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After Christopher leaves for Texas, Eddie’s life goes quiet.
School let out for the summer a week before Chris left. They had plans, lots of them. Chris had a science camp for a week in June. They had a beach day with Buck penciled in for their Saturday off. They were talking about getting Disney tickets for Eddie’s next weekday off, or driving up to a cabin some long weekend in July.
Now, Eddie’s calendar is empty. He wrote down his work shifts for the month and crossed out the rest, sitting at the kitchen table, feeling like he was torturing himself. Feeling like he wasn’t doing enough.
Eddie’s pretty sure he’s cried in every room in the house since Christopher left. He cried over the laundry last week. He sat on Chris’s bed and cried for an hour the other day. He fought it at first; he had to keep it together, had to be strong while Chris was gone. Eventually, he remembered that the door to the house wasn’t going to open. No one was going to catch him like this, in tears over some leftover popsicles in the back of the freezer.
Who’s he hiding from? His kid is eight hundred miles away. The only person who’s been in Eddie’s house other than him in the weeks since Christopher left is Buck, and any part of Eddie that told him to hide from Buck burned away a long time ago.
The loneliness is crushing. Buck's been trying to keep it at bay—following Eddie home after shifts, making him dinner and suggesting things for them to do on their days off until Eddie agrees to something. When his list of ideas runs dry, they do chores, grocery runs and folding the laundry and cleaning Eddie's kitchen. Neither of them say anything about how Eddie needs half as many groceries, has half as much laundry as a few weeks ago.
It's miserable, and Buck is there. Eddie can't decide how to feel about that. Guilt isn't the first emotion that springs to his mind when someone goes out of their way to help him, not anymore, but it isn't the last, either.
He's grateful, mostly. Gratitude is a hard emotion to feel right now, but he doesn't have much of a choice, not when Buck is making him homemade pizza for dinner and camping out on his couch and coming up with thinly veiled reasons to get Eddie out of his house. All Eddie wants to feel right now is misery, but Buck won't let him.
He lets Eddie feel it. He sat with him, that first night, for Eddie doesn't know how long. He barely remembers what they talked about, or if they talked. He just remembers the quiet after his parents left, the empty house and the closed door to Chris's room, and Buck.
Buck just doesn't let misery be the only thing Eddie feels. He doesn't let his empty house be the only thing Eddie sees. One day, Eddie's going to have to figure out how to thank Buck for it. For now, he's just glad not to be alone.
The days after Christopher leaves creep toward weeks, which creep toward a month. Eddie works; Eddie goes home. Eddie eats; Eddie sleeps. The time passes.
—
SOS, Buck texts on Thursday morning midway through June, their day off after a 24-hour shift. It’s been a mild June, which pisses Eddie off a little. What right does the weather have to be this nice, when Eddie feels this miserable?
Buck: not actually SOS don’t panic
Eddie: Buck.
Buck: listen change of plans can we do the movies next week
Buck: how do u feel about babysitting?
—
Buck honks twice when he pulls into Eddie’s driveway twenty minutes later. Eddie flips him off through the window and finishes tying his shoes.
“Eddie!” Buck says when Eddie gets in the car, loud and overjoyed, like they didn’t see each other less than twelve hours ago. Eddie matches his grin.
“Hey, Buck.”
“You’re saving my life,” Buck says. “Maddie’s life, actually, but same difference.”
“Chimney’s not around today?” Eddie asks.
Buck shakes his head. “Chimney’s in Temecula. The yearly wine tour with Hen, they left last night,” he says. “Maddie got the call from dispatch this morning, I guess the catering gave half the floor food poisoning.”
“Jesus,” Eddie says, wincing.
Maddie is overjoyed to see them. She is also, she informs them as she sweeps half the contents of the kitchen counter into her purse, running very, very late.
“You know where the snacks are. There’s leftover, um. There’s leftover something in the fridge,” she says, giving up on the words and waving a hand. “Call me if anything goes wrong.”
“You got it,” Buck says.
Maddie sails through the living room, saying her good-byes to Jee-Yun and Mara and doubling back for her coffee mug. When she passes Eddie, almost at the door, she stops for a second.
“Thank you,” she says, touching his arm. There’s an intensity in her eyes that Eddie didn’t expect. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too,” Eddie says back.
Maddie smiles and she’s gone. The door clicks shut behind her, and it’s Eddie and Buck and the kids.
Buck claps his hands. “Okay,” he says to the room. “What are we doing?”
Jee decides first, pushing off from the couch and taking Buck’s hand. They need to show off Mara’s room, apparently, and the three of them traipse into the hall in a line. Buck glances back over his shoulder at Eddie, eyes crinkling with a grin.
Eddie stays behind in the living room. He can hear their voices down the hall, Jee squealing at something and Buck’s voice rising in that telltale way that means he’s genuinely excited. Eddie smiles and shakes his head. He wanders over the toy box by the wall and takes a peek inside, glancing at the stuffed toys and the Fisher Price fire truck and the Play-Doh set.
Maddie’s expression is bugging him. She didn’t look sad when she looked at him, but it was a near thing. There was something serious and intense in her eyes when she looked Eddie in the face. He hadn’t really thought about it before coming here, but…it’s been a while since he’s seen Maddie. More than a few weeks.
He picks up one of the board books on the side table—Blue Hat, Green Hat . They—Shannon and Chris and him—had that book, a decade ago.
Eddie doesn’t like being pitied. He doesn’t take it well. It feels too close to something meaner, to how he remembers people looking at him after Shannon got pregnant or when she left him. Oh, Eddie. Such a shame .
He knows that’s not how Maddie means it. More than anyone, she probably gets it. They’ve never talked about it, not the two of them, but he knows plenty from Buck about the long months she spent away from Jee-Yun. The fear and the loneliness, the horror of realizing what you’ve missed, how much your kid has grown without you—she’s been there, too.
Eddie never thought he would find himself back there again.
There’s a noise at the door to the living room, startling Eddie out of his head. He looks up: Buck, poking his head around the door, and Jee, poking her head around Buck’s leg.
“Eddie,” Buck says. “Mara wants to show off her new video game. Are you better at gaming or at playing princesses?”
“Uh,” Eddie says. “I’m pretty bad at gaming?”
“Jee?” Buck prompts. She takes a step out from behind his leg. She’s got a blanket train wrapped around her shoulders and one of her stuffed toys in her hand. “Can Eddie play princesses with you?”
Jee looks at Eddie. Eddie looks at Jee.
She tugs on Buck’s sleeve. He leans down; she whispers something in his ear.
Buck straightens up. “You’re approved,” he says, grinning. “Eddie—princess crowns are in the toy box. Jee—take good care of him.”
He gives Eddie a thumbs up before disappearing back to Mara’s room, very you got this! Eddie resists the urge to call after him that between the two of them, Eddie’s the one who actually has a kid.
“Hey, Jee,” Eddie says. She’s still leveling him the same serious, appraising look she fixed him with a minute ago. “I’m going to go find the crowns, okay?”
Playing princesses, it turns out, is not very complicated. The way Jee does it, it’s basically playing house with crowns on. Eddie gave Jee her tiara and she waited, staring at him, until he found the other tiara and put it on his own head. Then, she set him to work in the little play kitchen she’s got set up in the corner of the living room. Eddie is chopping vegetables with a plastic knife, delivering her pots and pans on request, and taste-testing her finished dishes, all while carrying on a very serious and only semi-comprehensible conversation about life as a princess.
Jee’s not a very discerning chef. It’s just as likely that she adds Fisher Price cars and doll clothes to her skillet as the plastic tomatoes and eggs. She’s a very good delegator, though; hilariously, it reminds Eddie a little of Buck, when he and Eddie cook together. Buck established a long time ago that he’s the real chef in their friendship. Eddie does as he’s told—grunt work, chopping and fetching and stirring—and accepts that he’s going to do at least one thing wrong that gets Buck making a fond but disappointed look at him. Jee is similar, though less amused when Eddie misunderstands her.
Eddie’s not sure how long it’s been when Buck sticks his head back into the living room—to check on them, he says, though Eddie’s a sneaking suspicion he means check on Eddie. Mara won the game, he reports, and she wants to do some reading.
Eddie raises an eyebrow. “You got kicked out?”
“I did not get kicked out,” Buck says, indignant.
“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie says. “Here, try this.”
He holds out the plate Jee prepared last: it’s gourmet plastic pepper sauteed with Polly Pocket dresses. Obligingly, Bcuk crosses the room and takes the fork from Eddie.
“Mm,” Buck says, making a show out of miming eating. Jee isn’t paying them any attention. “I love what you did with the, uh. Little shoes?”
“I think that’s the garlic,” Eddie advises.
“Princess?” Jee asks from behind Buck.
Buck and Eddie share a glance. Eddie looks back at Jee. “Hey, Jee—what do you think?” he says. “Can Buck come and play?”
She’s moved on from the kitchen to opening and closing her little cash register, making the cha-ching of a sale go off every time. She gives Buck a long, appraising look. Eddie tries and fails to not feel smug about being on the right side of her stern looks this time around.
“Is it princesses only?” Buck asks.
“No,” Jee decides. She pushes herself up from the ground and goes to the toy box. After a second of rummaging, she says, “Here,” pushing something at Buck.
“A firefighter helmet?” Buck asks. It’s kid-sized, which means it just about fits in the palm of Buck’s hand. “Is that for me?”
“Fire,” Jee says approvingly. “You can.”
“I think firefighters are a kind of princess?” Eddie suggests. Buck chokes on a laugh.
“You got it,” he says. He reaches up and perches the helmet on the top of his head. “Do the princesses have any jobs for me?”
Eddie and Jee share a look. Jee points back at the kitchen.
“Dishes,” she declares.
Buck salutes. “Aye, aye, captain.”
Jee seems to have things under control at the cash register, so Eddie joins Buck at the toy sink, scooting over on the carpet to sit next to him. There’s not really enough room for both of them, but they squeeze in together anyway, Buck at the sink, Eddie with the little embroidered towel, their shoulders bumping up against each other every time they move.
“Careful with the pizza cutter,” Eddie advises. “It’s sharp.”
Buck snorts, making the firefighter helmet perched on his head wiggle dangerously. “Thanks.”
Mara wanders out of her room a little while later. She raises one eyebrow at the setup—Jee playing contentedly by herself and Buck and Eddie playing together—and settles onto the couch without comment.
She cracks open her book. Eddie recognizes the cover: Frindle. He read it to Chris once as his bedtime story, years ago now, after they graduated to reading chapter books together, before Chris got too old and too impatient to listen to his dad read him books anymore.
Mara is only a few years older than Chris was when they first moved to Los Angeles. It makes Eddie’s head hurt a little, thinking back to the time. Leaving Texas, packing his son and what little stuff they had between the two of them—most of it Chris’s, not much of it Eddie’s—into a truck and driving it out to California. Eight hundred miles. They listened to music and played road trip games and ate gas station snacks. Chris read in quiet moments; Eddie watched the scenery and tried not to think about how he might be making a mistake.
Remembering Chris around Mara’s age is painful. He’s grown up so much since then. It twists something in Eddie’s heart when he thinks about how fast the years are passing. How it feels like no time at all since Chris was that little, how it feels like the next five and ten years are going to pass before Eddie’s even noticed.
Remembering him at Jee’s age might be harder.
He’s been trying not to think too much about it all day. He’s trying not to be totally pathetic, but it’s tough, when his own kid is back those eight hundred miles away without him. When he plays with Jee and tries to pull on his memories of playing with Chris at this age, when he has to reckon with just how short his list of those memories really is.
Eddie’s done a lot of work to forgive himself for the mistakes he made when he was barely out of his own teenage years. He was young, he was trying, and he can’t go back, no matter how much he wants to. He knows all that. None of that work stopped them from being mistakes.
He still lost years with his son. He missed out on the daily life of knowing his kid at Jee’s age—reading him board books, listening to him start to talk, playing house with him. He had days like that, sure, but it was only ever moments at a time. He had time with Chris, but time where Eddie felt perpetually like a guest, a visitor in his own home and as much a stranger to his son as he is to Jee now. He doesn’t like remembering how long it took for the awkwardness to finally fade away, for playing with his own kid to start feeling natural and not like something Eddie was fumbling through.
It’s always hard to think about. It’s worse today, when Chris is gone and Eddie has no idea when he’s coming home.
“Eddie?” Buck says quietly.
“Sorry,” Eddie says reflexively. When he looks up at Buck, Buck’s just looking back, the tiniest tick of a frown between his eyebrows. He was holding out a plastic tea cup to Eddie; Eddie takes it on instinct.
“You good?” Buck says in an undertone.
“I’m fine,” Eddie says.
Buck bumps his shoulder against Eddie’s. “Thinking about Chris?”
Of course Buck can read his mind. Eddie looks down at the cup in his hand. “Yeah,” he says. “A little.”
“Me too,” Buck says quietly, and that’s—
The first thing Eddie feels is something uncomfortably close to anger. What, exactly, does Buck know about what Eddie’s feeling, when his son decided he couldn’t live in the same house, the same state, as Eddie anymore? Chris isn’t Buck’s son; Buck’s not Chris’s father. Eddie is.
The anger is gone in the space of a second, because Eddie knows better by now. Buck isn’t Chris’s dad, but he doesn’t have to be to miss him. Eddie can’t help the obstinate part of him that wants to lash out, to push Buck away, to say only I am feeling this. No one can understand my pain. But Eddie doesn’t get anything out of insisting on being alone in his misery.
How Buck feels about Chris isn’t the same, but it’s close enough. It’s been close for a long, long time now. When Eddie isn’t feeling like the worst person who’s ever lived, he’s grateful for it.
“He, uh,” Eddie says quietly. He turns the teacup in his hand. “Chris had this kid’s toolset he was obsessed with when he was Jee’s age. I think my dad got it for him. He carried it everywhere, he would not put it away even when he went to bed. Me and Shannon bought him so many stuffed animals, and we’d wake him up in the morning and he’d be cuddling with a plastic wrench."
Buck laughs. “Please tell me you have a picture of that somewhere.”
“You know, I bet I do,” Eddie says. It’s been years since he thought about that. “I’ll look when we’re home.”
Buck grins, looking at Eddie. His expression is wide open, bright, like there’s nothing in the world he wants more than to look at Chris’s baby pictures with Eddie.
Eddie grins back. He hasn’t felt like smiling much, not since Chris left, but when Buck grins at him, it’s still easy to smile back.
For a second, neither of them move. The kids are playing quietly in the background. The sun is bright outside the windows. Buck looks at Eddie. Eddie looks back.
Don’t wait thirty years. Eddie’s father’s voice appears in his head, unbidden.
Wasted time. So much of Eddie’s life has been that. All the good things in his life, he can’t help but feel that he came to them late, over and over again. It’s only been the last few years that he’s felt like he’s been the kind of father Chris deserves—and then, of course, he fucked it up again.
There are paths that Eddie could have gone down that he usually tries not to think too much about. What would his life be like today, if he’d stayed in Texas six years ago? What about if he’d never enlisted? If Chris had been born five years later, when Eddie was old enough to know himself a little better?
There’s no point to the questions, but on days like today, Eddie can’t help but chase them down anyway. What would his life be like if Shannon had lived a little longer, if they’d had time to work things out or to find a way to part from each other that didn’t hurt as bad?
What would his life be like if he’d met Buck five years earlier? Ten?
Buck has been a fixed point in Eddie’s life for so long that there are days he can’t remember what it was like before Eddie had him. There was no decision, with Buck. There was no day when Eddie sat Buck down and said, hey, will you always come running to help my son and me whenever we need you? Buck just did it. He just became that to Eddie, years before Eddie asked him for it. Before Eddie even realized he could ask him.
Knowing what you want is a funny thing. Eddie wants his son home. He wants him not to have needed to leave in the first place.
He can’t have those things. It doesn’t matter how hard he wants them; it isn’t going to make them real.
When everything blew up, Eddie wanted Buck there. To fix it, if he could, but the truth is, Eddie knew that was a long shot even when he called Buck. What he really wanted was just for Buck to be there. To be with Eddie.
He wanted to turn around and see Buck. He wanted Buck’s hand on his shoulder, the first thing that felt anywhere close to good in a day. He wanted Buck in his house; he wanted Buck to stay there. Eddie wanted something, the one thing, that has always felt easy.
He wants that now.
Buck’s text message alert chimes. He looks away from Eddie, glancing down at his phone. Another smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, tiny and private, like he can’t help it, and Eddie’s alone again.
“Can I have a snack?” Mara asks from the couch.
Buck bounces up before Eddie can move. He busies himself in the kitchen and Eddie lets him go. He sits, still on the rug next to the play kitchen, half watching Jee and Mara as Mara gets up off the couch to ask Jee about the picture she started coloring on her drawing pad. Half watching Buck in the kitchen. Eddie’s heart is beating too fast in his chest.
When Buck comes back from the kitchen, he’s got a plate for Mara and a plate for Jee—and a plate for Eddie.
With monumental effort, Eddie rolls his eyes at him. “You shouldn’t have,” he says. It’s apple slices and caramel.
Buck grins, his smile cartoon-big. “You’re welcome.”
Eddie eats his apple slices while they settle in for a movie until Maddie’s due to get home. What is he supposed to do— not eat the snack?
He glances at Buck out of the corner of his eye during the movie. They ended up side by side in one corner of the couch, the girls sharing the rest. Buck’s thigh rests against Eddie’s. Every time he laughs at the movie, Eddie feels it. Every time his shoulders shake Eddie’s, the want in Eddie gets a little stronger, a little sharper.
—
“You wanna do dinner?” Buck asks.
Maddie arrived home minutes before the movie ended. Based on the way Jee’s head was starting to bob in the final scene, it was also minutes before Jee was due to get a nap. Maddie thanked them both and waved them out the door, looking about as ready for nap as Jee-Yun.
Eddie shrugs. Buck tried to be subtle about it, but for the last half hour of the movie, his phone was lighting up with increasing frequency. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who he was texting, when he was grinning down at his phone like that. “You don’t need to get going?”
“Not really,” Buck says, at the same time as his phone dings with another text.
Eddie raises an eyebrow.
“Seriously, I don’t,” Buck says. He glances at the phone and dismisses the notification. “It’s, uh. Tommy’s starting a shift in a few minutes. The only thing I should be doing right now is cleaning my apartment, and I really, really don’t want to be doing that.”
Eddie thinks it’s probably selfish to say yes. It’s definitely bad for his heart, when looking at Buck right now is making his chest go tight like this. Eddie’s not sure he cares.
Saying yes might be the easy way out. But Eddie doesn’t always have to make things harder for himself than they need to be. He’s trying to remember that, especially lately, when things have been plenty hard enough without his help.
“Okay,” Eddie says. “Let’s do dinner.”
—
Buck takes charge when they get back to Eddie’s. It takes about a minute of him looking around Eddie’s kitchen—whatever sorry produce is left in the bottom of the fridge, the half-empty boxes in the cabinets, the frozen veggies in the freezer—to pull a recipe out of his ass and start directing Eddie. He sets Eddie up at the cutting board, slicing up tomatoes and mincing garlic, while Buck runs around getting water boiling on the stove and raiding the spice drawer.
The feeling of deja vu tugs at Eddie. This afternoon, it was plastic food and toy dishes, but the motions are the same. Buck’s shoulder bumps up against Eddie’s as he’s going from sink to stove and Eddie’s back on the rug at Maddie and Chimney’s, playing house in Jee’s toy kitchen.
Once the water’s boiling, Buck assigns Eddie to stirring and watching duty while he takes charge of making the sauce. Eddie doesn’t mind; he leans back against the counter and watches Buck work. Buck talks to himself when he cooks, running over the next steps half in his head and half out loud; he sways along to the radio and fidgets with the printout of the recipe. Eddie stays still and watches him move.
It’s fun, the same way this afternoon was fun. Eddie enjoys it—playing house with Jee and Buck, and cooking dinner with him in Eddie’s kitchen. It’s easy and it’s fun and that’s maybe all it is. They’ve gone home and they’re still just playing at cooking. Playing at this—at a life together in Eddie’s house, at being a family, at all of it. The food is real, the house is real, but it’s still just pretend.
Eddie wants it to be real.
In an hour or two, Buck will go home. Eddie will stay. Buck can fight all he wants to keep the creeping loneliness of the past few weeks at bay, but it’s never going to work, not the way Eddie wishes it would. He’s always going to go home eventually.
Eddie looks down at the pasta boiling in the pot to stop himself from looking at Buck. He doesn’t want Buck to see this on him. It’s not fair, for one thing. All Buck has ever done is try to help. If Eddie wants more than that, that’s on him. He can’t put that on Buck.
He wonders, too, if Buck would even clock this on him. He’s gotten used to Eddie’s misery, these past few weeks, these past years. It’s nothing new. The thing that scares Eddie is Buck realizing that any of what Eddie’s feeling is about Buck.
“Perfect,” Buck declares. He holds out a spoon of the sauce to Eddie to taste.
For a second, Eddie doesn’t think he can do it. It’s too much—the charade of it all, the two of them cooking dinner together like together is something real between them.
He gets over it. He tastes the sauce.
“Good,” Eddie says. “More salt?”
Buck makes a face at him for the suggestion. He tries it, licking the rest of the sauce off the same spoon.
Buck reaches for the salt.
Eddie shakes his head at him. Buck’s wearing an apron that’s been in Eddie’s kitchen for so long he lost track of when Buck left it. He knows Eddie’s kitchen as well as he knows his own. He uses it more than Eddie does, probably.
Eddie doesn’t want to play house with him. He wants—he wants to file their taxes together. He wants to fight over grocery bills and car insurance plans. He doesn’t want to keep waking up to Buck on his couch; Eddie wants to wake up to him sleeping next to him.
Eddie wants to love him.
He doesn’t know if he can.
The thought creeped at him, hours ago, sitting on the couch in Maddie’s living room. Eddie wasn’t ready to face it then. He’s not ready to face it now, but he’s not sure he’s got much of a choice, not when Buck is making him dinner with the window cracked open and the radio on. Not when Buck is shimmying along to the pop station and chiding Eddie to set the table with the nice plates and making him sit down while Buck finishes the pasta.
“Dinner is served,” Buck says, setting down the pan of pasta in front of Eddie with a flourish. “No doll shoes, but I hope it’s up to your standards.”
“Thanks,” Eddie says. Buck makes to turn back to the counter for the bread. Before he can, Eddie catches him by the wrist.
Buck goes still, looking down at Eddie.
“I’m serious,” Eddie says. “Thank you.”
Buck’s expression softens into an easy smile. “You know you don’t have to thank me.”
Eddie shrugs. “Yeah,” he says. “I kinda do.”
Buck turns his arm in Eddie’s loose grip. He closes his hand around Eddie’s wrist, squeezes it once. Lets him go.
Eddie’s timing has never been worse, but then, when has it ever been good? It hurts, to know what he wants and know in the same breath that he can’t have it. To know that he might never get it.
Everyone keeps telling Eddie that Chris just needs time. Maybe Eddie needs it too. Most days, the idea that things will get fixed with Chris feels like an impossibility. Eddie is practicing having hope that it will anyway, because he’s not sure how he would get out of bed in the morning without it.
At this point, if he’s already hoping for one impossible thing, why not two?
Buck is here, in Eddie’s kitchen during one of the worst months Eddie’s had in a lifetime of bad months, making Eddie dinner and grinning at him over his wine glass. Eddie’s no good at hope. He’s not sure he’s any good at love. But for this—Eddie thinks he might want this enough to try.