THE TRIP BACK home did not go by as fast as Wyatt would've liked and he briefly wondered why things always dragged out when you did not want them to before completely abandoning this train of thought when unwanted images of Rashad's living room and how he'd left it flashed across his mind. He shuddered, earning more than one curious stare from the people around him.

His bandages had turned looser than they were when Rashad wrapped them around his knuckles and in the time it took to trek from his house to Grand Central it'd gone from white to red.

The old woman he'd vacated his seat for began to hack wet, loud coughs which attracted the occasionally faint look of concern from a passenger whose eyes would promptly slide back to whatever it was that they were doing on their cellphones.

New Yorkers and their preoccupation with minding one's own business never ceased to amaze Wyatt, but to be fair he was more concerned with hoping her cough did not have him catch something than anything else, until she sneezed on him, effectively putting to rest all thoughts of Rashad and psychotic breakdowns.

"Sorry dear," she muttered, jowls shaking as she pulled out a bottle of hand sanitizer from her ancient handbag. She spritzed it on a handkerchief and cleaned the affected part of his trousers. "There you go. Good as new."

Wyatt, unmoving, maintained his cool even as a ball of bile rose up his throat. He imagined he could feel the germs go through the fabric of his trousers to permeate his skin, and fought past a violent shiver.

Letting go of the handrail he moved to another part of the train, flying out as soon as he got to his stop.

The suburb he lived in wasn't a twenty minute walk away and so he decided to trek, bumping into everything from couples walking hand-in-hand to a lone saxophonist playing the blues, face scrunched up in effort, neck-veins visible as he coaxed music out of his saxophone. Wyatt dug into his pocket and pulled out a tenner, which he deposited into the instrument case before heading on his merry way.

The city was alive, and yet as he walked Rashad's words shadowed him.

He hadn't anticipated his anger becoming a living thing and that scared him, as in retrospect it shouldn't have been his business since they were no longer together. But barely three weeks after their breakup?

The thought snuck into his mind unbidden, that he was justified in his feeling of betrayal, and he shrugged it off before pulling out his cell phone to text Rashad.

WYATT: hey i'm rly sry abt 2nite

He paused then added.

WYATT: i hope ur trip goes ok. text me when u get there.

Without letting himself overthink things he hit the send button and slid his device back into his pocket.

His knuckles stung when they grazed the hemline, then it hit him that perhaps he shouldn't have sent the text in the first place.

"Fuck," he murmured.

As he made a turn into the gravel-lined pathway of the driveway and past the freshly mowed lawn, Wyatt heard the sound of the television turned on as loud as it could get which could only mean his father was at home. Their neighborhood was a relatively quiet one and several times in the past there had been noise complaints.

Sighing, he shrugged off his bag and rummaged through it for keys which he used to unlock the front door.

Wyatt loosened his tie, ignoring the prone form that sat in the living room as he headed to the kitchen, where he assumed the aroma of lasagna originated from―however, he was greeted by the sight of empty tinfoil plates and three empty cans of beer.

"What the hell?" he murmured.

He ransacked the fridge, and then the oven but when eventually he came up with nothing he was faced with the cold hard fact that his portion had been devoured, or he had been overlooked during the ordering process, which would've held a level of plausibility if the house wasn't made up of just two people.

A persisting sense of how out of place he was in every area of his life niggled at the back of his mind, but was quickly drowned out by the loud protests of his stomach, and Wyatt strode to the parlor where he found his father cozied up, with one small slice of lasagna which he nursed with a can of beer as he channel surfed. Their eyes met, and Regan changed the channel.

Before he'd become such a wreck people would sometimes ask if he was Wyatt's older brother, and save the few telltale signs of age, their hair, and other slight variations in each other's features the resemblance was uncanny.

"Did you leave some lasagna for me?"

His father dropped the remote. "I thought you'd eat outside."

Wyatt let himself count to ten, and then added another ten for good measure.

"What is wrong with you?" he asked.

"I was hungry," Regan defended weakly, placing the leftover plate on the coffee table. "It was really good lasagna, son."

"I know it's good, just like I know you know that I never eat at school. I'm starving."

Regan eyed him carefully and from the glassiness in his gaze Wyatt could tell that he was tipsy.

"We'll just order more takeout, I guess," he said after a long moment.

Wyatt made to do just that, quietly head upstairs and order something from the Chinese restaurant not too far away from his neighborhood but he stopped in his tracks. Minutes ago he felt emptied out, but now a reservoir of venom had revealed itself to him, and this time his anger came as a variation of its predecessor, fueled by secondhand embarrassment and shame.

"Does it ever occur to you how much of a failure you are?"

He'd spoken with his back turned, and hunger momentarily forgotten, he turned to watch as his words sank into his father, who at first gazed blankly at him before finally taking effect.

"You've failed as a husband," he began to count off his fingers, "a father, a friend―I mean, look at you, forty-six and friendless. You never even go out. Nobody wants to be with you. Hell, you even failed at music, the one thing you were supposed to be good at."

The shock on his father's face alleviated eased off some invisible weight in his chest. He could breathe easier now.

Regan made to stand up but drunkenly staggered before plopping back down into the couch. The accusation in his eyes would've burned like coals if Wyatt cared.

"How dare you?" he slurred instead. "After everything I've sacrificed for you."

"Sacrificed? You sacrificed for me? The guilt trip card has never even existed with you so stop before this gets embarrassing for the both of us."

After a while, Regan asked: "Where is this coming from?"

Wyatt, just warming up, ignored the question completely.

"You're a scared old man who realized pretty early that he wasn't special and now you're a music teacher riding on your glory days. You're pathetic. I look at you and find a mirror of all the things I never want to be. You couldn't even keep your wife. The Mozart of violin my ass, more like the world's biggest scam."

With every word he spoke the weight eased, his anger focused on something external meant it could not fester in him and so he continued his berating and didn't realize he'd gone too far until his father grabbed the front of his shirt pushing him to the wall, one hand raised to hit him.

"Yes," Wyatt said, and it shocked him, the sincerity with which he said those words. "Yes, hit me you fucking loser."

Only the sounds from the TV could be heard as their breaths came out loudly in the tension-filled room. For a split second Wyatt was sure his father would hit him, and he let out a sigh that was equal parts relief and disappointment when Regan let him go.

"I forgive you," was all he said. "I know there's stuff you're going through that you won't talk to me about."

Wyatt scoffed. "I don't want your forgiveness."

His father continued on as if he hadn't said anything at all.

"When you're angry you lash out. You try to punish us. But actions have consequences and so you're grounded for two weeks, starting tomorrow."

The finality in his tone made Wyatt remember that while Regan Carter played the piano and drank pinot, his formative years had been spent in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Queens; and that if it came down to fighting he could pack a mean punch.

"Grounding me? Please, only real fathers can ground."

"Too bad you're stuck with me."

"Well, kill yourself and I won't have to be," Wyatt surmised, and not waiting to catch his father's reaction he turned and made a beeline for his room, slamming the door behind him so hard the frames on the walls rattled.

He took deep breaths to calm himself down, counting to ten, and then to thirty, and then to fifty, but none of it worked. Not even his room which he'd styled to remain as Zen as possible―baby blue walls, Beyoncé posters (because Queen Bey was the very definition of Zen, obvi) etc. was enough to pacify him. At that exact moment he remembered that he would have to launder his clothes and take a shower before heading to bed, per the lady in the subway.

Wyatt pulled out his phone and his heart skipped when he found a message from Rashad.

RASHAD: Yeah, no problem.

A moment passed and then he received another text.

RASHAD: Carter...

He waited, but nothing followed and so he shot off a single question mark before shedding off his uniform, which he dumped in the washing machine.  He turned the water pressure up as high as he could take it and scrubbed his entire body so that by the time he came out he was red and pruned.

Wyatt figured that he'd let Rashad stew for a bit before he responded, and he found that the best way to do that was if he wasn't anywhere near his phone when a reply came in. Shortly after, he heard a chime and smiled coyly even as there was no one to see him.

Like a spider and its web, Wyatt thought to himself as he leisurely tapped on the notification.

RASHAD: Please don't text me anymore.

He read the text once, and then twice, before flinging his phone away so hard its screen cracked and went dead, taking with it his otherwise good mood.