“So you basically turn Jasper off and on again.”
He smiled. “He’s gonna be okay. He’s just grieving, and his guilt made it way worse, know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “I guess that’s how the cookie crumbles.” I picked up a cookie, then dropped it back on the plate, frowning. “I was pretty hard on him when he told me about the affair. I’m sure that wasn’t helpful.”
Shrugging, Orion bit into another cookie. “You got a right to feel your own way. What he did was shitty, no question.”
“Do you think he trusts you over me because you’re neutral on that?” I asked. “Do you think he looks at me and sees his own sins against my mom, and that’s why he won’t let me help him or anything?”
“Nah. Maybe a little, but I think it’s more about me than you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I used to be a stage-five clinger with Jaz when I was younger. He took care of me. But once I got my shit together, I’d try to do things for him, and he’d never let me help him either. Wasn’t until your mom died he started allowing me in closer. Like things had reversed, and he needed me. But not just to do errands.”
“Then for what? Don’t take this the wrong way but—why you? He’s got three kids.”
“Right. And you kids were a responsibility. But me? I was a duty.”
“Oh. Because of the job thing?”
“Yeah. I started out as a job. I know he cares about me but he’ll always see me that way in a sense. I think he clings to me now because I used to be his duty, and he misses having one. I represent that for him, that structure and responsibility he feels like he lost.”
“Huh.” I took the plate away when he reached for a fourth cookie. “Stop, you’re gonna make yourself sick. You got a hollow leg? Where do you put all the food you eat?”
He smirked. “I’m active! I burn it off. Come on, just one more. Your cookies are so good. Best I ever had.”
I slid the plate back. “Manipulative little shit. Here you go. All right, this makes sense. If you want to keep helping him out though, I’m gonna pay you.”
Scowling at me, he dropped his cookie, then pushed the plate away. “No.”
“Yes. Orion, it’s a lot of work, you’re taking time out of your week for him, you should be compensated.”
“Would you let someone pay you to take care of him?”
“No, but I’m family.”
“He’s family to me.”
“Is he? Or do you feel like you owe him something? Whatever he did for you in the past, Orion, he was only doing his job.”
Huffing, he linked his fingers behind his head and stared up at the stars. “You don’t know shit.”
“No offense, I can tell he’s fond of you. But like you said yourself, you were a job.”
Orion reached in his pocket and pulled his phone out, scrolling through it.
“You gonna ignore me now?”
“No. Relax, I wanna show you something, dickhead.”
I rolled my eyes, but smiled. Orion was the only person who could make me smile while calling me a dickhead. He slid his phone over and I looked at the image on the screen. “What’s this?”
“It’s me.”
The screen showed a photo of a boy dressed as a clown. Roughly twelve years old, I recognized Orion’s dark eyes, but the rest of his face was obscured by clown makeup, complete with red rubber ball on the nose. He wore a baggy suit with big red pom-pom buttons and a frilly collar, and his hair was a short, bright yellow mop. I looked up at him, and cautiously reached out with my fingers. He stiffened, but leaned into my hand as I touched that one strand of yellow hair in the front. “Same color.”
“That’s why I have it. I keep it as a reminder.”
I held his phone up. “Of this?”
“Your father did that. When he first brought me to Hillock Beach. Sat me in the bath at Claudette’s house and cut and dyed my hair.”
My eyebrows rose. I couldn’t picture it. My mother had always been the warm, compassionate one in our family. I couldn’t even remember many hugs from my dad. The image of him cutting and dying a little boy’s hair…it made a lump rise in my throat, and I wasn’t sure why. It was just so personal, so nurturing. A part of his job I’d never imagined.
And it was leading me to ask a question I knew Orion must be ready to answer. Something he wanted me to know. “Why did my father have to dye your hair?”
“Because people were trying to kill me.”
Chapter Thirteen
I picked up the bottle and poured Orion another drink. He seemed completely calm and relaxed considering he’d just told me people were trying to murder him as a child. He downed his drink then pointed the glass at me. “See, there it is, that face I hate. You’re wearing it now. People always make that face when I tell them about my past.”
“Well Jesus, how do you expect them to react when you tell them something like that?”
He shook his head. “Just get it out of your system. Are you all right, Orion, did you get therapy, I’m so sorry, blah blah. Look, Kurt, this is just what happened. There’s very little emotion attached to it anymore.”
“So you just…deal with it.”
“I don’t think about it anymore. It’s in the past. I didn’t survive just to let the worst time of my life live in my head forever.”
Despite stating how unaffected he was, he was definitely agitated. I hadn’t even asked him a single question yet, but he was behaving as if I was interrogating him. “I understand,” I said. “I won’t press you about your emotional state. You’re just giving me information and it’s in the past.”
He seemed grateful, and his shoulders relaxed. “Thanks. You can still ask questions if you wanna though.”
“Good, then I’ll start with the most obvious. Who was trying to kill you?”
“Friends of my father.”
“Sound like great friends.”
“Yeah. They were precious. They had him killed in prison.” At my sharp inhale, his eyes shifted my way. “It’s not a nice story. I only brought it up because what you said about Jaz just doing his job. He did so much more than his job. I need you to understand that’s why I take care of him. The shit I do for him doesn’t need a reward.”
I shut up for a moment. I’d always been on the outside regarding my father’s job, yet assumed I knew enough to make judgements. But here sat one of my father’s jobs at my patio table, and I realized I knew nothing. “I’m sorry,” I said.
Orion shrugged. “For what?”
“For what happened to your father. For all of it. Mostly for deigning to tell you how you should feel about my father.”
“It’s okay.” He smiled softly, rubbing his chin, long lashes dipping as he looked down. “But I asked you not to do the sympathy thing.”
“I tried not to. But I have feelings, so sue me.”
“No, I get it. I do.” He chuckled, staring into his empty glass. “No one’s ever quite prepared for this particular story. Only a few people know about it, but enough that I learned it makes people uncomfortable. We can change the subject.”