I need to apologize. No way around it. He crossed lines with me, sure. But what I did back there was… not okay.
I’ll talk to him when I get back. After fall break.
Definitely before I hand him the bill for the tires. Because holy hell—almost five hundred dollars when you add the extra fees they charge for someone to come out and change two tires in a parking lot, plus the cost of two brand new tires to replace the ones that were both definitely slashed.
I should have just filed a report to get my revenge, not… whatever I just did.
Should I apologize before or after demanding compensation?
Probably before. Definitely before. Maybe. I don’t know.
What if he won't talk to me about it? What if I actually made the whole thing worse and he punishes me for showing his weakness to that extent, because I’m sure that’s how he sees it.
I really don’t know what I think of it all, other than I’m twisted up about it.
By the time I roll into my mom’s driveway, it’s dark and quiet. The wind swishes leaves all over the un-raked yard and rattles the fence someone left open. The house sits quiet and a littlelopsided in the glow of the porch light, exactly the same and somehow worse than I left it.
The place needs help. A lot of it. The siding I patched over the summer is peeling again. The porch railing’s loose. A few shingles are missing from the roofline.
I make a list in my head, even though I don’t have the time, money, or bandwidth to actually accomplish half of it this weekend. Especially now that I’m a day late and five hundred dollars short.
Inside, the house smells like the lemon cleaner Mom uses at work and the vanilla plug-ins she uses to cover the musty smell of old carpet. The house is falling apart, but Mom does her best with what she has, and it’s always clean and homey inside.
The kitchen shows evidence of a meal cooked that no one was around to enjoy. There’s a plate wrapped in foil waiting in the fridge with a note stuck to the top that Mom got tired and will see me in the morning. My chest tightens.
I shove the plate in the microwave thankfully, not having eaten since breakfast this morning. I’d originally planned to grab something on the road, but by the time I left campus, I was late, several hundred dollars poorer, and too jittery about what I’d done to eat anything.
I shovel Mom’s tuna noodle casserole in my mouth, listening to the silence settle around me. Mom is sleeping. Davis probably is too. As tired as I am, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get to sleep anytime soon. I can’t get my brain to stop working overtime. And I want to see Davis with my own two eyes.
I clean up my plate and wash the few dishes in the sink while I’m at it before padding quietly down the hall. I pause when I get to Davis’ door, thinking I heard something.
I knock softly and a muffled sound answers me. I push the door open a sliver and peek inside, seeing Davis awake. Sort of. He looks like he might be only half conscious, or like he’s close to falling asleep. He’s sweaty and his eyes are sunken in. He’s lost weight since I last saw him, and he didn’t have much to lose as it was.
He’s lying on his side, controller in hand, TV glow flickering across a face that looks years older than me instead of a mere eighteen months.
“Hey,” he rasps, eyes barely tracking me.
“Hey.” I toe off my shoes and ease myself onto the bed beside him. The mattress dips under my weight. He hands me the second controller without looking away from the screen.
We play silently. It feels like being twelve again. Except this time, neither of us is really putting forth any effort to win or taunting the other.
After a long while, he mumbles, “How’s school? That fancy place treating you alright?”
“Good,” I say automatically. Then, quieter, “Mostly.”
His eyes flick towards me, dull and unfocused, but still edged with the concern of a caring older sibling. If nothing else, at least I can say I saw proof that my brother is still in there somewhere. “Mostly?”
I let out a breath that sinks deep in my chest. “Yeah. Mostly.”
Davis raises an eyebrow and gives me a look that reminds me of our dad. It’s heavy-lidded and exhausted but still present enough to be big-brotherly. “What happened?”
I scrub a hand over my face. I really, really shouldn’t say this out loud. Not to him. Not toanyone. But I’m tired and confused and on edge in a way that weeks of torment, guilt, two slashed tires, and whatever the hell happened in that stairwell all mix into one bigfuck it.
“I, uh… might’ve accidentally sexually assaulted my team captain who hates me.”
Davis’ eyes sharpen for the first time all night. “I’m sorry—what?”
“Not like that,” I hiss. Then wince. “Okay. Kind of like that. But not… likethat.”
