, except for in all the ways that he wasn’t. Except for in all the ways he didn’t figure out until much, much later.

But he’s not going to say any of that out loud.

How could he?

[motownfiction]

eyeshadow

Daniel catches himself looking at Sadie in their AP English class, toward the middle of October, while they’re working on a group project about Hamlet.

This isn’t the first time he’s caught himself looking at Sadie like she’s more than just herself, more than just his friend. He knows he did a few times last year. Sophomore year, when things seemed easy. Back then, Lucy wasn’t pregnant, Will wasn’t the expectant father, and Daniel hadn’t recently ended a fling with Sam’s girlfriend. Back then, it seemed like the whole world made sense. But it doesn’t anymore.

So, Daniel might as well look at Sadie the way he knows she looks at him.

And isn’t it terrible of him? To know the way Sadie feels about him and not do anything about it? It’s not that he doesn’t feel that way about her. He does, or at least part of the way. Sadie’s feelings have always been bigger than anyone else’s (and about anything, not just love, not just him). He knows he could date Sadie. He plans for her to be in his life forever, anyway. Why not just make it romantic?

Daniel doesn’t do romantic. Not out loud. Sure, he hooks up with girls all the time, but he’s not built to be romantic. He could have gone that way with Steph, but then, there was the matter of Sam. Even his romantic inclinations are unavailable.

Sadie is not unavailable. She is there. She is ready. And Daniel isn’t.

He looks at her as she reads, somehow not feeling his attention. She’s usually perceptive about stuff like this. It’s sweet when she’s engrossed. Right now, she’s trying to understand every hidden nuance in Hamlet’s frailty, thy name is woman soliloquy. Normally, Lucy would do it, but she’s busy trying not to throw up all over the desk clump.

“Funny, right?” she asks, though Daniel only hears her through an echoey distance. “That this is what became of our first-grade desk clump? A pregnant teenager and her fiancé.”

Daniel nods. He can’t believe this is what became of those first graders, either. But not because Lucy is pregnant. Not because she and Will are getting married in a month. Because he’s looking at Sadie in a way he’s not ready to. Sadie is wonderful. She is beautiful and smart and everything you’re supposed to pray for.

It’s just that Daniel doesn’t deserve her.

Maybe he never will.

He looks at her a little longer before she finally looks up from her copy of Hamlet. When she smiles, it’s like the world opens up to another realm, just for the two of them. Daniel gulps hard to make the feelings go away. They don’t.

“What’s going on?” Sadie asks behind a sweet laugh.

Daniel shrugs.

“Nothing,” he says. “Are you wearing eyeshadow?”

Sadie blinks her eyes. Sure enough, she’s wearing purple eyeshadow. A nice compliment to her big brown eyes. She looks beautiful. She always looks beautiful.

“Junior year means doing something new for yourself, I think,” she says. “And Lucy already took ‘getting pregnant,’ so I figured I’d sign up for ‘trying eyeshadow’ before I got stuck with anything more serious.”

Daniel laughs. Sadie’s funny, too. He can’t forget about how she’s funny. She makes him laugh even when he doesn’t think he remembers how.

Should he remember how?

“It’s nice,” Daniel says. “The eyeshadow.”

Sadie smiles with a touch too much hope.

“Thanks,” she says. “You wanna see the notes I took?”

Daniel leans across the desk clump a little closer.

“Sure.”

(part of @nosebleedclub july challenge -- day 10!)

[motownfiction]

lacrosse

Every Wednesday night, Daniel picks Rosemary up from rehearsals for the play. She’s not in the play, of course. She has just enough of her father’s cool gene to know that being in a high school musical is lame as hell, unless it’s Disney’s High School Musical. But she did end up in a drama elective at school this year, and part of her grade is working backstage for the school’s production of Grease.

“At least the music is good,” she said on the way home after the first rehearsal. “And I don’t think you can get sick of it, either.”

They’re three weeks into rehearsals now, and Rosemary still hasn’t reported being annoyed by any of the songs. Instead, all she does is talk about Tommy, the boy playing Eugene, AKA the school’s biggest nerd. Apparently, he got the part because life imitates reality.

Rosemary tells him everything she can about Tommy on those rides home from the school gym. The whole time, Daniel doesn’t say much. He just nods where he feels it’s appropriate. She probably doesn’t think he’s paying attention. Maybe she even thinks he’s one of those fathers who wakes up one day in complete denial that his daughter might have romantic interests. Neither of those things would be true. It’s just that he loves listening to his daughter say whatever she needs to say. He loves hearing the details she chooses to include. It’s a fascinating thing, he thinks, to discover what your children admire as they become adults. You wonder how much of it is because of you. You wonder what they’re avoiding because of you, too.

But of course Daniel listens to Rosemary. He doesn’t just listen, either. He remembers. He remembers that Tommy still plays with Legos despite being seventeen years old, that he was born in Ohio but moved to Michigan when he was two, that his dad played lacrosse in high school and was devastated when Tommy turned out to have all the coordination of a fish on a bicycle, that his mom grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin, which was how his parents broke the ice when they first met. It’s very sweet, what she knows. She’s a good listener who knows how to love. She gets that from Sadie.

“Sounds like you really like this kid,” Daniel says.

Rosemary’s eyes go wide. Yep. Must not have known her dad was paying attention.

“I think I do,” she says. “But I don’t want to go overboard.”

“Going overboard is in your blood. You’ve met your mom. You remember your Uncle Sam. And I don’t think I have to talk to you about Charlie.”

Rosemary snorts.

“Please don’t,” she says.

“I think it’s good you like somebody,” Daniel says. “Gives you something fun to think about, doesn’t it?”

Rosemary sinks into the passenger seat and twirls a long strand of hair on her index finger.

“I guess,” she says. “It’s also torture. I don’t think Tommy knows that a girl could like him. I don’t think he knows that’s an option.”

Daniel nods. Tommy isn’t a thing like he was back in high school, but somehow, Daniel feels like he understands him, anyway. When you don’t believe you’re worthy of someone’s affections, you refuse to see them, even when they’re clear. But Daniel’s not letting Rosemary go down without a fight.

“Ask your mom more about how she and I finally got together,” he says.

Rosemary laughs, just a little.

“I’ve heard that story a million times,” she says. “What could I possibly still have to learn from it, you know? At this point?”

But Daniel shrugs. For once, he knows exactly what he’s talking about.

“Ask your mom,” he says again. “Ask her to tell the story differently.”

He watches the wheels turn in Rosemary’s eyes – the eyes she got from him, the eyes he’ll always be proud of – and he’s pretty sure he’s doing a good thing.

(part of @nosebleedclub poetry month challenge -- day 3!)

[motownfiction]

upriver

When Sadie and Daniel move out of the downriver area, Sadie has a hard time adjusting. It’s not that their new suburb is any better or fancier – arguably, it’s worse, depending on your cross streets – it’s just that it’s different. Sadie has thought of herself as a downriver kid for as long as she’s been alive, even after she wasn’t a kid anymore. To move even a little bit feels awkward and unnatural, like she’s supposed to stay in the same suburb all her life. It’s ridiculous. She never wanted to stay in one place. She always wanted to get out and move. If she’d been able to afford it, she probably would have gone away to college, too – stuck to the New York City plan she and Lucy had when they were twelve or thirteen. Lucy followed the plan (in a roundabout way), and she never looked back downriver. Why is Sadie nearly weeping as they head down Ford Road?

Maybe it’s because she’s pregnant. That’s the answer to everything, actually. She’s been pregnant twice before, but that doesn’t make the third time any easier. When she and Daniel decided to have a third baby, they knew they’d have to move to a bigger house. It just so happens that the bigger house is on the other side of the Detroit River. But maybe if Sadie wasn’t pregnant, she’d be able to pack up the moving van without a word. She’d be excited to move to their new house (less than ten miles away from the old one). Instead, she’s a mess.

“It’s that there’s no such thing as upriver,” she says as Daniel drives. “What’s my identifier going to be now that I don’t live downriver? Huh?”

“How about your name?” Daniel says.

“Daniel.”

“No, that’s my name. You’re Sadie. I thought you knew that.”

He laughs to himself for a bit too long. Sadie turns around to look at Michael and Rosemary in the backseat … as far as she can turn around, of course, at six and a half months pregnant with her third baby.

“I need you both to know that your dad used to be cool,” she says.

“Cool!” Rosemary says.

Michael, however, snorts – far more sarcastic than the average seven-year-old child.

“Sure,” he says. “Cool.”

Sadie turns back around and sighs. She feels Daniel’s hand on her knee and looks up, even though it’s the last thing she wants to do.

“I promise,” he says, “you will still be yourself when you live in a different house.”

“In a different suburb?” Sadie asks. “With a different ZIP code?”

“Even then.”

Sadie sighs again. She looks out the window and watches downriver disappear behind her. She’ll pass through it again tomorrow (and probably all the days after that), but it won’t be the same. Maybe after she has her new little boy, things will be different.

Then again, of course they’ll be different.

(part of @nosebleedclub february challenge -- day 5!)

[motownfiction]

rosary

cw: discussion of catholicism

For his First Communion, Daniel’s mother gives him a rosary.

Supposedly, it’s very special, and that’s not just because it’s a thing that he can use to pray. It’s made from beautiful beads colored like aquamarines – Daniel’s birthstone. By the time her son is eight years old, Linda still hasn’t figured out that he doesn’t drool over gemstones in the same way her six-year-old daughter does. But she tries. She tries harder than anybody Daniel has ever known. And when she hands him that rosary over a dinner of spaghetti, meatballs, and a screaming match about who goes to hell when they die, Daniel knows he can’t lose it. He can’t even wear it. He can’t do anything but appreciate it.

A few years pass, and Daniel feels a little more comfortable taking the rosary out of his room. When he makes his Confirmation at the start of ninth grade, he takes the rosary with him to Mass. Even as he recites his prayers, he keeps his mother right there in the middle of his mind.

Dear God, he thinks, please don’t let me drop this rosary. Please don’t let me lose it. Please help my mom to know that I love it, and I love her. Please help her to know I know what she went through. Please, God, please.

It’s been a little less than a year since Daniel’s father left. It’s been a little less than a year since he found his mother clutching her own rosary at the foot of her bed, crying and praying for … something. Daniel has spent the better part of this year lying awake at night, trying to figure out what she must have been doing, what she must have been asking God for.

For Frank to come back? No. Mom knew this was never his home. There’s nowhere for him to come back to. There’s a big difference between sleeping in a house and living there. Daniel wishes it had taken him less than thirteen years to see it.

Was she praying for Lola not to get hurt by all of this? Maybe. Lola’s a sensitive kid even if she doesn’t always show it, even if she hides behind her toothy smile and her bright outfits. Mom wouldn’t need to pray for Lola. She moves in her own way.

But was she praying for a better son? Now that Frank is gone, who is supposed to teach Daniel what it means to be a man? Can he learn it from a mother? Can he learn it from himself? He’s not sure if these questions count as his own prayers, but judging by the grip on his rosary, he thinks they might qualify.

Was she praying for a better son? One who would say his prayers, come home at night, and be there to help the people in his life – the mothers, the sisters, the friends? Was she praying that all Daniel had in common with his father were those eyes … those big brown eyes that anyone could mistake for good before discovering they’re evil?

Are Daniel’s eyes evil?

He clutches the rosary and prays it away … whatever it is. Fear, disgust, something. He prays it will evaporate, and by lunchtime, he will be the kind of son his mother must have been praying for.

Won’t he?

(part of @nosebleedclub september challenge -- day xx!)

[motownfiction]

story begins

Daniel’s story begins away from him.

In a lot of ways, it doesn’t even feel like his story at all. He was there, but not in the way Melissa Kaminski tells it.

He overhears some telephoned version of the story on Wednesday morning, five days after losing his virginity (Do boys even have virginity? Daniel doesn’t know, and he doesn’t want to embarrass himself by asking.). Everyone’s walking across the street from the high school to the church for weekly Mass. Melissa Kaminski’s first-period geometry class is right next door to Daniel’s first-period algebra class, but they’re not walking together. Why would they? Instead, Daniel walks behind her, listening as she chats excitedly with Bonnie McDonnough about how her weekend went.

“You know, Jeff is Jeff, and I like him,” Melissa says, “but Daniel DeLuca. If he wasn’t a freshman, I might just have to get some more of him.”

“He was a freshman on Friday, too,” Bonnie says. “Didn’t stop you then.”

“Yeah, but … I don’t know, once is different. Twice would be bad. But, Bonnie … you should have seen …”

She proceeds to talk about Daniel as if he’s a celebrity in a magazine, and he feels like his limbs are not his own. He looks down at his shoes and wonders if he belongs in them anymore. It’s a cliché he can’t stop thinking about, not even when he’s forced to genuflect before the opening hymn. At last week’s Mass, he was just Daniel DeLuca, some freshman almost no one paid attention to. Now, he’s a story – a character in Melissa Kaminski’s imagination, which somehow feels more real than his own body. He takes a deep breath to make sure he’s still there. Even thinks about singing along with “All Creatures of Our God and King,” but he doesn’t. A part of him is still too cool.

Melissa Kaminski knows which parts.

If this is where Daniel’s story begins, he’s not sure how he feels about it. How can someone else decide who he is before he even knows how to make up his mind?

But then Kim Campbell and Vicky St. John make eyes at him in line for Communion.

And he thinks maybe this new story won’t be so bad.

(part of @nosebleedclub november challenge -- day 1! i'm back, and i'm going to stay)

[motownfiction]

divination

Daniel doesn’t dare tell anyone about this – not even Sadie – but he thinks he must have known what was going to happen between Charlie and Elenore.

He thinks he knew even before Charlie told him on Christmas Eve, when they went to go see Sam in the cemetery. Something about the way Elenore looked when Daniel saw her … something about the way she sounded on the phone, or the way her infrequent emails read. There was something going on – a feeling Daniel would only describe as what he would get if he somehow had the chance to spend a night with Princess Leia in her long white dress. Only one person in the world could do a number like that on Elenore.

And Daniel knows he couldn’t have stopped anything. He couldn’t have even talked to Elenore about it. He loves her – always, always, especially now that there’s no Sam for her to run to when no one else understands – but it’s not like that. Daniel’s not like that. He can love you to heaven and hell and all around Saturn, but he’s never going to make you talk about your feelings unprompted. He’d die if anyone asked him flat like that. Figures everybody else would, too.

Everybody, of course, except Sadie. The only person he could ever say any of this to, except for himself.

“Divination,” she says.

Daniel makes a face.

“What?” he asks.

“Divination,” Sadie says again. “It’s like being able to see the future. I always thought you kind of had it. This just gives me the proof.”

Daniel thinks about that for a minute. Maybe he is the kind of guy with a hunch for things. When he was six, and his father never used the stupid little soap Daniel made for him one Christmas, he knew one day, he’d leave and never call them again. He knew as soon as Lola made her first grilled cheese sandwich by herself that she would open her own restaurant one day. And he knew from the first time Sadie kissed him that she’d be the only woman he ever kissed for the rest of his life. He was always right. Something about the bones.

“What should I do?” he asks. “For Elenore?”

Sadie shrugs.

“Call her up,” she says. “Talk about anything. Except what’s going on.”

Daniel almost smiles.

Sounds pretty good to him.

(part of @nosebleedclub december challenge -- day 20!)

[motownfiction]

scallop

There are moments when Daniel wonders what the hell he’s been doing. Like tonight, as he lies in Gina Lumetta’s bed, all alone while she takes a very long shower. He tries not to think of that as an insult. Have sex with Daniel DeLuca, the quietest boy in the Class of ‘85, just to shower him off yourself and pretend like you didn’t. Come back for more in a week, a month, give or take how much attention you get from boys with letterman jackets. That’s how it’s gone from the very first night with the very first girl. And really, Daniel should be more used to it by now. The pendulum of desire and rejection. It surprises him every time it smacks him in the ass and lands him smack in the middle of an unfamiliar mattress or backseat.

Gina even went out of her way to assure him that it wasn’t because she was, like, ashamed to hook up with him or anything.

Really, she said as she rolled out of the bed without a second look at the boy by her side. If I wasn’t interested, do you think I would have put on “Up Where We Belong?”

Daniel snorts, still thinking about that line. If only Gina knew. In the past year, he’s hooked up six times to “Up Where We Belong.” It’s one of the most popular choices for popular girls, beating out even the likes of “Sexual Healing” and Yazoo’s “Only You.” As a matter of fact, Gina should know. Just last month, she played “Up Where We Belong” for him in the backseat of her LeBaron. He snorts again. Maybe she thinks it’s their song.

It’s all that assurance that makes Daniel want to get up and leave. He knows Gina won’t miss him, that she’ll just call up a friend and talk about what happened, that she’ll ask if someone more popular and less available (less willing) might be more interested in her now that it looks like she has her eye on other guys. That’s what they all do. Daniel is a stepping stone, in all senses of the metaphor.

But then, he spots her light blue nightgown on the floor, the one with the scallop edges on the very bottom. It looks just like a puddle, waiting for her to step back into it. And Daniel remembers how it felt to get her out of it … to pull both straps down one by one, to go slowly when she just wanted him to get it over with. It was a routine, to be sure, but it’s a routine Daniel is good at. It might even be the only thing he’s good at anymore.

It’s a reminder that for a second, someone wanted him enough to be vulnerable in front of him. It’s a reminder that maybe, one of these days, he’ll be vulnerable in front of one of them, too.

Is that not what it already is?

He hears the stream of Gina’s shower suddenly turn off, followed by the loud rushing of the rings on her shower curtain. For a split second, he thinks about getting ready to leave, but he can’t. It wouldn’t be right to leave her like she left him.

She appears in a stark white towel with a confused look on her face.

“Hey,” she says, “I thought you’d have somewhere else to be.”

Daniel’s heart drops a little into his gut.

“No,” he says. “I try not to, uh, do that.”

Gina smiles a little and crawls back into the bed.

“Good,” she says. “Because I was wondering if – like, if you’re really not busy – if we could maybe …”

She says a few things, but in all honesty, Daniel’s not listening. What does it matter?

Whatever it is Gina is asking for, he’s pretty sure he’s going to give it to her. Not because she means much to him. Not because he could see himself loving her.

But because he’s really not busy.

(part of @nosebleedclub june challenge -- day 5!)

[motownfiction]

survivors of lust

Daniel feels Steph’s leg brush up against him in the backseat of his car. It’s not usually where they meet up, but today, it was all they had. Both of their mothers are home, and they have no intention of leaving. So, Daniel’s stuck in the car, like some kid who has to worry about getting caught, about anyone caring what he does. And sure, his mom always would have cared. She would have cared if she’d known about Melissa Kaminski, or Kim Campbell, or Vicky St. John, or anyone. But she didn’t have the time. Daniel’s not really interested in a retrospective lecture. He’ll take the car. An uncomfortable gear shift in all the wrong places is better than his mother’s judgment … anywhere.

Maybe it’s not his mother’s judgment he’s running from. Daniel doesn’t even want to think about the person who would judge him the most. More than that. Sam’s heart would break. He wouldn’t even say anything. Wouldn’t make a sound. He’d just walk away and forget he ever knew Daniel … forget they were ever best friends, if they were ever best friends. Daniel has always worried he’s second to Will. He shakes his head. Now is not the time to feel sorry for himself … not the time to blame Sam’s preferences for Daniel’s damn-near adultery.

Is it still adultery if you’re all sixteen and unmarried? Daniel doesn’t know. All these words he used to think only applied to women … he feels them now, harder than he ever thought possible. When he’s not with Steph (or another girl, though there haven’t been any of those all summer), Daniel spends most of his time thinking about himself as bad. Bad for staying out all night, bad for waking up in different girls’ beds all the time, bad for sneaking out of the house and back in when he has school the next morning.

He looks over at Steph, whose eyes are glassy, likely with the same guilt and regret. Daniel exhales. The two of them are survivors of lust, and they know they should stop. They never should have started, and Daniel is bad for having gone after her. But she was in his head, and she would not come out. Now … she still won’t leave. They know they should stop.

It’s just that they haven’t yet.

Steph’s leg brushes up against Daniel’s again, and he has all the same thoughts in a different order.

(part of @nosebleedclub february challenge -- day 21!)

[motownfiction]

run the other way

Daniel is smart enough to know he should run the other way, and as fast as he can. As far as his middle-aged legs will take him.

But he doesn’t want to. Just like nineteen years ago, he doesn’t want to. He wants to meet Charlie this time, just like he did before. Just like nineteen years ago, he tells Sadie where he’s going, and just like nineteen years ago, she stays at home. Doesn’t want to see her brother. Assumes he’s up to no good.

This time, they don’t meet at an Applebee’s. Daniel always thought that was the weirdest choice, anyway. They meet on the patio of a Tex-Mex restaurant, and Daniel is there first. He breaks a tortilla chip into shards and waits. It feels like forever, but according to his phone, it has only been six minutes.

When Charlie shows up, he looks so different.

Daniel has seen Charlie plenty of times since Christmas Eve in 2004. They’re still brothers-in-law, and brothers-in-law show up to a lot of the same events. He has watched as Charlie has gotten older (as Daniel, himself, has grown even older than that) … watched as his hair lost those coppery tones, as his beard went through awkward stages of patchiness. But it’s not that Charlie looks older. It’s that he looks better.

His shirt fits him. So do his pants. He doesn’t look like he’s swimming in fabric anymore. He’s got a good haircut – one that makes him look like he really lives in New York City, not just like he tells people he does. And his sunglasses. He must have dropped a fortune he doesn’t have on them. But it’s not the outfit, either.

When was the last time Charlie smiled like that?

Daniel knows he should run the other way. He knows that seeing Charlie like this cannot be a good thing. That if Charlie looks happy and put together, then he’s probably taking advantage of some young woman, maybe a waitress at a cocktail bar like they’re living through a music video for The Human League. They never even liked The Human League.

Who could Charlie be fucking, and fucking over? Daniel blinks, and he sees a whole affair between Charlie and Emma O’Connor, who’s probably too old for him. Good thing Emma and Michael have been together for a year already. Charlie’s not shitty enough to steal a woman out from under his own nephew.

Right?

Daniel should run the other way.

But when Charlie sits down across from him and smiles – really smiles, like he did when he was a teenager, like he did when he didn’t used to think too hard about his life, like he did before they all lost Sam – Daniel knows he isn’t going anywhere.

He’s in this for the rest of the day, and it’s exactly where he wants to be.

Incredible what seeing your ex-best friend will do to you.

(part of @nosebleedclub january challenge -- day 24!)

[motownfiction]

mahler's fifth

Sadie is trying. It’s a little hard, given her loyalties must always lie with Sam, her twin, her other self, but she is trying. Tonight is Charlie’s first concert in his new music program at school, and she is going to be happy for him.

They have special guests from the local symphony orchestra to open the show. It’s kind of them, as all the awkward patrons in the audience whisper to another. Daniel leans over to Sadie and asks, “Remember when the best part of our DSO field trips was going to McDonald’s afterward?” Sadie laughs even though she’s not supposed to – even though Mom shoots her a look of daggers to be quiet. The orchestra is playing a selection from Mahler’s Fifth, but Sadie is pretty sure Mom wouldn’t know that by ear.

Sam and Dad do, though, for whatever that’s worth.

Charlie has a piano solo. It’s a very big deal, despite the fact that he’s had piano solos since he was six or seven. Maybe even younger than that. Sadie can’t keep track of all the Christmas concerts, spring flings, and graduations. Whenever St. Catherine’s needed a pianist, there he was, ready for Mom to volunteer him. This time, his solo is a big deal because he got into a music program, because he’s in college, because he got to choose his song. He’s playing “Blackbird.” His choice.

When Charlie sits down at the bench to play, Sadie looks over at Sam. He is mouthing the lyrics that are not there.

As Charlie plays, Sadie notices she’s doing the same thing. She’s probably sung “Blackbird” a million times before, but listening to Charlie play it here – watching him – it just means something different. Something better.

You were only waiting for this moment to be free.

She swears she can hear the birds chirping on the track.

He finishes the song. Usually, it’s Mom who stands up and claps, ruining the sophisticated element of classical concert-going. But this time, Sadie has her beat.

She rises to her feet and cheers for Charlie like she didn’t know she could do.

He turns around and sees her there. At first, he smiles, probably thinking she’s Mom. Sadie knows they have the same voice, which she pretends does not bother her. But when he sees that it’s Sadie, he looks … strange. Almost panicked.

Sadie stops clapping and locks eyes with her little brother – a rare thing between the two of them.

She’s not sure what they’re communicating, but damn, if it’s not something.

(part of @nosebleedclub january challenge -- day 22!)

[motownfiction]

lamprey

When Rosemary develops a brief infatuation with undersea life, Daniel learns more about fish than he ever thought possible.

He can hardly believe there was a time when he didn’t know this much about crustaceans and clownfish. Everything he knew about the water, he knew from the koi ponds he and Mike install in rich people’s backyards.

But Rosemary makes sure he learns a lot more. She tells him about some fish he’s never even heard of. She tells him about blobfish (which are apparently real), fangtooth, and flying fish. Every time Rosemary talks about a new fish, her eyes get a little bit brighter. Daniel has to admit he loves it. She might have his eyes, but damn, if she doesn’t have Sadie’s enthusiasm.

One night when Michael and Billy are playing in the backyard, Rosemary curls up to Daniel on the couch and shows him pictures of her new favorite fish, the lamprey.

It is quite possibly the ugliest and scariest fish Daniel has ever seen. The lamprey has beady eyes and a terrifying mouth with some of the creepiest teeth on any living thing. He shudders.

“Dang, Rose,” he says. “Where’s this fish from? Liverpool?”

“No,” Rosemary insists, though Daniel’s pretty sure she doesn’t get the joke, since she’s still only seven. “Lampreys are in the Great Lakes.”

“The Great Lakes? Like here?”

“Kind of. I read that they’re a pest, like a cockroach or a rat or something. But I think they look kind of cool, and I like them.”

Daniel laughs.

“You think they’re kind of cool?” he asks. “What about a fish that looks like this is cool to you?”

Rosemary shrugs like it should be obvious, and maybe it should be.

“They don’t have jaws,” she says. “They just suck everything in. That sounds pretty cool. Like it’s a lot of power.”

Daniel nods. And there it is. He never thought of his seven-year-old daughter as someone on a quest for power, but maybe that’s exactly who she is. Middle child. Only girl. Never quite sure what to do with herself, no matter how hard she tries.

And Daniel can relate. He’s never been a middle child or a girl, but he thinks he gets it. When you’re the type of person who can be easily ignored, you have to bite your way to the top. But you get tired of biting. People stop feeling the pain. And all you want to do is open your mouth and take the whole world in. Make them see. Make them see how dark it is on the inside. They’ve been too scared for all this time. It’s time to make them find something to be scared of.

Maybe Rosemary doesn’t feel this way at all. They named her Rosemary Sunshine, after all, and it wasn’t for nothing. She smiled on the day she was born because she knew she had something to smile about. Not like Daniel. Not when he was a baby, and not today.

But when he looks at Rosemary, he doesn’t feel so dark anymore. He doesn’t want to be jawless.

He smiles with all his teeth and holds his head as high as it can go.

(part of @nosebleedclub september challenge -- day xiii!)

[motownfiction]

strangling plant

Daniel’s working in a longtime customer’s backyard when he spots a dangerous vine crawling up one of the tree trunks. His chest twinges. He’ll have to call them and break it to them that way. They’ve got a strangling plant.

It’s never fun to tell people about those. They always feel like they’ve failed, like they’ve done something wrong, like they were bad parents to their trees. Daniel gets it. Nobody really asks to have trees in a suburb like this one, except by living there, but they have them, anyway. He and Sadie are good to their trees, almost like they’re extra children. But people who live around these parts … the rich parts … they tend to care more about their swimming pools and patios than anything else in their own backyards.

He pulls out his phone and takes a picture, knowing the wife is going to want photographic evidence. She’s the type. A couple of summers ago, when the bees drained all the color from their purple flower bushes while they were away on vacation, she didn’t believe it. She wanted pictures then, too. It’s exhausting. Damn Internet has made people so literal. For Daniel, who’s never been particularly poetic, to notice … it has to be bad.

Daniel remembers the first time he saw a strangling plant. He was in college, picking up some extra work with Sadie’s dad over the summer. Mike pointed one out in a different rich client’s backyard and explained. The strangling plant tries to kill the host. It’s born to kill the host. It’s botany with an Oedipal complex.

Mike had this look in his eye, too, like there was something he was too nervous to say. Daniel would never have dreamt of following up on it, but that glint … it haunts him, all these many decades later.

His phone buzzes after he takes the picture. A text from Charlie, a number he won’t block, no matter how many times Sadie begs him to do it.

Can we talk? the message reads.

Plain and simple for anyone else, but for Charlie Doyle, there is no such thing. Daniel knows he should ignore the message, just like he should have ignored that phone call on Christmas Eve back in 2004. He should always ignore Charlie. They don’t live in a world where he makes sense.

But Daniel doesn’t make much sense, either.

He opens up the message thread – the one that hasn’t seen a new message from either of them in over a year – and types.

Sure, Daniel writes. Call at 5?

(part of @nosebleedclub january challenge -- day 17!)