I don’t know exactly when, or exactly why, or even exactly how, but I knew that my own light had gone out and I had no idea how to turn it back on.
I should be happy. I shouldn’t be crying. I’m healthy, I’m with family, Rex is back in my life. I should be happy.
I cried harder. I turned the faucets to full force, hoping it would drown out the sobs that were wrenched from my body.
I can’t be happy. I can’t.
At some point, I sank to the floor. The black-and-white tiles felt cold on my knees, my palms. I dropped my head in the cave my arms created.
I’m broken.
The thought rang in my head like a shattered bell, its chaotic sound making my head hurt. Or maybe that was the crying? Could be the crying.
I wasn’t sure how long I stayed on the bathroom floor, thinking about everything: my lack of drive, the lack of any good prospects for a career, my lack of feeling any kind of elation for what happened last night.
At some point, the tears dried, and the water bill was most likely way higher than it should be. I stood and washed my face before turning off the water. The face reflected in the mirror looked like even more of a stranger, with puffy and red eyes. Still, somewhere underneath the sad mask, somewhere in there was the old Benji. I just needed to figure out how to pull him out.
The rest of the morning went by without anymore spontaneous cry fests. I did start feeling a little better, as if the tears had helped remind me that I wasn’t as broken as I liked to believe. The dark clouds in my head moved aside, and I started looking back at last night and feeling that same familiar spark light in my gut. I stayed in my room after my bathroom meltdown, but I decided to venture out around lunchtime. I’d been spending my lunches inside my room over the last few weeks, eating sandwiches and drinking protein shakes while I watched old anime episodes.
Not today. The sun hung bright and full in the sky, and the weather was that perfect Georgia mix of summer and fall. Not cold enough for coats and not hot enough for shorts. I threw on a T-shirt and some track pants, and I wandered outside, where my moms were hanging out by a table on the patio. Uncle Peanut was there, wearing a bright yellow and pink button-up shirt, the small amount of white hairs on his head trimmed short as if he were ready for a big date.
And Rex was there, too. He looked so damn good, and I wasn’t just saying that because I’d seen him naked only about five hours earlier. No, even with clothes on, Rex looked like a man pulled right out of a “perfect guy” catalogue. He had a smile that glowed, and those sky-blue eyes of his matched the glow, flashes of last night streaking across my brain.
Flashes of those eyes, half-lidded and hungry, his mouth turned to an O as he blew his load all over me.
“Someone’s looking spiffy,” I said as I joined the four of them, focusing on Uncle Peanut and reminding myself that my moms were sitting only a few feet away from me.
Jack gave himself a vogue frame, working his haircut like a pro. “Aunt Gabbie cut it. She did a good job, right?”
“Damn, she did.”
Mia covered her mouth and spoke in a stage whisper, “Don’t tell him about the penis she shaved into the back of his head.”
Ashley guffawed and Uncle Peanut laughed, too. Rex’s laugh boomed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I specially asked for that. I’m just upset she circumcised it—”
“All right, my mistake for going down this road,” Mia said, dropping her head in her hands, cheeks flushing pink.
“You came at the perfect time,” Ashley said, motioning at a chair. I sat, smiling. I may not have been feeling like myself lately, but my family never failed to bring me back down to earth.
I sat next to Rex, his oaky scent rushing into my nose. Under the table, like an instant magnetic pull, our knees pressed together.
“Ash is making lunch. You good with burgers and hotdogs?” my mom asked.
“Sounds good to me.” And then I remembered something. “Hey, Ma,” I said. “Last night, I was up late and I noticed the gate to the volunteer parking area was open. I closed it, but still, with everything that’s gone on here, they should probably be on top of that.”
Both my moms nodded, but Mia seemed more concerned than Ashley. She craned around in her chair, looking at the locked yellow gate that would have been impossible to climb over. Security around the Gold Sanctuary got real tight after we started getting threatened by someone named the Dove. They wanted to shut us down, although the reasons didn’t seem very clear. My moms were convinced it was some animal rights person turned extremist, but I always had a sense that there was something more personal about it.
Either way, none of us were right. The Dove had been caught, and he was just some crazy lunatic, not attached to any animal rights groups or any past links in the family.
“I’ll talk to them. We’ve got two new people; it might have been one of them,” Mia said. “Cameras didn’t pick up anything weird, so I doubt it’s anything to worry about.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s fine.” I settled into the chair, trying not to think too much about Rex’s leg against mine. It brought with it a whole train of other thoughts: I want that leg on me, I want my face between his thighs, I want to stay up all day and night with him, talking, naked, loving, fucking.
I also wanted to figure out who sent that damn text.
“Do you think these are going to stay?” Ashley asked. “Tarrek seems a little out of it. And Bindy is scared of anything with teeth and also gags at the slightest smell of poop.”
Uncle Peanut huffed. “Oh, she definitely won’t be a good fit here, then.”
“They’ll be fine,” Mia said. “The only volunteer who we’ve lost is Helena, and that’s only because of family problems. I’m not running some kind of boot camp here.”
“How is she?” I asked, realizing I hadn’t seen her around in months. She’d been one of the first volunteers at the sanctuary and had become pretty close with the family. It was actually her foster child, River, who my parents were trying to adopt.
“She’s doing all right. Some drama with her father, so she’s had to go to Texas these last few months. River’s with her, although now that this whole Dove situation is behind us, maybe we can bring him into the family and get him settled here before his sixteenth birthday.”
Rex leaned back in his chair. “What a fucking relief. Mav had been telling me about the threats that psycho left.”
“It got scary,” Ashley said, and we all nodded our agreement, a rogue chill traveling down my spine.
“There are some crazy-ass people out there,” Rex said.
“Tell me about it,” Uncle Peanut said, “I dated most of them.”
It was the perfect opening. We fell into a long and elaborate and gut-busting sequence of stories that involved our Uncle Peanut and the various different conquests he’d had during his time as a famous celebrity photographer and beyond, living with Aunt Gabbie as an artist in the wine valley of California. My favorite story of his wasn’t about the hilarious one-nighters he had or the disastrous blind dates he’d gone on.
Nah, my favorite story from Jack was about his first and true love, one that truly left his mark on Uncle Peanut’s heart. His name was Ted, and he and Jack sounded like the perfect pair, only pulled apart by the tragic twists life sometimes brings, especially to those we think deserve them least.