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“You’re not hung-over, are you?” Marisol asked dubiously, giving Poe the side-eye as he got into the shotgun seat.
He blinked blearily at her. “Huh?” His brain caught up with what she’d asked; it had been so long since anyone had addressed him in Spanish that it took an extra moment. “No, Jesus Christ, I’m not hung over! It’s five thirty am on a Saturday and you’re— come on.”
“You look pretty rough,” she said, putting the blinker on as she pulled away from the curb to go around the block and get on the highway. Of course her hair was flawless, and she already had the big red rose she wore clipped into position. She’d known him through some of his worst period, right after he’d crashed and burned and lost his shit entirely, so she’d seen him hung over and worse (he’d been on some pretty fierce prescription drugs for quite a while there), but it stung a little that she’d assume the worst so readily.
“Jesus Christ,” Poe said again, “at this goddamn hour of the morning! I can’t be beautiful all the time, it’s physically impossible.” He turned around and looked at the back seats. The guitarrón player, Julie, was the only one there yet, in the middle bench seat so she could stretch out. She was a solid four-- well, three and a half, Poe was pretty serious about that half-inch-- inches taller than Poe, which made her an absolute giant relative to everyone else; prior to her joining the group, Poe had been the tallest, which had been an entertaining novelty for him at his perfectly-average-thanks height of five-eight- and-a-half . (Slightly above average height for a man, he liked to point out.) He switched to English to say, truthfully,, “I was gonna say nobody looks good at this hour but both of you look fucking flawless, thanks for making me look like a schlub.”
Julie had a chin-length bob, impeccably styled, and her eye makeup was already done. “I mean,” she said. “It’s not hard to make you look like a schlub.”
“Fuck you,” Poe said, throwing up his hands.
“Hey,” she said, “not all of us have natural beauty, okay?” It was a running joke that he was the prettiest member of the band, and sometimes it was kind of more teasing than Poe really was comfortable with. “We can’t all just roll out of bed and see what happens.”
“You remembered your sombrero this time, right?” Marisol interjected.
“Yes,” Poe said. “I forgot it one time! One time!”
“I brought an extra hair flower just in case,” Julie said. The women’s costumes were different; same jackets, but they had floor-length fitted skirts, and flowered headpieces instead of the sombreros. Poe constantly joked that he’d prefer the women’s costume, both to take the emphasis off his ass and because years of military conditioning had trained Poe that hats were to be removed indoors, and so he was constantly forgetting and trying to remove it. Marisol had taken to bobby-pinning it to his hair at weddings so he’d stop taking it off and forgetting to put it back on and getting it stolen by tourists and such.
“I have the best hair out of all of you and I’m the one who always has to wear the hat,” he said. He rubbed his face. “Still gotta get J and Paids?”
“Paids,” Marisol snorted. “Yes, we still have to get Pedro. Jose’s going to meet us at the park and ride, he was nice enough to spare us the drive all the way out to his place.”
“Nice,” Poe said. He got his phone out. “I’m navigating?”
“Always,” Marisol said, “although I think I know where I’m going this time.” She slid him a look, as she stopped at a red light. “So if you fall asleep the whole time we won’t be stuck.”
“Hey,” Poe said, wounded, “shotgun seat is navigator, it’s a sacred duty, you should’ve woken me up.”
“Nobody could bear to,” Marisol said. “You sleep so seldom.”
“So what was it this time?” Julie asked, leaning forward. “Were you up all night writing a paper? Was your cat sick? Did you have to rescue your neighbor again?”
“No,” Poe said, “no, that kid’s long gone, I have a new neighbor now,” and his face must have gone soft, because both women shrieked with laughter. “What?” he said, affronted.
“Is the new neighbor a hot boy or a hot girl?” Julie asked.
“I’m so predictable,” Poe said, sliding down in his seat and pulling his knees up.
“No no,” Marisol said, “there’s always a variety. I guess you’re maybe a little predictable, but never boring, Poe. But remember, we told you, no more sex. You were going to take a break from sex. Remember we were going to approve future candidates by committee vote.”
Poe pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up and pretended to pull his head in like a turtle, pulling the zipper up over his face. “I know,” he said. “I know. I know.”
“You didn’t answer,” Julie said.
“Boy,” Poe said, muffled from inside his hoodie. “I’m not even being shallow, he’s the most beautiful boy that has ever existed.”
“You cannot even tell me you were up all night having headboard-banging sex with your beautiful neighbor,” Marisol sighed, leaning forward to see if the traffic was clear so she could make a right on red.
“Ah,” Poe said, “wait, go straight here, Pedro’s house, remember?”
“Ah,” Marisol said, just in time, and flicked the blinker off to go straight as the light turned green. “Good catch. I guess your headboard banging isn’t taking your edge off.”
“I’m the best navigator,” Poe said smugly, settling. “No, there was no sex. I can’t have sex with this creature, he’s like. He’s this angel. And you told me, and you’re right, no sex for me. Poe can’t have nice things because he only breaks them.”
“Okay, but,” Julie said, “how beautiful is this boy? You need to give more details.”
Poe sighed. “No, it’s just torment,” he said. “He’s so pure. Listen. Listen how I met this kid.”
“Were you drunk?” Marisol asked. “I don’t like the stories when you’re drunk.”
“No,” Poe said, mournful. Maybe he was drunk in too many stories. Maybe he should make a point of publicly laying off the sauce. He could do that, pretty easily, which was why he hadn’t until now, but it was probably time to make a show of it. People kept mistaking his issues for alcoholism and it would almost be easier to let that ride, but it wasn’t the truth, and sometimes that mattered. “No! I’m sitting at home minding my own business, sober, doing homework, being a good boy.”
“That happens?” Julie asked. She didn’t know the half of it, didn’t know how much Marisol wasn’t joking.
“That happens,” Poe said. “A lot, lately, since I started grad school. The classes are really hard, I was not ready for this.”
“Yeah… that happens,” Julie said. She was a professor, as it happened. Chemical engineering, at the local extremely prestigious technical institute, which Poe was not attending because he was not that smart.
“So I’m minding my own business and my phone rings and this man says, I found your cat , and my heart stops.”
“Oh no,” Julie said, and Marisol joined the chorus: “Oh no!”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” Poe said. “I’d seen them both when I got home, but you know BB goes out, and they have those little code tags on their collars, and I thought, fuck, she’s been hit by a car, fuck, and I’m slowly dying on my living room floor and trying to hold my shit together long enough to finish this conversation, and I’m like, making plans, like, if I get her cremated I could keep her in a little jar, or, God, I can’t, I’m going to have to see if there’s room at my dad’s place to bury her like under a tree, or— and I’m just—“
“I’m in too much suspense,” Julie said, actually distressed. She had fur-baby cats too, she and Poe had bonded over it. “Just— finish the story.”
“She’s fine,” Poe said. “She’s okay. But like. This guy on the phone. I’m like. I pull myself together and I ask bravely, how bad is it, you know, like all voice-trembling, and he’s horrified, and he’s like no she’s fine! She’s fine! She just— she came into my apartment, and I thought she was a stray, but, the collar tag—“
“Oh my god,” Julie said, deflating in relief.
“I know, right.” Poe slouched in his seat. “So I know immediately that this is my new downstairs neighbor, because I know BB used to go hang out with Justin in his place like, all the time, and he gave her treats because he was a softie.”
“Do you ever hear from him?” Julie asked.
Poe shook his head sadly. “No,” he said. “Not since he moved out.” Justin’s ex-boyfriend had come back and beat the shit out of him, and Poe’d had to call the cops and then go stand in between Justin and the ex and practice de-escalation. He’d gotten a black eye for his trouble, and that had been a huge mistake on the ex-boyfriend’s part, because then he could prove that he was acting in self-defense. He’d taken the asshole to the floor in one not-at-all-gentle move and held him there until the cops showed up, and then Justin’s guilt at his black eye had been enough that the kid had pressed charges after all.
Not without Poe lecturing him about how the guy would only do it again worse to someone else if he didn’t face some real consequences right now, but. It’d had to happen. And Justin had needed stitches, so it wasn’t like there was some misunderstanding about how serious it was; the guy had really been trying to hurt him.
Poe hadn’t wound up with a concussion so he was marking it in the worthwhile column.
“I hope he’s okay,” Julie said.
“Me too,” Poe said.
“But the new guy’s hot,” Marisol pointed out, “so. The story. You didn’t tell him right away who you were, right?”
“I didn’t play too many games,” Poe said. “I just told him to go out on his porch and look up, and there I was, and when I called, BB came running up the tree and jumped to me, and it was very cute. But I happened to notice that he was really super hot, and that’s a sweet thing to do, to be so worried about a stray cat that you call the stranger’s number on her collar.”
“I mean,” Marisol said, “how hot are we talking, though?”
Poe pulled out his phone, and scrolled through. “I don’t know if I have a picture,” he said, which was a lie, he did and he knew it. “Okay, so. Where to start? First off he’s like twenty-five, which is too young for me.”
“No,” Marisol said, “not at all.”
“Maybe,” Julie said. “I mean. I think it’s half your age plus seven. That’s the cutoff.”
“Who comes up with those,” Marisol said.
“Twenty-three,” Poe said, doing the math, and groaned. “Fuck. I finally actually asked him last night, you know. He’s actually twenty-three. Fuck, that’s right on the line. Ugh, me, be better than this!”
“You asked him last night,” Julie said. “Oh my!”
“It wasn’t like that,” Poe said. They pulled in the parking lot of Pedro’s apartment complex, and Pedro wasn’t standing there waiting.
“I’ll get him,” Julie said.
“Oh no,” Poe said, and Marisol laughed, because Julie was far more physically-intimidating than he was. When she’d first joined the group she’d assumed that she’d be doing bouncer duty, because she often did for bands she was in. (She’d played bass, just like Poe had played regular guitar before this; Marisol had recruited and trained them both, with the help of an elderly friend who’d known how to play guitarron but had been too physically feeble to actually perform with it.)
Poe had let the assumption ride for a while, because it was entertaining. Plus a lot of his superpowers came from the fact that nobody figured he knew how to fight. He usually styled his physical appearance in such a way that he wasn’t particularly intimidating, but the effect was magnified when he was in the full charro regalia. It wasn’t that the ornate outfit wasn’t magnificent, it just made people really not expect him to be so good at ending fights.
Julie got out of the van. “C’mon,” Marisol said, switching to Spanish, “give me details.” They mostly stuck to English when Julie was around, because she wasn’t totally fluent in Spanish (she could mostly keep up in listening, but couldn’t always answer back), but Marisol actually preferred Spanish given a choice. Poe didn’t care either way, but his dad had started making fun of his accent sometimes if he’d been hanging out with Marisol a lot. He did kind of tend to pick up her accent after a while. Poe’s Spanish was completely fluent, but a bit suggestible, and he was a little lacking in specific adult and technical vocabulary words, making it plain it wasn’t his everyday-use language.
Poe swiped through his phone. “Not a great photo, but that’s him.” It was Finn, standing in Poe’s kitchen next to the balcony door, with BB riding his shoulder like a pirate’s parrot, and actually it was a phenomenal photo of Finn, in three-quarter, smiling slightly as he looked out the corner of his eyes at BB, who was doing the cat-love-eyes squint into the camera.
“Oh,” Marisol said, taking his phone and zooming in a little. “Oh! Oh, what an angel face!”
“He’s like— radiant from the inside, Marisol, you don’t even know. If he was smiling, the camera wouldn’t have been able to withstand it. I can’t even— he’s so pure.” Poe put his head in his hands.
Fortunately for Pedro he had been on his way down the stairs, and so instead of bringing the pain, Julie helped him load his stuff into the back before climbing into the van.
“This is the boy,” Marisol said, handing Poe’s phone to Julie, who said, “ooh!”
“What’s this now?” Pedro asked.
“Poe’s hot neighbor,” Julie said, handing over the phone. “God, he’s cute .”
“So-- that face,” Poe said, “plus, like, how do I explain? He’s so pure .”
“He’s twenty-three,” Julie said to Pedro. “I don’t even remember being twenty-three.”
“Ah,” Pedro said, handing the phone back. “Well, I mean, not to my taste, but—”
“You wouldn’t acknowledge a dude’s hotness if your life literally depended on it,” Julie said.
“That’s a fair point,” Pedro admitted. He was forty-four and had a wife and two kids, and his charro pants were a great deal less flattering than Poe’s. “If a fairy godmother held me at gunpoint to ask me who the fairest in this car was, I would get shot because I wouldn’t admit it was Poe.”
“He is the fairest,” Julie conceded.
“You know that’s my entire job in this band,” Poe said.
“Eye candy,” Marisol said. “Someone’s got to look good in the tight pants.”
Poe privately thought Julie would probably look great in the pants, but it was Not Done for a woman to wear trousers with the charro costume, and that was just that. He had not figured out a way to bring this up; his relationship with Julie was pretty good but he was extremely concerned that she not think he was hitting on her in any way ever. She had great legs, curvy and sturdy and about a mile long, but it was sort of important to Poe to maintain a sisterly kind of vibe with her.
“So he was up all night doing depraved things with his hot neighbor,” Pedro concluded. Pedro was actually a decent dude and devoted some real effort to not being homophobic-- including defending Poe’s honor in debate, on one notable occasion-- so Poe tended to give him a pass on being a little disapproving about all of it. Poe grabbed his phone back from Julie, who wasn’t showing signs of relinquishing it. “I thought we all decided Poe wasn’t allowed to have any more sex, depraved or no, until some predetermined milestone?”
“We were going to approve future candidates by committee,” Marisol said. “That was what it was. Just to save you from wasting your beauty on undeserving recipients.”
“Well,” Poe said, “I didn’t bang him, he came over and he told me his horrible Tragic Backstory and it’s like, a doozy.”
“Oh,” Julie said, “no, Poe, don’t take in any more strays. It’s your heart of gold that’s going to get you murdered, not your hot ass.”
“No, that’s the worst part maybe,” Poe said. “Even though he has the most ridiculous origin story you can imagine— like, think of the worst upbringing you can think of, and it’s not even close— he’s got his shit so together, and so he tells me his whole deal, and in return I didn’t even tell him my whole story and still he was the one comforting me.”
“You do have some fucked-up shit,” Julie conceded.
“It’s sort of unreal,” Pedro put in. Pedro knew more of it than Julie. Pedro and Marisol had been two of the original founders of the band. So Pedro had been present when Marisol had forcibly recruited Poe’s hot mess of a self straight out of his post-breakdown depressed-moping-with-a-guitar phase. (And had staunchly backed Marisol when she’d thrown the original third member out; it had taken Poe a lot of work to get the story out, but Pedro had finally admitted that the man had expressed some deal-breaker opinions about Poe, and it had been very moving to realize how deeply both Pedro and Marisol felt about him.)
And he was better than he had been, he really was. He was so much better. And both Pedro and Marisol knew it, and were extremely nice about not actually giving him shit about things he couldn’t handle having shit given to him about.
“And that’s why I can’t have nice things, because I only break them, because I’m broken,” Poe said. Okay, he wasn’t totally better. He was just better than he had been, which was a lot. “So last night I did not have sex with this beautiful boy, but I think I fell in love with him, because he is so kind and good and sweet and pure, and I am in despair now because I don’t get to have nice things like that.”
“Did you at least make out with him?” Julie asked.
“No!” Poe said. “No, not even a little. But I was upset about something and he hugged me, and I was like bro this is too long a hug, and he was like it’s not a hug it’s a tender submission hold, and was like, snuggling me for my own good, and I can’t tell you, man, what prolonged exposure to that kind of purity does to a shriveled blackened soul like mine.”
“Ay,” Marisol said, “Poe, sweetheart, you’re not shriveled.”
“My soul is shriveled,” Poe said. “I’m a withered husk of a creature.”
“Speaking of withered husks,” Pedro said, “we’re stopping for coffee, right?”
“Oh come on,” Marisol said.
“No, I really could use some too,” Poe said.
“Fine,” Marisol said, and turned into the convenience store instead of the highway entrance ramp.
“I don’t know why I bother fixing my hair,” Poe said glumly as Marisol plopped the sombrero onto his head.
“It is lovely hair,” she said. “How long do you think you’ll keep it?” Her controlling, abusive jerk of a husband, who had made her give up music and whose abrupt exit from her life had led her to try to form the band, had also done a singularly bad job of going bald gracefully, so she tended to make bald jokes.
“It’s your mother’s father, right, that you get it from?” Poe straightened the sombrero, then set it at a jaunty angle. Marisol slapped his arm.
“Wear it right,” she said.
“Yes ma’am,” he said, fixing it. “My abuelo never went bald until chemo took his hair, so. I think I’ll keep it, but I might not live that long. Depends which genes I got.”
“You got the pretty ones,” Marisol said, patting his cheek. He rolled his eyes and smiled at her. She wasn’t really old enough to be his mother, but sometimes she got maternal with him. She was nearly fifty, and her two children were grown and lived far away, and she was divorced and that had taken a lot of guts, and she was a little lonely sometimes, so he let her surrogate-mother him more than he would anyone else.
She also had a voice that was both sweet and powerful, a phenomenal command of the violin and the vihuela, and an encyclopedic knowledge of Mexican folk and popular music, so she was an ideal bandleader, and he actually did respect the music they made in this group. She’d personally instructed him in guitar and vihuela to get his technique up to speed when she was trying to found the group, and he owed a lot to her patience. (Those vihuela lessons were the only reason he’d been forced to stay functional, during the worst of his coping. He owed her a lot .) She was a music teacher, and spent most of her time corralling unruly high school kids into grudgingly upholding the curriculum. Poe would probably die in battle for her, if it were necessary, and he’d considered hunting down her kids and dragging at least one of them home, at least for Christmas.
(Julie had offered to help him do this. They were considering it.)
“Is it time to slap Poe’s ass for luck?” Julie asked.
“Guys,” Poe said, “c’mon.”
“Well,” Jose said. “If you weren’t having depraved sex with your cute neighbor, then it shouldn’t be too tender.” And he slapped Poe’s ass, though somewhat gently.
“I wish this didn’t have to happen,” Poe said.
“It’s luck,” Julie said gleefully, and spanked him a little more firmly. He was very careful to remind himself that he wasn’t into that.
“It is,” Marisol said, and hers was more of a pat.
“This always makes me feel weird,” Pedro said, “but I think if I don’t do it I’ll wreck it for everyone else.”
Poe bent forward slightly, and Pedro gave him a ginger little smack, like maybe Poe’s buttock might burn him. “Thanks,” Poe said drily, “thanks,” and picked up the vihuela. “Could we switch to kisses next time?”
“I’m not kissing that,” Pedro said, eyes wide in horror, so Poe leaned over and offered his face’s cheek instead. “Ugh, no, only if you shave.”
Poe rubbed his chin, which was only a little stubbled. “I shaved yesterday,” he said. “C’mon.”
“No sugar from Pedro,” Pedro said, and picked up his trumpet. “How long til soundcheck?”
Their set went well. It was a festival, so there were other bands playing, and they actually performed several times. There was another mariachi band, a slick young all-girl group with not a one over 40. (And, Poe pointed out, the women were wearing pants, and Marisol rolled her eyes and admitted they looked great.) It took a little doing, but they managed to all squeeze onto a stage at once and have a brief set as a supergroup, and it was really wonderful because they had an incredibly talented flute player and three trumpeters and they were all so young and bright-faced and enthused. Poe good-naturedly faded to the back for all the pictures, letting the women stay in the foreground. There was a great photo op, he thought, with the other group’s violinist in her chic skinny-jean spangled charro pants being embraced by Marisol in her extremely traditional skirted suit, and he was pleased when the flash went off as the photographer got the shot.
Of course as the set broke up and they were free to mingle, Julie had to bring up the pants, and it was apparently a controversial subject the all-girl group had gotten shit about from traditionalists, but then they all had to compare asses to Poe’s, and it was decided that his ass was still possibly the hottest one, and he admitted that he felt bound by chivalry not to actually comment too much.
There was a chance, then, to start drinking, and Poe considered it, and let himself be pressured into joining in for one round of tequila, since it was traditional, but then after that he decided not to have any more. He could just seeing this getting out of hand, and he was extremely reluctant to wind up in any compromising positions with anyone.
“This one,” one of the women said, a trumpet player, a beautiful mixed-race girl with magnificent natural hair and a willowy figure and the spangles on the sides of her charro pants followed a really delicious curved line that kind of made Poe aware of why it was scandalous, maybe, for women to wear charro pants, “did you all see this one, how he was moving to the back for the photos,” and she took him by the arm.
“I did notice that,” said the other vihuela player, coming up on his other side.
The flutist stepped in and patted his face. “And he can keep his mouth shut, what a nice change.”
Poe had to laugh at that. Another girl came up, next to the flutist, she wasn’t a musician but she’d been around through the whole thing, she was somebody’s friend, and she said, “I couldn’t help but admire your hands,” and it was one of the least subtle come-ons he’d ever gotten. And she was super hot, and these were cool chicks, and the Poe of a few months before would have happily taken up the invitation to hang out and probably more that was clearly being extended here.
“Hands are important in this business,” Julie said, and put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m gonna head back with the others. I can tell them you’re okay here?”
“I like a respectful man with strong hands,” the girl said, and Poe grinned at her and then looked at Julie, and made a decision. If he wasn’t letting himself sleep with Finn, he wasn’t letting himself hook up with attractive strangers in distant cities either.
“Girl,” he said, squinting sort of regretfully at her, “so do I,” and everyone laughed.
“Aw,” the woman said, “are you gay?”
Poe grimaced. “Kind of,” he said. “Mostly. Sorry?”
“Oh, it fucking figures,” she said, but then laughed, shaking her head a little. “You can still come hang out, I wasn’t being quite that mercenary.”
“You know, if I didn’t have an early morning tomorrow, I would be all over that,” Poe said with genuine regret, and held his hand out to Julie. “I’m coming back with you, darling.”
When they were out of earshot, Julie said, “You’re not mostly gay, though?” He’d been disaster-on-again-off-again-dating a woman when she’d met him, and he’d always been conscientious about pointing out that he was bi not gay because he hated getting lumped into categories he really didn’t fit in, and also it was kind of a new idea for him, to have something to call what he was.
Poe sighed. “Bi takes too long to explain,” he said.
Julie slid him a look, because she’d heard the explanation more than once, and as they approached the others, said, “You’re really gone on that kid, huh?”
“I’m so fucked,” Poe admitted, rubbing his face.
He wound up walking with Marisol and Pedro, still in their full regalia, and someone stopped them to take a picture. As they posed, Poe remembered he ought to check in with his Papa, so he asked if they’d take another picture with his phone too. The photographer obliged, and handed his phone back afterward.
Perfect: Poe was standing between Marisol, who was five-nothing even in her shoes, and Pedro, who was five four on a good day, which this wasn’t, and so Poe was fairly looming over them, a novel sensation for him. He sent the photo to his father with the accompanying text “I am a giant among Mexicans”, knowing it would amuse Kes.
He thought about sending it to Finn too, but he didn’t think Finn would particularly understand it.
“What did you write on that picture?” Marisol asked, far too alert.
“Nothing,” Poe said.
Kes texted back a single exclamation point, but Poe knew that meant he was extremely entertained. They’d developed a lingo, by now, with all the compulsory check-ins and so on. Kes hated typing, but there were apparently no real limits on what he’d do for Poe. Learning how to text was probably the easiest of many adaptations he’d taken on.
They were crashing at someone’s house, some friend of a friend, and it was a tight squeeze but they were used to one another enough that it wasn’t so terrible. José and Pedro bunked together on a big air mattress, and Poe wound up crammed into a corner of the floor between Julie and a door, wrapped in a sleeping bag, on a yoga mat. Marisol got the couch, because they all agreed on it. (She was the oldest, and had some health problems, and they all conceded it gladly.)
“I haven’t done something like this since I was a kid,” Julie said, low and amused. She’d been in punk bands and stuff, but as an adult hadn’t really ever toured.
Poe groaned softly as he tried to get comfortable. “I slept rough enough in the service,” he said. “I try not to now.” He thought about it a moment. “Normally now if I know I’m gonna have to bunk like this I try to get a little tipsy first, but I didn’t think to. Eh, oh well.”
“Oh, that would’ve been a good idea,” Julie said. “And me without a hip flask.”
“We’ll know for next time,” Poe said.
He lay awake for a long time, listening to Pedro snoring a little. (It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t going to keep him up or anything. No more than anything else.) He finally dropped off, and figured he was good.
He woke up with a tremendous jerk just before he hit the ground, flailing upright with a sharp gasp. He had no idea where he was, when he was; he was sure he was injured, the bird was crashing, everyone was dead, he was fucked—
“Whoa,” Julie said next to him, muzzy and disoriented. “What?”
He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, sat there motionless choking on his own tongue, heart hammering so hard he couldn’t feel anything else.
Julie sat up. “Poe?”
He managed to get a breath. “Nothing,” he said, “no— thing,” and dragged another breath in, and shoved both hands over his mouth; terror was beating at him like a large trapped bird, and it was nothing , he was fine , but Christ, he couldn’t— breathe—
“Hey,” Julie said softly, and her sleeping bag rustled as she came closer. “Hey, Poe, I’m gonna touch your shoulder now.”
He couldn’t let his breath out, it just kept coming in in shallow little gasps, he couldn’t let it out and there was no room in his lungs for new air and he couldn’t let the old air out, he kept his teeth tight shut over the terror so he didn’t make any noise, his heartbeat was shaking his whole body.
Julie’s hand was warm and gentle on his shoulder, and she said, “Charlie horse?”
He shook his head, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t speak.
“Asthma attack,” she said, and moved her hand to between his shoulder blades. “Hey. It’s okay. I can get help.”
“Nn,” he said, managing to breathe out, and reflex sucked a breath right back in, but he managed to shake his head. He pressed his hand over his chest, pushing back against the pressure.
“Panic attack,” she murmured, and he nodded. “Oh honey. I’m right here. It’s all right.” And she told him the date, and the time, and their location, keeping her hand pressed between his shoulder blades, and found one of his hands with her other hand, keeping her voice low and steady.
He gripped her hand tight and managed a couple of breaths, lower and slower. He could hear that Marisol had awoken and sat up on the couch. The other two were on the other side of the room and seemed to still be asleep. Small mercy.
“Thanks,” he managed, “thanks, I’m— I’m okay, thanks,” and slipped his hands out of hers, rubbing his face. He was shaking now, all over, and pulled his knees up, putting his head down between them to breathe.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay. My roommate used to get those. You’ll be okay.”
He nodded. “I get ‘em all the time,” he said. “It— passes. Thanks. Sorry to wake you up.”
“It’s fine, baby,” she said. He got to his feet and went into the bathroom and had time to be grateful that there was an exhaust fan so he could turn that and the faucet on to cover the noise of being sick.
The next morning Julie found him in the kitchen and said, “Poe, you look awful, can I hug you?”
“People want to hug me lately,” he said, but held his arm out, and she gathered him up and held his head against her shoulder.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m okay,” he said.
“What happened?” Marisol asked, coming into the kitchen. She’d seen Poe in worse states, so this was both nothing new to her, and exceptionally concerning to her. He’d always tried to put on a brave face for her, from the beginning, but he’d been trying to convince her he was magically all better (or, better still, that it had never really been that bad anyway) for a while now and he’d been fooling himself she believed it.
“I still get night terrors,” Poe said. “I woke up in the middle of a panic attack and didn’t know where I was.”
“Pobrecito,” Marisol cried, poor little thing, and came and hugged him too.
“I’m fine,” he said, “it’s a brain chemistry imbalance thing, it’s not even nightmares or whatever.”
But he let Marisol rock him against her chest for a few minutes, because it seemed to soothe her too. “My poor baby,” she said in Spanish, “my poor brave little boy.”
“I’m thirty-two years old,” he said, “I’m nobody’s little boy.”
“I know you’re a grown man,” Marisol said. “I know you’ve put a lot of work into it. I won’t mother you too much. Just give me a minute.”
Pedro and José straggled out just as Marisol was letting go of Poe’s head. She then proceeded to fuss with his hair, and he let her do that too. He’d seen enough photos of her kids to know they both had curly hair like his.
“I feel like I’m roleplaying as your son right now,” Poe grumbled finally, and she patted his shoulder and stopped fussing with his hair.
“You are kind to indulge me,” she said, and kissed the top of his head.
“I know we’d said we would hang out in the city for most of the day,” Julia said, “but I have a wicked headache and I just want to get home. Can we kind of vote on that again?”
“I just need to go to like, one market,” Marisol said.
“I don’t have anywhere I have to be,” Poe said, “but I’m going to not navigate, and sleep in the back, if I can.”
“Let’s look at the errands, then,” Marisol said. “Pedro, I know your wife needed me to pick her up something but I forgot what.”
“Oh,” Pedro said, “let me look at the list again.”
Finn had texted, and Poe had written back-- had sent him the photo of himself with Marisol and Pedro, sans caption, and had said he’d probably be back late. He didn’t want Finn doing something dumb like trying to wait up for him or anything.
But they were in the car well before noon, and Poe sat in the middle seat with Julie. “Let’s get back to the beautiful neighbor,” Julie said. “We could bring him before the committee, Poe. We could vote on this too. Maybe you could try dating again. It’s been like, months since your last disaster.”
“I can’t date him,” Poe said, curling farther into his hoodie. “God. He’s like, the sunshine embodied.”
“That sounds like just what you need,” Julie said. “Like, for once, instead of a sarcastic asshole or like, what was she?”
“I think we dubbed her the Meanius,” Poe said. “Like, Genius, but Mean.”
“Yeah, her,” Julie said.
“She was hot though,” José reflected.
“Not hot enough to be worth it,” Julie said repressively. “Nobody’s that hot.”
“Is your hot neighbor into you at all?” José asked. “I feel like that’s the first question.”
“He’s into me, at least a little,” Poe said. “He’s— he hasn’t said as much but he’s really transparently hoping for me to make a move. I’m not being arrogant about it, I just know— what that looks like, all right?”
“And you don’t think it’s a good idea,” Julie said. “Why not? Because it sounds like it is.”
“He’s had the most messed-up life,” Poe said. “I mean— I can’t tell you, it’s not even mine to tell you, but he’s literally never had anyone love him, no mother or father or anything, and I don’t know if he’s even really ever had a real relationship. There’s nobody on his side in this world, and he’s making his way alone and he’s doing fine at it, and he needs a friend, not my bullshit. Jesus Christ, I’m a fucking disaster and it would just be inhumane to drag him down with me.”
“You’re a beautiful disaster though,” José offered feebly after a moment. Sometimes Poe wondered about him.
“Didn’t you just yell at me for babying you?” Marisol offered from the driver’s seat.
Poe blinked at her. She was watching the road, but had her head tilted just so, and he could envision her facial expression. “How is that the same?” he said, annoyed.
“You’re offering to date him, not be his dad,” Marisol said. “If you were adopting him, maybe you would need to worry about these things, but you said he was twenty-three, right? He’s not a child, he gets to go into this as an equal with you and with open eyes and if your problems are too intense you can tell him so , right?”
“That’s a great point,” Julie said.
“This isn’t an argument you can win,” Poe put in.
“I can be right, though,” Marisol said.
“I think the committee says you should bang him,” Julie said.
“I’m not going to bang him,” Poe said. “You guys don’t actually get to vote on that.”
“Well,” Julie amended. “It should be his choice.”
They let him off, and Julie hopped out to help him get all his luggage to the door. “All kidding aside,” she said, “you should do as your heart inclines, Poe.”
“Thanks,” he said, rolling his eyes, and let himself in.