THERE WAS a day Thomas and I had been walking through the woods. He’d made Joe stay behind. Joe wasn’t too happy about that, but Thomas had just flashed his eyes in that way he did and Joe had stopped complaining. Mostly.
We didn’t talk for the longest time. It felt good to be silent with someone, not needing the weight of conversation. Thomas knew that about me. He knew that sometimes I couldn’t find the words to say what I wanted, so I just said nothing at all. He didn’t think I was stupid. Not like others had before him.
There was a moment, brief and bright, where I thought of my father. I still wasn’t quite sure what wolves could pick up by heartbeat and scent, if sadness had a taste to it, or if anxiousness felt heavy.
My father wouldn’t have understood this. The wolves. The pack. My place with them. He wouldn’t have understood any of it.
Not really.
He would have given me shit for it.
Tried to take it away.
My father hadn’t been a good man.
I knew that now.
He’d spoken in indifference and callousness.
In rage and violence.
But I’d loved him anyway, because I was his son.
And he was my father.
I wondered what that said about me, that I could love someone like him.
Despite his everything.
It wasn’t the first time I’d told myself it was better that he was gone.
But maybe it was the first time that I believed it completely.
That hit me hard.
That I’d ever thought it was good someone was dead was beyond me because I wasn’t that person.
I didn’t speak in indifference. In callousness.
In rage and violence.
My heart stuttered in my chest.
I took a breath, sharp, like a soundless gasp.
Thomas wrapped his big hand around the back of my neck and squeezed, leaving it there as we walked. He didn’t speak. He was. He was just.
There.
My heartbeat slowed.
My breaths returned to normal.
My feet didn’t drag.
We walked on.
Strangely enough, I spoke first. Later, of course. Much later. I thought maybe he was waiting for me.