The Remaking of Corbin Wale

by Roan Parrish

rain hit the pavement and the roof like it was throwing itself down from the sky.

“Sometimes people just need a mom.” Alex blinked at her. “Yeah, I guess so.” They ate in silence for a minute. “What do you do when you need one?” His mother’s parents were both long dead. Helen pursed her lips and smiled a little. “It’s the strangest thing. Once you become a mom, you need one differently.”

The other kids at school had called him a lot of things—some true, some not—but there had been no utility in commenting on them. They hadn’t cared about the truth of him. He’d been a stand-in, a convenient spot in the universe to direct the feelings they hadn’t wanted to hold inside themselves. What good would it do a spot in the universe to say if those feelings were true or false.

Corbin could see how Gareth and Alex were such good friends. They were the inverse of one another, Alex’s gentle geniality covering gut-deep confidence and iron will, Gareth’s snappy bluster the veneer over a slightly nervous desire for approval.

In that moment, Corbin saw so clearly who Alex was. The man whose touch could gentle. The man whose presence soothed. The man who was so full up with weighty presence he had ballast to spare. His aunts had had a name for people like Alex. Kedge. The mooring that kept things from drifting off, kept them anchored to the here and now.

“Since when do you say ‘dude’?” Talking made his head throb worse. “Since I need an introductory word that I can imbue with equal parts rebuke, awe, and casual interest. Which requires a long vowel and a slangy cultural context.

“Well. I think for me I would tell because I would feel comfortable around them after a while, as if I could be myself and they would like me for it. I would think of them first when I wanted to tell someone things that happened. If I were doing something or seeing something amazing and they weren’t there, I would know that it would be better with their presence. I’d want to know everything about them. Even the bad stuff. And I would stand behind them, support them, feel proud that they had chosen me to spend their time with, to trust.”

“There’s something about him that just . . . it calls out to me. I’ve never felt that about anyone before. It’s like a place inside him is screaming my name, and I just want to answer it with everything.”

love doesn’t live in kisses and flowers and first dates. It lives in your mind, in your heart. The problem is that I already love you.”

He had sunk into his love for Corbin with the inevitability of gravity.

ignorance was painful, but it wasn’t the same as a lack of love.