Chapter 25 Heart Strings #2
“I did think about it,” I tell him because it’s true.
I thought about getting him out of there, even if it was only for a night to interrogate him about whether he was okay or not.
I had dreams about it. The two of us on the road together.
Running away. Making it work. Us against the world.
But they were just dreams. Just fantasies.
And either I was too big of a coward or too selfish at the time to make them a reality.
“I don’t blame you for hating me.” I hate me too.
“I wasn’t fair with you when you came back,” he says.
“You’d just lost everything.”
“Not everything. I got you back. And then I shit all over it.”
“I deserved that, though.”
“You didn’t,” he says firmly. “You did everything you could to make it okay for me, and I still wouldn’t let you.”
I don’t argue with him. I’ve had the same thought in terms of what the fuck else could I have done?
But the answer to that is so obvious now that I won’t even put the words out there.
I could have been his brother. What I’d been instead was his landlord, leaving him to fend for himself, too afraid he’d condemn me the way he’d condemned me in the hospital.
What I should have done was sat him down and fought for him.
I should have had this conversation or something like it once he was walking again, once the initial shock of what happened to him had abated.
I should have forced the issue, because it would have worked.
I was the big brother, he was the kid. He would have listened.
He wanted to love me, and I refused to let him because I didn’t know how to love him back.
That day on the screen porch—the one that’s been so overshadowed in my memory by Jayne’s appearance in my t-shirt—what happened before that was Connor had tried.
He’d put aside his doubts and everything he’d been told or believed about me, and he reached out to find the connection that was suffocating even as it lived and breathed between us, and I’d run away from it. From him. I shut him out.
It was the wrong path. A bad path. I was a coward.
“I wouldn’t let you, either,” I say.
“And now?” he asks.
I take a short, quick breath. “You’re different.”
He huffs. “Well, I literally like—saw the light this time, so…”
Jesus.
Responding to whatever trauma response makes it onto my face, Connor presses his lips together.
“Sorry. Too soon. I know. Forget I said that. Technically, I’m bipolar as fuck, and I’m on a lot of medication, and I’ve never not had a dark sense of humor.
So, wrestle with that as you will, but this is me without all the sound and fury. ”
Sound and fury. If you can get past all his sound and fury.
Think of us like twins.
“I imagine you’ve earned it,” I say as memories of Tristan threaten to overwhelm.
Some lights go off in the lobby, and I turn to see a young nurse approaching. “Hey, Connor?” she says. “Time for your visitor to go.”
Connor’s head jerks around, and he scowls. “We’re in the middle of a session.”
“Rules are rules. Sorry.”
He gives her a tight smile. “Then will you please call my doctor? I’d like to sign myself out.”
I sit there with my mouth shut as the two of them enter a sort of silent standoff.
The nurse sighs heavily. “You can have a few more minutes.”
“Thanks so much,” Connor says to her before turning back to me. “You want to go outside?”
“Yeah.” Fresh air is always a good idea, but what I really need is a drink. I have a precarious hold on my guard.
On the large patio, we sit across from each other in some cheap excuses for chairs. I light his cigarette for him, taking one for myself. I don’t smoke much at all these days, but this feels like the right kind of occasion.
It’s a nice night. A cool front is blowing through, and with it comes the scent of pinion wood being burned in chimineas by over-eager lovers of fall. The smoke from his cigarette trails off behind him, and that’s what I train my eyes on, thinking about how I would paint it.
His next question pulls me back to the present. “Was she ever kind to you?”
I make myself look at my brother. Make myself think.
I still believe he’s not ready to hear the truth, so I sidestep the question.
Carefully, I say, “I considered it a kindness that they sent me to prep school in another state. And that I got to come back and finish high school with West. But I don’t know why they decided that, other than it was the first step of them cutting me off.
At the time, it wasn’t what I wanted, and I was pretty pissed.
” Focusing on my hands, I avert my eyes, overloaded by the weight of all the guilt I bear for not being strong enough or smart enough to do anything to get him away from her, too.
After a heavy breath, he goes on. “I should have let you know how important it was for me that you came back after the accident. I treated you like it was your fault, and it wasn’t.
I couldn't see the silver lining. What happened—as awful as it was—it brought you home. There wasn’t anything else in the world that would have.
And that makes me grateful for it. But I guess…
you know. Be careful what you wish for.”
Bile rises in the back of my throat. I have disappointed my brother on such a massive scale, it’s impossible to calculate the damage done, and I’ve ruined myself in the process.
“Our mother was really sick,” I say. “It took me a long time—it took West and Helen…Tristan even, for me to understand that what she did had nothing to do with me. I mean I’ve always known it in my head, but in my heart sometimes… If your mom can’t love you, then who the fuck can?”
“Oh, please.” He rolls his eyes. “Who doesn’t love you? I’m the impossible one.”
“You’re not. You’ve been through it, too.”
“I guess. Can I ask you something?”
Why stop now? I blow out a lungful of smoke. “Sure.”
“Am I the reason you broke up with Tristan?”
My head rears back. The Tristan blindsides need to stop if we’re going to achieve anything close to a relationship. And yet, my answer just sort of…slips out. “Yes.”
The word lands like a grenade for him. The tears he managed to hold in when I got here return with a vengeance. “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry.” He can’t wipe his face fast enough to catch them all, though he tries.
I look at my lap because it’s too hard to watch him like this when there’s nothing I can do to change anything.
Part of me wishes I hadn’t said that, but while he’s in this safe place, he needs to understand where I’m at—what he and I are really dealing with.
Maybe it would have been better if there were a counselor here to mediate, but I think he and I can do this. We’re nothing if not battle-tested.
After he gathers himself for a second, he says, “Tristan is… He’s my whole world. We’ve been friends since we were five. More than friends. More than brothers.”
The nausea that went away weeks ago stirs low in my gut. I swallow a sudden excess of saliva in my mouth.
“He’s just the most amazing fucking person.
I can’t even explain it,” he says, but then I guess he sees the look on my face.
I feel like all the blood has left it. He holds up a hand and shakes his head, sobering suddenly.
“Fuck, wait. I don’t mean I’m in love with him or anything, but he’s—God I just love him so much.
I can’t imagine my life without him. I don’t want to.
When I found out he was with you—” His speech halts abruptly.
He wipes at his cheeks again, and he leans forward, looking at me intently. “I need you to understand something.”
“What?”
“I’m not strong the way you are. I know Mom hurt you, but she hurt me too. Bad. I don’t know if it was the same, but Tristan’s the only reason I didn’t try to kill myself years ago. The only reason.”
“I had no idea,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“But I did know you were close,” I say. “Obviously.”
Connor holds my gaze and nods. “He’s amazing, right?”
I think about all the things. Tristan’s laugh when I was horrified that he liked grapes in chicken salad. His gasp as I pressed myself inside him. His perfect use of the word besotted.
“Yes. He is.”
My brother’s lips purse, and he says, “He’s been in love with you from the first time he saw you. You’re how he knew he was gay.”
“I know,” I say again, quietly.
“I sometimes used to think he only kept being friends with me in case you came back. I haven’t always been the best friend for him.”
I need to change the subject. “Listen—”
“Wait—that’s not true. I didn’t sometimes used to think it. It’s what I always thought. I kind of still do.”
“What’s your point? What are you saying?” Because it feels like another threat. Like back off, big brother, or else.
His voice is smaller when he speaks again. “I’m saying I’m sorry for getting in the way.” His tears are like glitter, sparkling down his cheeks. “I never wanted to ruin your happiness. For either of you. You both deserve so much happiness.”
I suffer yet another internal collapse—a breaking down of my insides. My heart. “What about your happiness?”
He doesn’t answer, only looks away with feigned indifference.
“I need you to understand something, too,” I say.
His eyebrows lift like he’s listening, but he doesn’t look at me.
“You don’t have to choose. I can keep my distance from Tristan.”
For some reason that just makes him more upset. “It’s too complicated.”
“Why?”
“Because I know how he feels about you. His journal… Jesus, that was an eye-opening experience.” He sniffs and wipes his nose. He gathers his knees to his chest, resting his wet cheek on them. His mouth stretches into a sad smile. “I think you love him as much as I do.”
I shake my head.
“I know it’s a different kind of love, but quantifiably, I think I’m right.”
“It’s not love.”
He rolls his eyes. “Jesus Christ. I wonder which one of us needs him more.”