Golden Autumn - Part Eight
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
“Aiden,” Raj finally manages, in a very shaky voice, “You can’t just make a man almost drop his baby like that.”
“I’m sorry!” Aiden winces anxiously at Raj, shifting his snapback over his hair. “For the record I don’t think you came close to really dropping her. She did a little bounce in your arms, that’s all!”
“And I would’ve caught her,” Noah adds soothingly.
Raj pushes a hand through his dark curls, breathing unevenly. “Still!”
“Hey, um - why did we all get into Raj’s truck if we’re not going anywhere?” Ripley asks, finally surfacing from the thunderstruck silence he’d lapsed into for a good long time. “Are we just sitting here in the back of the truck, parked in the darkness? Where’d you take us, Noah?”
“I just thought some fresh air might help everyone calm down.” Noah turns around in the driver’s seat to face those of us in the truck bed, folding his elbows on the open window. “Also thought it might be a good idea to take the general noise away from our sleeping baby, as well as the shouting away from the neighbors who might overhear it. Melanie? You okay, angel?”
“Isn’t it sweet, the way he says my name?” she murmurs to me, in the same faint, stunned voice as Raj. “He makes it sound more like Mélanie. No, it’s more subtle than that, I can’t do it the way he can…”
I tilt my head to the side, looking at Mel with sympathetic eyes. “How you doing, babe?”
“Oh, I’m doing good,” she answers distantly, staring off at nothing. “How are you, how’s the family?”
“Oh, boy. Okay.” I lean closer to Noah and drop my volume, nodding at Raj and Mel. “Are these two alright?”
“Rajiv, my man,” Noah calls, reaching into the back of the truck to tug on his husband’s sleeve. “Look at me real quick?”
Raj turns to look him full in the face, and Noah lets out a sputter of fond laughter.
“Well, Raj is fine,” he says, with a dimpled grin. “That much I can say.”
I turn to have a look for myself, then fight back a startled laugh of my own. Raj’s angular features are lit up with an expression of pure awe and wonder. He’s gazing at Aiden like he’s absolutely dazzled, now that he’s recovered.
“Did you know he could do that?” he breathes, turning to Melanie.
This, somehow, is what finally snaps her out of it. She looks up and meets Raj’s eyes, blinking hard in disbelief.
“Did I know he could do that? Oh my god, Raj, I think I would have mentioned it!”
“Mellie,” Aiden asks quietly, wincing uncomfortably, “Don’t you remember the time I glowed? When we-?”
Melanie seizes two fistfuls of her braid, aghast. “I thought that was normal for someone’s first time, all this time! If it was good, anyways! Like a post virginity-loss glow, or - something! I assumed that I must have glowed, too!”
“Holy shit,” Ripley laughs, snapping all the way back into the present.
“I didn’t even question it!” Melanie sputters, pressing her fingertips to her burning cheeks. “Oh, Jesus, I’m so glad I never mentioned that out loud to anyone!”
“Except right now, to all of us,” Ripley unhelpfully points out, breaking into his wide grin.
“Oh, no, and to Dahlia, too!” Melanie groans, dropping her head into her hands. “Okay, but seriously, what was I supposed to think? He glowed like it was normal, he didn’t say anything about it! I said to Dahlia he was literally glowing afterwards, and she said yeah, I bet he was, like it was totally normal! I realize now she didn’t think I meant literally literally, thank god! But at the time - how was I supposed to know?”
“That’s not a wild assumption!” I reassure her earnestly. “Plenty of living things can glow naturally! Did you see the eyes in the picture of the bluntnose shark I showed Noah earlier?”
“That shark must’ve just lost his virginity,” Noah manages unsteadily, biting his lip to keep back his laughter. “Right before that picture was taken. Think we can call that scientifically verified. Can’t believe you didn’t mention that that’s why their eyes glow, Jamie.”
I let out a deep, aggrieved sigh. “Why does everyone take away wrong science lessons from the things I say? None of that is right. I just feel the need to point that out, make it clear. Zero percent right.”
“Can we move off the topic of prehistoric sharks and their virginities?” Aiden cuts in, a pained blush climbing up his cheeks. “And especially off the topic of my virginity? I don’t know what I was thinking, bringing it up! Jesus, this is the one time where I got to tell someone without some unexpected magical thing happening to them first, the first time in total calm, and somehow it’s been the most yelling and shouting out of all the - Jamie, you said you thought they had an inkling!”
“They did, clearly! Maybe they all freaked out, but they didn’t think twice about piling into the truck with you and letting Noah drive us to - the middle of a dark field? Where the hell are we, dude?”
“Near an old junkyard. We used to come out here in high school to smash and burn old furni- I mean - to - to-” There’s a pause as Noah catches the look Aiden just shot him, and then a much more improvisational tone to his voice as he goes on: “-read - books? And - help kids out with - with their - science homework? For - charity. Kid’s charity, for - health - things.”
Ripley, quite clearly holding back a laugh, innocently asks - “Really? Wow, man, so nice of you. What was the name of the charity?”
Noah shoots him a betrayed look, hesitates, then tries, “It was - the big one. You know, um - Babies With The Sickness. Yeah. That’s the one.”
“Yep, keep going, Noah, this is all very convincing,” Mel assures him, suddenly on the brink of helpless laughter. “And Aiden, of course we already had an inkling! Of course we all thought something was - unusual about you, but we didn’t expect you to just do it right in front of our faces!”
“I’m sorry!” he says, beyond flustered. “I thought it would be good to do a nice demonstration, for once, instead of a panicked disaster! I didn’t know Raj was going to faint!”
“No, I didn’t faint!” Raj protests immediately. “I just sat down really fast on the ground! If I was fainting I wouldn’t have thought to hand Niki to Noah first, would I? It doesn’t count! Right, Ripples?”
“I don’t know, man. Between the smoking car, the magic butterfly, and now Noah taking us out to some dark field where we’ll certainly be left to our deaths for knowing too much-”
“Ripples, I took you to a calming field. Calm. The junkyard is right over there. You want to go smash something, would that help?”
“-this day has spun out of control,” Ripley finishes weakly, pushing a hand through his green curls.
“You think this is out of control, you should’ve seen Aiden battle a witch last weekend,” I tell him eagerly, unable to stop myself now that I don’t have to. “It was wild! Super impressive. And Ralph gave a fake dog to the police.”
Ripley stares at me blankly, and Aiden drops his face into his hands.
“Jamie, don’t try to summarize, it never ends up - are you hearing yourself?”
“Battled a witch?” Raj sputters, blinking hard at Aiden. “Goddamn, Aiden! You’re not intimidating enough already, without magical battle powers? You’re already built like those guys who make all the other guys at the gym feel nervous!”
“Okay, first of all, I wouldn’t describe them at all as battle powers. They’re designed to do basically the opposite of that. Second of all, I’m not as big as those bodybuilder guys and you know it. And third of all, in my experience most of the big guys at the gym are actually very nice. They’re happy to help you with your reps if you ask them, so you shouldn’t be nervous-”
“Wasn’t there a more gradual way to break this news to us, Aiden?” Melanie asks helplessly, her eyes still perfectly wide.
“Like what?”
“Couldn’t you have - written us a letter, and left it, or something?” Mel tries, wincing like she knows it’s not a very good suggestion.
“Oh, yeah, that would’ve seemed very normal!” Aiden sputters, then turns to Noah. “Noosh, let me ask you something. What would you do if you came home one day, and there was a mysterious letter waiting for you that s-?”
“Throw it in the fire,” Noah answers promptly, before he can finish.
Aiden pauses, taken aback. “What? Why?”
“Because that way no one can make me read it, and I don’t want to have to read, dude. You should know this.”
“Oh, my god.” Aiden turns back to the others with crestfallen eyes. “Did you guys seriously not like the butterfly? I practiced it for kind of a long time… and are you guys, like - are we all - is everyone cool with this, or…?”
Aiden’s hoarse voice trails off. Suddenly he looks so unhappy and anxious that Raj, Mel, and Ripley all snap out of their collective daze at once.
Aiden is suddenly swallowed up in a tight group hug. Raj was the first one to get in there (of course), but Mel and Ripley just pile on top of him.
Aiden looks at all of them with startled eyes, caught off-guard.
“Oh, Aiden, it’s okay!” Mel begins hurriedly.
“We got our fuckin’ minds blown, so we didn’t make it clear-” Ripley begins at the same time.
“It’s all good, man,” Raj says firmly, reassuringly. “It’s all good. It’s fucking amazing, in fact!”
Aiden lifts infinitely relieved blue eyes to meet mine. I smile at him across the bed of Raj’s truck, gently nudging his foot with the tip of my Converse.
He squirms free from the group hug - having the most difficulty with removing Raj - and takes a longer look at Ripley, who’s fidgeting with one of his green curls.
“Ripples?” Aiden asks nervously. “Are you about to ask if I can do something for you with magic? Or ask why I didn’t use it in the past when it would’ve helped? Because it’s - I can do little things, but I’m not really supposed to use it that way. Beyond that.”
“No,” Ripley answers, raising his eyes to meet Aiden’s. “I was actually gonna ask if I’m supposed to not tell Alix about this.”
“Oh.” Aiden stops for a second, then winces apologetically. “Yeah, I’m just telling you guys for now, if that’s okay. And Gabby knows, she figured it out on her own.”
Ripley lets out a helpless laugh, tilting his head back. “Of course she did!”
“Do you mind keeping it to yourself?” Aiden asks Ripley, nervously shifting his snapback over his hair. “Maybe once I’ve known Alix for a little longer-”
“Yeah, no, it’s okay,” Ripley cuts in gently. “I get it, I - I can wait.”
Aiden gives him an appreciative smile, then arches his eyebrows. “Wow, and you’re really not gonna ask for any kind of magical favor?”
Ripley shrugs his shoulders. “Nah, I’m good. Prefer to work for the things I want instead of wishing for them. Unless - wait, can you change things on like, a massive political or socio-economic scale?”
“I - no, dude. No. You could probably do that better than me, with your art.”
“Oh.” Ripley ponders that, gives his shoulders another shrug. “Then nah, I’m good.”
Aiden looks at Raj. “What about you?”
“All my wishes already came true, brother.” Raj gestures to Mel and Noah, then in the rough direction of his house, where we left Ralph and Calla to watch Nik. “I have everything I ever w- no, wait, I thought of something! Can you make Nikita injury-proof? Make her bones unbreakable, or something? This isn’t because of her learning to stand and walk, by the way. I’m totally not nervous about her falling over, and that’s not why I bought up all those rugs, either-”
“Oh, that’s why all the rugs, all of a sudden,” Noah murmurs, in a voice like everything finally makes sense.
Raj turns his pleading eyes back to Aiden. “Could you do that?”
“I don’t really want to mess around with your baby’s bones, man,” Aiden answers, obviously alarmed. “Might mess them up by accident.”
“Yeah, and we don’t want that, because I have a suspicion that Babies With The Sickness won’t be able to help us with that one,” Ripley adds, very seriously. “Noah, you’d know better than me, having volunteered for them. And ‘cause your new car has been responsible for multiple babies.”
“Oh yeah, that reminds me-” Noah tucks a long strand of hair behind his ear so he can catch Melanie’s eye. “Mel, where was Niki conceived? I realized today I don’t know.”
Mel nods across the bed of Raj’s truck. “Right where Ripley is sitting, I’m pretty sure.”
Noah lets out a burst of delighted laughter as Ripley scrambles across the truck bed to cram himself in beside me on the other side. Noah leans out into the back of the truck, catches Mel’s hand, and kisses it like she just gave him an amazing present.
“Ha! That’s what you get for cracking jokes all night, Ripples! Jokes aimed at slandering Midnight, a beauteous piece of history about to take the future by storm! My car is legend, my car tells a story-”
“A story of lots of babies!” Ripley groans.
“I was going to say a story of machined muscle mastery, but true, true, also babies,” Noah concedes.
“Can we get back on topic?” Raj cuts in, a blush spreading across his angular cheekbones. “I don’t see how where Mel and I made Niki matters right now! When we just found out magic is real, and Aiden is a - a - what did you call it?”
“Guardian,” I answer for him.
“Explain it again, Aiden?”
“No,” Aiden rumbles, then winces apologetically when Raj spreads his hands in disbelief. “I’m sorry, but I already explained it once, and I’ve talked so much tonight. I really don’t want to do it anymore. Can I direct you guys to Jamie for further questions?”
“I’ll take them,” I offer brightly. “I don’t mind!”
Ripley raises his hand. “I have one about the fake dog that Ralph gave to the police.”
“Yeah, I have a few about that,” Melanie jumps in. “It’s madness to say something like that and then just stop talking, Jamie!”
“I saw it move!” Raj blurts out suddenly, startling all of us. “The saucepan! In your kitchen! I thought my eyes just fucked up for a second! But you said you’re naming your sauce - s-sauce - so the - it’s magical, the saucepan-?”
“Wait a second, is this how you knew when Nikita was born, Aiden?” Ripley realizes out loud, then turns to Raj and Mel. “He knew, at the hospital, he got up before Noah came out and told us!”
“I heard her,” Aiden explains sheepishly.
“From down the hall?” Raj asks, bewildered.
“No, I mean I heard her,” Aiden clarifies, tapping a fingertip to his temple. “Her little soul note. I heard it join the, um - all the rest.”
Melanie, Raj, and Noah stare at him with wide eyes.
“What does she sound like?” Raj asks softly, after a moment.
“It’s hard to explain… I heard her note start up for a second, and it was very cute and small. But then she was already part of everything. It’s really difficult for me to pick one note out from all the rest if they’re not calling for me, because we’re all - together. All one big thing. Unless I work really hard I can usually only pick out my own note. And Jamie’s.”
All curious eyes flit to me.
“Why you, Jamie?” Ripley asks.
I shake my head, turning the malachite pendant in my fingers. “We don’t know. There’s a lot about Aiden’s magic that we’re trying to figure out on our own. A lot we still don’t know.”
Silence falls as everyone absorbs that.
“Honestly, I just want to see how you do it, Aiden.” Melanie turns to him, her eyebrows knitted. “Your Guardian magic leads you to wherever you’re needed?”
“Mhm, but - you don’t want to see it, it’s not fun,” Aiden tells her, growing very serious. “And nobody’s in life-threatening danger right now, so I couldn’t show you anyways.”
“Aiden,” Ripley murmurs, after another brief silence, “Have you - have you ever missed any-?”
“Yeah.” Aiden lowers his gaze to his boots, carefully avoiding everyone’s eyes. “I have. Too many. While I was away, obviously, but even while I was here… I did say I’m not very good at this, right?”
“You did, and I got a bone to pick with that, Aiden.” Noah leans out into the back of the truck to stab a finger at Aiden’s face. “Bullshit. We all saw you take down the Witch. That shit was rad. And what you did to the road, when we were being chased? And doin’ that to Ralph’s voice? All the cool shit you did, I’m surprised we weren’t the ones to explode the hotel.”
“Noosh, stop-” Aiden glances anxiously at the others, who are listening with blank, wide-eyed expressions. “That’s not helpful! And the hotel didn’t explode, the storm knocked it down-”
“The hotel - the one in Port Sitka that got wrecked, the one they showed on the news after the storm? That was you?” Ripley draws back, his green eyes wide with indignation. “You guys exploded a Confederate hotel and you didn’t invite me? What the fuck!”
“No we did not,” Aiden says firmly, “And at no point was the destruction of the hotel supposed to be part of the plan, otherwise obviously we would’ve invited you!”
“Okay, I have a question.” Raj wraps his hands in the depths of his navy blue scarf, shivering. “If we promise to stop yelling, can we go home? I’m kind of cold out here in this abandoned, um - very nice field Noah brought us to.”
“Glad you like it, dude,” Noah yawns. “Sometimes you just gotta go to the thinkin’ field, you know?”
Aiden takes a good look at Noah, whose grey eyes are ringed with exhaustion. He worked harder than any of the rest of us on the car. He was up at dawn clearing out the garage and buying cleaners and new tools he needed.
“Noosh, let me drive.” Aiden gets to his feet and hops out of the back of the truck. “You come back here with Raj and Mellie.”
Noah doesn’t need more persuading than that. He climbs out of the front, hops up into the truck bed, then pauses like he just thought of something.
“Raj, Mel, you want to swing by the discard pile at the junkyard?” he offers, dropping to sit beside Raj. “Would that help soothe your nerves?”
Mel and Raj exchange an eager glance.
Raj hesitates, fidgeting with his scarf. “Nah, it’s okay. Everyone’s tired. We can just-”
“No, let’s do it!” Aiden says, clearly relieved. He starts up the truck and begins guiding it onto some route he must know by heart. “If that’ll help everyone chill, I’m down.”
“Might just have a look, then,” Raj agrees, losing the battle against himself. “Real quick one. Just drive by and see if there’s anything good. Might be something for the workshop, right Ripples?”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“Would’ve been faster to take the other way, Aiden,” Noah yawns, folding an arm around Melanie’s shoulders. “This track goes the long way around a big ditch now.”
“Sorry,” Aiden mumbles, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “I haven’t been back to the scream ‘n smash field for a long time.”
“Is it a screaming and smashing field or a thinking field?” Ripley asks Noah.
“Those are often one and the same, bro. And it’s fine, Aiden. We’ll just check out the piles around the back instead of around the front.”
“Sometimes that’s where you find the best stuff, anyways,” Raj adds brightly. “No one’s gotten to it yet.”
I bite back a smile, full of relief. It seems like Raj, Mel, and Ripley were ready for this, deep down. Despite the initial shock, it’s clear that they’re all taking it okay. They’re already thinking about something else, in fact. The most dramatic thing that happened was a lot of shouting, which happens every time we hang out anyways. Nik laughed right through it, assuming that it was business as usual.
I can tell that Aiden is deeply grateful for the response he’s gotten, even though he’s gone silent again. The tension that’s been knotting up his shoulders and tightening his jaw all night is slowly melting away. It almost disappears completely when we stop beside the rusted walls of the junkyard and Raj eagerly hops out of the back of his truck.
“Oh, check this out!” he says excitedly, leaning over a heap of junk. “M, come see! Tin ceiling tiles, with pretty designs worked in, white paint over them. Could we use these somewhere? Oooh, and some old cash register flags, too! Could be nice for one of those market events you organize around Christmas.”
Melanie immediately gets up, then laughs in surprise when Noah catches her waist, lifts her over the side of the truck bed, and places her on her feet beside Raj.
“Oh, yes, grab those!” she says brightly, accepting the register flags from Raj. “The tiles, too, definitely. Nice find! What’s behind that box over there?”
“Anyone else already hungry again?” Ripley asks, folding his elbows on the edge of the truck bed. “Should we get some more food on the way home?”
“They seem to be taking this okay,” I whisper to Aiden, around a soft, affectionate laugh. “Don’t you think?”
I lean further into the front of the truck when Aiden doesn’t answer. He’s got his head turned towards the junkyard, his brow knitted.
“Aiden?” Ripley asks quietly, leaning in beside me. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just… hearing some kind of weirdness with a nearby soul note… maybe-?”
He breaks off, dark lashes fluttering. I look sharply at the junkyard, my startled heart missing a beat. I thought I heard a clattering sound off in the distance, behind the wall.
It seems like Ripley heard that, too. He turned his head exactly when I turned mine. Mel, Raj, and Noah all paused in loading stuff into the back of the truck, then looked swiftly at each other.
Aiden unstraps himself, opens the truck door, and leans out to look at Noah. “Are we trespassing, or stealing, or something like that?”
“Nah, we’re free to root through the discard pile, although the owner might not like it… but I doubt they’d come out just to chase us off…”
Noah falls silent as we hear the distant, metallic clattering sound again. It came from within the junkyard, that much is clear - and this time it came with a faint voice. Too far off to make out any of the words, but a voice. Calling out.
Aiden hesitates, then gets out of the truck and strides over to the padlocked gate in the wall.
“Hello?” he calls, his deep voice booming out across the junkyard. “Are you talking to us?”
A rasping voice shouts something back. Again, we can’t make out any clear words, but - everyone grows serious at once. We all heard something urgent in the tone of the rushed, incoherent voice.
Aiden and Raj sprint up to the gate as Ripley and I quickly get out of the truck. Noah catches Mel by her waist, swings her back up onto the truck bed.
“Wait here, angel,” he says solemnly, as she lets out a sputter of protest. “If something happens we’ll need someone to go on, to take care of Niki. And to defend the ceiling tiles.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” Mel says breathlessly, swatting Noah’s arm. She hops right back down and strides over to the gate with me and Ripley. “Hello? Is someone there?”
We all peer through the gate into the junkyard. It’s very dark out by the screaming/smashing/thinking field, so most of what I can see is moonlight glinting on silhouetted heaps of scrap and salvage, giant mechanical haystacks with pointed tops. Scattered around them are junked cars, broken down and busted, barely visible in this light. They look pretty lonely out here, which makes me strangely grateful that Noah’s Midnight is safe in the garage back at the house. Rescued from the path that was inevitably leading to someplace like this.
The clouds above us shift, releasing a sprinkle of icy rain and letting some of the moon show through. The droplets flit through the fog our breaths make in the air, and the moonlight grows slightly stronger. But nothing falls into view, and no voice calls out to us again.
“Should we leave?” Noah asks, after a minute passes and the rain begins to thicken.
Since Aiden is still silently staring through the gate, I’m the one who answers.
“No.”
His blue eyes aren’t glowing, and he’s not showing any other telltale signs of hearing a soul in life-threatening trouble. But his expression is decidedly uncomfortable, his eyes narrowed like he’s hearing something that doesn’t sit right with him.
He reaches through the gate and unlocks it from the inside. That must be the kind of thing the padlock is there for, because it jangles sharply and doesn’t give at all when Aiden tries to pull the gate open.
He hesitates for a few seconds, listening intently, then glances at us over his shoulder. “Everyone back up.”
We all do, except for Ripley, who curiously darts closer just in time to catch an eyeful of Aiden’s eyes flaring with icy, swirling blue light.
He touches a glowing fingertip to the padlock. There’s a sharp change in the temperature, like all the heat was wrenched out of something and thrown at us in a swift, fleeting burst. For a split second my face is toasty warm, and the next second, the padlock has crumbled into chunks with a series of muffled, heavy cracking sounds, like dry ice breaking.
“Whoa, oh my god!” Ripley gasps, drawing closer instead of taking even one step back. “Damn, Aiden! That’s - can I take back what I said about not having any magical requests earlier? Forget about that. Give me padlock-breaking hands.”
“Maybe later,” Aiden laughs softly, nudging the gate open as the chain slithers to the ground after the ruined padlock.
I hurry forward to kick the pieces of the padlock into the grass. Scattering them so that no one will find them and wonder how the hell it broke this way, then hurrying to rejoin the others as they follow Aiden into the junkyard.
He goes a few feet, stops, and stares at us all through the moonlight. “What, we’re all going?”
“Obviously!” Ripley speeds up, rushing through the rain to catch up with Aiden. “If rolling with you on Guardian business means a chance to unexpectedly explode a Confederate monument, you bet I’m gonna come. Next I’ll be hearing you guys sank somebody’s superyacht and forgot to call me first. When you know that’s on my bucket list.”
“No, Ripley - I’m hearing something that doesn’t sound good. You guys might want to stay here, I don’t know what kind of-”
“Hello?” calls a hoarse, rasping voice, wracked with desperation. “Are - are you really there? If you’re real I need help… help…”
Aiden spins around, stares with startled eyes into the darkness, and spots something. He rushes over to a car a few yards ahead of us, strides around to the far side of it, and freezes where he is. One hand flies up to his mouth. The other hastily flies up to stop us as we all start to rush forward.
“Not everyone needs to see, alright?” Aiden manages unsteadily. “Noosh, c’mere and help me.”
Noah rushes around the side of the car to join Aiden, then goes very pale when he sees whatever he’s looking at.
“Holy shit, dude!” he sputters, cringing with his whole face. “What happened?”
“Thank fucking god,” groans the hoarse, barely-there voice, fading audibly. “Shit, I’ve been yelling for ages, I thought no one was gonna hear me… thought I imagined you guys… Can you… can you get me off of that thing?”
“Raj, go pull the truck right up to the gate,” Aiden says hastily, dropping down behind the car. “Mel, Ripples, hop in. We should move fast.”
Everyone breaks for the truck, except for me. I hesitate anxiously, watching Noah and Aiden doing something behind the car. I can’t see what, but I hear a sharp cry of pain from the voice I don’t know, after which Aiden tosses something heavy aside with a metallic thud.
I brace myself, then hurry around the car to see what’s happening.
A man in coveralls is sprawled out awkwardly on his back, letting Noah help him sit up. One of his boots is dark with blood, but Aiden gets in the way before I can see more than that, leaning down to help Noah get the guy upright. I rush forward to help, and together we manage to get him standing up on his one uninjured foot.
“What’s that thing you stepped on?” Aiden asks, as the man leans heavily on his arm.
“I don’t know, but it went right through my fuckin’ boot when I hopped down from the stack,” he stammers, all the color drained from his face. “Holy shit, that hurts… I’m so glad you guys showed up… I was about to try and get my foot free myself and crawl for the office… was worried nobody would have found me ‘til 6 AM, when the next shift starts… lucky… lucky you were here…”
Melanie, who just came scurrying back to see if we needed help, heard all of that. She glances at Aiden, understanding dawning in her eyes.
I guess everyone is getting a bit of a demonstration, after all.
“You’ll be fine, dude,” Noah reassures the stranger, as he and Aiden help him hop painfully towards the truck. “Nothing a tetanus shot won’t take care of. I should know, I’ve been to Urgent Care like a billion times. Not to brag, but some of the nurses there knew me by name by the time I graduated high school.”
The guy lets out a wheeze of faint laughter, his head hanging down, his injured foot hovering above the pavement. “If you guys can get me to the front office, I’ll call someone, see if they can take me there… my boss, I guess? Or maybe the shift manager.”
“No need, man,” Aiden answers firmly, as we reach the truck. “We’re already here. We’ll take you.”
Raj has backed the truck up precisely so that it’s right there to meet us. Aiden and I help the man up into the truck bed. Ripley throws a blanket over his shivering body so it’s protected from the rain, while Melanie gently helps him prop up his leg.
“Are you sure?” he pants, bewildered by the flurry of movement around him. “That’s really nice, thank you…”
“No problem,” Noah assures him, looking down at his phone. “Lemme just text Ralph and Calla, tell ‘em we’re on our way to the Urgent Care and then to pick up some more food, but we’ll be back soon.”
“Oh, okay-” Melanie snatches Noah’s phone out of his hand, then affectionately thumbs his cheek. “Maybe let me compose that message. Since none of you guys can summarize appropriately to save your life.”
We all hop up into the truck around the injured junkyard employee, who drags his foot in close to himself and closes his eyes, slumped over in relief.
“Just let me know when we’re there…” he mumbles. “Appreciate this…”
His voice is so shredded that I have to wonder how long he was laying there, shouting for help. He’s probably right that someone would have found him in the morning - after all, Aiden never sensed him in life-threatening danger - but that would’ve been a very cold, scary, miserable night, especially with the rain beginning to pick up. He looks too cold already, infinitely grateful for the blanket alone.
“Everybody settled?” Raj calls from the driver’s seat, as Aiden slips into the front beside him and closes the door. “To Urgent Care we go?”
“To Urgent Care we go!” comes the chorused answer.
Raj begins navigating us back towards the road, stealing a sidelong glance at Aiden.
“We wouldn’t have heard him,” he murmurs softly, half to Aiden, half to himself. “If we’d been around at the front.”
There’s been no more explaining, but I think everyone is starting to understand.
~~~~
“This is so good right now,” I sigh happily, eating another one of the hot, crispy potato wedges. Even the bag of grease-slicked paper feels incredible against my cold hands. “Weird to pair this with hot chocolate, but I guess we’re working with what’s still open at this hour.”
“Yeah, I feel bad,” Raj yawns, holding Melanie to him as she licks the salt off of her fingers. “We left Ralph and Calla to babysit Nik all night. We didn’t even really ask them if that was cool…”
I don’t think either Ralph or Calla minded, personally. Calla has an obvious soft spot for babies, and Ralph mostly just seemed surprised that Raj, Noah, and Mel were all fine with leaving their baby under his watch.
“I’m sure they don’t mind,” I tell Raj, leaning sleepily against Aiden’s shoulder, cupping my hot chocolate in my hands. “Besides, I’m sure they’ll understand once we explain.”
“Yeah, and I doubt they’re freaking out, since Melanie wrote the text,” Aiden adds, with a huff of laughter in his deep voice. “Might be another story if one of us took care of that instead.”
“Oh-” Ripley sits up, nodding to the bottom of the truck bed. “We’ve got movement.”
The heap of blankets stirs, and a half-awake face peeks drowsily out from the top.
“Hey, Royce!” Noah, who’s sitting perched on the edge of the truck bed, reaches down to slap his shoulder. “Just in time, man. You should eat before your potatoes get cold.”
The bewildered junkyard employee starts to sit up, then stops when Aiden quickly puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Careful with that leg, dude.”
Royce’s eyes fall to his foot, which is heavily bandaged up, fitted in a boot for extra support. Then they flit up to Noah, who’s offering him a package of fried potatoes and a to-go cup of hot chocolate. He accepts them gingerly, looking around in confusion.
“Sorry, um - where are we? What happened?”
“Well, they told us at Urgent Care to take you to the hospital, so we did,” Raj explains. “Then we were waiting for you outside the hospital in case you needed more help. You came out on crutches and told us you could get yourself home, but you were pretty tired, and you fell asleep sitting on the back of my truck. We were gonna drive you home and wake you up when we got there, but you only told us your name, not where you live. So we parked here, at a drive-thru where they got a heated parking area and potatoes. We’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”
“And we figured you’d probably be starving, since it sounds like you were laying there for a long time, so.” Noah flicks the paper packaging of Royce’s potatoes with one inky finger. “Eat up, dude.”
Royce blinks slowly, dazedly at him, then mechanically pops a potato wedge into his mouth.
“Thank you guys,” he mumbles, drawing one knee up to himself beneath the blankets. “That’s really - I really appreciate all your help. You folks are - that’s - that’s so-”
“No problem,” Noah yawns. “But give us your address, yeah? We should get you home. Sun’s gonna be coming up soon.”
Royce settles himself in the corner of the truck bed as we all rearrange ourselves so that we can head back out onto the road. Aiden is the most awake out of all of us, so he takes the driver’s seat and puts Royce’s address into his phone. Melanie slips into the front beside him, holding her hands out to the heaters.
I sit in the other corner of the truck bed as Aiden gets the engine going. It’s cozy back here, but no one says much. I think we’re all just too tired to talk.
Eventually, over the wind rushing past, I hear Melanie break the silence. Quietly. Speaking to Aiden.
“I think I’m starting to understand how this works a little better. Although I understand this wasn’t the most extreme example.”
“It was not,” Aiden agrees firmly. “Royce has been what you might call an easy customer. Now we can all get home, and you can get back to the important work of preparing your baby for her first spin kick. Unless you’re against that plan?”
“Oh, no, of course she’ll have to learn to spin kick,” Mel answers, very seriously. “That way the other babies know what the score is. The moms, too, by proxy.”
Aiden lets out a startled huff of laughter. Melanie lets out a quiet laugh with him, but I hear something in it that makes me turn my head to steal a glance at her.
She’s not looking at Aiden. She seems lost in thought, gazing out through the window at the trees gliding by in the fading darkness, the dusky purple sky growing lighter overhead. The sun is just beginning to come up, adding golden gilt to the most distant of the mountains.
Melanie stares out at them, then looks over at Aiden, her voice growing soft and serious.
“Aiden, so… in high school? All those times when you ran off without explanation? You were trying to save someone? And when you came over to see me, all angry and upset, but you wouldn’t talk to me about what happened…?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” he murmurs, darting a swift, apologetic glance at her. “I know I was a pain to be around when I was all-”
“No, that’s not - I’m just asking… was it - about this?” Melanie’s eyes grow dark with sadness. “You really had all this on your shoulders? Even back then?”
He gives a little shrug, flexing his wrist on the wheel, clearly unsure why she’s asking. Melanie lets out a heavy breath, winding her braid around her fingers.
“Jesus, Aiden! I was worried you were under too much pressure just from soccer! Alone!”
He shrugs his shoulders again, faintly surprised at that suggestion. “Nah, that wasn’t too bad. I liked soccer.”
“That’s not the point, I’m saying - oh, my god.” Mel rubs her eyes, then curses softly when she comes away with mascara-smeared fingers. “I’m saying I can’t believe you went through all of that, and you didn’t say one word to me about it. Wasn’t it so hard? Didn’t - didn’t you want my help in dealing with it? At all?”
Aiden looks at her, his blue eyes warm with affectionate surprise.
“You did help,” his deep, soft-spoken voice answers. “Didn’t matter that we didn’t talk about it. You made me feel better when I came over all worked up like that. You know you did. Didn’t I always leave in kind of a better mood?”
“I - I guess.” Melanie blows out a frustrated breath. “But you never said a word, and I never did anything special to make you feel - I mean - all we did was sit together, or watch a movie together, or hook up if my mom wasn’t home, or make dinner…”
“Yeah,” Aiden murmurs, his eyebrows drawn down and together, like he doesn’t understand what she doesn’t get. “And that made me feel a little better, which - trust me, was the most I could ask for when I was feeling like that.”
Melanie stares at him, then breathes out a little laugh, sitting back and resting her jaw on her knuckles. She lapses into silence for a long moment, but she seems reassured by that answer.
“So are you and Jamie going to end up with a magical baby?” she asks without warning, fixing Aiden with a big grin, then a stern expression. “You tell your baby that they better not mess with my baby’s bones! You’ll need to have that talk with them before their first playdate with Nik.”
“What-?” Aiden lets out a startled laugh, then a groan as he flips on the blinker. “Oh, okay. From the sound of it your spin-kicking baby will be capable of doing just as much damage to my baby’s bones, so why don’t you have that talk with her? Instead of worrying about my nonexistent babies!”
He steals a blushing glance at me, and I bite my lip, trying not to laugh at the flustered expression on his face.
His and Melanie’s conversation devolves into a laughing argument as the sun begins climbing into the sky. Noah, Raj, and Ripley have fallen asleep more or less in a pile across from Royce, who’s now busy devouring the rest of his potatoes.
I find myself gazing through the truck window at Aiden, a proud smile glowing on my face, something warm and soft glowing in my heart. I think Aiden is too distracted right now for the realization to sink in, but -
He did it. He got through it.
He told them.
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