Title: Tastes of Home

Writer: Azure K Mello

Part:4

Other notes in prior parts.

"Sorry I'm late." Ephram smiled weakly as he placed his bag on the floor next to the couch. "I didn't remember how long it took to walk back from school."

"It's fine. You called." Madison tucked her hair behind her ear. "So your friend didn't come with you?"

"I sent Jackson back to New York."

"It's a twenty-seven hour drive! Didn't she just arrive?" she used the pronoun because she didn't want him to think that she and Delia had been talking.

"I totally forgot. . . I go crazy when Jack's around. Damn it!"

"Maybe she'll get out of town and crash in a motel."

"Yeah. This week coming up is fall break at school so Jack must have taken today off and hoped to spend the weekend and the rest of the week here."

She nodded, "Do you want dinner? I'll make you a plate?"

"I'm really not hungry. Thank you for cooking extra and I'm sorry it didn't work out," he said as he folded into himself on the sofa.

"It's fine," Madison thought before sitting down. "I know we've gotten off to a really bad start. And what I'm about to say is going to sound extremely patronizing because I can't think of better words to say it in. I hope you take them for their meaning and not their sound. But if you are offended you should feel free to send me away. She's not worth this."

"Who?"

"Jackson, anyone who hurts you this badly isn't worth it."

"Jackson is the only person who *is* worth it. Always. There will never be a time when I won't get upset after see Jack, today made me realize that. . . That wasn't patronizing."

"No, but this is: this all seems like the end of the world right now but given time it won't burn anymore. And I don't mean that your feelings aren't real or that you're in anyway hysterical, I'm just saying that even this will heal."

"Wow, that is patronizing."

"Sorry."

"Hey, I heard the disclaimer and I listened anyway. So when does the healing begin, Mr. Wizard?"

"I don't know. Here's an exercise. Name five things you actually like about her. Because often one works the object of obsession into mythological proportions simply to comfort themselves. So be honest, what made her something to hold on to?"

"Jackson was funny as all hell."

"Don't be so superficial." She said with a gentle laugh.

"You're getting steadily more annoying as this conversation goes on."

"We can stop if you want." Madison worried that she had stepped over a boundary.

"It's kind of nice to talk to someone about any of this."

"You don't talk to your dad," Madison nodded to show she understood.

"I can't." Ephram considered his next words carefully. He had been playing the pronoun game and hadn't once corrected Madison when she said "she". And he sat trying to figure out a way to explain without letting the cat out the bag. "Dad likes to be an ostrich with his head in the sand when it comes to my personal life."

"What do you mean? He doesn't want to know?"

"He chooses not to know." He saw from her face that Madison was still confused. "Last year they wanted dad to teach sex ed. He then accosted me in the kitchen to ask if I was a virgin. I told him that if he didn't know then he would never know. It wasn't mean spirited either. He was in the house the night I first slept with someone. And the only thing that would have made him not know was his willingness to not know. And that's how he is with everything."

Madison smiled sadly, "I'm here whenever you want to talk. I like you, Ephram. Now back to the important issue. Five non-shallow things."

"Jackson was my best friend when I didn't deserve any. I was an extremely dislikeable person. . . I wasn't a person: I was a walking cliché of a troubled teen. I was popular and all that mattered was being drunk and screwing around with cheerleaders. I didn't even like myself. I got A's in all my classes even though I was stoned all the time. I wasn't a person, just a shell. I had no real friends. I was the most popular person in school and was always surrounded by a group but none of them gave a damn about me. So one night I'm making a spectacular ass out of myself at this party and Jackson grabbed me and pulled me outside and asked why I did all the stupid things I did. And I told Jack that there was no reason but then there was no reason for anything I did and what else could I do with my life. And he kissed me. And he told me that there was a lot to do with my life if I got over being the great Ephram Brown. I was the flagship of the popular clique and it was so wrong. He saw that I could be something. *He* made me something. When I was with Jackson I was happy and I liked who I was. And you say that my liking his sense of humor is shallow, but it wasn't. I never really laughed until he made me. Nothing seemed funny until he was the one saying it. . . Delia swearing always rocked my boat. But he made things ok." He realized suddenly that he had stopped playing the pronoun game while so wrapped in his own thoughts and he looked up. Though he expected to see disgust or disappointment in her face Madison was still just smiling sadly. As he scrubbed at tears with the back of his hand he spoke again, "So does that count as two?"

"I think you've done enough: you found a flaw in my great exercise as he *is* apparently good. Why did you break up?" she looked genuinely confused.

"Well, ok, this goes no further than us? Delia loves him and I didn't exactly tell her what happened because I didn't see a reason to tell her when it would just make her sad. So don't tell her?"

"Delia? From how she reacted when I told her that he had said hello I don't think she'd care."

"What? She worshiped him."

"She worshiped her happy brother and the person who made that happen."

"But she practically mourned when we finally left New York!"

"Again, she was mourning for her happy brother and not talking about the person she perceived as having brought about the brooding."

"Oh."

"So tell me this top secret," she said with a gentle prod to his shoulder.

"Mom died, I was miserable and he dumped me because he was afraid of making things worse."

"Idiot."

"Yeah, he just brushed me off. Like it was some hookup over a weekend and not a year and a half of my life."

"God, Ephram."

"He didn't mean to hurt me, he was trying to protect me he was just. . . an idiot. And then three months later we moved here. And I wrote. . . repeatedly, trying to just be his friend and not lose him completely. But he never wrote back. I guess it was weird and he didn't know what to say."

"And what did he say tonight." She sat, baited breath, waiting for his answer, afraid he would cry.

Softly Ephram laughed, "He came to grovel and beg. Apparently he's seen the error of his ways and pined just as much as me and doesn't want it to be so anymore. He wanted me to give him another chance."

"And?"

"And he's on his way back to New York because I'm a coward."

"Why do you say that?"

"I'm too much of a coward to put aside the past and not worry about the next time Mr. Fairweather lives up to his name. I don't know. . . burn a boy once, shame on you. Burn him twice, assume he's a masochist. He said that I was afraid and I started shouting that he was self-righteous. But he's right I'm a coward. If I were brave I would be with him right now instead of coming out to my sister's babysitter! And tonight he called me the great Ephram Brown which was always a joke between us when we were out in public he would say it about the stupid popular persona, people thought he was stalking me. But tonight when he said it he meant it. I don't know what I'm doing!"

"It's safer to live in a box. It's also a waste of life."

"So what should I do?"

"That's up to you. Meanwhile I have to go pick-up Delia who's at Nina's with Sam. Are you ok?"

"I'm fine." He shrugged, "I need to practice anyway." He nodded to the piano.

She ruffled his hair as she stood and he just rolled his eyes. And as he stood to sit at the piano the phone started to ring, "Do I get any breaks tonight?"