Phasing Out (MM Romance Mystery/Suspense)

That face. The flawless profile it made against the car window. Beautiful brown eyes with lavish black lashes. The hue of that skin—a riveting tan with soft olive-gold undertones. The beauty of that toned body. The gentle chisel of his lips.

Wondering where, exactly, his mind had gone, Gabriel Aeirsah took his eyes off the boy on the bench beside him and glued them to the screen of his phone. A succession of text messages seemed to glare back at him.

Raj: Why are you ghosting me?

Raj: I don’t know what I did wrong.

Raj: What I’m not allowed to develop feelings for you? That’s crossing the line?

Raj: We’ve been hooking up for 6 months, Gabe. We can at least talk about this.

Something swelling in his throat, Gabriel’s thumb pressed lightly on the banner above the message chain until the options drop-down appeared.

“Are you sure you want to block this number and delete all messages?”

Yes.

He closed the messaging app and abruptly swiped to something else.

Empty. Thoughtless.

It would burn into his memory, this car ride. Like a frozen capsule of time capturing the calm before the storm, he would never forget the loud quiet of the atmosphere in his mother’s SUV on the way to Tulippi, Arkansas.

Arius, in the back seat beside him, leaning against the window, those stupid-looking headphones resting over his mess of raven hair and thoroughly covering his ears. Monica and Amana in the bench in front, carrying on two separate conversations—Monica with their mother about grad school plans, Amana with herself about the pony sticker pack she was examining. Their mother, Lauren, sitting behind the wheel with a stack of work waiting in the passenger’s seat to keep her busy while Arius and Amana had their appointments. The distracted quiet in Gabriel’s heart as he idly scrolled through his college friends’ Instagram posts.

They were twenty-two and nineteen that summer. Two sets of twins, the biological set born healthy and normal, and the fostered set with rare complications requiring monitoring and advanced treatment. They all had their driver’s licenses except Amana, but Lauren insisted on soloing the ten hours from Cincinnati, Ohio to the special clinic in Tulippi, just as she always had for all fifteen of these annual visits—all the way back to when Arius and Amana had joined the family.

Monica mentioned Calculus II, and Gabriel put away his phone. A smile of welcome diversion crossed his face as his eyes moved back on Arius motionlessly watching the window, that perfect Asian face silent and expressionless. Leaning over the seat separating them, Gabriel lifted one side of Arius’s headphones. “Hey. Metalhead.”

The slender boy by the window gave Gabriel exactly enough time to say the two words before flashing his unwelcome company an irritated glance and abruptly replacing the headphones without a word.

Gabriel smiled amusedly at the tiny clear plastic retainers lining the delicate edge of Arius’s earlobe. His arm snaked out again, this time to pinch at the vulnerable skin just under the boy’s ear. “You really think she’s not gonna notice?”

His hand was slapped away without so much as a glance. Gabriel was left laughing cynically. That boy was exceptionally equipped to pull off piercings, those mixed-Korean features of his drastically differing from Gabriel’s light-hair, light-eyes, Caucasian complexion. That face that straddled the enviable line between cute and sexy. The dark oval eyes, sharp black brows, unflawed face, skin two or three shades darker than Gabriel’s, even without the help of too much sunshine...

But Gabriel’s mother strictly prohibited her boys from any kind of piercing. That undoubtedly included the tongue accessory Arius had probably replaced with another inconspicuous retainer.

Amana’s face appeared over the back of the bench, and two large, sober eyes peered over at Arius. Childish pink ponytails held her long black hair out of the way, and two cartoon stickers plastered her cheek. Like a toddler who had glimpsed her favorite person in the whole world, Amana’s face lit into a large smile at sight of her twin brother. “Ari,” she announced finally. A slender arm appeared over the top of the backrest and slowly extended toward Arius, a sticker planted on her thumb. “Do you want a sticker?”

Her hand was abruptly slapped away. “No. Jesus.” Flinching like he had been startled, Arius lifted his legs up onto the seat and huddled out of her reach. One almond-toned arm gripped his knees, and he turned to glare out the window again.

“Arius, no swearing,” Lauren called from behind the wheel.

“I’ll take a sticker,” Gabriel told Arius’s twin, giving her downcast expression an encouraging smile. He lifted the cartoon sticker off her thumb, then smiled again at her pleased grin. No sooner had Amana turned away, than Gabriel’s hand shot out and slapped the sticker onto Arius’s forehead.

“Gabe—!” His knee kicked out like a reflex had been triggered, hitting the back of the girls’ bench. He yanked the sticker off his forehead, wincing as it took several threads of his hair with it. “You got it in my hair.” Arius poised, eyes glaring, the sticker on one finger, sparking dark eyes focused on Gabriel. That blazing moment was apparently important enough to temporarily rest his precious headphones around his neck.

“Look at you all feisty,” Gabriel remarked in return. He lifted out a hand and swiped teasingly at Arius’s ruffled hair. The gesture was slapped viciously away.

“Stop it.” A silent, eight-second stare down ensued, after which Arius shoved his headphones back over his ears and turned to the window again.

Gabriel smirked softly, but permissively turned to his own window.

Monica was twisting her long brown hair in a ponytail as the SUV reached its destination. “Go inside, use the bathroom, freshen up, and I’ll check you in for your appointments,” were their mother’s instructions as she set the parking brake.

They exited the SUV one by one. Gabriel lifted his hands to the sky and stretched. The air smelled fresh out here, unlike the city, southern humidity making each breath feel sleepy. Rolling green and whispering trees created lovely landscape all around the small clinic. A dirt road stretched out across the clinic’s driveway, mudpuddles and shining wet pebbles attesting to a recent rain.

The clinic itself was a modest building of a few offices and several examination rooms. Behind it, however, lay a monstrous barbed wire and chain-link fence encircling the far bigger—and, apparently more secretive—research section of the institution. Little more was visible of that section than the guardhouse at the gate, a few milling security uniforms, and cinderblock walls hiding the buildings beyond.

Arius stepped out of the vehicle last, his Vans dropping to the ground as lightly as if he was a ballet dancer, not an emo teenager superglued to his rollerblades. Gabriel immediately ransacked the shorter boy’s hair with an outstretched hand. “Let’s go get ’em, Arius!”

“Piss off,” came the hushed reply with a cautious glance at Gabriel’s mother locking up the car. Arius raised his head slightly and gave Gabriel a level glare. “I don’t think I need you to go in with me this time. You can stay in the waiting room.”

“Dream on, little boy,” Gabriel laughed back. “We both know you’re terrified of these appointments. Wouldn’t want to melt into a puddle of tears in front of the nurse and not have me there to keep you from drowning in your own saltwater, would you?”

Arius mouthed out an even less polite two-word dismissal, then started for the front entrance of the clinic. He was always afraid. “We need to remember to cherish the time we have Arius and Amana,” Gabriel’s mother had told him on numerous occasions. She was a doctor herself, and certainly prone to being overly cautious.

Inside, the two sets of twins separated at the restrooms. Gabriel held the door for an ungrateful Arius, then watched briefly as Monica and Amana walked into the ladies’ room. Monica’s blue eyes flashed smilingly at the matching features of her twin brother before she entered the restroom. Amana had her pink backpack on as she followed the older girl. Long ponytails hung over her shoulders, and feathering wisps crossed her sweet forehead. The two mini teddy bears hanging from her backpack zipper swung as she walked, her sticker-plastered shoes tapping lightly on the hard floor.

The ladies’ room door swung shut behind them, and Gabriel turned back to the restroom doorway in front of him. If only he had known, as he walked casually up to the large mirrors to poke Arius in the ribs—if only he had stopped to think, consider, remember the signs, realize the irreversible damage that would take place in the next few hours. Realize that this was the last he would have of this.

Standing there in that restroom with Arius, Gabriel Aiersah was having a last taste of the comfort provided by the fragile, precious web of little white lies that made up his entire world.