He looks down. “Stella…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I stop a few feet from him, my emotions vulnerable and raw. “How could you not? You hate me that much?”
Costa just shakes his head. “I don’t hate you. Are you crazy? I didn’t tell you because…look at you. Look at what this has done. I didn’t want you to know. What was the point?”
I wipe my eyes and shoot him a look of disbelief. “The point? So that I could have understood that my sister is not a drug addict who despises me, that my father had a reason for disappearing and leaving me alone with a mother who did nothing but try to destroy me. And I would have understood why you tripped me and turned me into a death tripper. It’s payback for what my father did to you.”
“It was a stupid reactive thing to do.”
“What should my father have done? Let you and Amy die?”
Costa’s eyes flash with anger. “Yes. Exactly. Then, I wouldn’t be living in this hell.”
Now, I go to him. “Costa…” He spins his stool to me, and I put my hands on his face. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. You know it. I hate this life, this world, yet I passed it on to you and Sam.” His face is hard, bitter. “If I could die for good, I’d do it this minute.”
“You didn’t want to be alone.”
He nods.
“You’re not alone anymore.”
“I should be.”
“But you’re not.”
I encircle him in my hold, trying to comfort both of us. So much of me resents the hell out of this stupid, broken, selfish boy, but an equally large part of me can now empathize with everything he is. Costa, whether I like it or not, is bonded to my father and to Amy, and he’s therefore bonded to me. My father tripped him, he tripped me…Costa is in my world. He’s part of my fiber, my makeup. It makes sense why he reacted so strongly to my touch when we were under.
Suddenly, one bit of this circle makes sense to me. After I found Amy in her condo and after she told me to get away from her and Mom, she spoke the same words that Sam had said to me.
I whisper to Costa now as I hug him, “Go find your good.”
He actually laughs lightly. “You know about that?”
“Sam said it to me when I first met him. Then, Amy did years later. You passed it to her, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he says softly. “When we surfaced, before they separated us. Sammy used to say that to me when we were kids…when things were hard for me at home. I don’t know that I ever listened to him though.”
“You’ll find your good, Costa. You will.”
“I’m a mess, Stella.”
“We’re all in this now. None of us chose it, and even though you tripped Sam and me, I get how lonely and angry you were. Maybe I’ll never forgive you entirely, but I understand. I have to. What other choice do I have?”
His arms tighten around me, and I feel him shake silently in my embrace. “I’m so fucked up. I can’t get a handle on anything.”
“That’s why you had to tell me the truth. Even though it hurts to know, you needed to let it go, and I needed to hear it. I spent a long time not seeing truths because my mother manipulated so many of my experiences. Knowing that my father started this for all of us? It burns like poison, but the truth lets me see. The truth makes everything clear.”
I stop as I’m hit with yet another piece of the puzzle—a very significant one.
Truth. See. Clear.
Oh my God.
“Costa…” I start. It’s hard to breathe. “Costa.” There is sudden joy in this tumultuous night.
He sniffs. “What?”
