Raze (Riven 3)

“But then this Riven thing happened and it didn’t include me, and then you were never home anymore, even before you left.”

I could see the familiar stubborn look kindle in her eyes, and I quickly said, “It’s not that you did anything wrong by taking the Riven gig. I’m so happy for you, seriously. I just wish…I just want to still be part of your life.”

“Felix, I…fuck.” She looked more serious than I’d ever seen her. “I’m sorry. I’ve been so caught up in everything with Riven—”

“Well, of course you have.”

“Wow, can you shut up for a second now? Anyway. I’ve been really caught up, I know. And I am sorry I disappeared. But I’m doing this for you too. You are part of it. The whole family is.”

Her eyes got wide the way they did when she was plotting.

“Because if this works out? This will be it for us, all of us. I’ll be able to pay for college for the kids if they wanna go and help them out just like you helped me. For once it doesn’t have to be all on you, bro. I owe you, like, everything. Let me finally do my part!”

“I— What? You don’t owe me.”

“Of course I do. Don’t you think I feel bad that you worked while I applied to college, and while I went to college, and studied, and on the weekends because you told me I should do schoolwork?”

“What? No! I…I thought we were partners.”

“We were! Partners whose main goal was to help me. Don’t you think I felt selfish as fuck about that? Don’t you think I feel bad that you gave up your whole fucking life for me?”

I felt it like a physical punch to the solar plexus.

“You…you think I have no life?”

Sofia bit her lip and lowered her voice.

“I think you’ve spent so long taking care of all of us that you haven’t spent any time figuring out what you want. And honestly? I think you’ve liked it that way. You liked being the one we turned to and you liked helping us, because you’re a fucking sweetheart. But also ’cuz it’s scary to want shit and you don’t like to be scared. Well, stop worrying about us, Felix. Worry about yourself. Let me take over. At least on the money front. Hell, I already sent Mom the money to fix the roof. We’re gonna be okay!”

I sat there, speechless and deflated. I pictured the numbers in the bank account I’d opened unbeknownst to Sofia. The one I’d funneled exactly thirty dollars a week into for the last ten months in the hopes of helping Mom fix the roof in a year. I imagined Sof writing a check for the full amount with one newly-careless flourish of her pen.

If my family didn’t need me anymore—if Sofia didn’t need me—what the hell was I doing? Just following in my mother’s footsteps, working the same job for years because it paid the bills and never getting a chance to change the story.

“I—I—I was saving. For the roof. For Mom.”

Sofia narrowed her eyes. “Okay.”

“I wish you hadn’t paid for it without telling me,” I said, voice as prim and proper as it had ever been, to avoid tears.

“Damn it, Felix, no! No, I’m not gonna ask your permission about how to spend my money. And you need to let go of whatever weird masculinity shit is telling you that it’s your responsibility. That it ever was. Yeah, our dad wasn’t around, but you weren’t Mom’s husband, you were her kid. That shit wasn’t on you.”

Our father hadn’t stuck around. Neither had the kids’. And though I’d gone through a phase at ten and eleven of wishing they would’ve, it had dissipated soon after that, leaving a healed-over wound that I’d always considered minor. At Sofia’s words, skin thinner than I’d suspected felt scraped away, revealing something hollow and gaping. Something I’d been trying to shovel full on my own without ever realizing.

I’d tried to fill that hole by making my mom dinner and making sure the kids did their homework. By contributing money and cleaning the house. By refereeing conflicts and soothing hurt feelings. I’d wanted to give them everything. Wanted them to have everything. Wanted my mom to feel like she had support and the kids to feel like they had structure. Because I loved them, but also because I never wanted them to feel like anything was missing.

The way I had.

And now, even shaken by that realization, writhing in my gut and squeezing at my heart was the petty, bitter knowledge that if I’d sung for Theo and Coco that day in Dane’s bar, I could be the one giving my family everything they’d ever wanted now. Everything I had tried to give in my own small ways for as long as I could remember. Ways that would never compare to Sofia’s now.