Adam - A Novella

20

I don't know when Amaya hung up, or when my father had returned home. I only heard him when he started screaming at the TV happily, not even bothering to check on me. How I was feeling. How I was doing.

He was yelling at sports like the world was alright. Like anything was alright. Like my boyfriend was alive, taking pictures of his Indiana apartment, preparing mentally to be permanently in my presence, thinking of things we could do when he returns, maybe even texting me future ideas: how do I feel about kids, dogs? Marriage? But he wasn't doing any of that. He was probably on a stretcher, being loaded into an ambulance or a body bag. The last picture he ever sent being of an oddly shaped stain on his mother's coffee mug.

"Adam? What's wrong with you, son?" He ran his hand over his almost bald head, his strawberry blonde tufts scratching against his palm, not taking his eyes off the TV. He was gripping a beer in its holder without setting it down. My stomach felt tied in knots at the normalcy. I barely heard him speak.

"Caleb died." I didn't say. It felt like someone else said it. But nobody was in here except us, and he had asked the question. Augustus licked his lips as if I didn't just deliver the most painful news I've ever received, and barely took his eyes off the ball flying across the screen.

"Karma. For disobeying God." He mumbled, drunk. My consciousness kicked into gear at the response. My blood stung in my veins, like it was desperate to escape, and my eyes began to see again.

"What the fuck did you just say?" He sighed and muted the football station. I was an annoyance to him. Caleb's death is an annoyance to him.

"He shouldn't have been giving into his homosexual urges, especially with you. If I were you, I'd pray that God had mercy on you." There was an evil twinkle in his eye. Every second he spent yapping on, I felt the muscles in my hand tighten into themselves, until my nails drew blood in my distal palm fat. "I knew I'd be able to frame it right. The kid was already depressed. It wouldn't be too hard."

Confusion clouded my brow for a moment. What did he mean, "especially with you?" With me? How did he know... Did he figure out we...? And why isn't he...? My thoughts interrupted each other, before realization hit.

Holy fuck.

"What the hell did you do to him‽" I screamed, gripping his shirt collar, and lifting him out of the chair with one arm. He climbed onto his chunky legs for balance, but I didn't let go. He straggled, but I could feel Cool Adam's anger and Real Adam's love combining. They've never combined before. I didn't know I could get so angry, so violent.

"I'm saving your soul! He wasn't savable. I drove all the way up to Indiana just for you, boy. Be grateful."

"Grateful? Did you kill him?"

"For all the police know, he did it himself." His smug face was now permanently stamped in my brain as an image I can never forget. All of a sudden, every muscle in my body felt weak and numb, and I let go of him, slinking to the floor.

I ruminated about him talking about how he'd kill someone, framing it as a suicide. The choking of Amaya's voice telling me Caleb had killed himself only minutes ago, the sound of Caleb on call a couple days ago telling me how much he missed me already and how he can't wait to come back to Louisiana and everything we'd do as soon as we could touch again, and his happy laughter which had grown on me like a mold made my brain autopilot. Gus's coy smile knowing he'd murdered someone and managed to justify it in his head overturned any merciful thought trains I had left. All cognitive reasoning in my brain had flickered out to the sight of his peachy, cracked, thin lips smirking to demonstrate his sinister intentions.

Augustus learned about us. I don't know how; I don't know where. But he'd acted out worse than I thought he ever would. He murdered someone; he killed someone due to his insufferable, drunken anger.

Augustus killed Caleb.

My father killed my boyfriend.