His features break, and his eyes glass as he shakes his head. “Every day I think,that could be me.I spent twenty-two fucking years with my head up my ass,” he says. “I didn’t give a shit about my fucking half-brother who Iknewwas living with our father—ourfather…” He can’t say the rest out loud.
Rose stares at Ryke with the most empathy I’ve seen her convey, her face pained like his. My stomach is in knots, and I don’t know how to untighten it.
Production never airs these intimate, painful details—the parts that shape us into the people we are. I think we all hide them too often. Sometimes from each other.
Lo has been verbally abused by their father all his life, and Ryke escaped it.
That’s the truth.
It’s what we all know.
If production truly wanted to showallof Ryke Meadows, they’d tell the viewers that he spent his last year in college helping his half-brother get sober. That he stopped hanging out with college buddies, going to parties for athletes, just to make sure that Loren didn’t turn out like their alcoholic father, to guide him towards a better road.
I admire Ryke for many reasons. But I think this is the greatest one: Loren Hale is the bastard child that destroyed Ryke’s family. Their father got another woman pregnant, conceiving Lo. And Ryke subsequently lived with his single mother after the divorce. Yet, Ryke stands here today, wanting only to protect a guy who was the catalyst for his broken life.
But Ryke doesn’t even understand the impact he’s had on Lo’s life. He really can’t see all the good he’s done. Because he’s not finished blaming himself for being so selfish those first twenty-two years, for ignoring Lo because he was attached to their father by blood and proximity.
He needs to forgive himself. I’m not sure how long that’ll take, if it will ever come to pass. We just have to wait and see.
Ryke rubs his reddened eyes. He looks like he needs to scream. Or maybe kick something. “I don’t know what to fucking do.”
“Ryke,” I say calmly, filling my voice with the most reassurance it can handle. “If he’s relapsing, you’re not alone in this. We’re going to help you take care of him.”
Ryke nods to himself, trying to believe this.
I want to add,You didn’t fail your brother.But it sounds trite and cliché. But it’s also true.
“That’s not all,” Rose says, her voice slightly shaking.
Fuck.
She heads over to the mattress and picks up Savannah’s camera.
It’s Lily.
Whatever’s on there—it has to do with her sister.
We lock eyes for a second before she adjusts the screen, the volume and the playback. Sometimes I feel as though Lily and Lo are the heart of us all. When they go down, a force inside of us slowly decides to break. It’s a painful reminder that we’re all human; we all have foibles and no matter howhard we think we’re keeping ourselves together—it’s other people that can hurt us the most.
Love is an asshole. Or a bitch. I wonder how long we’ve been fighting each other.
I watch the screen as Rose hits the “play” button.
Lily and Lo are at a bookstore—a rarity for them. Usually they’re holed up in their rooms or they hide out at Loren’s office where he’s trying to build a publishing company for comic books and graphic novels.
I watch as Lily pulls Lo into thepublicbathroom.
Shit.
They have rules based on Lily’s recovery plan. No public sex is one of the big ones. Savannah films from outside the door, but the audio picks up their voices from the microphones they wear underneath their clothes.
“Everyone is staring,” Lily whispers.
“You’re a sex addict and I’m an alcoholic,” he reminds her, “and the whole world fucking knows it. We have to get used to people staring, love.”
There’s a long moment of silence before Lily asks, “Can I give you a blow job?”
I glance up at Rose who still holds the camera. Her yellow-green eyes pierce me with an internal rage. I wrap an arm around her shoulder, so rigid she might as well be a marble statue.
