Greek Revival: Chapter 9

IX.

In the bathroom, Ari took deep breaths – five in, hold for eight, seven out – to prevent themself from hyperventilating. They pulled out their phone to text Damian but found that he had texted them first, a few minutes ago.

‘ari. ARI i know where i heard ur teachers name b4. the guy penny left nico for is named eddie pryor.’

‘just looked up a photo... it’s definitely him. get out of there asap or else he might explode ur eye’

‘are you okay kid? are you getting these? if you’re still at that dude’s house get out NOW!!!’

Ari tapped out a response, only half paying attention to where their fingers landed, scanning the tastefully-decorated bathroom (vintage blue tiles, flower-embroidered hand towels) for any sign that Nico had been here.

Because Nico was here, they thought. At some point. Nico was here and he tried to get Penny back and now he’s missing. And Dr. Pryor knows about it. Or he knows that something happened to Nico, anyway, and he seems completely chill about it. And he seems completely chill about the fact that Penny’s here – he called her ‘his lady.’ Gosh, that takes on some really effed-up undertones knowing that somebody magic-ed her into falling in love with him. Oh, shoot, did he do that? Or did someone do it for him? But even if they did it on his behalf, he must know about it, right? Or maybe he doesn’t – but then how does he know about Nico?

No, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t! There’s no way. He – but Penny’s here – and Nico was here – and Damian’s eye, and the carving in the kitchen –

Ari swallowed, hard. What had Dr. Pryor been saying before Penny came in?

You’ll be a proper Greek man someday soon.

Proper. Greek. Man.

‘I’m still here,’ Ari typed. ‘Not in immediate danger. But Penny’s here. And I think Dr. Pryor might know that I know what happened to Nico. And I think I know how to get more info.’

‘oh my god why the fuck are you still there!!!! get penny if u can and get the fuck out!’

‘If you don’t hear from me in twenty minutes,’ Ari responded, the idea coalescing even as they texted it to Damian, ‘come in guns blazing. But let me try doing some recon first.’

‘jesus christ kid. exactly twenty minutes... i’m setting a fuckin timer. not losing you to some asshole with a magic book.’

He’s not losing me? What does that mean? He… has me now?

What the heck, Ari? Not the effing point. Not even close.

Ari flushed the toilet, although they hadn’t used it, and washed their hands. They continued deep breathing all the way back down the hall, through the kitchen, and into the dining room. Penny and Dr. Pryor were sitting at the table, sharing balls of sticky fried dough. Penny was giggling at something, and Dr. Pryor was smiling in a warm, indulgent, self-satisfied way that made Ari think again of a tiger. A tiger that had just eaten something very small and defenseless and alive. They both glanced up when Ari entered the room.

“Are you alright, Ariste?”

“Yes, thank you,” Ari said. “I… I’m sorry. I really haven’t been well lately. It got bad enough at one point that I thought I might have a gas leak in my apartment. I completely forget what we were talking about.”

“I was just introducing you two,” Dr. Pryor said.

“Yeah, of course. Hi. I’m Ari Tan. I’m a student of Dr. Pryor’s. Or former student, I guess.”

“I’m Penelope, Eddie’s partner. And soon to be fiancée, I hope,” she added with a teasing smile. “He’s been promising to propose for weeks now.”

“After the annual meeting, dearest,” he replied. “I swear it.”

“Alright, alright.”

Ari tried not to gape as the two flirted like young lovers. They didn’t know Penny, had never seen her except in a few photos. But the picture Damian had painted for them, of Nico and Penny’s friendship, of their trips to gay bars in Boston and their marriage, hurt to think about now. This woman – Penelope – seemed so demure, so domestic, in comparison to the Penny of those photos and Damian’s stories. The difference filled Ari with something like revulsion, the same kind they’d felt when there had been an all-school assembly their junior year of high school. Two girls had gone to the senior prom together. Nobody made a fuss that night, but the next week they brought in a speaker who extolled the effectiveness of conversion camps, using his own heterosexual marriage as proof. The assembly had made Ari so uncomfortable that they’d faked sick and gone to the nurse’s office halfway through. Everything about this situation filled Ari with that same terrible sense of wrongness. They fought the urge to bolt to the bathroom again.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Ari said, “but I’ll have to head home sometime soon. Could I possibly get that tour before I go?”

Penny jumped a little, like she’d forgotten that Ari was there, but Dr. Pryor nodded and stood up from the table.

“Of course,” he said. “My apologies – it would be terribly inhospitable to keep you too late. Penelope, dearest, would you clear the table and then check on – ah – the garden?”

Penny squinted at him. “Sure, Eddie, but – the garden?”

“The garden,” he repeated patiently. “Downstairs.”

Penny stared at him blankly for a few moments before brightening and slapping a palm to her forehead. “Oh! Yes, of course. Silly me.” She giggled and began piling plates and silverware back onto the large dinner tray as Dr. Pryor swept Ari out of the room.

That was weird. Ari followed Dr. Pryor back into the study, trying to keep track of their racing thoughts – Nico was here, that’s Penny, but Dr. Pryor wouldn’t, but he must know, Damian’s eye, proper Greek men, Nico, Penny, Damian, PGM, Dr. Pryor, what have I gotten myself into? – as Dr. Pryor spoke at length about the decor of the house, the various auctions at which he acquired each piece of furniture, and his particular love for the shades of blue and green on the walls.

Ari’s eyes wandered over the bookshelves and the desk as they took deep breaths. Like the shelves in Gilbert’s office, nothing popped out at them.

Just like Gilbert’s office, in fact. Ari’s gaze lit on the sturdy desk against the wall. They couldn’t see the contents of the books or the papers or the antique typewriter spread out atop it, but the desk itself looked awfully similar to the one in Gilbert’s office. Ari shifted their weight casually, nodding along to Dr. Pryor’s speech about crown molding, and cocked their head just enough that they could see the side of the desk. The light in Gilbert’s office had been white, overhead, unremarkable, and they hadn’t noticed the secret panel until he had already launched himself at it. But here, as the sun sank outside, the office was lit by scattered warm lamps that threw everything into comforting, fuzzy lights and darks. And in this light, Ari could just discern a set of lines on the side of the desk. They could have been hairline cracks, could have been a function of the wood grain, except that they formed a perfect square the size of a large hand. Perfect for pressing into the desk.

I have to get into that secret drawer.

“I’m afraid I’m boring you,” Dr. Pryor said, although he didn’t sound the least bit afraid. “Shall we move on?”

“Huh? Yes – no – I mean… look, professor, do you really mean it? About me being a proper Greek man? I… you can’t guarantee it, can you? I mean, you alone?”

Because if he’s one, and Gilbert is one – which he must be, if Dr. Pryor is one, because me saying ‘proper Greek man’ is what set Gilbert off – so if they both are, then there must be others. A real secret society.

Dr. Pryor chuckled. “Of course I’m not the only one who makes the decisions, but I assure you, you’ve got nothing to worry about, Ariste. The recommendation letters you received from me for graduate school alone would go a long way towards securing your position, but of course there are many more, ah, impactful opportunities for me to speak in your favor.”

“But aren’t there – I mean, okay. I know you can’t say anything officially yet. But… I know Nico was one of your students, and I know he should have been a proper Greek man, but I don’t know what happened to him after that. I don’t know what he got passed over for, and I don’t know where he is now. I…” Ari took a deep breath, thinking back on their years of classes with Dr. Pryor. His mannerisms, his love of history, his belief in greatness. The fact that Nico’s extremely gay wife was currently playing house with him.

“I don’t want to be just a footnote,” Ari said at last. “I don’t want people to not know what happened to me. I want to be great. So tell me what happened to Nico. Tell me where he is now, and where he went wrong. Don’t just tell me I won’t be like him. Tell me how I won’t be.”

A slow smile spread across the professor’s mouth, and Ari recognized the expression with a pang in their chest. Pride. He was proud of them. Maybe this is somehow a misunderstanding, they thought. Maybe he really doesn’t know who Penny really is. Maybe he really had nothing to do with Nico’s disappearance.

“He was a brilliant student,” Dr. Pryor said. “Fastidious, precise, always striving for perfection. Not unlike you, although he did have something of a tendency to get distracted by the… human elements… of the discipline rather than focusing on the big ideas. Gods, wars, magic, language itself. Still, his father was a proper Greek man before him, and Nico would have been an obvious choice. Another brilliant student was on the rise, and the two ended up in the same graduate program – the other wasn’t one of mine, but I still found myself deeply impressed by him and took up his cause. He was our first special case, which is of course what you would be – his family had no history nor interest in the ancient Hellenistic world, but his aptitude was so great that I convinced the rest of the old guard that he deserved a fair shake. He’s gone on to do great things, obviously. He’s teaching up at Saint Julian’s College now, if you’ve ever been.”

So Dr. Pryor doesn’t want me to be the next Nico. He wants me to be the next Gilbert.

Ew.

“I haven’t,” Ari lied, and Dr. Pryor didn’t seem to notice. Evidently Gilbert hadn’t put two and two together about Ari’s identity yet, or if he had, he hadn’t squealed to Dr. Pryor.

“Ah, well. Lovely place, albeit a bit too Catholic for my taste.” He smiled conspiratorially at Ari. “I prefer my religion older, as you know.”

“Right. But if Nico had the family connection, why didn’t he ever go further in Classics?”

“As it turned out, he didn’t have the family connection. He was adopted. And two special cases in one year – the old guard would never have allowed it.” Dr. Pryor sighed, shrugged his shoulders slightly, tilted his head. “A shame, but the way he reacted afterwards made everyone feel rather good about their decision not to allow him the opportunity to progress to tenured professorship. Joining the military, of all things, which one might admire if he had done it for more Spartan reasons, but in the end he was just running away. Married and divorced in fewer than ten years. I pity him.”

“He got divorced?” Ari prompted, trying not to make their desperation for more information about Penny obvious.

“Yes. As I said, a shame, although to the best of my knowledge his ex-wife is much, much happier now.” A brief smile flashed over his face, almost too quickly for Ari to catch. Similar to his proud smile, but not quite.

This smile was triumphant.

He knows. Whether he did it or not, he knows exactly who Penny is and exactly why she’s with him.

A wave of nausea rocked Ari so hard that they had to lean against the doorframe for support.

“Are you alright?” Dr. Pryor asked.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Just – so I’ll be a special case.”

“You would, unless you have some particularly skilled Classicist ancestors with whom I’m unfamiliar. And, if I may be so vulgar, unless your anatomical situation has changed recently.”

“If I have Classicist relatives, I’m unfamiliar with them, too,” Ari said, brushing past the anatomy comment and hoping Dr. Pryor didn’t push it. “And when I get to grad school and become a proper Greek man and everything… I’m good? I’ll be able to do – well, I mean…”

Ari trailed off without saying ‘magic.’ I have no idea if I’m supposed to know that or not.

“Whatever you want to do,” Dr. Pryor agreed. “The world of higher education will be your oyster. We – your superiors, your peers, your mentors in the field – will make absolutely certain of that.”

“And if I somehow ended up like Nico Cappelletti and didn’t get in… I’d be screwed?”

“You won’t,” Dr. Pryor assured them. “But yes, if you’d like to put it in such a crude way, those who do not meet the standards required by the field – those who are not proper Greek men, not to put too fine a point on it – tend to find themselves unable to keep up with the demands of academia and fail to attain high positions in their departments. It ensures a higher standard of quality among its leaders than in any other discipline.”

“Well, I guess I’d better hurry up with my grad school applications, then.”

Ari’s phone buzzed. As they were pulling it out of their pocket to check it, a banging from the back of the house echoed through the study. A muffled yelling followed it, and more banging followed the yelling.

‘it’s been 20 mins,’ Ari’s phone said. ‘i’ll distract them. u run. just like up at st jul’s.’

“Oh dear,” Dr. Pryor said. “I had better –”

“I should go,” Ari said. “We can finish the tour another time?”

“Right, yes. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t walk you to the door. That sounds rather urgent.”

“Yeah, no, totally. I’ll see you soon, professor.”

Dr. Pryor swiftly left the study, moving back into the dining room and, Ari assumed, toward the back door, which, Ari assumed, Damian was banging on right now.

As soon as the door had closed behind the professor, Ari rushed to the desk and jammed their hand into the panel on the side of it. It glided in smoothly and clicked sharply, and then a drawer popped out of the side of the desk.

Inside it was a book. Well-cared-for, leather-bound, clearly handmade. Three initials were embossed on its cover. Pi, gamma, mu. P.G.M. They leafed through it quickly – handwritten Greek text. The same handwriting on Nico’s magic paper. Same drawings and diagrams, same mirrored portions. And, toward the back of the book, the soft, ragged, mountainous edge of a torn page. Ari didn’t have Nico’s magic paper with them, but they had spent enough time staring at it to know that its edge would match up perfectly with this one.

Ari glanced inside the drawer for any obvious magical traps and saw, stuck to the back of the drawer, another wooden eye. This one was much smaller than the one hanging in the kitchen, but it was clearly the same piece of magic.

Damian must be right. That’s what made his eye explode.

But this is it. This is the Papyri, all here, in Greek. This is the book Nico tore a page out of. Why just a page? Why not take the whole thing?

Unless just taking a page wouldn’t activate the eyeball trap, but taking the whole book would.

But Dr. Pryor will be back any second. And he’ll be expecting me to be gone. And he knows exactly what happened to Penny. And he’s fine with what happened to Penny, even if he didn’t do this to her himself. And his house is full of magic eyeball traps.

Ari stared down at the book. Just like Damian had said, they’d signed up for this, but they hadn’t signed up for this. And if Dr. Pryor wasn’t lying, if he really thought that Ari knew only as much as they’d claimed, if Ari’s years of practice holding up under his lie-detecting stare had paid off, they could quit right now. Leave the book, leave the house, finish their applications, and go on to a long, promising, and lucrative career in academia. They could be almost any college’s first Filipino Classics professor, and literally any college’s first nonbinary Classics professor, period. Dr. Pryor could continue to be their favorite mentor, they could learn magic from people who actually knew how to do it rather than by desperately self-teaching from impossible-to-read handwriting. Their eyes and their future would both remain intact.

But Damian, banging on the back door and yelling at the top of his lungs to give them a chance to escape, would be without his brother. Maybe just until he found another gullible Greek student. Maybe forever.

And Penny would still be here, docile and domestic and in some kind of false, magical, conversion-camp love with a man twice her age.

Eff it.

Ari took the book under one arm, shut the drawer, and ran for the exit. Taking one last look over their shoulder at those shelves of books they might never be allowed to borrow, something clicked in their brain, the same thing that had been tickling them since they walked in.

Holy crap. This was the study from the ring dream. This is where they did the lizard ritual. I can’t stop and think about that right now, but holy crap.

Ari grabbed their shoes with their free hand on their way out the front door and, not bothering to put them on, pulled out of the brick driveway still in their socks. They drove, tapping their fingers on the wheel, struggling not to speed although the only thing they wanted was to get away as quickly as possible, waiting to feel any sort of swelling, pressure, or pain in their eye.

They pulled into their driveway to a text from Damian. ‘leaving now. if ur not home… u better be.’

When, half an hour later, they knocked on the front door of the little white house and Damian opened it, sunglasses off, hair up, an expression of intense relief washing over his face, both of Ari’s eyes were still intact.

“Look,” Ari said, brandishing the book at him. “This is where Nico’s paper came from.”

Damian, as if he hadn’t heard them, swept Ari up in a bear hug, grabbing them tight, clinging to them, pulling them up onto their tiptoes. He crushed the book against their sternum, and Ari, unable to do anything else, leaned into Damian. His chest was warm and soft, and his chin rested atop Ari’s head. He smelled like wine, but Ari discovered they weren’t annoyed. If anything was a celebratory occasion, it was this.

“Jesus fucking Christ, kid,” he said into Ari’s hair. “Scared the shit out of me.”

“I just lost track of time,” Ari murmured.

“Thought he was gonna brainwash you too, or – kidnap you or some shit. I don’t know,” he said, still seemingly unhearing. “Fucking hell. Thank god you’re okay.”

“I wasn’t in any real danger, I don’t think. But I’m glad you came when you did. I got the book.”

Finally, Damian seemed to understand what was going on. He released Ari and waved them inside, his eye shining – holy crap, was he crying? – and examined the book in their arms instead of their face.

“Is that where Nico got the page from?”

“Yeah. I haven’t had the chance to go through the whole thing in depth yet, but I think this is everything. All the Papyri, all in Greek.”

“Hot damn, kid. And you just walked out of there with it?”

“I ran, but yeah. It’s weird – I thought it was gonna be harder than it was. I mean, there was one of those creepy eye things in the same drawer as the book, just like the one in the kitchen, but my eyes are still fine. And yours happened right away, right? So maybe it wasn’t working for some reason.”

Damian swallowed hard. Ari watched his Adam’s apple bob. For a few moments, he said nothing. The ibises, which had evidently taken up residence on the couch since Ari had left earlier that evening, watched him with their beady eyes. He sank, slowly, to a sitting position on the floor.

“So,” he said, sounding like there was something stuck in his throat, “we’ve got the magic book. What now?”

Despite their concern for Damian, Ari couldn’t fight the smile they felt. “Now,” they said, “we learn magic.”

***

‘Now’ was a bit of an exaggeration. After a brief discussion, Ari and Damian agreed that it was better not to use the physical book if they could help it. They would photograph each page and, just like Nico’s paper, Ari would use the photograph for their translations. That way they could sneak the book back into Dr. Pryor’s house, with a little luck, before he even knew it was gone. With less luck, he might at least notice the book’s disappearance but not think to suspect Ari after its sudden reappearance. With even less luck, he might suspect Ari but consider it part of their burgeoning interest in the secret society of which they had been promised eventual membership. It would still take some luck, but Ari enjoyed the feeling of their plan having layers, of not flying entirely by the seat of their pants.

Damian was unusually silent as the two took photos of each page, Ari using their phone, Damian using an old digital camera that Nico must have had kicking around the house. Damian had insisted on the duplicates, just in case the PGM got ahold of Ari’s phone. To make up for Damian’s uncharacteristic lack of interjections or even annoyance at the presence of the birds, Ari talked through everything they’d learned over dinner.

“So anyway, PGM stands for two things, as best I can tell,” Ari said. “There’s the Papyri, obviously, and there’s also a secret society of people calling themselves the Proper Greek Men. If I had to guess I’d say they picked the name because it shares the initials with the Papyri. I think it’s actually all men, too, at least from the way Gilbert talked about it, and Dr. Pryor, too. And if that one Asclepius vision I had was accurate, with the lizard and everything, that was all older white dudes. Which would make me the first – well, first of a couple things, if Dr. Pryor had his way. And… I mean, it’s hard to tell how powerful or influential or whatever they actually are, but I imagine having access to literal magic is pretty helpful.”

“So why didn’t you join?” Damian asked, the first noise he’d made in several minutes.

“I thought about it,” Ari said, flipping to the next page, their voice coming out just as sheepish as they felt. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have – but gosh, he made it seem so tempting. Told me I could do whatever I wanted to do. I don’t think anyone has genuinely offered me that since I was a little kid. But… I thought about you. And Penny. I don’t want to be fighting on the same side as whoever did that to Penny.”

“Eddie did that to Penny.” Damian’s voice had a hard edge, a hot edge, a furious edge. “He did. Didn’t he?”

Ari sighed. “I’m sure he probably did, but… I hope not. I have to hope not, right? He taught me Greek. He taught me about how many different kinds of tea there are, and he made sure I knew my worth and didn’t sell myself short no matter what. I… shoot, I know he’s probably a terrible person – at the very least he knows that Penny isn’t with him by choice, which is more than enough to say he’s a terrible person – but I don’t want it to be true. And so until it is true, definitely true… it’s not. Not to me. It can’t be.”

They flipped another page. The previous pages had been all dense Greek text, but this one had a pale yellow sticky note clinging to a spot a bit more than halfway down the page. The note partially obscured a drawing, and when Ari lifted the corner, they saw a drawing of the same eye that had stared at them from inside the secret drawer of Dr. Pryor’s desk. The sticky note contained a date and a line of neat Greek text in handwriting Ari recognized after years of seeing it cover their compositions and scroll across the whiteboards of their classrooms.

Unlike the rest of the book, they had no trouble deciphering it.

02/05/2016CE. It has stopped a foolish thief. This magic works in the way it is described. He would have stolen my woman. There was a great stain on the floor.

Ari finished translating this aloud for Damian and asked, “When did your eye explode?”

“The start of May. But that says –”

“He writes his dates the European way.”

“Fucking pretentious.”

“Yeah,” Ari said, hardly listening. So he knew that Damian’s eye had exploded all over his kitchen. That made sense – based on Damian’s description and the ‘great stain’ it left behind, it would have been hard to miss. Ari flipped through the pages, looking for more sticky notes. They found another one soon enough, this one on a page with no diagrams or drawings. Scanning the text of the page, Ari saw words that they thought were references to women or wives – often the same word, gynei, could mean either – and a few mentions of Eros. This sticky note was less optimistic.

29/02/2016CE. I have tried this magic. She does not love me. She walked away cruelly when I spoke to her in the marketplace.

Several more pages contained similar notes, all from late February or March of this year, as well as similar magical content. By the third or fourth repetition, Ari could guess what was happening.

“They’re love spells,” Ari said aloud, indicating one to Damian and trying very hard not to vomit.

“Kid, you look –”

“I’m fine.”

22/03/2016CE. I have tried this magic. She does not love me. She claimed to be a follower of Sappho when I asked. Perhaps the reason why this magic does not work is because it is designed for women who love men.

They flipped another page.

19/04/2016CE. This magic works in the way it is described. I have accomplished it. She loves me. No longer will she see women with the eyes of Aphrodite. Only me. May it destroy the fool, her husband!

Ari felt bile rising in the back of her throat. “He did it,” they said. “You were right. He did it to Penny. And – he knew. He knew she’s gay. And he did it anyway.”

One of the ibises was beside Ari. They didn’t know when it had left the couch. They certainly didn’t know how it had managed to pull a small trash can lined with a plastic grocery bag from another room – bathroom? Guest room? – all the way to the living room without them noticing. They didn’t care.

As the day and the wine and the adrenaline and the increasingly long list of terrible revelations caught up with them, Ari noted dispassionately that Penny’s cooking tasted much worse on its way back up.

Ari vomited until there was nothing left in their stomach, and even then they continued heaving and tasting the bitterness on the back of their tongue. Their sides shook, and based on how warm and wet their face was, they realized they must be crying.

Well. This is embarrassing.

As they coughed and sputtered and shook, they became aware that they were being touched. Something warm was on their back, pressed against the place where their spine curved as they bent over the little trash can, and something else warm was cupping their shoulder. Something soft surrounded each of their arms. Ari took a deep, shuddering breath, wiped their mouth with the back of their hand, and looked around.

Damian was holding onto them, supporting them with one hand on their back and the other on their shoulder. The entire flock of ibises had clustered around the two of them, fluffing their feathers and crowding around Ari in a way that reminded them of a childhood field trip to the zoo in the dead of winter, when the penguins and the first graders had copied each other, all huddling together for warmth.

“That was gross,” Ari said. “I’m so sorry.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t join him,” Damian responded. “I… you knew exactly how I lost my eye. And you took that book and ran anyway.”

“It’s fine,” Ari said, and to their surprise, it was. “Even if the worst had happened, I look pretty good in sunglasses. But you’re right, it is weird that I haven’t lost my eye.”

“You did steal the book, right? Pryor’s note said the spell stopped a thief.”

Ari squeezed their eyes shut in concentration. “Actually,” they said, drawing out the syllables as they thought, “I don’t think I did. When he was bringing me through the study the first time I told him I wanted to borrow some of his books – he owns some super old commentaries on Euripides that I’ve never seen before. And… he told me any of his books were my books. As long as I brought them back.”

Ari looked over their shoulder at Damian and saw his eye widen. “You’re kidding me.”

“I am not.”

“Magic is so fucking stupid.”

Even as he said this, he began to chuckle, growing in strength and volume until Ari was caught up in it too, until they were both laughing so hard they could barely catch their breath and the ibises were retreating in disgruntlement.

“You know,” Ari said with a hiccup, as Damian wiped his eye, teary from too much laughter, “maybe I should have seen it coming. About Dr. Pryor. After all, it’s his fault I never got into archaeology.”

Ari was still giggling, although the archaeology thing was true, but Damian’s face softened into seriousness. “You would’ve made a great archaeologist, kid.”

“Maybe. I’d have to borrow your Indiana Jones hat for that, though.”

“And let me not look like Harrison Ford? No fuckin’ way. Get your own hat.”

“Do you have a spare toothbrush or something? My mouth tastes awful, and I want to be slightly less gross before we finish up these photos.”

“Down the hall, take a right. Should be some spares in the medicine cabinet. And look, kid.” His voice choked up again. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’re sticking with me. It’s… Jesus, it’s…”

“It’s alright,” Ari said, chest fluttering, unsure how to deal with this outpouring of emotion from Damian. “Seriously. It’s alright. Let me get cleaned up.”

Might Makes Write and all the writing shared herein are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.