“You readyto tackle that tree then?” I asked, hoping we could reminisce together.
His eyes shimmering, he nodded. Without saying a word, he stood from the table and walked into the living room. By the time I’d managed to choke down my emotions, he was already opening the box and pulling a few ornaments from the tree.
You can do this,I said to myself.
But saying the words didn’t mean I had to believethem. Because as we took down the tree, knowing our mom was the last person to touch everything, we both broke down like small children, and being able to dothis,get on in life without them, was going to be the greatest challenge we would ever face.
“I’m sick of looking at boxes.” Dropping the last of them into our new apartment, I was thankful that our move wasjust about over.
“Don’t forget you have to unpack them all, dipshit.” Slapping me on the back, Gavin walked past me and let out a loud whistle. “And by the looks of it, you’ll be unpacking for days and days.”
He was lying. There wasn’t that much to unpack, sadly. We never had much to begin with, and since we donated most of Mom and Dad’s things, our possessions had literally been cut in half.“I’ll have it all done before Ben gets home from work tonight,” I promised, more to myself than to Gavin. “He’s been through enough, and I don’t want him to deal with any of this.”
“Then let’s get to work,” Gavin coached, grabbing a box before walking into the kitchen.
We worked quietly for a while, and before I knew it, the kitchen was clean and everything was in its place. It wasn’t all thatbig. Nothing in the apartment was. Hell, my bedroom was barely larger than a walk-in closet. Not wanting to deal with his protests, I moved the few boxes Ben had into the larger room. It wasn’t a five-star suite or anything like that, but it gave him a little more space.
“Where do you want this one? It’s not marked,” Gavin asked as he began to unfold the top of the box.
I knew exactly what wasin it. And I didn’t need Gavin going through it. More abruptly than I needed to, I stole the box away from him. Looking down at Mom’s handwriting, my stomach twisted in a knot. It was stupid to hold on to it all, but there was no way I could throw away the stupid stuff she’d kept over the years. Old report cards, cheesy soccer trophies, goofy family snapshots that never made it to a frame. ButI knew, if she couldn’t get rid of it, then neither could I. After tucking it carefully into my room, I walked back out into the living room where Gavin was standing there, dumbstruck by the exchange.
“Okay,” he quipped before flopping onto the couch. “Looks like we’re just about done,” he announced. Scanning the room, I was surprised we only had a handful of boxes left, and most of them didn’treally need to be unpacked yet. Nonsense, like family pictures and decorations, memories of which I didn’t need to be reminded yet could stay in the boxes for a little while longer.
“So you’re still dead set on leaving school. You know you only have the semester left.” He tried to keep his voice cool and unaffected, but I knew my withdrawal from school pissed him the fuck off.
“What else amI supposed to do? My parents died. I have to take care of all this shit,” I cursed, throwing my arms up. “I don’t even have a job yet, so how am I supposed to finish the last of my classes and do an unpaid internship and take care of Ben and pay for the apartment and pay for two funerals?” I paused, staring Gavin down. Based on the look on his face, he hadn’t expected the rant I’d just given him.But once the floodgates were opened, I was in no mood to shut them off. “Luckily for me,” I began, sarcasm flowing from my mouth as easily as the air leaving my lungs. “The funeral place was nice enough to give me a discount. Must have been a two for one sale they had going on. And they were even nice enough to set up a monthly payment plan. Did you know that?”
“Dude, look—”
“Don’tDudeme,”I yelled. Shooting up from the couch, I had the strongest urge to punch the wall. But I knew I’d have to fix it. Besides, my hand was still bruised from the night they died when I punched a window in on some car in the parking lot. I knew I’d have to fix that, too—my hand that is. That was my role now. I was the fixer. At twenty-three fucking years old, I had to put everything I wanted on hold tofix everything. “Just don’t.” I stopped him from saying anything else. “Nothing you can say is going to make it better. School isn’t important right now. All that matters is that I can get a job and get back on my feet. So unless the next few words out of your mouth have anything to do with getting money in my pocket, just shut the fuck up.”
Shocked, he sat there, letting my outrage soak in.He’d always been my best friend, but in the last few years, he’d been the alpha in our pair. Letting him take advantage of me and act like an ass most of the time wasn’t going to happen anymore. No matter my attraction to him—something he still didn’t know about—I was done with his know-it-all attitude.
“I think you need a little bit of space,” he said, keeping his voice quiet. “I’ll check inwith you in a few days.”
Letting him see himself out, I waited for the sound of the door shutting behind him before I let out a stream of curses. A ball of disgust settled in my chest.How did I ever crush on him?A humorless chuckle fell from my mouth at that thought. Obviously, we needed a little space from each other. And I needed a little space from the pit of anger threatening to consumeme.
Missing my parents had transformed into some misaligned hatred. I hated them for dying—as if it was their fault. I hated having to start over, to give up my future, to be left alone to figure out how the hell I was supposed to teach my brother how to become a man. That’s when the fit of laughter overtook my outburst of rage.
Slumping into a defeated and exhausted heap of skin and bones,I knew I was facing an impossible task.
How could I inspire him to be a man when I couldn’t even face the person I was?
