25
GAbrIELLA
By the time morning comes, Kain is still sedated and me, Travis, and Blake are wrung out from no sleep and the stress of taking turns to watch Kain’s heartbeat monitor, willing the next beat to come.
Dalton and Lukas return, and we swap our watch shifts, exchanging exhausted hugs and passing on the news of no change. Dalton’s navy eyes are heavy with worry, the burden of being the oldest brother responsible for consoling their father resting firmly on his shoulders. Lukas doesn’t appear as though he slept a wink, the shadows under his eyes cave-like in their hollowness. I need Blake to hold my hand as we leave the hospital, but he can’t. Not with Travis walking slowly beside us.
We travel home in Travis’s rental with an awkward silence resting between us. I can feel Travis’s questions churning in his mind, and Blake’s shame at having been discovered but not confronted.
And I just feel desperately sad.
Before Travis left for Germany, we were a family, and the Nowaks were our friends. The lines were clearly drawn, except they weren’t. On the surface, Mom and Lukas were neighbors who helped each other out now and again and talked about yard work and the increasing prices of everything. Travis was friends with Dalton, Blake, and Kain, and I was a mostly forgotten cling-on to their friendship where fond memories of our childhood played alongside yearnings that I kept stuffed down deep.
And everything was fine.
At least on the surface.
But now all the secrets are rising through the cracks, and I feel like we’re balancing in a moment before a storm where we can see it brewing darkly on the horizon but everything around us just feels eerily empty, normality sucked into the belly of the tornado.
Back at home, Travis hugs Blake again before he leaves to go home. Blake’s dove gray eyes meet mine over Travis’s shoulder, searching, sad, and I swallow down my emotion and turn away, looking up at the homes that we’ve lived in since before we can remember, the homes that brought us together.
I follow Travis to our front door and watch him open up with his key. It’s so weird to have him home, so weird how easily I got used to him not being here. Inside, the house is still, and when we close the door, a chasm forms between us. A chasm of time and all the forbidden things I’ve done, hoping that keeping them in a neatly contained secret deal would prevent them from causing hurt.
Funny how our lies always come back to bite us on the ass.
“So, you’re with Blake now?”
The shock of his outright question forces me back a step. I inhale and exhale quickly, my eyes focusing on a spot on the floor. I can’t deny what he saw. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen.
But I could lie. Pretend it was a one-off, the result of sadness about Kain. I could tell him I needed comfort and Blake was there. Except that makes Blake sound like an opportunist. It makes Blake sound like a man who’d take advantage of me in my lowest moment, and that’s not who he is at all.
I could lie, but with Travis’s narrowed blue eyes fixed on me, his brows like serious slashes on his face, I can’t think through the impact of an untruth. I can’t weave a realistic sounding fantasy where I haven’t been having sex with all of his best friends.
“I’ve been fooling around with all of them,” I blurt, bringing my hands to my heated face and hiding away from the probable horror in his expression. Seeing disappointment or anger in his eyes would be too much when I’m barely holding myself together.
“All of them.” There’s no question in his voice. Those three words come out like a statement of fact. As though he’s reading a menu and telling me that sea bass with crushed potatoes and green beans is on the special’s menu.
“I know you read my diary,” I say, still cowering. “I know you know how I feel about them.”
“And how do they feel about you?”
Peeking over my fingers, I find Travis leaning against the wall, looking so much like my dad before he died that I cringe. What would Dad think about what I’m doing with my brother’s best friends? He wouldn’t like it. He probably would have called me all the names under the sun, even though that would have made him a hypocrite.
“I don’t know,” I say. “They treat me well. We made a deal…a no-strings arrangement.”
Travis sighs and shakes his head. “I leave for a couple of months and…”
“Mom’s in a relationship with Lukas Nowak,” I blurt. “She told me yesterday…it’s been going on for two years.”
He pushes off the wall and runs his hand over his head. He used to have such thick blond floppy hair but now it’s so short it’s hardly visible, like a layer of sun-kissed velvet. “I’m too tired for this,” he admits. “I need to sleep.”
“Mom’s still renovating your room,” I tell him. “It’s a mess of paints and dust sheets.”
“Guess I’ll sleep in her room,” he says, already climbing the stairs. Staring after him, I feel as though all my self-respect has liquified and slid down inside me, pooling in my feet. Even though I’m a fully grown woman who’s comfortable in my sexuality, I still hate feeling like my brother is disapproving of my actions. I wish he’d shout at me. Tell me all the reasons why I’m making a mistake. Tell me to break off the deal with his friends and live like a nun until I find a husband. Anything but retreating to sleep.
I get it though. With Kain still so sick, all of this seems so unimportant. Sex is barely a shadow when it comes to the monolithic nature of death.
“I love them,” I whisper as he’s turned the corner. It slips out of my mouth and hangs in the air around me like mist on a winter morning. The truth laid bare, uttered out loud before I’ve even admitted it to myself. “And I think they love me,” I add, because I believe it’s true. I really do. But none of it matters. Not really. Because a house built on shaky ground is destined to crumble.