Wishing on a Blue Star (28 page)

When Frank had finally agreed to leave the house after a week, it was for Tai that he had moved, not me. And when they were at the store, Frankie shuffling along behind him, everyone was looking at my boyfriend instead of my obviously sleep-deprived little brother. If you wanted to stay in the shadows, Tai was the man to travel with.

“Mark!” My mother screeched at me.

“Oh,” I chuckled, turning back to her. “Yes, dear?”

She growled at me, which I loved, and I leaned in and kissed her cheek.

“Darling, stop being adorable and listen to me. Your brother almost overdosed on drugs.  He needs to see someone.”

“Please. It was stupid, yes, but not premeditated. He doesn’t want to kill himself; he succumbed to peer pressure because he’s an idiot. But being resuscitated, having your stomach pumped, and then having to submit to a psych eval will help you get your priorities in order. His brain didn’t get fried. It just got scrambled a little, and now he’s fine.”

“The psychiatrist at County Medical said he needs to be committed.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I want him in a hospital until I see the boy I know.”

“Really?”

“Mark!”

I hopped up on the kitchen counter, glad that Tai wasn’t there to see me do it, crossed my arms and looked at her. “Hey, remember when Nana had her stroke and you said,” I pointed at her, “that she would never come back from it because your doctor told you so and that she should be put in a nursing home?”

Second growl.

“And I told you I would move her in here with me and T, and we fought and fought until you gave in, and like a month later, she called you on the phone and asked you for the recipe for Chicken Divine?”

“Mark, this is different.”

I arched an eyebrow for her. “It’s about unconditional support, and you know it. He doesn’t need to be in some psychiatric facility; he needs to be here with me.”

“Mark, you
––
”

“And Tai.”

“Mark
––
”

“For a while,” I told her.

“Will you please just lis
––
”

“And,” I cut her off, “if I had listened to you about Nana, she would have gone from the hospital to a nursing home, and I would have missed out on all that time with her.”

“Yes, honey, I know, and you were right and I was wrong, but this is a totally different situation.”

“I disagree.”

“You’re being stupid,” my sister Trish said, joining the conversation, stepping closer to my mother in solidarity. “Frank is sick, Mark, and he needs to be in a hospital.”

“He’s not sick.  He just needs more sleep.” I yawned. I needed more coffee. “And so do I.”

“Mark!”

“He’s just young,” I assured Trish. “He still has time to straighten up and fly right.”

“Dad!” She yelled over at my old man.

“I have no say, Trish,” he called back, involved with both his newspaper and Sunday morning NFL games. “Ever since your brother talked me out of investing with Dan Sanders, I don’t question him.” He turned and looked at me. “You saved my ass, kid. You know that.”

“I was just thinking of my inheritance.” I smiled at him.

We shared a long look before he simply nodded and went back to reading the paper. It was enough. At one point in time, I had wanted a big gesture from him over the fact that my background in finance, that he had not helped me pay for, had saved his and my mother’s life savings. It was Tai who had told me not to be a prick. This was my father we were talking about: I needed to get a life. In the end, Dad and I both acted as if nothing had happened, right up until he grabbed me at Thanksgiving the same year Dan Sanders, his army buddy, disappeared with the five million dollars all the rest of his friends had risked on an investment property that didn’t exist. And at that moment, as my father spoke a litany of praise and appreciation into my ear, I was glad I had listened to my boyfriend because really, it was more than enough.

“Jack!” The sound of my mother yelling at my father brought me back sharply to the present.

“I think Mark’s right,” my father said, looking back at us. “I know Frankie looks bad, I know he does, but Sara, honey, he’s going to be okay. He just needs a little time to
––
”

“It’s already been two months!” She insisted. “He needs to feel better.”

“He is feeling better,” I told her. “He’s running every morning with Tai now, and on the mornings that Tai is flying, I run with him. And yesterday, before you guys got here, I made him grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup just like you did when we were little, and we talked for like three hours. You just, you gotta let him deal with his stupidity, Mom, and when he’s done, he’ll get a job and go back to school and be himself again. He’s young, he’s only twenty-three, he’ll do everything he should, but you have to let him…what,
grieve
, I guess, for the loss of his sense of immortality. He thought he was bulletproof because he’s young and stupid, and he thought nothing could really hurt him, but now he knows better. Now he knows he’s got to be careful. I think he’ll be reinvested in school when he goes back. I think you’ll see a lot of changes in him.  I just…he needs time, and he’s got that. Not everyone is so fortunate.”

She squinted at me, and I looked over at Trish. My mother was smart and saw everything. Between Tai’s sudden change in his flying schedule and me working from home, she knew something was up.  She just wasn’t sure what.

“Trish,” I barked out.

“Oh, God, what?” She gasped, startled.

“Remember when you got shit-faced in Vegas for your twenty-first birthday and married Aaron Rayburn?”

“Mark!” She yelled at me. “We were never to speak of
––
”

“And you were so drunk that I had to fly to Vegas to bring you home, ‘cause you got alcohol poisoning and they wouldn’t let you get on a plane alone?”

“Mark, you shit!”

“What?” My mother shrieked, and I thought her head was going to explode.

“You married Aaron Rayburn?” Deb was giggling. “The guy with the weird eye that sort of rolled back in his head all the time?”

“Ohmygod, Mark, I can’t believe you just
––
”

“People who live in glass houses,” I reminded her.

“Mark,” my sister Deb got my attention. “We were all at the hospital together, and Frank was
––
Frank looked so lost and small, and he needs professional help to
––
”

“He just needs to sleep. End of story.”

“Listen,” Deb said, and I heard her teacher voice kick in, the one she used on all the third-graders. “Frankie should be
––
”

“Hey,” I cut her off, “remember when you shaved your head because you fell in love with that roadie from Red Alarm and decided that you were gonna drop out of school?”

“Mark!”

I crossed my legs because I didn’t want to get a ball smack, and I shielded my face as she hit me in the bicep really hard. “But I never said you were crazy. I just came and bailed you out of jail in El Paso and brought you home.”

“You were in jail?” My mother was turning a very lovely shade of crimson.

Deb smacked me really, really hard on the thigh before she pinched the same spot with every drop of strength she had.

“Owww,” I laughed, as Trish interrogated her about her night in the slammer and my mother yelled for my father.

“Mark, you asshole!” Deb wailed, before suddenly moving between my knees and leaning her head against my stomach.

“Stop,” I chuckled, holding up my hand at my mother and sister. “Deb’s off limits now, all right?” I told them, lifting my little sister’s face so I could look down into her eyes. “My point was only to say that Frank did something dumb, just like you. And at least he never went to jail with people named Big Mama.”

She slapped my leg again.

“Shit,” I laughed as she growled at me, moving away. I made all the women in my family insane.

“Mark,” Trish said suddenly, her red-rimmed eyes swallowing me. “How can you think that Frank overdosing on drugs is okay, or normal, or anything else? How can you?”

“Because it was an accident,” I told her pointedly. “He didn’t mean to, and now, because of other considerations, he’s thinking a little bit too much about the responsibilities that he has to other people.”

She took a breath. “What considerations?”

I just looked at her.

“Mark?”

I was saved from speaking because I heard the garage door go up and scrambled off the counter before Tai made it inside.

Our garage was connected to the kitchen, and seconds later the door opened and I smiled too big.

“Why do you look guilty?”

I made my eyes round and smiled at the love of my life. “What?”

He squinted as he crossed the floor to plant one on me. Always, always, he kissed me when he left the house or came home. From what his mother had told me, it had been me, Mark Gabriel, who had brought that loving creature out in him. He was, as a rule, not demonstrative to anyone. He was warm, yes, charming, certainly, but the
come here and kiss me,
got to have my hands on you
guy had been, for her
—
for sixteen years now
—
a new development.

People remembered Tai because he was witty and beautiful and smart, but as nice as he was, as much as he could make you laugh, as much as he put you at ease, he was definitely a
look but don’t touch
kind of guy. His friends, other pilots at the airline, flight attendants, and just people he saw every day were all crazy about him, but they knew that touching him without an invitation was bad. I had never asked. He was the one who pulled me into his life.

I was at my friend Matt’s birthday party, and I saw Tai come in. He lived upstairs, and when I asked my buddy who he was, he had exhaled his name. Matt had been surprised that he was even there. Tai was a pilot so he was always gone, and not on short hops, like from California to Texas or Hawaii, but to New York, where he was officially based, and from there to London or Paris or Rome. He was the long-haul guy, and so Matt had been shocked to see him. Even more shocked that the god he sometimes passed in the hall or stood beside in the elevator was taking him up on his party invitation.

“How do I look?” he asked me nervously.

And Matt normally would have never cared, much less asked the question, because he was, as a rule, always confident, but when I saw Tai Yosuke, I immediately understood. I was easily looking at the most beautiful man I had ever seen in my life. The dark eyes, long lashes, the smirk, and the thick glossy black hair had me mesmerized. His face, coupled with his long, lean muscular body, had taken my breath away.

“Mark?”

“Sorry.” I came out of my trance, “you look great.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely,” I assured him, because he did, and I settled back against the bookshelf and watched.

All night long, I kept my eyes on Tai and saw him smile and laugh and be the life of the party with his stories from work, even while he hid behind a mask of impenetrable charm. He was engaging, and so everyone wanted to take him home. But one after another, every man who went near him was turned down with a quick, kind, shake of Tai’s head. He wasn’t mean about it, but his eyes left no room for argument. I wondered what he was looking for.

When it was time to present Matt with his many birthday gifts, everyone stood around him to watch as he opened up dive gear. He was going on a snorkeling trip for his thirtieth birthday and so that was the theme, and everyone had bought something in line with his wishes. It was smart, even though I could have never done it. I was just happy to have people show up to buy me drinks on my birthday.

So the size of my gift was strange. All the rest of the packages were large, and only mine was the size of a DVD, which is what it was.

“
Open Water
?” Matt said as he opened my present.

The room turned to me.

I did the lazy smile because it made sense in my head.

“A cautionary tale,” Tai said from the other side of the room.

I looked over at him and saw his eyes narrow.

“Mark!” Matt’s roommate Tim started laughing. “What the fuck, man? That movie is about people who go on a diving outing and get eaten by sharks!”

“Because they weren’t careful,” I explained. “I want Matt to be careful.”

“That’s disgusting,” one of the girls closest to me said.

I shrugged.

“It’s inspired,” Tai told her, and I realized he had moved to a spot on my right. Close on my right. He must have moved pretty fast to get there.

My snort of laughter made him smile, as did the waggle of eyebrows. As Matt returned to opening gifts, I felt Tai’s hand close on my bicep. I turned my head to look at him.

“Will you come upstairs to my place so I can talk to you a minute?”

“I’ll go upstairs with you if you promise to have dinner with me tomorrow,” I countered, turning to face him.

His scowl was endearing. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Because as much as I want to get in your bed, I want to talk to you too. So I figure this way, I get both things I want.”

The startled expression was even cuter than the scowl.

“‘Cause right now you’re thinking I’m funny but not hot, so you’re thinking you might screw me, but that’ll be it. But just watch, you’re gonna fall for me.”

He shook his head. “I don’t fall. I just fuck.”

“So you say,” I grunted, looking into his big, onyx eyes, sounding so much more confident than I felt.

He trembled, which I took as a very good sign, and laced his fingers into mine. “Dinner tomorrow’s fine. Come with me.”

I waved to Matt as I was tugged behind Tai, and he mouthed a word that had me flipping him off.

How?
was mean.
How?
implied that I was completely lacking in
pretty
. And I wasn’t. I was in good shape for twenty-six. I ran and swam and played soccer with a crappy team on the weekends.  My sandy brown hair and blue eyes had gotten me laid more than a few times. I was taller than Tai, six-two to his six feet, but that was about all I had going for me. None of it mattered, however, because at least for the moment, for this man, whatever I looked like was enough.