I don’t like that I’ve gone silent. I want to talk to Lucas. But everything is locked inside me because I don’t know what to do with it.
I can hear quiet voices and smell pizza before we walk into the kitchen. Everyone goes silent when Lucas and I appear. Sasha is at the island by one of the open pizza boxes picking olives off the slices of pizza on her plate. Vitali is looking through the spice cupboard for something. Quinn is at the table.
Lucas and I have halted in the doorway. I have an unexpected and unpleasant sense of being … outside, like I’m completely disconnected from the three of them. It’s how I felt months ago when Lucas and I first came here. It didn’t bother me then. If anything, I enforced it, so it’s a surprise to find that it bothers me now.
Then Lucas squeezes my hand and tugs me forward. I walk with him to the island. He leaves me there with Sasha while he goes to get plates for us. On his way, he stops at the spice cupboard, reaches in, and hands a jar of what looks like red pepper flakes to Vitali.
“Ah,” Vitali says. “Thank you. Quinn was being an asshole and wouldn’t help me.”
Quinn huffs. “I told you which cupboard. I don’t know why you have so much trouble reading labels.”
Sasha says, “I, for one, don’t think you deserved extra help after ordering my pizza with olives on it.”
Vitali groans, “I forgot, okay? Good god, Sasha, I already told you I was sorry.”
“Actually, you said,oops, but okay,” Sasha replies as she continues plucking the olives off her slices, leaving them in a little pile on the open lid of the box.
Lucas returns to me and hands me a plate. When I take it, his hand brushes my lower back.
God, he’s so fucking sweet.
I feel myself suddenly choking up. It’s weird and sort of makes me panic. I just feel so inside and outside and upside down and I don’t fucking know what to do.
But I swallow it down and put a piece of pizza on my plate and walk to the table with Lucas. I sit in my usual spot and Lucas sits in his, kitty corner to me. It puts him next to Quinn.
Quinn’s eyes flick up to me. “You took some hits. You okay?”
I nod. I’m sore, but sore doesn’t mean anything to me.
It would be a different story, though, if Vitali hadn’t insisted on that bulletproof vest. That bullet probably would have killed me. And then I wouldn’t have been around to protect Lucas.
He said to me, not long ago, that I couldn’t protect him with my absence. Those words have weighed on me, and they weigh even heavier now.
I have to figure out how to be here.
I have to figure out … a lot of things.
Lucas presses the side of his foot against mine and starts eating his pizza. Vitali comes to the table with his plate and starts shaking red pepper flakes onto his pizza.
Lucas looks to my brother and asks, “Is everything okay?”
Vitali knows what Lucas means. The mess of last night, both here and at the gym. He says, “We’ve got it. Quinn and I will head back over there after we eat. There’s nothing you need to worry about.”
Lucas breathes a sigh of relief. “Okay. Good. Thanks, Vitali.”
It catches Vitali off guard. He wasn’t looking for thanks. He just takes care of shit. But he smiles slightly at Lucas’s words and lifts his pizza slice, folding it in half.
Sasha finally comes to the table with her plate. She says to Quinn, “I’m surprised you allowed junky pizza like this into the house.”
“Yeah, well. I’m tired,” he replies. “Enjoy it while you can.”
Quinn does look tired. So does Vitali. Sasha too. They took care of things last night, when I couldn’t.
“There’s nothing wrong with liking a little junk food,” Sasha replies. “Today calls for it.”
Lucas leans near to me and whispers, “Do you want something else?”
I shake my head and manage to say, “No. Thanks.”
