Chapter 8 #2
“We used to look at that one all the time when we'd come here,” he continued, and his voice had gone softer now, almost distant. “You'd always say it looked like a straight line, and I'd tell you it was more like a curve. Remember that?”
“Yeah,” I said, even though I wasn't entirely sure I did. We'd looked at the stars plenty of times, but I couldn't remember which ones we'd argued about.
“The thing is, we were both right.” He dropped his hand back down and wrapped his arms around his knees, making himself smaller.
“From where we sat, it looked one way. But if you moved even a few feet to the left or right, the whole shape changed. Same stars, completely different picture depending on where you were standing.”
I waited, not entirely sure where he was going with this but knowing enough about how his brain worked to understand he'd get there eventually.
“That's how I felt back then,” he said quietly.
“Like you were looking at my life from one angle and seeing this straight line, this path forward that made sense. And I was looking at the same fucking thing from a completely different spot and seeing it all falling apart. Same situation, totally different view.”
I still didn't fully understand what he was trying to tell me but I could feel that he was working his way toward something big.
“Soren—”
“Do you know what it's like to have your parents get drunk all day and do fuck-all to take care of you and your siblings?”
I opened my mouth to answer before realizing I didn't have one. Didn't have a single fucking thing to say that wouldn't sound hollow or stupid or painfully inadequate compared to what he was asking.
“Right before graduation,” Soren continued, and he was still staring at the stars instead of looking at me, “my parents disappeared into their own shit and just left us there.
Stopped showing up at all. Stopped paying the bills, stopped buying food, stopped pretending they gave a damn whether we lived or died.
And I was eighteen by then, so I became the grown-up by default because there wasn't anyone else to do it.”
I felt my chest tighten with a pressure that had nothing to do with the cold air around us, and everything to do with the picture he was painting with his words.
“I had to get a job,” he said, and his voice was gaining momentum now like he'd been holding this in for too long and it was all coming out at once whether he wanted it to or not.
“Two jobs, actually, because one wasn't enough to cover rent and food and keeping the lights on.
Had to figure out how to be a parent when I barely knew how to take care of myself.
Had to make sure my siblings got to school and did their homework and ate actual meals instead of living off whatever garbage was cheapest at the store.
And I couldn't—” His voice cracked again, and he pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes like he could force the emotion back down through sheer fucking will.
“I couldn't let you see me like that. Couldn't let you know how badly I was failing at everything.”
“Why not?” The words came out harsher than I'd meant them to, but I couldn't stop them now that they'd started. “Why the hell couldn't you let me help you?”
“Because it was humiliating.” He dropped his hand from his face and looked at me then, his eyes bright with tears he still refused to let fall.
“Because you had your shit together and a future ahead of you, and I was falling apart trying to keep three kids alive on minimum wage and food stamps. Because asking for help felt like admitting I’d failed at the one thing I was supposed to be able to do, and I couldn’t stand the thought of you seeing me like that.
Then my parents started finding us, and after that I couldn’t stay anywhere for long.
I just kept moving. I honestly thought if I disappeared, you’d get on with your life.
That it would be easier than tying you to a sinking ship. ”
“Where did you go?” I asked. “I went to your house after graduation. The whole place was empty. You’d already cleared everything out.”
He exhaled. “My mom’s sister. Aunt Donna, in Hamilton.
She had a spare room, and she didn’t ask a lot of questions, which was all we needed at that point.
We weren’t there long, maybe six months, before she made it clear four extra people in her house wasn’t sustainable.
After that it was a series of shitty apartments wherever the rent was cheapest. Brampton for a while.
Then Scarborough. Then eventually here.” He paused.
“We were always moving. Partly because we had to, partly because I made sure we did. I didn’t want my parents finding us.
” He swallowed. “I didn’t start coming back here until after we moved back.
I think I just needed somewhere that still felt like the version of my life I’d lost.”
My throat tightened, but the anger came back anyway, cold and familiar. “So that was it?” I asked. “You just vanished and decided that was better? Better than telling me the truth? Better than letting me spend years thinking I didn’t matter enough for a goodbye?”
“I know.” The tears were falling now, quiet and devastating as they tracked down his face in the moonlight.
“I know, and I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry, Rook.
But I didn't know what else to do back then.
I was drowning in it, and dragging you down with me felt worse than just letting you go and hoping you'd be better off without me.”
The anger folded into tenderness so fast it left me dizzy and disoriented.
I watched him cry, watched him try to hold himself together and fail completely, watched the years of pain and shame and exhaustion written across every line of his face, and I couldn't stay guarded anymore.
Couldn't keep holding onto the hurt when he was breaking open right in front of me like this.
“Come here,” I said, and my voice came out softer than it had been all night.
He looked at me like he didn't understand what I was asking.
“Come here,” I repeated, and this time I reached for him with both hands, guiding his head down onto my shoulder the way I used to do when we were kids and the weight of the world got too heavy for him to carry alone.
He came without any resistance at all, folding into me like his body remembered exactly how this worked even after all the years we'd spent apart.
His face pressed into the curve of my neck, and his breath came in harsh and uneven gasps that I could feel against my skin.
I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and held him there while he cried, held him like I could somehow make up for all the times he'd had to do this alone.
I stroked his hair without thinking about it, letting my fingers thread through the strands that were longer now than they'd been back then.
It was softer than I remembered, still damp from a shower he must have taken before driving out here to meet me, and it smelled like something clean and unfamiliar that I wanted to memorize anyway.
“I'm sorry,” he said again, and the words came out muffled against my shirt. “I'm so fucking sorry. I should've told you everything. Should've let you in instead of shutting you out. I just couldn't do it back then.”
“I know,” I said, and I pressed my lips to his temple without planning to. “I’m sorry too.”
He pulled back slightly, just enough to look at me with red-rimmed eyes and confusion written all across his face. “What the hell are you sorry for? You didn't do anything wrong.”
“I don't know,” I admitted, because I really didn't. Didn't know if I was apologizing for not finding him sooner, for being angry at him for so long, for the years we'd lost, for not somehow knowing he was drowning and needed help even when he wouldn't ask for it.
Maybe I was sorry for all of it at once.
Maybe none of it made sense. “I just am.”
His face crumpled again at that, and he buried himself back against my shoulder with a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob or both at the same time.
I held him tighter than before, felt my own eyes start to burn with tears I hadn't cried in years, and stared up at the stars that had watched us grow up together in this exact spot all those years ago.
My vision blurred as the tears came hot and fast, spilling over before I could stop them or hide them or pretend they weren't happening.
I didn't bother trying to wipe them away.
Didn't have the energy left to pretend I was fine when I wasn't, when the grief of everything we'd lost was finally catching up to me all at once after years of pushing it down.
“Fuck,” I said, and my voice broke on the word like glass shattering. “Fuck, I missed you so much.”
“I missed you too.” His arms came up around my ribs, holding me back with the same desperate strength I was using on him. “Every single day. I missed you every single fucking day.”
We sat there like that for a long time, tangled up in each other under the same stars that used to watch us laugh and talk and exist in a world that had felt so much simpler than the one we'd ended up in.
The ginger ale sat forgotten on the rock beside us, going flat and warm while we held each other through the wreckage of everything we should have said years ago but hadn't known how to.
The cold air bit at my face where the tears had tracked down my skin, but I didn't move away from him.
Didn't let go. Didn't do anything except breathe and hold him and let the truth of what he'd survived settle into my chest alongside all the anger and love and grief that had been living there for too long.
“Your siblings,” I said eventually, when my voice felt steady enough to use again. “Are they okay now?”