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He’s too indecisive, that has to be it.
Between the extensive list of things TK likes to order and his own go-to’s, Carlos really can’t seem to narrow down their takeout order tonight. Then again, he’s been sitting at this table trying to decide for what feels like forever, surely the staff is starting to wonder what’s taking so long. He’s usually quicker than this.
Maybe he should just pick randomly and call it a day. His head is starting to hurt anyway.
“You got the homestyle bean curd last time,” Carlos hears as he rubs at his eyes, and he nearly laughs. They come here often enough that he and the owner’s daughter, Hana, have a little rapport. Of course she knows what they ordered last time. “Get the garlic eggplant with rice.”
“TK isn’t doing carbs.”
“He’s not?”
“Wedding prep,” Carlos says with a chuckle, his eyes still trained on the menu. “He’s adamant.”
There’s a somewhat exasperated sigh and then, “That’s my son. Adamant. Although, I don’t know why he’s following his father with these ridiculous health fads. I thought I taught him better…”
Carlos snaps his head up, the menu falling limp in his grasp. Across from him where he expects to see Hana is someone entirely different — it’s Gwyn. She’s smiling back at him softly, amusedly, as she takes the menu from him and begins to read it over herself.
“You should at least tempt him with fried rice,” she continues casually. “He can never say no to that.”
“G-Gwyn?”
She peers over at him again. “Carlos?” She asks teasingly.
“What are we—what are you doing here? Where am I?”
“We are getting dim-sum,” she tells him as if it’s obvious.
“We are?”
“Yes.” She turns back to the menu. “And you’re figuring out what to bring back home to TK. When you’re ready.”
Carlos feels landlocked, rooted to the spot with no ability to move. He nearly knocks over the glass of water in front of him as he looks around, his eyes darting from one end of the room to the other.
This is not their usual Chinese takeout. It’s unfamiliar, a hole-in-the-wall sort of place with tables and chairs that probably haven’t been changed out in a good fifteen years or so, and Hana, who he swears he was talking to just a moment ago, is now Gwyneth Morgan.
“You’re…Gwyn, you’re dead.”
“I am.” The response is soft, without shock or sadness, just a matter-of-fact understanding. “Did TK ever tell you about Spring Street?”
Carlos’ throat has gone dry and his hands have started to shake as he tries to speak. “Yes,” he gets out eventually. “A few times.”
“I used to take him here all the time when he was little. Then he got too old for me.” Gwyn laughs. “It was uncool to have dinner with your mom. But then he came back around. It was just for us, he loved it. It’s a shame the three of us never got to come here together.”
They’re in New York.
“Where’s TK?”
“You don’t know?” Gwyn asks, and Carlos shakes his head. “He’s looking for you.”
“I-I told him I was picking up dinner on the way home, he—he knows where I am.”
Carlos watches as she slowly sets her hand on her chin and studies him. “Sweetheart, are you sure?”
“I—” He cuts himself off. The truth is, he can’t quite remember.
He’s almost positive that he told TK before he left the station, but now, sitting here with Gwyn, he isn’t so sure.
He drops his head into his hands and lets out a low groan.
There is both a glorious sense of calm and a churning of unease in the air around him, and all Carlos can do right now is try not to puke. He takes a deep breath and sits back up, spine rigid as the woman across from him keeps watching him with a maternal gaze. She looks healthy, happy — not to say that she wasn’t when she passed, but there isn’t even a scratch on her. Then again, almost all of his memories of Gwyn are happy ones.
Emphasis on almost. When TK was kidnapped alongside Tommy and Nancy on a call two years ago and they couldn’t get ahold of him before figuring out what happened, Gwyn immediately feared the worst.
Then again, so did Carlos.
She thought he was in a gutter at that point, having spun out from the news that she was moving back to New York. The whole while, a part of Carlos had feared he was dead — a part that, as hard as he tried to push very far back in his mind, kept creeping back up on him.
And then it hits him like a truck.
He swallows, leans forward to ask when suddenly two bamboo steamers are set between them. The lids are removed and a plume of steam billows out revealing six dim-sum apiece.
“These look incredible,” Gwyn chimes as she contemplates which one to grab first with her chopsticks hovering over them. “Definitely try them alone first, but I highly recommend the chili oil. They make it in house.” When Carlos doesn’t budge, she eyes him curiously once again. “What are you waiting for?”
“What’s actually going on here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Gwyn. Am I—Am I dead?”
She settles back in her chair with a sigh. “Just about.”
“Sorry?”
“Your heart stopped,” she tells him solemnly. “It was the morphine.”
“What morphine—?”
It’s then that it all comes back to him: Trudie and Darryl, the tunnel leading from the abandoned house, his hands and feet zip-tied together, TK showing up at the house while the neighborhood was being canvassed and getting thisclose to danger yet again.
Fuck, his head is pounding.
Maybe he really will be sick.
Carlos steeles himself as best he can. “So…I am dead?”
“No.” Gwyn pauses. She squints as if she’s thinking, then hums. “Now you are.”
Maybe he’s crazy — everything about this is crazy — but Carlos swears he feels something snap in the air around him. It’s subtle, barely a jolt, but he starts to panic.
“No,” he gets out, looking for the nearest exit. That’s how it works in the movies, right? “No, no, no, no, no. This can’t be happening.”
“But it is,” she says calmly.
“It can’t.”
“Carlos—”
“I can’t leave TK!” He slams his hand on the table, rattling the flatware. “Who’s going to take care of him?”
“You will.”
“How? I can’t if I’m dead.”
“You’re a fighter, Carlos. And that’s exactly what you’re going to do.” Her tone goes stern. “Because that’s who you are, and that’s who you’re going to be right now. I know the man who loves my boy just as much as I do would never give up, even in death. Am I correct in saying that?”
He nods. “Yes, ma’am.”
She chuckles. “I think I told you after we met not to call me ma’am. It makes me feel old.”
“I’m…I’m sorry, Gwyn.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, not just for that. For being someone else who left him.”
“Well, you’re not leaving him forever.”
“I don’t know how to fix this…” Carlos is near tears and absolutely terrified. “I don’t know how to get back, I—I didn’t even say goodbye to him. Or my parents. I need to tell them I love them.”
“Oh, sweet boy, they know,” Gwyn soothes. She reaches across for his arm. “They know.”
“I need to tell them again.”
“And you will.”
“How?”
“Wake up,” she says as if it’s as simple as that. “If I know my son, and I’d like to think that I do, TK is out there scouring every dead end looking for you. And when he does find you, all you have to do is meet him halfway.”
Carlos sputters. “How am I supposed to do that?”
The smile returns to Gwyn’s face once again. It’s warm, enough to relieve Carlos’ anxieties for a split second and assure him that everything is going to be okay.
“Listen for him,” she explains. “He heard you once before when he needed you most. You guided him back, now let him guide you.”
It seems partially outlandish, impossible, like he has to start grasping at straws in order to…get back, or whatever that means.
“Am I supposed to get up?” He asks, but Gwyn shakes her head.
“Listen,” she repeats, so he does.
He feels cold and like he’s being forced lower with gravity. He physically starts to shift, leaning over on one side and grasping the table with both hands. If this is fighting, then Carlos isn’t too sure he’s doing a good job of it.
But then he feels it again, that jolt from before. But it’s more powerful this time, like a sting, and then he hears it.
“Come on, baby. Come on! “
“Gwyn?” He asks.
He watches as she stands and walks over to him. Her movement is strange, like stop-motion where the lights are too bright. She rests her hand on his cheek, stroking gently with her thumb as she bends down to meet him at eye level.
“Take care of my boy, Carlos. Go tell him you love him.”
It’s the last thing he sees and hears before a full whiteout, his pulse racing.
And then, with a snap, he’s staring up at a very blurry TK, feeling disoriented and terrified.
But he’s back. He’s back, he’s back, he’s back.
Hours later when he’s tucked too tightly into a hospital bed, monitors beeping all around him, he knows he’s safe. And with TK’s hand in his, he always will be.
He has a promise to keep.