Chapter 34
Chapter 34
It’s unsettling, how easily I slip back into my adolescent tactics, as though the instinct to lie, deflect, omit will forever be embedded within me. “What’s up?” I ask, batting my eyes innocently. “Anything I should know?”
Eli gives me a calm, slanted look. It lasts long enough for me to ask myself: What the hell are you doing?
“I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. Let’s start again—what about Conor?”
Eli’s tongue roams his cheek. Clearly, seeing us interact during the fight must have given him some food for thought. “You know, for a while there, I wondered if you were just pretending to like him because you enjoyed watching me squirm.”
“That was just a nice perk.” I grin. “Okay, before you start the overprotective-older-brother routine, allow me to give you a brief overview of the facts: Everything is consensual. I initiated it. He’s not taking advantage of my wide-eyed youth. He’s not breaking my heart. He’s not—”
“Are you ?”
“—using his considerable influence to…Excuse me?”
“Are you breaking his heart?”
It’s like a mischievous child is shaking the little snow globe in which I dwell, and now the world is upside down. “So…You’re not here to inform me that if this continues, you’re going to lock me in Rapunzel’s tower and beat up your closest friend for ruining me. You’re here to tell your barely legal little sister to be gentle with the rich older guy.”
Eli licks his teeth. “Put this way, it sounds fucked up.”
I nod, thoughtful. But say, “I find this very flattering.”
“You do?”
“At least you are giving me agency. I’m not wholly sure why you’re siding with him, but—”
“I’m not—it’s not about siding , Maya. I am just worried about the one who clearly has feelings.”
I laugh. Then realize that he’s serious. “You think I don’t?”
“I…” Eli’s palm draws circles against his temple. “It’s different. He’s different. With you, I mean. I think it’s the way he looks at you. I’ve never seen him like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like…Like he could become unhinged really quickly.” A sigh. “In the last couple of years, he’s been very protective of you, but—”
“Are we talking about Conor Harkness?”
Eli looks at me like I’m an ungrateful toddler. “Yes, Maya. He cares about your well-being. He checks in. Pays attention when you come up in conversation. Remember that hard-to-get computer Minami gave you as a graduation present?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s the one who pulled strings to get it. And—” Eli snorts. “You know how he feels about UT after they kicked us out, right?”
I nod.
“The year you enrolled, he started donating to the College of Natural Sciences.”
“What? Why? ”
“One of the lessons he got from Finneas Harkness. Buy influence in places where you might need it.”
“I didn’t need it. I got in on my own merit. That was unnecessary—”
“I know, and so does he. But Hark’s a planner. He has little trust in institutions, or their commitment to decent behavior. And he cared about you, so he made sure that in the eventuality you needed something, his money would buy it.”
“I…” I shake my head. “He probably just wanted to support physics as a discipline.”
Eli’s eyebrow rises. “Two summers ago? Those floor-to-ceiling bookshelves you wanted in your room?”
“The ones you put up while I was on vacation with Jade? Even though you’d told me that I was smart enough to figure out how to put together my own furniture, and that I couldn’t pick and choose the gender roles that I wanted to reject, or automatically assume that you’d do shit for me because I’m a woman?”
“What you said, Maya, was ‘I’m just a girl, I don’t know how to use power tools, you have to do this for me,’ which I refused to entertain, and…It wasn’t me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hark came over. Put them up. Painted the walls. Cleaned up the mess.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because he asked me not to. Because he said that it would relax him, and that he was doing it mostly for himself. Because I’d just gotten with Rue and struggled to think about anything that wasn’t her.”
“Bud, that has not changed.”
“No.” He sighs. Rubs his eyes. “There are…things, about Hark, about the past few years, that I’m starting to consider in a different light. I always assumed that he wasn’t over Minami. Every behavior, every reaction, every time he chose work over relationships, every strain, I attributed to the fact that he was still in love with her, but…” He looks at me as though I might have an answer for him.
“Have you been to…Did you go to him, too? To talk about me?”
“Not yet, but—”
“Don’t, please. He already thinks that he’s a pervy old man stealing schoolgirls’ underwear. He hates that I’m younger.”
Eli weighs my words. “It’s not an irrational concern, Maya. You are at different stages in your lives—”
“What if Rue was fifteen years younger than you? Or older?”
“She’s not. That’s the point—”
“The point is that you find someone, and you can’t always control where shit goes. I mean, you met her on a sex app.”
“Right. And I fell for her. And for a while there, I wanted a relationship and she didn’t, which did not make for a pleasant experience. That’s why I came here to tell you that if you’re using Hark to have some fun—”
“I’m not…I like him.”
“I know you do, but—”
“No, Eli. I like him.”
A beat. My brother absorbs, reorients, and says, “I see.”
“Three years ago, my last semester in Scotland. He helped me.” I swallow. “And then we kept in touch. For over two years, we spoke nearly every day. As friends. And then…” Eli waits patiently for me to continue. “Before this week, I hadn’t talked to him in months.”
“Why?”
I exhale slowly. “Because it all went to shit.”