Daddies Brat

Leslie

“Two crunchwrap supremes,” I said into the intercom at the Taco Bell drive-thru. “Three grilled cheese burritos.”

“I only want two burritos!” Harper said in the passenger seat.

“I know. One is for me.” I turned back to the intercom. “Two orders of nacho fries. And a cheesy gordita crunch.”

“Oh, I want one of those too!” Harper said.

“Make that two cheesy gorditas.”

The guy on the other end of the intercom read back my order to me and gave me the total. $42. 95. “Jesus,” I muttered while driving around to the pickup window. “Forty bucks gets you a lot of food at Taco Bell.” “I’m hungry,” Harper said, eyes mindlessly drifting across the windows.

“You doing okay, buddy?” I asked.

He bobbed his head without looking over, then abruptly began giggling. I didn’t ask what was funny; this was the third time he had started randomly laughing on the drive home.

I was starving, too. I wasn’t high anymore-the panicked adrenaline from the restaurant had seen to that. But I did have the munchies. Everything on the menu sounded amazing, even more so than the filets in our to-go bag from the steakhouse.

When we got home, I helped Harper to the couch, then took a big bite out of a brownie from the fridge. If he was going to be silly, then so was I.

We found a space documentary on Netflix and dove into our Taco Bell like we hadn’t eaten in days. We couldn’t remember who had ordered what, so we opened the wrapped food at random and started chewing without hesitation. “You have to try this,” Harper said, handing me a quesadilla. “That’s good, but not as good as this,” I replied, shoving a Doritos Locos taco at him. He took a big bite out of it and moaned.

As we slowed down, Harper added his own commentary to the documentary. It was funny, because he would point things out right before the narrator did.

“That’s Enceladus,” Harper said. “It’s one of Saturn’s tiny moons.”

“Enceladus is an icy moon orbiting Saturn,” the narrator said, while the image of a pale moon filled the TV.

“It has an ocean of liquid water under its surface.”

“The tiny satellite is believed to have a subsurface ocean of liquid water.”

“There might be life there,” Harper said, leaning back into the cushions of the couch. “But it’s really hard to drill through the ice.”

“Scientists endeavor to test its oceans for signs of life, but exploring the small moon of Saturn has its technical challenges. A thick crust of ice covers the planet…”

“You’re good at this,” I said, my new brownies beginning to kick in. “You should, like, major in Astronomy or something.” The two of us fell apart into giggles.

“I wish we had dessert,” Harper suddenly said. “We have more brownies in the fridge!” I said.

That caused another round of giggles, with Harper’s head falling into my lap. I stroked him without thought. His auburn hair was thick and silky.

“Cake!” he said, suddenly sitting upright again. “I wish we had cake!”

“Ohh,” I moaned. “Cake sounds really good right now.”

“My birthday was two months ago, right before the semester started.”NôvelD(ram)a.ôrg owns this content.

“That’s good enough for me. Hold on.” I dialed Riley’s number. He picked up on the third ring.

“Leslie?” he said groggily. “Is everything okay?” “CAKE!” I shouted into the receiver.

“Cake! Bring us cake!” Harper added.

There was a pause on the line. “I’m in Sacramento for our road series.” “Shit! I forgot! You’re off the hook. For cake. The cake hook.”

“Cake hook. For hanging cake around the kitchen,” Harper agreed. “Why hasn’t anyone invented this yet?”

“I’m going back to bed,” Riley said. “Good luck with, uh, your cake search.”

I laughed as we hung up. “I like Riley. He’s fun.”

“Yeah, he is,” Harper said. “I’m glad he’s my friend.”

I’m glad he’s my friend that also fucks me, I thought. I almost let the words drift out of my mouth and into the air for Harper to hear. But I stopped myself. That was supposed to be a secret, I remembered.

“You know, Leslie,” Harper said, “I’m really proud of you.”

I blinked at him. “Why?”

“I’ll tell you,” he said, blinking his bloodshot eyes. “But first I need to warn you that I’m going to remove my filter.”

Laughing, I replied, “You removed it two hours ago in the restaurant.”

He frowned. “What restaurant?”

“Nothing. Nevermind. Go on.”

“Everyone struggles in life,” he said philosophically. “It’s part of, like, being human. Or being an animal. Animals struggle, too, I guess. But humans are what we care about. Unless your dad is, like, Bill Gates or something. They probably don’t have to worry as much.

“But even though everyone struggles, so many people whine about it.

They let their struggles hit them like… like…”

On the TV, an asteroid struck a planet with a thunderous boom.

“Like an asteroid impact!” Harper said with a grin. “So many people let their struggles hit them like that. And it creates a shockwave from the impact that spreads outward, destroying everything else. Like their hopes, and dreams, and motivations.”

“Okay,” I said, unsure of where he was going.

“But you.” He shoved a finger in my direction. “You immediately tried to fix it. You stayed home on a Friday night to study, even though you would have rather gone out and partied with us. You spent every night for the past two weeks studying, instead of watching TV or getting high or whatever you wanted to do. You didn’t let the asteroid destroy you. You focused on fixing it. I have an immense amount of respect for you for doing that.”

“You make it sound like I performed some amazing feat,” I said, blushing. “All I did was study.”

Harper shrugged, and for a moment there was a glimmer of clarity to his eyes. “Sometimes that’s all it takes. Sometimes a small action is worthy of praise.”

My hazy brownie brain considered that. Was the bar really that low in life? Was simply doing the necessary work deserving of recognition and acclaim? Or perhaps that was a reflection of the kind of friends Harper had. Maybe not Avery and Riley, both of whom worked hard. But other people.

“Is that why you’ve been finding excuses to help me?” I asked him. “Because you were impressed that I actually studied?”

“Finding excuses? I don’t know what you mean.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Come on. First you made a batch of brownies and pretended that you needed to hang around the kitchen to watch them. That was after you left a party early. The next night, your excuse was that you were cleaning the kitchen and happened to see what I was working on. The day after that, you asked me for a scantron sheet and repaid the favor by quizzing me… but I suspect you didn’t have a test that needed one. All your exams require written answers. You said so the first week I moved in.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, Harper. I’m not an idiot.”

His gaze bore into me. “That’s the last thing I would think of you,” he said softly. He reached over and squeezed my hand. It felt friendly. A platonic reassurance. But the longer his touch lingered, the warmer I felt in my chest.

The front door opened and Avery strode inside. Harper turned to look at him, and then said in a very serious tone: “Cake.”

Avery frowned. “Huh?”

“Cake!” Harper replied more insistently.

“Cake, Avery!” I said, joining in.

“I don’t understand.” “CAKE!” I shouted.

“We want cake!” Harper yelled. “Bring us cake! CAAAAAAKE!”

Avery looked back and forth between both of us, then pointed an accusatory finger at me. “You got Harper high!”

“He got himself high through his own carelessness,” I replied. “He thought the brownies in the fridge were mine.”

“I wrote a note on them,” Avery insisted. “It said extra special brownies!”

“I thought that meant they were extra special!” Harper argued. “Like, Leslie made them with love!”

“This is some bullshit,” Avery said, dropping onto the couch next to me, putting me in the middle of them both. “Harper has never done weed. He said he would get high with me after we graduated.”

“I’ll totally do it again,” Harper said, reaching across me to pat Avery on the cheek. For a moment, his scent overwhelmed me. “This is nice. Way better than being drunk.”

“Welcome to my world, brother,” Avery replied.

Avery hung out and watched the space documentary with us. After half an hour, he said, “Is there any Taco Bell left?”

“We ate it all,” Harper said. “All forty dollars’ worth.”

“Forty bucks?” Avery said incredulously. “Do you know how much Taco Bell forty bucks can buy?”

“Too much,” Harper said, patting his belly.

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “We have leftover steak in the bag on the counter. It’s filet mignon.”

“We didn’t eat it because we had to leave the restaurant,” Harper muttered. “Leslie says I was making a scene.” He made air quotes with his fingers.

“I wish I had recorded it for posterity,” I said. “Now that it’s over, it’s actually really funny.”

“You bought filets from that fancy steak place, but then ordered Taco Bell instead? How much did that cost? A hundred dollars?”

“Two hundred, including the appetizer and the wine,” I corrected. “Oh, yeah! There’s wine, if you want it.”

“The wine pimp said it’s really good,” Harper chimed in.

We watched TV together for another half hour, and then Avery and I helped Harper get ready for bed. Getting his teeth brushed was the hardest part; he kept pausing to stare at himself in the mirror, like he didn’t understand the concept of a reflection. Finally, we lowered him into bed, removed his glasses, and put them on his bedside table.

“Night night, little guy,” Avery said as if he were a child. “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

“Wait,” Harper said, reaching out a hand. “Stay with me until I fall asleep?”

“You’re already falling asleep,” I said. “You were dozing off on the couch.”

“What if my heart explodes in my sleep? From the marijuana?”

Avery busted out laughing. “That’s not how it works, man.”

“But what if it does? You don’t know.”

“If your heart explodes, there’s nothing I can do, is there?” Avery replied.

Harper rose up in bed. “Please?”

Avery sighed. “Okay. I’ll stay with you.”

“No,” he replied. “Leslie.”

Avery glanced at me. “You don’t have to-”

“I don’t mind,” I said. “I’ll hang out with him for a few minutes. He’ll be asleep before I can finish today’s Wordle.” “Brick,” Harper suddenly said.

“Huh?”

“Today’s Wordle. Brick. B-R-I-C-K.”

I glanced at Avery. “Now I wish the pot would make his heart explode.”

“Don’t say that!” Harper whispered, which immediately made me feel guilty. Avery left, and then I crawled into bed next to Harper, on top of the covers so there was a barrier between us.

I turned off the light. The two of us were silent in the dark for a while.

“Thanks for the fun evening,” he whispered. “Even though I ruined it.”

“You didn’t ruin anything,” I said. “Thanks for helping me ace my astronomy exam.”

He rolled over, facing away from me. “It was just an excuse to hang out with you more because I like you.”

I gave a start. “Wait, really? Harper, is that true?”

But Harper couldn’t respond, because he was already snoring.