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She finds Eddie up on the rooftop, which makes sense, given that Buck is currently working out his feelings on the heavy bag after Bobby finally snapped at the two of them to get their acts together unless they wanted to be benched. Chim's down in the weight room with him, which means that Hen is up here in the warm night air to talk some sense into the other half of their codependent little unit, who is currently perched on one of the folding chairs that they usually leave up here. He's as still as a statue, tense like he's afraid of what his body might do if he lets it move.
"Hey," Hen says, and he gives a jerky little nod of acknowledgement. "Mind if I sit?"
"Go ahead."
"Thanks." She pulls out one of the other chairs and sits down. "So."
"Bobby sent you."
"I sent myself," she corrects mildly, and watches Eddie's shoulders hunch a little. "I don't think I've ever seen you and Buck fight like that."
Though the truth is, she really only caught the tail end of it. Buck's frustrated voice rising on, "Do you hear yourself? How did you think this was going to work out? Have you even thought about Chris? What, you were just going to introduce him to her like—"
"Chris? Since when is how I parent my son any of your business?"
"I don't know, Eddie, you kind of made it my business when you put me in your fucking will!"
"Yeah, well, maybe that was a mistake!"
There was ringing silence in the wake of that. Then Buck said something quieter, inaudible from where Hen and Chim were standing frozen outside the locker room door, and Eddie spat, "Go to hell. I'm done talking about this."
The door slammed open and he stormed out, only pausing for a moment when he saw the two of them standing there. It wasn't until he'd already stomped up the stairs to the loft that Buck emerged, scowling.
"I don't want to talk about it," he snapped, before either of them could speak.
That was six hours ago. Neither of them has said a single word to each other since outside of the bare minimum on calls. The tension in the back of the truck has been thick enough to cut with a knife, and none of Chim's increasingly desperate jokes has done a damn thing to lighten the mood.
Hen doesn't blame Bobby for being fed up with the pair of them. She's caught somewhere between that and worry, herself. This isn't like them. Either of them.
Eddie shrugs again, tense. "I don't really feel like talking about it."
"Mm."
Hen kicks her legs out, relaxes into the chair and waits him out. It doesn't take long. Maybe two minutes before he lets out an angry little huff and says, "Marisol dumped me this morning."
"Oh," Hen says. That explains some of the mood, anyway. "Well, I'm sorry to—"
"I cheated on her. She found out."
She closes her mouth. For a moment she just looks at him: his tight jaw, his hands in fists on his thighs, so tense he looks like he's about to snap. Like looking through a warped mirror to a younger version of herself, and maybe that's why she manages some gentleness when she says, "That doesn't sound like you."
"Yeah. That's what Buck said. Shows what he knows."
"Why'd you do it?"
"It doesn't matter. It was stupid. I fucked up."
"If you're waiting on me to tell you otherwise, you'll be waiting a while." Eddie lets out a sharp, bitter little bark of laughter, and Hen adds. "I've been there, you know."
"Yeah. But it's not—Karen forgave you."
"Eventually, yeah. She didn't have to."
"Yeah," Eddie says, and then doesn't say anything else.
"Is that what you and Buck were fighting about?"
He shrugs again. Like talking to a damn teenager, Hen thinks. Not Denny, with his easy sweetness, but like one of the other kids who come through their home sometimes on temporary placements: already on the defensive, claws out, ready to fight.
"I guess," he mutters finally.
"You put him in your will?" Off his look, she adds, "Hey, if you want it to be a secret, maybe don't have your domestics at the top of your lungs in the locker room we all use."
He scoffs, clearly annoyed, but doesn't get up and storm off, so she's counting that as a win. Finally, he says, "Yeah. He's down as Chris's legal guardian if something happens to me. Since—uh, since I almost died in that well collapse a few years back."
Oh. Hen contemplates that for a moment, squares it up in her head with what she already knows about Eddie. It's not, she'll admit, completely out of left field. But still. "And you think maybe that was a mistake?"
Eddie groans, dropping his head back. "I shouldn't have said that. I didn't mean it."
"Maybe you should tell Buck that."
"He's pissed at me."
"Seems mutual."
"Yeah," Eddie says, wry and still kind of irritated. But then he sighs. "You ever do something where you know the whole time you're doing it that it's going to blow up in your face, and somehow that still doesn't stop you?"
"Yep," Hen says, remembering a dark little motel room and the sharp cut of Eva's smile. A whole damn pile of fuck-ups, that relationship was, and she dragged it along with her to almost ruin the best thing in her life.
"I keep thinking I see Shannon. It's like she's just around the corner, like if I turn around fast enough, she'll be there, and I'll be able to go back and make it right. But I can't."
"No. You can't."
"It's been five fucking years."
"No timeline on grief."
"I went on a date with a woman just because she looked like her." Hen raises her eyebrows at him. He slouches lower in his seat. "A couple of dates. It—didn't end well."
"Mm. You mean because she turned out to be a whole damn person who wasn't Shannon, or because your girlfriend found out?"
"Both," Eddie mutters. "Believe me, I already heard it from Buck."
"Oh, I believe it."
"But he's—" Eddie snaps his mouth shut.
"Kind of a hypocrite on this particular subject?" Hen offers.
"That's not what I was going to say. He's with Tommy now. So."
"So?"
"Never mind. It doesn't matter."
Hen would dearly love to interrogate that line of thinking, but she keeps her mouth shut. For a little while, they don't speak. It's a transient kind of peace; their next call could come at any minute. But for now, the city's as quiet as it ever is, lit up and beautiful in the distance.
Eventually, Eddie shifts in his chair, straightens up like he's bracing for something, then says, abruptly, "Can I ask you a personal question?"
Hen raises her eyebrows. "Go ahead."
"Have you ever been with a guy?"
"Excuse me?"
"Forget it," he says quickly, hunching in on himself again. "I don't even know why I asked. You can tell me to go to hell."
She almost does tell him to go to hell. Has her mouth open and everything. But then she takes another good look at his face and lets the words dissipate.
"No," she says finally. "Kissed a couple of boys in high school, but I pretty much always knew it wasn't for me."
"Oh." Eddie's mouth twists. He's still staring a hole in the concrete by his feet, and Hen wishes like hell that this was easier for him, that he could have stumbled into it with wide eyes and open arms without leaving a trail of wreckage in his wake. Buck managed it, but it's not like that for everyone. She knows that.
"Karen was engaged to a man, you know," she says, and she watches him still, watches him turn, finally, to look at her.
"I didn't know that."
"It was a long time ago. College sweetheart. She called it off a week before the wedding. Broke his damn heart, from what I hear. Probably better in the long run, though, all things considered."
Eddie laughs at that, a raw, horrible little sound. "I was a bad husband to Shannon. I loved her so much, and I still could never—and I always thought that maybe, if we'd just had more time, maybe I could have gotten it right, and we could have been a family again, and it would have been okay."
"But she died."
"She asked me for a divorce."
"Oh." Hen takes a breath, lets it out. Careful, careful. "I didn't know that."
"Nobody knows that. I mean. Bobby does. But nobody else. Because she died two days later, so I never had to—to tell anyone. I never had to admit it. I could keep pretending. But it doesn't even matter, because I've also fucked up every relationship I've been in since. So it's kind of obvious where the problem is."
"Mm. You know what my mama used to say?"
Eddie cuts her a look. "What?"
"Get down from that cross, we need the wood."
When he laughs this time, it sounds a little more real. Hen nudges her knee against his, and for a minute they sit there together in silence.
"I fucked up," he says again, but it's calmer.
"Yep."
"What the hell do I say to Buck?"
Not Marisol, Hen notes. Though the truth is she's pretty sure that whole relationship was dead and gone long before whatever went down this morning. Maybe from the very beginning. Eddie's just got a bad habit of dragging those corpses around. "Sorry might be a good start."
"He's gonna ask why. I don't have a good answer. I can't—" He looks over at her, and all Hen can think is that he looks so damn young. "I can't."
"So tell him that. You know he's not gonna push it."
"Yeah, he will."
"He's worried about you."
Eddie scoffs. "Yeah."
That was, Hen surmises what the fight was about in the first place. Unstoppable force, immovable object. Sometimes she wishes she could just knock their stubborn heads together until they showed some sense.
"He loves you," she says, and Eddie flinches.
"I know that," he mutters.
Hen sighs. "Just talk to him. You don't have to tell him anything you're not ready to tell him, but just—talk to him. Okay? For all our sakes."
"Yeah, okay," Eddie says, sounding defeated. "Sorry about that."
"We'll survive," Hen says. She bumps her knee against his again, and they sit there together in silence, watching the city lights, until the bell starts going off below.