“I have a girlfriend,” he offered. “I mean, I’ve had a few of them, but I have one right now. Nita. She’s a teacher. She’s nice.”
“That’s great, Zeke.”
“Yeah,” he said.
I was just about to ask him about work when he cut in.
“I do live here with my mom and dad,” he said. “I mean, I haven’t always. I’ve lived in some other places, too. I went to art school. I moved around a little. But . . . I don’t know. I had some problems. I guess I still have them.”
“It’s okay, Zeke,” I said. He looked so embarrassed, and it hurt me that he would think I’d judge him.
“I got diagnosed as bipolar, but that took a while. At first, they thought it might be something else. It took a long time to get it all figured out. Hospitals? The medication, you know? A lot of different ones because some of them were bad. And I’d go somewhere and get settled but then something would happen or I wouldn’t feel right, and I’d come back here. So I just stay here now. It’s good for me. All my doctors are here. It’s familiar to me.”
“That’s good,” I offered. “And your mom and dad are . . . like . . . they’re still together?”
He laughed, which made me so happy. “Yeah, they are. It’s weird, but when we came back to Memphis, my dad kind of realized he had been awful to us. He felt so bad. And he shaped up. He helped take care of me. And they really do love each other, I think. I’m around them a lot, so I think I’d know. It’s better than . . . well, better than before.”
“What do you do? Or, like, do you work? Or, like . . .”
“I do art stuff,” he said. “I ink for different comic book companies.”
“Wait, what?” I said. “Oh, that’s really cool, Zeke.”
“I ink a lot for Marvel. I used to ink for DC. I’m not, like, quite what they would want for art, but mostly I realized that I’m really good with lines, you know? I’m good at going over someone’s work and making it better. And it’s good for me, to kind of have something already there for me to work with so I don’t get too carried away.”
“I didn’t see your work online,” I said. I wanted to search right now on my phone, but I kept staring at him, trying so hard to reconcile the Zeke I remembered with the person in front of me. The more I heard his voice, the easier it was.
“I go by my initials,” he said. “Like a tag? It’s BEB. But, like, even then you aren’t going to see much of me online. Like, inking is not super sexy. It’s not something people write about.” He paused for a few seconds, looking right at me. “But I am good at it. I know that.”
“I bet,” I said, thinking, of course, of course, of the poster, those lines.
I’d almost forgotten why I’d come; I was so struck by being this near to him, how weird time felt to me in this moment. And I knew that in some way, what I was going to say would ruin it.
“Zeke, it’s just—”
“I want to say that I’m sorry,” Zeke suddenly said, his voice rising just a bit, cracking. He kept interrupting me just as I was going to say the thing I needed to say, like he was afraid of what it would be. “I’m really sorry, Frankie.”
“What?” I replied.
“That I hurt you,” he said. “More than once, you know? I did that awful thing to you in the car, after my dad, when you were trying to help me. I messed up so bad. I’m sorry that I hurt you on the porch, and even worse, that I didn’t help you and that I left and that I never talked to you again. Things were just really bad for me. And then time passed, you know? It kept going and going, and I kept trying to get away from that summer, because it had ruined my life a little, and there was just no way for me to get back to you or apologize. And it’s just been this guilt, always, and it’s never left. And I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I didn’t want to admit how badly I had needed him to say all this. I needed him to say that he’d hurt me, had done something pretty bad, and then I could say that I’d survived it. I thought about reaching for him, but of course I didn’t. “Zeke, you didn’t hurt me. Or, like, yeah, my arm, whatever, but I’m okay.”
“Are you?” he asked, and I could see a little panic move across his features. “Like, you’re here, right? Something must be wrong.”
“Not . . . wrong, exactly. It’s just . . . Zeke, the thing is, a reporter found out that it was me. She knows I made the poster—”