Who: Preston, Shiloh, and Poe What: Who’s the daddy? Where: The Ballet School, then off to eat lunch. When: Monday afternoon Warnings: Boys being stupid?
Class ran over, as it always did, which meant the ten minutes Poe had slated to shower and dress to meet Shiloh and Preston were cut down to five. His nervousness meant that he dropped the soap three times in the shower, couldn’t find his shirt for a full three minutes, and lost his knit cap in his own left hand. By the time he made it out toward the lobby, however, he looked a little calmer (he hoped), dressed in overalls that bared a sliver of hip, a snug white tee and a robin’s-egg blue cap over damp blond curls.
Poe had met Preston, but he’d only seen Shiloh from the back of a very crowded museum lecture hall (unless you counted the one time he’d peeked into Shiloh’s office), and he was unbelievably nervous about not being able to tell them apart. After all, Preston had looked just like Shiloh on the street. It was that worry that had kept him awake the night before, strangely enough, not what stupid things he might say or do, or the fact that he was going to talk to the school head about his scholarship at 3, or the fact that Shiloh might have found out about his fake ID excursion and was going to report him. And it was that worry (not being able to tell them apart) that weighed heavy on thin shoulders as he stepped into the hazy red lobby of the ballet school at 1:10 pm - only ten minutes late.
It was Shiloh driving that afternoon, a snappy little hybrid Prius he had bought in an effort to be more ‘environmental’ in a world where breathing seemed to increase that oh-so-important carbon footprint - not that Shiloh really worried about such things. Waiting at the light a block down from the ballet school, he drummed his hands against the steering wheel, a nervous gesture that rarely made itself known. “And here, I was thinking it’d be good to go on my own,” Shiloh remarked, giving a sidelong glance towards Preston in the passenger seat, managing a faint, tight smile. “Thanks for coming with. Keep me from saying or doing anything stupid, would you?”
Preston was watching the passenger rearview mirror. Or rather, he was looking at his face in it. Preston was the near-opposite of vain, but the purple splotch splashed over his cheekbone and over his left eye was pretty concerning. His eye had opened again (he had been worried about that when he’d woke that morning) but he still looked like a felon. “Maybe I should wait in the car. This is not going to make a good impression.” Preston turned his head, farther than usual because he had to use the opposite eye to see his brother properly. He looked nervous, and Preston’s expression changed into a sympathy. “Don’t buy trouble, we don’t know anything for certain.” Hopefully they didn’t freak the boy out, or make it sound like some weird solicitation.
Shiloh had to admit that the black eye did a certain something to his normally pristine brother’s face. “It makes you look dangerous. You should get roughed up more often.” His tone was teasing, and it was good to joke about something considering his mood for the past day. The light finally turned green and he went through the intersection, turning moments later into the school’s parking lot. Killing the engine, he sat where he was, looking not so eager to venture forth and out of the car. “I keep telling myself that. That this could be a mighty coincidence, but until I know for sure...” He shook his head and pulled the keys from the ignition, slipping them into his pocket. “And if you don’t go in with me, I may revert back to being seven and throw a tantrum. Just saying.” Another tease, a wink, and he was out of the car before he lost his courage.
Preston hesitated a moment more, looking at the mirror and dreading Monday, and then he told himself there had been worse days, and got the hell out of the car. It took him a minute to catch up to Shiloh, who had a longer stride than Preston did despite their even heights, but when he did he didn’t say anything, not even anything encouraging. Preston was encouraging, though. He tended to stand at an elbow without being close enough to trip, like he was watching your back or ready to catch you if you fell. It was just something he did. He glanced at his watch, but didn’t say they were late.
Poe, being ten minutes late himself, had expected impatient, scholastic foot tapping to be awaiting him. For whatever reason, he imagined them both in the guise of teachers, and he skidded to a halt in the lobby (no, he wasn’t running, really), only to find it empty. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and he smiled at the elderly woman who worked the front desk, that nervous sort of smile that said he wasn’t sure of anything just then. He rocked on his heels for two more minutes, and it felt more like five hundred minutes, he was sure of it. Nothing still, and he turned on his heel to go back in, not knowing whether he was relieved or disappointed just then, but relishing the possibility of a stay of execution.
Just before Poe turned to head back in, Shiloh and Preston entered through the front doors, and for all his worry and stress, Shiloh still managed to have a warm smile on his face as a greeting. It was then that he thought to check his watch, the sight of Poe making a retreat prompting him to look at the time. Late. He was never late. “Sorry, sorry,” he said as he continued forward, Preston’s presence at his side welcoming and needed. “I didn’t mean to show up this late. You... haven’t been waiting long for us, have you?”
Preston saw Poe a split-second before Shiloh did, and he sighed. The overalls made him look young, and the shirt small enough to indicate something else, and it made Preston want to tell him to make less of himself just in case someone was watching, someone that might not have Shiloh’s good intentions. He greeted him with a slight smile and a sideways tilt of his head, obviously wishing the angle would hide the bruise but knowing it didn’t. He didn’t say anything.
Poe turned as soon as Shiloh voiced the apology, but it was the black eye that caught his attention. “Wow,” he said, and despite the long limbs and fey demeanor, the statement was all impressed boy. “Who punched you?” he added, looking from one man to the other, then, and very obviously trying to tell them apart. In the end, it was the clothing that did it, because Shiloh dressed less business-y, Poe thought, and he held out a hand to Shiloh first. “Um, it’s good to finally meet you.” To Preston, he repeated. “Wow.”
The elder of the pair couldn’t help the laugh that came at Poe’s impressed reaction at the shiner Preston sported, but he did his best to keep that to himself. “If you can weasel out of him who punched him, do let me know. He’s remaining quiet about it, it seems.” Taking Poe’s hand, he gave it a firm, warm shake, eyes upon the boy’s face as he took in his features, looking hard for any bit of himself lurking there. “It’s a pleasure as well, Poe,” Shiloh replied warmly.
Preston just looked embarrassed and turned his head farther away. It was probably pointless to say something about falling. “Just a misunderstanding,” he said, doing his level best not to touch his forehead or neck, a habit he thought he’d broke in college. “Nice to see you again.” Preston was casual, and to cement it didn’t offer his hand to reintroduce himself, hoping to reassure. He too was looking at Poe’s face, however. He looked like someone familiar, but Preston wasn’t sure who or why.
Poe noticed all the looking. It was was kind of impossible not to notice all the looking, and when he took his hand back it was with another shove into the pocket of his overalls. “Did you guys want to go somewhere?” he asked, and he visibly grimaced after, because he was pretty sure calling them guys was wrong somehow. “Or I can take you back?” he said with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder, before that hand disappeared in a pocket again, too.
“Whatever you’d prefer. It’s the lunch hour, so we could go somewhere nearby and grab a bite. And you can calm down, Poe.” Shiloh had picked up on those nerves, that grimace as though he had done something to be scolded for. “We’re not going to bite you or anything. So please. Just...” He hesitated, trying to think of a word that would fit. “Just relax.”
Preston didn’t think he’d relax if he was in a room with a potential parent--or his real parents, come to think of it. He understood the desire to impress, too, and he looked at Shiloh as if to say, I love you but sometimes you’re an idiot. It was a famed brotherly look that will go on forever throughout time so that one brother may call the other an idiot silently whenever necessary. “Food sounds good.” A distraction to fill silences and somewhere public to make everyone more likely to talk.
Shiloh’s statement that he could calm down, made Poe even less calm. And his mind became a litany of Oh, crap and Be cool and Do I still look nervous?? It showed very clearly on his face, and there was a definite possibility that he would tear a hole in the pockets of the overalls with how hard he was pushing his fingers against the seams. “Food, sure,” he said, voice a nervous octave too high, and then he walked past them and to the doors with a finger-wave to the elderly woman at the counter, and oh, God he was such a doofus.
Shiloh turned on one foot to watch Poe head towards the doors, not immediately following, pausing instead to give a look over towards Preston. He had caught that other look, and oh, he knew that meaning, and if it had been anyone else besides his brother, then there might have been more people sporting black eyes that afternoon. I have no idea what I’m doing, was the look that he gave towards Preston, as Shiloh was treading into territory that was completely foreign to him now. And that was saying a lot given his history of travelling everywhere.
Letting out a breath, Shiloh took a few quick steps to catch up with Poe, pushing the door open with one hand to let them all out, the noise of the streets helping to fill the awkward silence around them. “Anyplace nearby that you’d recommend?” he asked, trying to ease some of that nervousness that Poe seemed to wear like a very awkward coat that afternoon.
Preston put his hands in his pockets and he gave Shiloh a look that would have been more amusing if he hadn’t had the black eye to ruin the effect of the squinching. It’ll be okay. He followed along, but he was even slower than Shiloh was, and when either glanced back he was walking around someone with a lot of grocery bags or looking into the window of a shop, only two or three steps back, but still too far to quite hear what they were saying.
“There’s an Asian place on Pike that we can walk to,” Poe suggested, looking over his shoulder to see where Preston had gone to, and then looking back. “It’s called Ballet Restaurant, and it’s cheap. We go there for lunch a lot,” he explained, because now that they were alone it was easier to talk than be quiet and worry. “They do really good Pho,” he explained, then wondered if he needed to tell him what Pho was, and he wasn’t sure. “If you even like Asian?” Oh, God.
At those last words, Shiloh could no longer hold back his laughter. “If I like Asian food?” he repeated, shaking his head in amusement. “You do realise I’ve spent the last decade of my life more or less living in China, right?” A sidelong glance towards Poe and he shook his head again, laughing quietly. “It sounds like a good place to go. We’ll see if it lives up to the real thing, hmm?” Shiloh never bothered to glance back to check on where Preston was; his brother’s presence was easily felt, and he trusted him to play whatever role he felt he needed to that afternoon.
Poe had no idea Shiloh had spent time in China, and the statement was enough to cut through his nerves a little (despite the laughter, which had put him on edge for a good minute). “What were you doing in China?” he asked, natural curiosity winning out over anxiousness, and he threw another look over his shoulder, before asking more questions, all in a curious row. “The only things I know about China are from reading Around the World in 80 Days, and I got kind of tired of all the traveling in that book, because I wanted more people and less places. Have you read it? Was it like that?”
All the questions, and Shiloh had to admire his innate curiosity, though he was more than happy to answer anything Poe had to ask. “I went to China for my graduate school work, researching the history of their art, mostly sculptural. And no, I haven’t read that book, so I can’t say if it was anything like that, but it was...” He trailed off, a wave of nostalgia for his ‘second home’ washing over him. “It’s a remarkable country with equally remarkable people. I worked at a university there and before I knew it, it was my new home.”
“Didn’t you miss home?” Poe asked, his worry making it through very clearly in his voice. His life had been very small, very protected, and the concept of going that far away, of staying that far away was frightening. He’d been scared moving out to Seattle, where he didn’t know anybody at all. He would never admit it, but he’d gone to buy a bus ticket back to Boston at least three times, including the night before.
It was a good question, and one he wasn’t sure he would answer very well. “I missed it at times, yes. The familiar things about home; the people, the food, the culture. I missed being comfortable in my own skin instead of the six foot tall American around all these olive-skinned Asians. But... I liked the change. The excitement of finding something new just around the corner from my apartment. Some new discovery that I didn’t know existed. Those moments made my homesickness go away.” Shiloh looked over towards Poe, resisting the urge to loop an arm around his shoulders, to ease the worry that drifted from the boy in waves. “Do you miss Boston?”
“No,” Poe said, but it came with a scuff of a sneaker on the sidewalk and a glance down at his toes. “I have friends here, good friends. And I have my own apartment for the first time ever, at least for now, I’m not sure if my sponsor is going to keep sponsoring me,” he admitted, and he didn’t sound as excited about having his own place. “It’s quiet and no one bugs me,” he added, because that made it sound cooler. “And I can have parties,” which made it sound cooler still - maybe.
Shiloh’s brow furrowed down at the mention of the boy’s sponsorship being in question. “What do you mean you’re not sure he’ll keep sponsoring you? Has something happened?”
Poe pushed open the door to the restaurant, and he smiled at the familiar host, who smiled right back. He waited for Preston to get inside, and he asked for a table for three, somewhere quiet, and the host took them back and gave them their menus. Poe waited until they were sitting, and until they’d ordered drinks to reply. “I, um, I think I make him uncomfortable,” he admitted, glancing over at Preston, because he knew Preston and Blake were friends. If there was any intent for the glance to be inconspicuous, it failed miserably.
Preston caught up remarkably fast for someone who supposedly wasn’t paying any attention to the flow of conversation. He caught Poe’s glance but he didn’t understand the reasoning behind it. He had come across Blake’s name in relationship to Poe but he had not had a chance to ask the older man about it, and he had most certainly not come to any immediate conclusions. At least, not about Poe. Preston’s gaze sharpened. “Why would you think that?”
Shiloh, to his credit, knew very little about this Blake person other than he was acquainted with his brother and also Poe’s sponsor with the ballet company, but this news had him somewhat concerned. When Preston spoke up, Shiloh let him take the conversation over, turning instead to his menu as he perused the selection.
Poe picked at the edge of his menu with his fingernail when Preston’s gaze sharpened. “I think I might kind of remind him of somebody,” was all he said, which was harmless, really, and then he was looking up again, his expression worried, but emboldened by the prospect of continuing the current topic with that sharp gaze on him. “Why did you want to see me?” he asked, first looking at Shiloh and then at Preston.
Preston was not at all reassured by that answer. A line appeared between his brows--or at least it did for a moment before the bruising made him wince and he stopped frowning. He didn’t press it, but he made more mental notes for his increasingly inevitable conversation with Blake. At the inquiry, he glanced encouragingly at his brother.
As the question of the afternoon turned to the reason they were all gathered, Shiloh looked up from the menu, closing it and laying it down in front of him with a quiet sigh. “You don’t want to eat first?” he asked the other two, his stomach suddenly tying itself into knots, a sort of nervousness he hadn’t felt since he was a small child. “And once we have some food in us, we can head to the more serious conversation?”
Poe really didn’t think he could eat anything, and it had nothing to do with dance and weigh in that afternoon. “Um, ok,” he said, not wanting to rock the boat. When the waiter approached the table, he ordered Pho and a diet Coke, and he almost forgot to let go of the menu when the waiter tried to pull it away.
Preston let out a frustrated sigh. He ordered what Poe was having after making sure there wasn’t any meat involved, and then he ignored Shiloh’s shifting and twitching in favor of leaning over his elbows on the table toward Poe. “When we met you asked me about church back home. Why?”
Poe looked up from his fingers, thankful that they could talk about it now, even if he didn’t want to talk about it at all, because it was better to get it over with than to sit and wait. He worried his lip, and he remembered he had a cap on, and he pulled it off, and then he remembered his hair had been wet and was probably all over. “I remember seeing your family there,” he said, fighting with his hair as he said it and, he thought, managing to sound like he wasn’t about to be sick. “At church. The orphanage made us hand out psalm books and things.”
Shiloh’s own order joined the group of Pho and Diet Coke, handing the menu back as he listened to the pair speaking, hands folding atop the table as he leaned forward slightly. “And that’s the only reason you’ve... made it a point to talk to my brother and I?” Shiloh asked, his voice tender and calm, not accusing, but simply prodding gently to try and get the reason out of Poe without having to bring it up himself.
All this prodding was making Poe want to run. No, really, run. Push the chair back, let it clatter to the ground, and just be not there anymore. He didn’t know how to say what he had to say, not really, and he just looked from one man to the other, trying to figure it out. In the end he swallowed thickly and nodded, trying to ignore the fact that the exit door was such a fiery red that it was impossible not to glance at it repeatedly like an idiot. “Sure,” he said. “We’re really far from Boston?” It was a question, unintentionally.
Preston saw the rabbit look, and even though he’d been seeing it in various interns for years, he didn’t like being the cause of it. He sat back in his chair and, if Shiloh looked over, he gave him a helpless look. The diet cokes came, and Preston pulled his over without resuming questioning.
At least this was as awkward and hard for him as it was for Poe, or at least that’s the way it seemed. Shiloh said nothing for a while, instead taking a drink of soda, balling up the straw wrapper and tossing it to the table top. It was time to just pull the bandaid off, so to speak, and stop tiptoeing around what they all knew as it was. “Poe,” Shiloh said softly, pushing his glass off to the side so he could lace his fingers together, leaning in towards the boy. “Back in Boston, I knew a young woman who danced in the Boston Ballet. Lily Moira.” Leaving that in the air, he looked down towards the table, closing his eyes. “Your mother, if I’m not mistaken.”
Poe was much better at nodding than at offering his own information, and he was pretty sure he could nod himself through the entire conversation, if he had to. He looked at Shiloh with eyes that were as nervous as they were trusting, and he kicked the table leg as he waited.
Shiloh drew in a breath, he looked over towards Preston for a moment, gathering the support he needed there, and then he looked back to Poe, managing a smile. “I... was quite fond of Lily. She was... beautiful. A talented dancer, and I felt lucky that I was able to get to know her. But... things happened. School kept me very busy and somehow, her and I lost touch.” He paused, picking up his napkin and balling it up, his hands belying his nerves. “She never let me know that she was pregnant. I... never thought to check on her, so it really is my fault as well. But...” Shiloh broke off then, covering his face with his hands for a moment before pushing his hands back through his hair, trying to gather his calm.
“Is this part of the reason you came to Seattle? Because... I was here?” Shiloh looked over towards him, imploring, nervous as the young man was.
Poe’s gaze was greedy as Shiloh spoke, the words (and his desire to hear them) almost eclipsing the nervousness again for a second. He didn’t answer, and it was because the question that was tumbling past his lips was a non-thinking one, honest and aching. “So it’s you?” he asked, looking at Shiloh, and then over at Preston. “Not him?”
“Unless Preston’s hiding something from me, it... may very well be me.” Shiloh tried to smile, tried to relax, but it was hard with the look Poe wore. This moment was important, a step in a direction neither of them would be able to take back.
Preston gave a short little laugh that had bitterness in it the moment before he let it go. “That would be a hell of a secret.” He hadn’t meant for it to sound quite like that, and he looked into Poe’s eyes and smiled with a little shake of his head. “Not even close,” he said. “I don’t remember knowing her, though I think we met once.” It’s not Poe’s mother that Poe reminds Preston of, and the little flicker of thought still nudges at him. “What did she tell you?” he asked, curiously.
Poe reached into the pocket of his overalls, the right pocket, one of the ones he was shoving his fingers into earlier, and he pulled out a small diary. It was a tiny thing, small enough to fit in his palm and as old as he was, and he pushed it across the table to the two men. There wasn’t much there, really. A young girl’s writing, the name Preston in hearts, and confessions about not wanting to have his family take the baby. “I never knew her,” he said, gaze on the diary and not looking up from it just then.
Shiloh said nothing as he watched the appearance of the diary, reaching across to laying his fingers atop it, almost as though he was afraid of what it meant, what it stood for. But he drew it towards him slowly, leaning back in his chair as he opened it to look through, a trip down memory lane that he hadn’t journeyed in years. As he turned the pages slowly, handwriting familiar from a lifetime ago, it was the worries about the Preston family taking the baby that really tore at him. He shook his head slowly, and even without the paternity test that he and Preston had talked about before, Shiloh already felt himself taking ownership.
“Could you excuse me, please?” Shiloh asked in tight words, his voice choked as he rose from his seat quickly. He could feel his chest tighten, a sick feeling swelling as he beelined towards the front doors. He would not break down here. He would not loose it here, not now.
Poe looked stricken, and his gaze went from the door, to Preston, back to the door and back again. It was a very do something gaze, because he couldn’t make his feet move, no matter how much he wanted to, and he sounded very young as he looked back at Preston. “What did I do?”
Preston turned one knee and half-rose, as if to pursue Shiloh, but he got a look at his face and abruptly the worry seemed to leave him. He turned back to Poe, gave him the reassuring smile that seemed second-nature to him, and then reached out for the little book, pulling it toward him. “You didn’t do anything, Poe. It’s just a shock to find out that...” Preston’s own voice broke and he had to cough to get it back on track, “...you have family that was kept from you. Especially because of this.” He ran a long forefinger over the name in hearts, his own name now, the one he’d made his own and not theirs.
Poe had never thought of it like that, and he watched Preston’s finger on the page. “I met her once, your mother. I,um, I didn’t introduce myself, but she didn’t seem very impressed with me,” he admitted, worrying his lip between the words. “I like to think she would have said something, maybe, my mother, eventually. She just never got the chance,” he said with a sad little shrug that said he was so used to all of this that it didn’t make his voice break or catch anymore - it hadn’t for a long time.
“To Shiloh, she would have,” Preston agreed, coming down from what seemed like a great distance when Poe mentioned Mrs. Preston. “It hurt him when he found out she was gone,” he said seriously, speaking now of Poe’s mother and not his own, watching Poe’s eyes for signs of deception he was already sure he wouldn’t find.
There wasn’t deception there when Poe looked up, but there was some disbelief. “He never came looking,” he said simply, with the candor of the very young. There was some hurt in it, true, and Poe wasn’t even aware that it was there.
Preston was unthinkingly defensive, suddenly hard. “He didn’t know she wanted him to. They left on good terms; if she wanted him to come find her--” Preston stopped and realized what he was saying, physically backing off, every blink a slightly purple wince. “If he’d known, he would have come, Poe.”
The hard defensiveness surprised Poe, who interpreted it as blame for something, but he didn’t understand what, and he dragged back the diary and sat back, gaze going to the door, and then to the man across from him. He registered, somehow, when Preston backed off, but it didn’t sink through, not really, and he swallowed thickly and nervously, back to the uncertainty of before. “I have to-” he began, shoving the book in his pocket once more and motioning to the back, toward the bathroom, chair being shoved back with a scratch on the linoleum floor as he stood.
Preston got up and leaned over the table again as Poe went into retreat. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to think he left her on purpose, or would even think of doing so.” It wasn’t a threatening lean, just an intense one, and a second later he was straightening and catching the cup of chopsticks before he knocked it over.
Poe turned to go toward the back of the restaurant, but he stopped before turning fully, and he looked back at Preston, expression sad. “You were going to say she could have told him,” he said, something a little hard there beneath all the vulnerability on the surface, “if she wanted him to come for her.” He shook his head. “She couldn’t; she died,” he said, defensive of a memory (one that wasn’t even his) in the way Preston had been for Shiloh, because it wasn’t her fault, really it wasn’t. With a nod of his head, he went toward the back of the restaurant, but he didn’t go to the bathroom. He slipped out the employee entrance, managing not to show how upset he was, even once he was outside and walking toward home without looking back.
“Fuck,” Preston said, left alone at the table and realizing he had more problems than a chopstick jar that would not stand up. He left it spilling sideways and reached for his phone to tell Shiloh to go after him--and then he realized he still didn’t have his goddamn phone. “Fuck!” A passing waiter almost dropped a bowl of pho. “...Sorry.” Preston left a couple twenties on the table and went out to find Shiloh.
Ignorant of the goings on inside the restaurant, Shiloh was outside, back against the building’s wall, puffing away at a cigarette, a habit he had broken years before, but liked to come back and nip him during stressful times. This meeting had gone remarkably wrong, and he was sorely tempted to simply book the next flight he could to China and just disappear from it all. But he wouldn’t; he had obligations in Seattle, people he would, surprisingly, let down if he took tail and ran. So instead he smoked, the filter pinched between two fingers as he worked every last bit of enjoyment [stress] out of the nicotine and tar.
Preston’s expression was grim as he reappeared in the parking lot, and he was really pissed when he saw Shiloh smoking, because Preston was a recovering addict too and between Shiloh and Eli, he was never going to quit and die in ten years of throat cancer. “The hell you do that for?” he demanded, ignoring the fact that the blame wasn’t fair.
Shiloh closed his eyes for a moment, taking one last drag on the cigarette before dropping the butt and grinding it out beneath the heel of his shoe. “Do what? Walk out on the boy who could be my son or start smoking? You have to be specific, Preston.” Yes, he was stressed, and the tone of his voice was taking it more out on Preston than was probably fair.
“Try being a selfish bastard. You left me in there with him, and he’s even more confused than you are, and he just took off.” Preston’s accent and diction always degenerated a little around his brother, and when he got angry, it all went to hell. It sounded like a bad call at a Red Sox game. “What’s the matter with you?”
The news that Poe had fled snapped him out of whatever pity party he had been throwing for himself, leaving Shiloh to turn towards Preston sharply, his eyes narrowed in concern. “He left? Why... why did you let him leave? I just...” He stopped, pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to calm down, to think clearly, something that was easier said than done. Finally he let out a breath and focused back on Preston. “The notebook just brought back a lot of memories. I needed a breath. Do you know where he went? What direction he went in? I never saw him leave, and if he’s fleeing now...” Shiloh trailed off, a sound of frustration escaping him. “God dammit. Dammit!”
“He went out the back,” Preston said, unsympathetically, watching Shiloh’s face. He knew this was going to be difficult for his brother, but he didn’t want him to buckle under the pressure, nor pretend the weight wasn’t there. “He’s missing something and he’s trying to find it. He doesn’t understand the problems with our family and frankly, I don’t think he could handle it if he did. You can’t abandon the kid, Shiloh, not even at dinner.” Preston’s nostrils flared around the second-hand smoke, and he gave an irritated twitch of his head away.
“I’d really rather him not have to deal with the problems of our family. He doesn’t deserve to have to deal with that stuff.” Shiloh sighed again, glancing back towards the restaurant and then down Pike Street, his jaw tensing as he tried to make a decision as to what to do. He was treading into unfamiliar territory, his actions so directly impacting another person. Even he didn’t excel at everything ever.
Looking back towards Preston, he made his decision. “I’m going to find him. I’m going to bet he went back towards the school, so I’ll start there. We’re too far away from the apartments, so I don’t think he’d head that way, but it’s hard to say.” One hand ran over his face, trying to rub the day away. “Mind telling me that I’m not allowed to run off back to China, hmm? It’s pretty certain that I won’t if I hear you saying it.”
“If you try to get out of this, I’ll have a visa within twenty-four hours and you back here in thirty-six,” Preston said, only smiling because he knew Shiloh wouldn’t do any such thing.
“Which is why I would never do anything like that,” Shiloh replied with a sweet smile, clapping his brother on the shoulder. “You can head back. Unless you want to traipse all over trying to find him with me.”
“I don’t think I helped much back there. I got a little defensive about you and that’s not what he needs. If you can’t find him today, Shiloh, he probably just needs a bit, and we’ll find him again.” Preston gave his brother a squint through his bad eye, shook his head at him (not in a disgusted way) and then headed back the way they had come.
Shiloh knew that Preston was likely right, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying to find him today. Digging in his pocket, he pulled out the keys to the Prius. “Hey. Take the car. You don’t need to be walking back to Bathos in your condition,” he said, tossing the keys towards him with a teasing grin.
Preston got his hand out of his pocket just in time to catch the keys, but he tossed them back almost immediately. “I can get a cab, Shiloh.” He thought for one reason or another Shiloh might need to be mobile, and he didn’t want to say so for fear it might be an overly negative precaution. He gave his brother a little wave that was all dismissal, and in the habit of close family, walked off without further farewell.