“I was going through these blackout fits by the time I was fourteen. Fighting at school. Damaging property. Wreaking havoc any way that I could. I was so angry all the time. Just like my dad,” he said, and when I shook my head, he just looked at me. “He caused me pain, and I caused pain back. I fucked things up. Partied too hard. Drove too fast. It just felt good when I did bad things. Like the adrenaline rush was the only thing that could soothe the constant rampage going on inside me. It was the only thing that could keep me still for a little while.”
He gazed ahead at my neck as I straddled him, his eyes burning greener than I’d ever seen them as they drifted somewhere else.
“I had a little cousin named Daniel,” he murmured softly, seeming to change the subject. But I could feel his mind traveling somewhere, getting lost in a memory, so I went with it.
“I remember,” I said. “You used to buy him all those gifts before you went to Brazil every summer. There’d always be sneakers and iPods and basketball jerseys,” I smiled, remembering Iain how that suitcase would fill up with presents for Daniel over the course of his stay at our house. I’d even gone to the mall with him, Adam and Dad once, just to buy some video game for Daniel that had just come out. “How much younger is he exactly? I always imagined from the way you talked about him that he was in like, middle school.”
Iain’s eyes were shining as he breathed out a soft laugh, his hands playing absently with the hem of my T-shirt.
“He was only four years younger than me, but he was the baby of the family,” he said quietly. “I saw him every summer since he was born. That kid just had a way of making me feel like a rockstar. I was five when they started bringing him straight to me when he was crying, because I was the only one who could make him laugh anytime guaranteed. The first time he walked, it was to me. When he was in middle school, he talked about me enough that when I visited, his friends I’d never met would just start talking to me like they’d known me forever. Asking questions about my car. New York. Which movies I liked.”
I broke into a laugh, smiling for the story until I realized it wasn’t a tangent. Not some random memory that had popped up to give Iain a mental break from talking about his dad.
Suddenly, dread filled me, because while his faraway expression didn’t change, I suddenly felt Iain’s heart beating faster under my palm.
“He kept a picture of my Bonneville in his room like it was a sports poster,” he said, referring to the famous Bonnie. His beloved motorcycle. “His mom cried for weeks when he moved to California to go to school just so he could be close to me.”
His eyes were down at his hands now, which stayed busy with the hem of my shirt, thumbing along the seams. It seemed like a harmless distraction but then I saw his knuckles were white.
“I told myself to be a good role model for him. To try to keep him safe. But I was twenty-two and he was eighteen, and it was fun getting trashed with him. Racing down closed roads with him. Your brother wasn’t a motorcycle guy, but Daniel bought one as soon as he could. And we’d just ride together. The only difference was I did this shit to placate the demon inside me. And Daniel did this shit because he loved me. Wanted to be just like me. He always had.”
I knew what was coming now and my heart was racing like it was trying to escape being ripped in half. I knew it was going to happen. But all I could do was just nod and listen, because I knew this was the reason.
The reason he left.
The reason he refused to do any of the same things he once did.
His motorcycle. His car. Any form of thrill or adrenaline was discarded from his life because of what happened to Daniel.
Fuck. Tears jumped into my eyes when I saw them suddenly glisten in Iain’s. I wasn’t ready for this sight, didn’t know what to do. So I held his face in my hands and murmured close to his lips.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, believing it despite the fact that I didn’t yet know what happened.
Iain took in a single shaky breath that tore me apart.
“It was,” he whispered. “I was going fast on the highway one night. Angry about calls from New York. My uncle telling me it was time to come home. To see my dad. I hadn’t talked to him in a full year by then. I was ready to cut him from my life. I was working at Engelman with your brother by then. Telling myself I was never going to go back to New York.”
“I remember,” I murmured, collecting his hands in mine when I heard the tearing of seams on the hem of my shirt. “I remember you saying you’d never take over your dad’s agency.”
Iain’s eyebrows pulled tight as he shut his eyes for a moment.
“I think we were at a dinner. Your brother was there. I left abruptly because of the calls. I didn’t say bye to anyone and I didn’t realize Daniel got on his bike to go after me. Just to see where I was going. But I was going so fast…”
Iain’s voice broke and when I felt his body trembling, I wrapped my arms around him fast, hugging him as tight as I could.
I lost track of how long we sat there, both of us with tears as I held him against my shoulder, resting my head on top of his.
It took awhile longer before he was able to say the rest. That Daniel lost control of his motorcycle on the Pacific Coast Highway. That he died in the hospital the next morning.
That same day, Iain went home to the house he shared with my brother, took a shower and walked out the door with just his phone and his wallet. He went to the airport, bought a one-way ticket and flew to New York, spending a week in his childhood home that he couldn’t remember a detail of to this day.
It was like I blacked out. And when he woke up, he was taking a car into the city to take the spot at Thorn Sports left behind by his father.
It finally made sense to me.
His sudden departure. His overnight change. I understood it now. The fear of the rage coming back since it was so hastily buried. With every bit of work, every new client, he threw dirt over the demon. But considering the demon had been buried alive—considering he knew just how powerful it was—he lived in fear of its return.
Like me, he lived without closure. But unlike me, it ate at him every day. Fueled the anger that lived inside him, always threatening to come back.