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On the day of Eddie’s seventh birthday, he hides in his bedroom, wiggled between his bed and his wall. The lights are out, the setting sun creeping through his blue curtains.
He can hear the festivities continuing outside his door — the music playing, his cousins laughing and racing around with quick, light feet on the wood floors of the house, the adults chatting and drinking and eating in the kitchen. He can hear Mama calling for him, yelling that it’s almost time for cake.
He puts his hands over his ears and hunkers down.
Light spills into the room when the door opens. It’s Abuela, backlit by the florescent hallway light, and she closes the door behind her.
“Hm,” she hums. “I wonder where my Eddito is. No one can find him anywhere. I guess he ran away from home before he could have any birthday cake.” She sits on his bed with a big sigh. Her foot knocks into his, but she still doesn’t look for him. “Me and my husband will miss our sweet little boy so much.”
He sits up straighter, but doesn’t take his hands off his ears. “I didn’t run away. I’m right here. Estoy aquí, Abuelita.”
“Oh,” she blinks down at him like it’s a shock, a relief. “There you are! I didn’t see you there.” He laughs and she smiles, leaning her elbows on her knees. “What are you doing down there? There’s a whole party outside for you.”
He shrugs. “Too loud.”
She nods. “Parties can be a lot. We can take a moment to be quiet together. Sólo nosotros dos, hm, Eddito?”
And they do. They sit in the silence together, listening to the hustle and bustle of the party outside. He focuses on her breathing, even and calm, and it makes the whole world feel less like TV static. When his head drops to the side to rest against her knee, she rakes her painted nails through his hair.
“Better?” she whispers, after a few minutes — or hours or days — have passed.
“Kind of.”
“Well,” she says, “how about I go distract your mama? And when you’re ready, you come out and we can sing to you and eat some cake. It’s your favorite. I made it myself.”
“Okay.”
She laughs as she stands, her knees cracking with the movement. The door closes quietly behind her, but he immediately hears her call out to his mother, asking some questions about the cake and the food and how everyone is enjoying it.
He takes another minute and emerges from the dark.
Adriana’s quinces comes around when Eddie is thirteen.
It’s not the kind of event, the kind of opulence, they would normally go for — or that they could normally afford. But with all of Tía Pepa’s daughters crowned and showered and celebrated, Mom and Papi decided that they couldn’t exactly get away with not doing the same for their own daughters.
It’s been in the works for years at this point. Papi has been going on longer and longer trips, traveling farther and farther, taking the jobs nobody else wants and working overtime to help afford it. Abuela has been working on her dress, staying with them for long stretches of time and taking Adriana out to test fabrics and colors and different silhouettes. Mom has been testing out recipes, calling venues, reaching out to caterers. Their cousins and friends have been all in a titter, excited for a big party — especially if they’ve been honored enough to be her damas or chambelanes.
Mom puts Eddie and Sophia into dance classes, makes them practice together and apart. She makes them both practice with Adriana, too, just in case. And when he’s not practicing, Eddie sits on the sidelines and watches deliberately, learning all the steps to all the dances.
The night before the big event, Papi is not home from his most recent business trip.
He calls Adriana and promises that he’ll be there when she wakes up in the morning. She laughs and demands a hot, sweet coffee for her birthday breakfast from the convenience store he always stops at on his way home. He promises that, too.
When they all wake up in the morning, damas gathered around their kitchen table after a long sleepover, Papi is still not home.
Mom runs out and gets Adriana and all her friends hot, sweet coffees from the new Starbucks in town, the one that she always says is too expensive for them. Adri drinks it with a sad smile.
The hustle and bustle of the day moves into full swing. Papi still isn’t home. All available tías spend their time getting everyone dressed and made up. Papi still isn’t home. Any and all tíos start helping Mom load everything into the back of the truck to be shuttle to the venue. Papi still isn’t home.
Eddie is in charge of watching Sophia, of getting her dressed and ready — and fed. Mom calls out to him about making sure she doesn’t ruin her new dress, like he’s some kind of amateur. He stirs a pot of boxed mac and cheese, spoons it into a bowl, and wraps a towel around her front like a backwards cape. Papi still isn’t home.
Sophia holds his hand as they enter their local church, following quietly behind Adriana and Mom, godparents Pepa and Paco, and her entire court. Papi still isn’t home. Paco gifts her a very pretty rosary, one that had belonged to his own mother. Papi still isn’t home. Pepa gifts her a tiara, setting it on top of her tamed and styled curls. Papi still isn’t home.
“Eddie,” Sophia tries to whisper, all of seven years old, as he sits her down at their family’s table in the small reception hall, “where’s Papi?”
“He’ll be here,” Eddie promises. He hates to lie, but if there’s one thing he’s learned from his father it’s how to make promises he has no way of keeping.
Toasts are made, one by Mom and one by Tía Pepa.
It comes time for Adriana’s first dance — the father-daughter dance, traditionally. The dance she’s supposed to do with Papi. She’s standing alone in the middle of the makeshift dance floor, looking around desperately, as the music to a song she’d chosen all by herself starts up. She turns towards their table, like she’s hoping he’ll magically appear, and makes a helpless gesture towards their mom.
And Papi is still not here.
So Eddie does what he does best: he steps up.
In front of their friends and their family, he marches himself across the dance floor and slips an arm around Adriana like this was the plan all along. He gives her a smile and starts leading her through the steps. She sniffles, like she could cry or laugh.
“You know all the steps,” she says.
“I like to be prepared.”
“You knew this would happen.”
He shrugs as best he can. “I thought — maybe. You know?"
“Thank you, Eddie.”
“I got you.”
Over Adriana’s shoulder, the door opens right in Eddie’s line of sight. Papi bursts in to the room in a rush, still in his work suit, breathing heavy like he’s been running. He stands there, frozen in the doorway like a phantom too far to each, and watches Eddie lead his sister through the father-daughter dance.
He doesn’t try to interrupt. Not even when the song ends and Eddie passes her off to her escort. Not even when Adriana’s whole court floods the floor for their dance, followed quickly by their closest family members and friends.
Sophia eagerly grabs onto Eddie’s hands and demands, “Now me! Now me!”
Obedient, he twirls her around and leads her through the dance moves they practiced together. It devolves into goofing around, especially once actually popular music starts to play. It’s all Kelly Clarkson, Beyoncé, The Dixie Chicks, and Ashanti — until an Eminem song comes on and scandalizes their parents into cutting the music.
The rest of the party goes off without a hitch. It’s only after all is finished and everyone has gone home that Papi apologizes profusely to Adriana, carrying her piggyback to the car because her feet hurt from the heels. She shrugs and tells him it’s okay.
Well, what she says is: “It’s okay. Eddie stepped up. Like he always does.”
Just because he’d been thinking the same thing doesn’t mean it’s something he expected to hear out loud. Especially not in front of Papi. The look on his face is a strange mix Eddie has never seen before: annoyed and yet devastated. Like he’s sorry Eddie had to step up and mad that Eddie took his place.
Like he hasn’t been forcing Eddie to take his place for years.
“Gracias, mijo,” Papi whispers to him, when it’s just the two of them on the porch. He clucks Eddie on the chin like he used to when he was little. “Good man.”
Eddie hates parties.
That sounds bad. What Eddie really hates is crowds.
He hates the sound, the blurry clamoring of too many people in too-small a space. He hates the push and pull, the heat, the way everyone is touching everyone all the time because it’s unavoidable.
He always has. He assumes he always will.
But Shannon makes it easier.
Shannon loves to party — which, once again, sounds bad, especially if you’re talking to his parents. They act like she’s some bad influence, some wild child, but that’s not it at all. She’s free in a way Eddie has never been able to be. She loves people, finds joy in mingling in a crowed and getting to know someone. It comes naturally to her, being with people. Being shoved into somebody’s overcrowded house, knocking elbows and shoulders and ankles with their peers, drinking warm beer — all of that is invigorating for her.
Eddie’s not like that, but Shannon makes all of that easier for him to cope with. If there’s a party in a field or in a parking lot instead of a house or club, she’ll take him there instead. He follows her around like a puppy — or a guard dog — and she lets him, giggling and chatting and roping him into conversations the whole time. She lets him breathe, allows him to take a minute when he needs it. She hides in the bathroom with him, sits on the lip of a stranger’s tub and combs her fingers through his hair until he fits inside his skin again.
(And then they usually get distracted with each other, pressed up against the sink, mouths on mouths and tongues tangling. It’s inevitable — at least until some drunk college freshmen start pounding on the door because they need to pee.)
They’ll dance together, if it’s that kind of party, and he’ll be okay as long as he keeps his eyes on her and ignores everything else around him. Everything else fades into a blur when he focuses on her.
Partying with Shannon makes him feel like a version of himself people might like, one that gets along easier with others and doesn’t need to hide away. She sings to him, when music plays and when it doesn’t. She’s so fun, so open, in a way he never has been until now. He loves her desperately, happy to light fireworks in empty parking lots and makeout in dark corners and drink room-temperature whiskey out of a cracked solo cup — anything if it means he’s with her.
And afterwards, when they’re drunk and giggly and high off each other, they’ll sleep in the back of his pickup truck until they’re sober. Eddie loves her desperately, in a way he’s never loved anyone before, and he gathers her close under the stars, curled together like parenthesis with nothing in between.
(He loses his virginity to her this way, in the bed of the truck after a party.)
(He’ll look back in a few months, count back and do the math, only to realize that Christopher was likely conceived in the bed of that truck — maybe not the first time, but maybe the second or third. He’s every after-school special warning come to life.)
(Maybe some of that time spent holding her hair while she puked into someone’s grass wasn’t because she was suddenly a total lightweight.)
“Get this out of your system now,” Papi scolds, when he comes home early one morning smelling or shitty beer and Shannon’s perfume. “You think the army is going to put up with this kind of behavior?”
“No, sir,” he answers.
“Go get a shower,” Papi demands. “Don’t let your mother see you like this.”
“Yes, sir,” he shoots his father a mocking salute.
“That girl,” he hears Papi mutter to himself as he makes his way down the hall. “What a bad influence.”
And Papi can say that, because the after is all he sees: the rumpled clothes, the stench of sweat, the knowledge that Eddie has always avoided parties whenever possible before this, before Shannon.
He doesn’t see the before, the during. He doesn’t see how she takes care of him, in a way he’s never really been cared for before. How she takes his feelings seriously and keeps him on track, keeps him grounded. How just being with her is sometimes enough to chase that fear and anxiety, that skin-crawling TV static feeling, away from him.
It doesn’t matter what Papi thinks, what anyone thinks. Eddie knows Shannon is different. He knows Shannon. He loves her.
And she loves him, too.
By Christopher’s sixth’s birthday, Eddie has given up on Shannon coming home.
To make up for it, he throws Christopher the biggest party he’s ever had in his life. His mom has plenty to say about the extravagance, about the cost, about giving into his son’s every whim. When he orders the cake, she scoffs and goes for the phone, saying she’ll call back and cancel the order, that she can bake something better than whatever they’ll whip up. When he brings the decorations from the party store to hide them from Chris’s prying eyes, she shakes her head at his choices. When he goes to the library and prints out the invitations, she protests his use of the black-and-white printer, the way he lets Chris color each one in individually with crayons and markers.
(Chris spends extra time on one of them, painstakingly coloring within the lines. He hands it to Eddie with a shy reverence and asks him to ask Mommy to come. And Eddie, he promises Chris that he’ll send it out, but tells him Mommy might be busy.)
(He sends the invitation to Shannon’s mom, asks that she pass it on to her daughter and reminds her that she is always invited, too.)
Despite all this, the party goes well.
Most of the kids from Christopher’s class come — and the moms stay to celebrate, too. The gifts on the plastic folding table out back start to pile up, bright and colorful, ribbons catching the light. The food is well received, grab bags of chips taken and eaten and discarded all around the yard. Christopher almost collapses in joy when he sees his cake, squealing high and happy.
Papi sits quietly in the living room, away from it all, while Eddie thanks all the visiting guests for coming and his sisters clean up around him. Mom pouts in the kitchen when no one is looking, gathering up trash and muttering under her breath. Eddie reminds himself of the application’s he’s been sending in to firehouses— the ones in Austin, in Philly, in Chicago, in Los Angeles, the farther away the better.
Eventually, even his parents go home, with many parting kisses to Christopher’s sweet face. The two of them spend some time in the bathroom, Christopher perched in Eddie’s lap so he doesn’t fall asleep while they brush his teeth. Pajamas on, exhausted from a day of excitement, Chris is out like a light as soon as his head hits the pillow.
Eddie takes a moment for himself, then.
He needs it, after the day he’s had.
The chairs at the kitchen table are cushioned, soft and comfortable to better suit Christopher, but the wood of the table is hard under his elbows. He spends a long time scrolling through the camera app on his phone, playing back all the little moments of joy he’d managed to capture. Stroking his thumb down the curve of Christopher’s cheek, he takes a deep breath and switches over to the contacts on his phone.
The green call button mocks him.
He knows she won’t answer; she never does.
He calls her anyway.
It rings and rings and rings — and there’s that voicemail message: Hi, you’ve reached Shannon. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
He listens for the beep that signals it’s recording.
“Hi, Shannon. Christopher is six today.”
He pauses, like he’s waiting for a response. None comes. It never does.
“You missed a great party. Balloons everywhere. All of his school friends came, and my sisters and cousins. All the kids ran around, had an awesome time. You should’ve seen all the presents he got and how happy it all made him. God, he’s the best kid. And he had a Trolls cake, with cotton candy for hair. That’s his favorite movie right now.”
The soft, steady dripping of the sink he hasn’t managed to fix yet is the only sound that answers him.
He sighs, drops his head down, lolling forward until his chin touches his chest. “I don’t know what he wished for when he blew out his candles but — if Chris wished for the same thing as last year, he wasted it on you. Maybe I should’ve taught him better by now,” he whispers, “you would’ve shown up if you gave a damn.”
His mom always told him: if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. For once in his life, he takes her advice and hangs up the phone.
Eddie’s shield ceremony calls for a lot of attention on him.
More so than Shannon’s funeral, anyway.
He stands in front of just about everyone he knows: the whole station, their partners and their kids, his Mom and Dad and Abuela, his sisters. Bobby compliments him, lauds his skill as a firefighter and a medic. He stands with his hands behind his back, parade rest, and tries his best not to blush with all eyes on him.
Chris brings him his helmet and he holds him close, so fucking happy for the first time in what feels like forever. For once, everyone in the room is proud of him. For once, things are actually starting to look up for him.
There’s a cake (delicious) and a bunch of Bobby-made food (also delicious). Christopher gives a tour to his parents, leading them around like he owns the place. Hen presses a smacking kiss to his cheek, followed immediately by Karen, both leaving lipstick marks behind, one right over the other. Carla, never one to be outdone, leaves another on his opposite cheek. Chim is too wrapped up in Maddie to pay too much attention to Eddie, but that hardly matters when everyone else is so focused on him.
Buck manages to stand to hug him. It’s — well, Eddie thinks it feels like the first time they’ve ever hugged, ever been this close to each other, even though he knows it’s not true. He keeps it short, moves his arms a little stiffly, and gets Buck and his cast back in his seat as quickly as he can.
Privately, Bobby pulls him aside, in between two trucks and away from everyone else. He gives him a moment away from it all to just breathe. “I just wanted to say,” he claps a hand to Eddie’s shoulder, “that I’m real proud of you, Eddie. I knew as soon as we met that you were a perfect fit for our team. I’m glad you proved me right.”
Is this what approval feels like? Suddenly, Eddie understands why Buck gets flustered with every compliment, why he seems to crave validation — particularly from Bobby. It feels — well, Eddie’s not sure how it feels, but he thinks he likes it. He thinks maybe he was deprived of it his whole life until right now.
“Thanks, Cap. For everything.”
Eddie has nothing to do with planning Buck’s recertification party.
The whole thing is the result of the combined concentrated effort of Athena, Maddie, and Chimney. They conspire over text and email, a group chat or two, over the course of months. Honestly, the planning starts almost as soon as Buck’s medical leave does, moves into full swing when he and his physical therapist start working on walking again.
Chim and Maddie put together the guest list, delegate to the rest of them. Athena sends out the secret invites. Bobby makes the food. Hen orders the cakes.
And Eddie — well, Eddie is told to just show up and look pretty.
He knows they’re trying to go easy on him. They don’t want to overwhelm him. They’re trying to be considerate. He planned Shannon’s funeral a handful of months ago. He has a lot on his plate.
Even Christopher pitches in, spending hours sketching out and coloring his card. He shows it to Eddie with the proudest smile, cheery cheeks tilted up. “Do you think he’ll like it, Daddy?”
He ruffles his son’s curls. “He’ll love it.”
They all gather at Bobby and Athena’s — the first real gathering since their wedding, their first time hosting as a married couple — about forty-five minutes before Buck is set to show up with Maddie. Christopher speeds off into Harry’s room with the other kids and Eddie gets lost in the hustle and bustle of party prep. He’s carting plates and platters to and fro at Athena’s direction, running after May to find the big serving bowls, helping Chim tie balloons and hang streamers.
When Buck finally arrives, they all yell surprise!
Bobby pushes him forward and his hands instinctively find Buck’s waist, the sturdiness and solidity of him, tugging him in close for a hug. It lasts less than a minute, but it feels longer when their bodies press together and Buck slaps his back, buries his face in his neck for just a moment. He smells minty, like mouthwash or aftershave, and a little bit like the lavender fabric softener he likes, the one he took from Eddie’s house originally.
Christopher gets his one-on-one moment with Buck and clings to him desperately. After losing Shannon and then almost losing Buck in such quick succession, he’s latched himself onto Buck a little more tightly than Eddie has seen him do before.
“It’s very sweet, Christopher,” Buck says, pink in the cheeks. “Thank you.”
In between the cake and the drinks coming out, Eddie loses track of Buck. It’s like everyone who has ever been to the station is here and they brought everyone they’ve ever met. He bundles himself off the to side, content to be a wallflower. He watches the party pass him by, eyes Buck and Bobby together on the patio. Karen, overwhelmed with hormone-induced emotions, finds him and asks if it’s okay for her to sit with him for a bit.
And then suddenly coughing takes over the conversations, the ones that are quieting down.
“Buck?” Bobby asks.
Eddie turns from his quiet talk with Karen in time to watch Buck look up at Bobby with stark fear in his eyes, blood bubbling from his mouth, and collapse back into the bushes.
“Oh my god!” Karen yells.
“Buck!” Bobby — and Hen and Chim — are already moving forward.
“Somebody get my kit!” Chim calls to Maddie.
Athena snaps at Michael: “Call 9-1-1.” And at May: “Get the boys inside.”
“Daddy!”
That’s Christopher; Eddie can pick his son’s voice out of the clamor. He moves on instinct, scooping Christopher into his arms and herding the other kids into the house. He bustles Denny, Harry, and May as far away from the glass doors as they’ll go. Karen slides the doors shut behind them, her hands reaching for both Harry and Denny to pull them into her side.
“Did Buck just throw up?” Denny asks, simultaneous with Harry asking:
“Was that blood?”
He turns his body to try to keep Christopher from seeing out the doors, but his son is squirming, twisting, determined and upset. Through the glass, from his admittedly and deliberately obscured vantage point, he can see Hen and Chim on their knees, knows they’re working on Buck — maybe running a line or starting compressions.
Maddie, just a little more visible to him, is standing with her hand to her mouth, Bobby’s arm wrapped around her shoulders.
In the distance, sirens are approaching. Faster than the usual response time for this area, if time is actually moving the way it feels like it is. That’s what happens when a police officer’s ex-husband calls 9-1-1 about a noteworthy, decorated firefighter.
“Daddy?” Christopher asks. “Is Buck gonna be okay?”
“Buck’s fine.” He locks eyes with Karen and says more firmly: “He’s going to be fine.”
The sirens are approaching faster, louder now. May makes to move back towards the windows, nosy and concerned like her mother. “He threw up blood,” she says — and, for all she’s staying calm, her voice is shaky. “That seems pretty bad.”
Karen raises her eyebrows meaningfully at him, tucking the boys closer to her.
“There are plenty of non-life-threatening things that can cause that,” Eddie reassures them, rubbing his hand up and down Christopher’s back. “A tear in the esophagus from coughing. A stomach ulcer. Really bad acid reflux.”
He doesn’t list the things that are life-threatening, the ones racing through his mind faster than he can track: liver failure, esophageal cancer, stomach cancer, pancreatic cancer, tumors, pulmonary embolism.
Even though he’s not sure, Eddie still repeats: “Buck is going to be fine.”
The responding team knocks on the door then — and Eddie moves to let them in. He sets Christopher down with Karen and the boys, instructs the paramedics to follow him back out through the glass doors. As their lead paramedics join Hen and Chim, loading Buck onto a stretching and rushing him to the ambulance, one of the medics they’ve crossed paths with on calls hangs behind and pats him on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Diaz. We’ve got your boy.”
Michael and Karen usher them all out of the house, waving them off from the doorway. May, Harry, and Denny poke their heads out to watch them as they pile into their cars and follow the ambulance to the hospital.
When it’s time to turn to follow the ambulance, Eddie knows he could take the turn in the opposite direction and get them home. He could take his son away from this whole mess and tuck him into bed. They could pretend this whole thing never happened. But he knows neither of them will sleep until they know Buck is okay.
From the backseat, Christopher sniffles. “Dad? When can we see Buck?”
He taps his turn signal and makes his way to the hospital, mentally preparing for another long night in a hospital waiting room.
Eddie’s turns thirty as the world is ending.
They manage to celebrate Christopher’s ninth late-winter birthday together before the pandemic really hits and Los Angeles starts feeling the effects of it. The news gets worse as the days go on, but nothing actually starts to change until after the train derailment, when the school year is over for graduating seniors and the heat of summer sets in.
On his thirtieth birthday — or what it actually feels like: a random day in April — Eddie is woken up not by his alarm or his internal clock, but the sounds of pots banging in the kitchen. It wakes him with a jolt, the instinct of a parent with a very independent young child, and he’s half out of bed before he registers the sounds of Christopher’s laughter and Buck’s shushing.
In the kitchen, he leans against the doorframe and watches two of his favorite people in the world at the stove. They’re making waffles or pancakes — or maybe both, like they started with one and gave up halfway through. There’s a plate of unevenly chopping fruit, some slightly squashed blueberries. They also have a bowl of what looks like hand-whipped whipped cream, the kind Buck likes to make for Sundae Sundays, that Chris keeps dipping his fingers in and keeps getting scolded for stealing.
“There won’t be any left for your dad’s birthday breakfast,” Buck wiggles his finger at Chris.
It’s then that Eddie realizes its his birthday.
“Yeah, kid,” Eddie laughs when they both whip around to face him, “you stealing my birthday breakfast?”
Chris tumbles into his arms and hugs him tight. “Happy birthday, Dad!”
“Gracias, mijo,” he bends himself in half to kiss the top of Chris’s head. “Why don’t you go wash those sticky fingers and I’ll help your Buck finish up?”
As the sound of Christopher’s crutches disappear down the hall, Eddie steps up to the stove beside Buck. It looks like Buck rolled out of bed and made his way to their house, still in his ratty pajama pants and old hoodie, curls in disarray. Theres’a still a faint pillow crease on his cheek, folding into his birthmark. He looks soft and comfortable and at home, here in Eddie’s kitchen. He looks like he belongs.
“Hi, Buck.”
“Happy birthday, Eddie.”
“You didn’t have to do this, you know.”
“Of course I did,” Buck protests, flipping a pancake less shakily than he did a few months ago. It sizzles in the pain, warm vanilla wafting into the air. “You’re thirty now, old man! What kind of best friend would I be if we didn’t celebrate? But — I know you don’t like big parties and, with the way all this Coronavirus stuff is looking, I figured we could do something small, you know? Just the three of us.”
Eddie grabs the bowl of batter and ladles more into the pan for Buck as he moves the finished pancake to a piled-high plate. “I’m good with a family day.”
“Speaking of family,” Buck grimaces a little bit,” I told your Tía Pepa and Abuela they could come for a late lunch and some cake. They’ll be here around three-thirty.”
He puts a reassuring hand on Buck’s back, smooths down his spine and presses briefly against the arch at the small of his back. “Like I said, I’m good with a family day.”
The last pancake makes the move to the plate and Buck shuts off the burner. Eddie scoops up the plate to cart to the dining room table, where he can hear Christopher settling in. Dirty dishes make their way into the sink. Buck turns to him, whipped cream and berries in his massive hands, and stops — mostly because Eddie’s blocking the way out.
“Thank you,” Eddie says quietly, “for all of this.”
“Thanks for being born.” He kicks a foot out, like he’s scooting Eddie out of his way. “Let’s go feed the kid.”
Eddie’s firm dislike of parties extends to other things: bars, clubs, parades. Any gathering with a big, crushing crowd of people sets him on edge, has him looking for the exits and sticking his back to the wall — more so than ever, since the shooting.
He tries not to let it stop him from participating in life, in going out with his friends to enjoy a drink and some wings, to laugh at Chim and Hen’s karaoke duet. And it’s been harder to find time to be with the 118, since he left for the dispatch center. And he’s been clashing with the nine-to-five hours and the culture in dispatch, particularly with Josh.
So he kind of needs this.
He puts on his favorite jacket — his date jacket, Carla calls it, the one without the tag, the one worn in at the wrists and the elbows, washed enough that it’s easy to move in but not so much that it looks worn out — and climbs into his truck to hit up a hook and ladder bar nearby the station, where the little family he’s found is waiting for him.
But when he walks in, he finds himself stopping in the doorway. The waitress asks him if he needs anything — Are you with the firefighters? — and something in him freezes.
Because there they are: Bobby and Hen and Buck and some woman he’s never seen before. The lights are dim, but Buck must be sitting directly under one because he’s lit up in a way the other’s aren’t — or maybe he’s just lit from within, all that sunshine and happiness pouring out in a physical sense. He’s smiling, laughing, big and beautiful and expressive, throwing his head back and rocking in his chair, throwing his hands around.
They’re all doing just fine without him. Buck is doing just fine without him. Hell, maybe they’re all doing better than fine, better than ever, without him around to drag them down. His presence would just disrupt the good mood they have going for them.
“No,” he answers and gives one last look around.
He leaves.
Instead, with Chris out for the night like Eddie was supposed to be, Eddie spends the night alone on his couch, mindless TV droning on in the background. He heats up some leftovers from the dinner he made the night before — because he’s getting better at cooking, he’s working on it — and drinks a beer with his feet on the coffee table.
He ignores the texts coming in from Hen and Buck, asking where he is, when he’ll get there, is everything okay. He ignores Buck’s call — and his next — and his next. He basks in his solitude, in the quiet of his house and tries to find peace in the silence.
It’s a relief for a long moment, before it drops into melancholy he refuses to let himself acknowledge.
(Hen drops a very drunk Buck off at his house a few hours later. He tumbles into Eddie’s arms and into Eddie’s lap like it’s where he’s always meant to be. He puts his hands in Buck’s hair, breaking up the gel and sweat, and feels content for the first time in a while.)
(I kissed someone, Buck confesses, whiny drunk tears in his voice. I didn’t really want to kiss her. I think I just miss you. I miss you all the time.)
(Eddie doesn’t know what to do with that.)
It’s Eddie who brings it up.
They’re on the roof of the station, just him and Buck, reclining in some shitty plastic beach chairs while the rest of the team gets a nap in. The ridiculously large water bottle Buck has taken to carrying around is settled on the concrete between them. The sun is setting, painting the sky in pinks and purples and oranges, but still casting warmth down on them.
Buck has his eyes closed, face titled up to the dying sun. He looks sweet, serene, like nothing in the world could touch him right now. And Eddie — well, he’s watching Buck, watching his chest move as he breathes and marveling in the fact that he’s alive.
“I want to go to Pride,” Eddie admits, his voice quiet, soft, like a secret.
Buck doesn’t even open his eyes, just lets a slow smile spread across his face. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He blinks one eye open. “Like, on the LAFD float? Or—”
Eddie shakes his head. “No, just,” he holds out a hand, palm up, and something settles in him when Buck takes it and squeezes, “just as us.”
“Okay,” Buck pulls his hand across the gap between them and presses a kiss to the back of it, “we can do that.”
But then a bridge collapses.
But then Eddie breaks his ribs. But then he’s put on medical leave for six full weeks just as May is coming to an end. But then he’s got Buck fussing about keeping him on the couch and Chris forcing him to rest and Carla reminding him that he needs time to heal.
And the idea of going to an all-day open-air market and parade kind of slips his mind.
It’s a quiet Sunday morning. Outside their bedroom window, birds are chirping and leaves are rustling and the busy, mechanical sounds of morning traffic are far away. The bed is warm from their combined body heat, from a night of rolling away and rolling back together, forever caught in each other’s orbit like magnets. There are hours yet until they’d usually welcome Abuela and Tía Pepa for after-church brunch.
Eddie’s enjoying a morning of lazing about in bed, sleeping in without Buck having to crawl out and get ready for work — work, where he’ll face dangers without Eddie there to watch his back for a few weeks yet. His sleep mask has been dislodged from his face at some point in the night and he’s buried his face in the pillow to make up for it, to enjoy the comfort and warmth of hiding from the mid-morning light just a bit longer. He thinks of the wedding vows burning a hole in his sock drawer.
A kiss is pressed to the nape of his neck, then another. He grins into the pillow.
“G’mornin,” he tries, but it comes out more like a happy little grumble than anything.
“Good morning,” Buck whispers, lips still grazing Eddie’s skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake. With one last kiss, he pulls back, makes room for Eddie to roll onto his back.
“Hi,” Eddie slaps his hands to Buck’s stubbly cheeks and pulls him down for a proper kiss. Buck tastes like mint, like he got out of bed at some point and brushed his teeth already. He briefly worries about his own morning breath, but it doesn’t seem to be deterring Buck in any way, shape, or form — it never does — so he decides not to think about it.
The kiss ends when Buck breaks away, a little bit of a dazed look in his eyes. “What do you say,” he suggests, pulling out of Eddie’s reach and sitting beside him instead, “we go somewhere today?”
Eddie makes a disgruntled noise, flopping back against the pillows and dragging his hands down his face. “Do we have to?”
Buck laughs. “I thought you’d be excited to get out and about. You’ve been cooped up in the house for a few weeks now. We could go down to WeHo, maybe visit that one restaurant we like.” He leans back on his side, slides his hand up Eddie’s worn t-shirt. “Come on, baby. Let me take you out.”
The scratching of his nails against the skin of Eddie’s stomach is almost as distracting as his words. It makes Eddie feel giddy, to be romanced and cared for so openly.
“Okay,” he agrees. “Take me out.”
It takes them a little bit to get themselves together. They have a kid to wake up, to feed, to hustle out the door to Hen and Karen’s. From there, they wait for an Uber, because that one restaurant they love has zero available parking and it’s just easier this way.
Their Uber driver is kind enough to get them as close as he can, but the traffic, at one point, is forced into a complete standstill. The people around them, walking past, are moving faster and getting further than they are. Buck suggests getting out and walking the rest of the way, so they do.
The closer they get to Hollywood Boulevard, the more people they pass that are — well, Eddie doesn’t like to stereotype, but he would maybe call them visibly queer.
It’s the rainbows, really, that give them away.
And the body glitter, a little bit.
As Buck keeps trucking his way down the sidewalk, Eddie finds himself stopping to watch another group pass him by: two young women holding hands to pull each other through the gathering the crowd, a few men in sparkling high heels, more people of all genders in more crop tops than Eddie has ever seen in his life, a gaggle of teens wearing flags as capes.
“Buck,” Eddie’s voice is a little bit . . . awed, almost, “I think Pride is today.”
“Oh, wow,” Buck says — in a voice like he’s trying to act surprised, but he’s never been a very good actor when it comes to Eddie, “really? That’s wild.”
Eddie turns to face him, a smile growing across his face. He squints and points an accusatory finger at Buck. “You set me up.”
Buck shrugs his big shoulders, cheeks flushed and pink. “You wanted to go to Pride. I like giving you what you want.” He holds out his hand, palm-up and open, waiting for Eddie to take it. “Whaddaya say?”
He steps in close, folding his fingers through Buck’s. It grounds him. He brings their joined hands up to his mouth to kiss the back of Buck’s. “Such a good boy,” he whispers.
His husband-to-be wiggles like a happy golden retriever, bouncing on his toes before leading Eddie through the crowd by the hand. And as Eddie follows him, as the crowd gets denser and the music gets louder and the street opens up to stalls and tables and food trucks and flags of every color, it hits him:
He’s at Pride.
He’s holding hands with a man — with his man — at Pride.
He’s out in a way he hasn’t really been before. It feels monumental in a way he wasn’t prepared for. His cheeks almost hurt from smiling so wide. The colors blur around him, like a haze has settled over his vision.
If Papi could see him now.
A woman offers him a little pride flag, the kind you carry to wave, as he passes by. When he takes it from her, she holds out her hand and he stares blankly for a moment before Buck slaps a crisp five-dollar bill into her palm and continues pulling him along. He watches the flag in his hand, the rainbow bold and bright, and finds himself laughing lightly.
A man selling shirts on the side of the road holds up a rainbow tie-dye t-shirt. It reads GAY FUCKING PRIDE. When he turns it around to show the back, it says FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT.
A — someone androgynous walks by with a whole pineapple in their hands, a big curly crazy straw poking out of the top. Behind them, Eddie sees a piña colada food truck surrounded by others carrying pineapples. He can smell the coconut, even over the scent of frying food coming from the other trucks.
They do end up ducking into that one restaurant they like, which is packed fuller than he’s ever seen it and decorated for the day. They’re selling drinks to party-goers and day-drinkers from the front door, passing out free water bottles. Before they’re even seated, Eddie has a multi-colored lemonade in his hand that tastes more like vodka than anything.
Eddie orders what he always orders. It comes to him with a pride-flag toothpick sticking out of the top. Plucking it from his meal and setting it to the side with delicate, careful fingers, he finds himself grinning at Buck over their table for two.
Buck, of course, already has an over-large bite of his meal in his mouth. He tries to speak around it; it comes out garbled. Luckily, Eddie has spent years interpreting:
“Good?”
Eddie swallows his own mouthful before he nods. “Good.”
“It’s not too much?” Buck swallows. “You can tell me if it’s too much. I don’t want you to get overloaded.”
“It — it is, but not in a bad way,” Eddie tries to explain. “Like there’s so much going on, I don’t know how to take it all in. It almost doesn’t feel real.”
Paying the check comes with a “happy pride!” from the staff and free water bottles to go.
They wander through the open-air market. One vendor has frog-shaped hand-knit heating pads for sale. Another is selling candles shaped like naked woman, lesbian-flag-colored wax dripping down. A booth advertising sexual health information is handing out free condoms, which Buck refuses with a bashful grin and the showcasing of his engagement ring.
Even though the sun is out, there are people walking around with those glow-stick necklaces looping around their throats. A DJ is set up off to the side, playing some song he thinks he’s never heard but was probably on the radio at some point. People are dancing in all kinds of ways — twirling each other around, holding each other close, jumping in place with their friends, shaking their asses in a feat of muscle control Eddie has only very rarely seen. A guy dressed like Spider-Man does a backflip.
Eddie tugs Buck past the LAFD booth, where Lena Bosko is reclining in a lawn chair with her feet up on the table while the other firefighters hand out fire-safety manuals and stickers of the LAFD logo in rainbow colors.
At the end of street, where another street intersects, there’s a sign marking a family-friendly section of the event. Families of all shapes, sizes, and colors are running around, playing a dunk-tank game or drawing with chalk or getting a rest in after walking such a long way together.
And there, just behind the sign, is Christopher.
Eddie does a double-take but there’s no doubt it’s him. Flanked by Hen and Karen and May, he’s sitting on one of the makeshift picnic tables, sharing a big bag of Doritos that probably cost way too much at an event like this. He’s not wearing the shirt they dropped him off in. No, instead he’s sporting a shirt that reads I LOVE MY DADS — complimentary to Denny’s I LOVE MY MOMS shirt.
“He—” Eddie cuts himself off, looks at Buck. “Did you—?”
“He wanted to come; I didn’t want to disappoint him if we ended up heading home. And I figured maybe some of the things we might want to do or see might not be appropriate for him yet. So Hen and Karen offered to bring him with them.” He squeezes Eddie’s hand. “Want to go sit with him for a bit?”
“Yes, please,” Eddie grins.
When Chris sees them, he bounces to his feet and yells out for them: “Dad!” He doesn’t even complain when Eddie hugs him so hard he lifts him from the ground. He’s passed into Buck’s waiting arms for his hug and some reverent whispering between the two while Eddie accepts his standard kiss on the cheek from Karen.
“Hey, Mayday,” Buck chirps, wrapping his sweaty arms around her and squeezing tight. She swats at him the way Sophia would’ve done to Eddie; ever since the lightning strike, she’s been making a point to be closer to Buck. “You made it to the party!”
“Me? You’re late to the party,” May laughs. “I’m on day three of this.”
“Day three?” It comes out of Eddie’s mouth incredulous.
She laughs and the glittery blue-purple-pink painted on her cheek catches the sunlight. “They had Megan Thee Stallion headlining on Friday. There was no way I was missing that.”
“Valid,” Karen admits and Buck nods along in agreement.
“I can’t believe you all put this together under my nose,” Eddie shakes his hand, plopping down beside Chris. He steals a chip from the bag, shakes it at his son in mock-scolding before crunching down. “How’d you keep it a secret, mijo?”
“I’m good at keeping secrets, Dad,” he raises his eyebrows meaningfully and Eddie is reminded suddenly of the vows hidden in his sock drawer.
Buck barks a laugh. “No, you’re not.”
Chris frowns up at him. “I am about fun things.”
Eddie smiles, knocks their shoulders together. “This is a fun thing, huh? I like your shirt.”
“Thank you,” Chris preens, puffing out his chest. “Aunt Hen hid it at her house. It’s been there for weeks.” Denny snatches the bag of chips back from them as Chris leans in and lowers his voice. “Are you having a good time, Dad?”
“I am.”
“It’s not too much?”
“No,” Eddie shakes his head, horribly fond. “Not with you and Buck here. I’m a-okay, kid.”
When the day ends for them, all three of them exhausted ion the ride back home, Eddie takes a second to place his little rainbow flag in the vase of flowers on their dining room table. He admires it for a long moment, tracing the colors with a finger.
“Thank you for today,” he says as the three of them cram into the bathroom to brush their teeth, glitter and sweat mostly washed off.
“No problem!” Chris chirps. “It was so much fun! And you were so surprised!”
Buck gives him a foamy grin, presses a warm hand to the small of his back. It takes him a minute to spit and rinse, but then he straightens. “You deserve everything you want, Eddie. It’s my job to give it to you.”
“God, I love you.”
“I love you more.”
“I love you most,” Chris yawns, stretching.
They spill out into the hallway, trudging towards their bedrooms. Chris calls out to them from the doorway of his room. He gives them a sleepy, content smile, the kind they’ve been missing out on since he got too old to want to be tucked in.
“Hey. I’m really proud that you’re my dads.”
“I’m really proud you’re our kid,” Buck answers.
“And I’m really happy we got to do this today. And that nobody had a meltdown.”
Eddie laughs. “Me, too, kid.”