Taron’s head turned her way, but Mom was already walking back home. He shrugged, leaving Colin to twist his fingers with uncertainty.
It was a quiet neighborhood, and at this time of the evening—deathly quiet, but for some reason the silence in the car felt more comfortable than the peaceful air that awaited Colin outside.
“You think she got the dog to pick herself up after I was gone?” Colin tried again.
Taron sighed.
Colin swallowed hard and clutched at the fabric of the oversized pants. “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel they didn’t really want to have me, and that’s why they let my grandparents raise me until I was old enough to meet their expectations.”
He rarely expressed those ideas in any way, but in the quiet of Taron’s car, with the one man who seemed to think that he didn’t have to become anything other than what he was in order to fulfill his purpose, he let out his darkest thoughts.
Taron didn’t say anything, but he listened. He didn’t look away, or interject. He always took in what Colin was telling him. So Colin let it all flood out of him, because this was his last chance to do so.
“I didn’t even choose to be a doctor, but my dad wouldn’t accept it if I wanted a different career path. I was always good at studying, and since I didn’t have anything in mind, I chose my electives accordingly. I always played it too safe. Even now, when I think about going in there, I’m panicking that my dad will just say I disappeared to evade responsibility for a couple of months. I never really felt like they loved me. When I was a kid, I convinced myself they had to, as my parents, but I never really felt it,” he choked out the last words, but whatever he believed about his parents, it was obvious Taron wanted him to leave, so he frantically opened his seatbelt, choking on the sob pushing at his throat. When had he become such a softie? He was ridiculous and had no control over his emotions--something that would surely be a stain on his future life. And now, he was unloading all this on a man who shouldn’t have to care about Colin’s meaningless family drama when his own was long gone.
“I just think they had a kid because that’s the thing to do. And they support me, because that’s another thing you do. Just like I’m studying, because that’s the thing to do if there’s money to pay for it.”
His life was such a swamp, dragging him down the moment he stepped into it again.
But it was time to cut the cord and leave his abductor, because that was another thing to do. No one in their right mind would have stalled.
Taron reached out to Colin and grabbed his hand, but when Colin froze, torn between running off and letting himself be recaptured, it occurred to him that Taron passed him something. He opened his palm and saw a rabbit paw on a leather string.
Taron signed to him when Colin looked up.
Colin’s lips twitched, and he stared at the gift, at loss. “But… we didn’t speak to each other,” he said helplessly, clutching the item in his hand. It was imperfect, with crude stitching. Taron must have made it himself.
Taron took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair, his sun-damaged skin touched by a ray of light coming from outside.
Colin rubbed the paw with his thumb. Wasn’t that the thing to do for luck?
This was the moment to leave, and he should be removing his toxic presence from Taron’s car in order to reclaim the life he deserved, but his body was numb around a heart throbbing with loss.
“I’m sorry about your family. I know what you were trying to tell me. I didn’t mean to be so harsh. It was just… the situation,” he said, pathetically prolonging the inevitable for a few more seconds. He’d been so cruel to Taron, lashed out, yet Taron still brought him here, to a place Colin no longer considered home.
When Colin put his hand on the door handle, Taron pulled on his arm again.
He might have as well put Colin’s heart into a meat grinder, because for once all Colin wanted was for the world to end around them and leave them with no ties to anything outside the bunker. If Yellowstone really did blow up, he’d have the perfect excuse to never leave Taron’s side.