Forget hot abs. Maybe I was a laugh guy or maybe it was just Felix. I liked how he wasn’t afraid to let me take point like with fixing the pool table, but he was also so effortlessly competent and take-charge the rest of the time, ordering me around in the name of healing my injury and meeting the endless questions from the girls all while keeping the woodstove burning and making sure everyone was fed and hydrated.
I’d never found being bossed into a glass of water with a pain-killer chaser sexy before, but here we were. I’d never admit it to my buddies, but I was enjoying being taken care of a little more than I probably should.
“At least let me help with dinner,” I begged, tired of the couch and also strangely craving cooking with him again.
“As it happens, dinner might be in your wheelhouse.” Felix offered me a hand up from the couch. Accepting made me feel creaky and ninety, but it was also a nice chance for another electric brush of his skin. “Cheesy noodles for the girls. More chicken for us.”
“I’m good at the kind of pasta that comes from a box.” I hobbled after him into the kitchen area. Standing for foosball and fixing the table had left me more sore and stiff, but no way was I going to complain. “No one boils water like me.”
“Even with macaroni, you need to be a winner?” Felix teased back, matching my light tone, but my neck still heated.
“I hate to lose,” I admitted as I found a pan suitable for boiling pasta. Something about Felix seemed to pull even uncomfortable truths loose from their tightly guarded hiding spots.
“I’ve noticed. I guess it’s a good trait for a military career that you were born with that competitive gene. You probably won races while crawling.”
“Yeah.” I exhaled hard and could have left it at that. Everyone always assumed I’d been obsessed with winning from birth, and given my family’s love of friendly games and bets, it was easy to let people have their assumptions. But somehow, I didn’t like Felix having the same opinion as everyone else. “Actually... I wasn’t always like this.”
“Oh?” Felix plunked a box of pasta and sauce on the counter. He sounded curious, but not pushy, which made me more talky than usual.
“My two older brothers were way better athletes and natural competitors. They were the ones having races in diapers.” I laughed, but it was true. Oliver and Roger even looked more alike. And after Roger had left home, Ollie had been happy enough to pal around with me, but when we were younger, they were a definite one-two punch. “Until Arthur came along, I was the little brother who seldom got a win in against them, but I didn’t care. I was happy just to tag along and have a good time.”
“What changed?” Felix reached around me to add a sprinkle of salt to the pasta water. Cooking with him was relaxing in a way I wasn’t sure I’d ever experienced. It was like dancing, but better because I was a crap dancer and here I didn’t have to try to guess Felix’s next move. We worked together like we shared a brain, and maybe it was that connection which made it easier to open up.
“Seventh grade. Dad was transferred to a new base midyear.” I moved so that he could add a skillet for the chicken next to the pasta pot. “We didn’t know anyone there. Ollie and Roger were off to high school, and Arthur was still in elementary. So I was alone in a new middle school, and my parents talked me into trying track to meet other kids.”
“Didn’t go well?” Felix was likely simply a good guesser, but it felt like he knew in a way that had my shoulders easing. I almost never shared this story, but telling Felix was like letting go of a boulder I’d been clinging to for years.
“Nope. Went terrible. I’m strong, but speed has never been my strong suit. I lost.” Even now, decades removed from the memory, my voice lowered and I couldn’t meet Felix’s kind gaze. “Over and over, I lost. Practice races, track meets, I lost so much, other people started to notice. It became a joke, and this one guy, this...”
“Bully?” Felix supplied when I trailed off.
I nodded sharply. “I hate that word, but yeah, I guess that’s what he was. He gave me shit every damn day that spring.”
Felix made a sympathetic noise and took a break from stirring the chicken to touch my arm. “That’s terrible. What did your parents do?”
“I never told.” My jaw made a clicking sound from how hard I ground my teeth together. Felix’s concern was like a fuzzy blanket, but I’d been out in the cold so long I didn’t quite know what to make of the warmth.
“Why?” His voice was pained, a realness there that couldn’t be faked, making my chest hurt. Maybe I shouldn’t have cracked the lid on this memory.
“We’d just moved.” I added the star-shaped noodles to the boiling water, watching them spread out. “Mom was starting college classes. Dad was deployed. The older two were busy with high school, and I didn’t want to look like more of a loser by involving any of them.”
“Oh, Calder.” Felix touched me again, this time making me look at him. Unlike the few others I’d shared this with, he didn’t make me feel stupid for not telling. Instead, there was an understanding in his eyes. “You didn’t tell the school either?”
“Nope. Just tried to ignore it, best I could. His dad got transferred that summer and...man.” I had to stop and swallow hard against the rush of relief that echoed across the decades.
“Lucky break.” Felix’s voice was strained.
“That’s one way to put it. But even then I knew not to trust luck. So I resolved right then that I was never going to let anyone call me loser again.” My voice hardened because I wasn’t sure how much more sympathy I could handle before I turned into a limp noodle, swamped by feelings I thought I’d left behind. “I went out for eighth grade football, left track behind, and suddenly I was the most competitive Euler brother. Didn’t look back.”
“Wow.” He sounded dazed, as if his head was as murky as mine. I still wasn’t entirely sure why I’d shared that old tale, only that his soft eyes and his hand on my arm felt necessary, a warm presence filling the space that boulder had left behind.
“Sorry. That got heavy fast.” I moved to stir the pasta, but he didn’t let me go. Damn. He could be strong when he needed to be.
“No, don’t apologize. Thank you for sharing. Truly.”
“I’m not usually such a buzzkill,” I mumbled, having no idea what to do with the thanks.
“Trust me. As a guardian, I appreciate this story more than I can say. Charlotte has...issues with her peers sometimes. This is a good reminder to be more vigilant and not take either of their words that things at school are fine.” Felix continued to hold my gaze, and the depth of emotion in his eyes made my breath catch. Maybe that was why I told him. Not only did he seem to understand, but he found value in my sharing, as if I’d done him some sort of favor, opening that old memory box.