All Rhodes Lead Here

by Mariana Zapata

“I want to go,” Jackie piped up. Three heads turned to look at her. She frowned. “What?” “You get winded walking to the garage apartment,” Amos muttered.

“I . . . I didn’t know you were into parkour.” Amos snorted again, lowering his legs and planting his feet. “You backflipped onto the table . . .” Rhodes choked out.

“He’s perfect the way he is,” Rhodes spoke up

“He was enrolled in the things that interested him,” Rhodes replied,

Amos and Rhodes were rookies. Luckily for them, I had a doctorate in passive-aggressive and straight-up aggressive family figures.

“Come with us.” “Are you asking me or telling me?” I whispered. “Because you’re whispering, but you’re still using your bossy voice.” His mouth twisted, and he lowered his voice to reply, “Both?”

“We don’t get to choose who the people we love become or are, but we do get to pick if we want to stick around. If we want them to know that too, that they’re worth sticking around for.

“I should be surprised, but somehow I’m not.”

“I’ve never met anybody like you.” “I hope that’s a good thing?” “I’ve met people who don’t know what it’s like to be sad. I’ve met resilient people. But you . . .” He shook his head, his gaze watching me closely in that rabid raccoon way. “You got this spark of life that nothing and no one has taken away despite the things that have happened to you, and I don’t understand how you still manage to . . . be you.”

He was warm, and his body was solid. And my God, he smelled like the good laundry detergent. I could wrap him around myself and live there forever. Cologne be damned. There was nothing better than good detergent. Especially when it was molded to a body like Rhodes’s. Big and firm. All comforting.

“He was an idiot. Only somebody that’s never talked to you or seen you would think you were the lucky one.” Rhodes’s gaze flicked to my mouth, and he let out a soft sigh through his nose, his words a hoarse whisper. “Nobody in their right mind would let you walk away from them. Not once and no way in hell twice, angel.” My heart. My limbs went numb.

“Am wants you to come over and meet them.” “He does?” I asked quietly. One side of his mouth tipped up. “Yeah, he does. I do too. Billy said I can’t come over if you aren’t with me. They’ve heard too much about you.” “From Am?” He gave me one of his rare, small smiles. “And me.”

“Don’t tell him I told you, but you make him smile a lot.” There went my heart again. “You look . . . you know, like that, and . . . whatever. I don’t care if you like him, and I don’t care if he likes you. I want him . . . you know . . . to be happy.

“Didn’t think so. My bed’s big enough for both of us.” He let out a soft breath. “Or I can take the floor.” My feet moved, but the rest of me didn’t. Did he just say his bed was big enough for both of us? And there was a bat in here? Or that he could take the floor in his room? “Whoa, whoa, whoa, pal,” I whispered. “I don’t even know your middle name.” His hand tensed in mine, and he glanced over his shoulder. “John.” He wasn’t trying to . . . get me to go up there to have sex with him, was he? I didn’t think so—as in really didn’t think so but . . . “Not that I wouldn’t mind having sex with you eventually—” Rhodes made this terrible choking sound in his throat. “—but I barely learned your middle name, and I don’t know what you wanted to be when you were growing up, and this is going really fast if you want to do more than just sleep in the same bed together,” I rambled out in a rush, so I had no clue what the hell I was even saying. Apparently, he barely understood it too because he made another choking sound—not as aggressive—and just looked at me for a long second. “Sometimes I think I know exactly what you’re going to say . . . and then the exact opposite comes out of your mouth,” he whispered back. Was he laughing? “No sex, Buddy, just sleep. I’m too tired, and I do know your middle name, but I’m not real big on rushing things, Valeria,”

When you lose enough, you learn to take happiness where you can find it. You don’t wait for it to be handed to you. You don’t expect it in big firework-like displays. You take it in small moments, and sometimes those come shaped in a two-hundred-and-fortyish-pound man going above and beyond. I wanted to understand what was happening. I needed to.

“I’m too old to be anybody’s boyfriend,” Rhodes said in that hoarse, solemn voice that carried so much weight in it. “But I do like you more than I should. More than you might feel comfortable with.” He didn’t move, and neither did I. My heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest at his implications. Even my skin prickled. “I wanted to call you, but I was trying to give you room.” “Why?” I asked like he’d just said he liked eating mayonnaise straight from the jar. His answer was a sigh followed by, “Because . . . I’ve been watching you grow for months. I don’t want to be something you grow around. You were with someone who gave you too much shade before, right? I’d rather us take our time than me stunt where you’re going, who you’re becoming.”

“I know how I want you to feel, but I’m not rushing you. I know how I feel. I haven’t changed my mind about anything, especially not you. I only want you to be sure of what you want.” I was breathing through my mouth loudly. “Don’t mistake me giving you space as me not being interested. It’s not every woman I let into my bed, much less into my life, and even more into Amos’s life. Before you, it’d been nobody. So just because I don’t know what your mouth tastes like yet doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to. But Sofie would tell you I’ve got a big, fragile heart, and I think I do, so I need you to know what you want for my sake too, Buddy. Does that make it clear?”

“Just so you know . . . I really like you. More than I probably should too.”

You know . . . I was pretty sure I was in love with him. And I was pretty sure he might be a little in love with me too.

“Did you know the devil is really a woman?”

“Decency” was a strong word that usually people the furthest away from being decent would use. Because decent people didn’t use the word as a weapon. Decent people understood that there were reasons for everything and that there were two sides to every story. And I was a decent person. Fuck it. I was a good person. These motherfuckers were the ones who wouldn’t know what decent meant if it backhanded them.

“Scarred for life watching you grab Dad’s butt like that, but I’ll get over it. Thanks for wondering!” he hollered sarcastically before shaking his head and closing the door.

“You’re something else, Buddy,” he said. I set the T-shirt I’d been in the middle of folding down and squinted. “Can I ask you something?” “What do you think?” I groaned. “Why do you call me ‘Buddy’? I’ve never heard you call Am that, or anybody else.” His eyebrows crept up his forehead at the same time as his mouth stretched into an even more rare supermoon of a smile. “You don’t know?” “Am I supposed to?” “I thought you would,” he replied cryptically, still grinning. I shook my head. “No idea. I used to think you called me ‘angel’ because you thought that was my name, but now I know you just . . . whatever.” Rhodes chuckled, laying a hand on top of the table, the tips of his fingers millimeters from the lace trim of my green underwear. Those gray eyes were totally hung up on them for a moment before he glanced back at me, color rising along his throat as he said, “Because you are one.” My mouth gaped, and I was pretty sure I was just staring up at him blankly. One side of his mouth rose a little higher. “Why do you look surprised? You’ve got the sweetest, kindest heart, Buddy. It wouldn’t matter what you looked like, you’d still be my angel.” His angel? Was my chin quivering? Was that my heart losing its identity for a new one? Did Rhodes literally just say the nicest thing anyone had ever said about me? His expression was so fond, so open, all I could do was gape at him as he looked down at me. “You remind me of Buddy the Elf. You’re always smiling. Always trying to mak...

He made me happy.

Showing me again that he trusted what I felt and what I wanted.

“Home,” they said at the same time.

“You can’t run away when we get into an argument.”

“I’m not leaving,” I told them in a whisper, stunned. “No, you’re not,” he agreed, and I swore my whole life shifted.

“You’re mine. Just as much as Am is. Just as much as anybody will ever be.” A tear slid down my cheek, and he wiped it off, his eyebrows dropping low. “You are a part of us,” he said gruffly. “I told you before, didn’t I?” One of the hands on my cheeks moved, and he took my earlobe between his fingers. “I don’t know how anybody would let you walk away, and it isn’t going to be me. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Are we clear?”

“We love you—I love you—because you’re mine. Because being around you is like being around the sun. Because seeing you happy makes me happy, and seeing you sad makes me want to do anything I have to to get that look off your face. “I want you to come home. I don’t want you thinking these things that aren’t true at all, about us not wanting you around or wanting you to be with us for the wrong reasons. You matter, angel, and I want you here with us. You decided, remember? You don’t get to change your mind anymore. I’m not your ex, and you don’t get to leave. We go through things together, we don’t give up on one another, and not over something like this. Isn’t that right?”

My mom who had loved me with her whole heart, who hadn’t been perfect but had always made it known that being perfect was overrated. The woman who had taught me that joy came in all different shapes and sizes and forms. The same person who had battled a silent illness as best as she could for longer than I would ever know. They’d found her. After all these years. After everything . . .

“Don’t tell Yuki, but you’re my best best friend now.” His throat bobbed against me, and I didn’t imagine how hoarse his voice came out as he said, “You’re my best best friend too, sweetheart.”

Grief was the final way we had to tell our loved ones that they’d impacted our lives. That we missed them so, so much. And there was nothing wrong with me mourning my mom for the rest of mine, even as I carried her love and her life in my heart. I had to live, but I could also remember along the way. The people we lose take a part of us with them . . . but they leave a part of themselves with us too.

“She’s going to be forgetting someone, and it’s not going to be me.”

You’re the past. And I’ve got no problem with making sure you end up being some guy that broke her heart before I took over and put hers in mine for safekeeping.”

“I’m fine not being the first man she’s ever loved because I know I’m going to be the last.”

the best kind of love was about so much more than that. It was about giving the person you loved everything. The easy, effortless things, but also the hardest intangible stuff, the uncomfortable. It was about telling someone that you loved them by giving them everything you had and everything you didn’t because they mattered more to you than anything material ever would or could.