I waited patiently for a response but didn’t see any. I tried again a few minutes later, but still nothing. I took a shower, and checked my phone again after I got dressed. Oddly, there was still no response, so I tried again.
ME: Hooligans! What’s going on?
I ran downstairs and made myself a sandwich and grabbed a soda to take up to my room.
Stillno response. That was very unlike the boys. Usually one or both of them would respond immediately to a text, regardless of the time of day. I lay back on my bed and sent another text. If they didn’t respond this time, I was going in search of them.
ME: Seriously guys? Are you okay?
When I finally saw the little dots indicating someone was typing a response, I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding. My little brothers meant the world to me, and I wanted to make sure everything was going well.
SONNY&HICKS: We are seriously slammed, dude! I mean, lines around the block crazy busy! Bigger than yesterday!
ME: I take it Cameron’s a hit, then?
HICKS&SONNY: Big time!
ME: So what’s he like?
SONNY&HICKS: …Completely unlike what we expected.
ME: Really?
SONNY&HICKS: Yep. And he’s got a certain older brother of ours wrapped around his little finger… He’s acting like he’s his personal bodyguard or something!
Well, that piqued my interest! I sat up abruptly from my bed. When Lee came back from Afghanistan, he had been a total wreck. We’d been more worried about his emotional wounds than the physical ones, in truth. Lee was one of the best people I knew, and the loss of Mack had hit him hard. I still didn’t think Lee knew that the whole fam knew about the night he tried to kill himself.
The twins had found him passed out in his room with an empty bottle of painkillers and a fifth of Scotch by the bed. They had rushed him to the hospital where he’d had the oh-so-pleasant experience of getting his stomach pumped full of activated charcoal… Served his dumb ass right.
The twins didn’t think it had been a deliberate attempt to kill himself, but no one but Lee could answer that for sure.
To say that he hadn’t been emotionally stable for a while was an understatement. He hadn’t expressed any interest in anyone, really, since Mack had died, so the fact that he was being all protective of our unreliable visitor was a hopeful sign.
ME: I’d pay good money to see that, but I have to finish this paper for Dr. Tate before D&D tonight.
Within a minute, my phone beeped with an incoming picture. It was a photo of the inside of the twins’ store, Twin Peeks. In it, I could see Lee standing outside a small alcove that the twins were using for gaming events. A table was set up and a young man with curly black hair was seated behind the table, his head down as he signed something. Lee was standing with his arms crossed over his impressive chest, his muscles standing out under his Twin Peeks t-shirt. He was glaring at something just outside the frame. He looked like he was just barely restraining himself from taking someone’s head off.
ME: OMG! That is priceless! What does Cameron think?
Another pic popped up momentarily. It was the same shot, but it looked like Lee was moving off screen. His body was just a blur, but Cameron was in the background looking up from the table, a blush staining his pale cheeks and a sweet smile on his face as he looked at Lee.
ME: Fuck! They’ve got it bad!
SONNY&HICKS: Looks like. Gotta run! See you tonight?
ME: Wouldn’t miss it! Can’t wait to hear how everything went!
I sighed as I put my phone down. Something about those two photos just made me fucking delighted. I loved my brother and he deserved to be happy. I just hoped this Cameron guy felt the same. I got off the bed and settled in at my desk, powering up my laptop. I had been debating exactly what I should do with my afternoon of relative freedom and decided I really should work on my paper for Dr. Tate’s class. I could figure out the rest of my day from there. I turned on some music and stared at the blank screen.
Dr. Tate had said to write about what I enjoyed about math. How did you put into words how formulas and numbers brought order to chaos? That they were reliable, dependable, unchanging. Two plus twoalwaysequaled four, no matter who was solving the problem. There were no grey areas, no ambiguity. It was, literally, black and white.
I began typing, trying to put my feelings into words. A little while later I heard a knock on my bedroom door and heard Bishop call my name. I looked up as the door opened inward. My brother stuck his head in the door but held his hand over his eyes.
“You aren’t naked, are you?” He called out, his nose scrunched up in disdain.
“Not hardly,” I laughed. He cautiously peered from between his fingers before dropping his hand.
“Oh good! Brain bleach is expensive!” he teased.
