Chapter 18 Andrew #4
“Yes,” Charlie challenges, always so damn argumentative. “It’s about damn time you let us in. I would’ve shoved my way in before if I’d realized you were lying.”
“I wasn’t lying, I was...slightly distorting the truth to make things easier for everyone.”
“That’s literally lying, Annie.”
“Yeah,” Andrew admits, pulling his face out of the couch so he doesn’t suffocate.
There’s no hiding from Charlie, his fingers smoothing through Andrew’s hair that does nothing to keep the traitorous tears at bay. He doesn’t want to do this now, or ever, but maybe it’s better this way.
“Do you remember that day at the beach?”
Andrew closes his eyes, and suddenly he can taste the salt water and the bile, and can feel the lack of oxygen.
It happened so fast. A simple bet. The desire to beat Charlie.
An overestimation of his own swimming skills despite knowing the undercurrent wasn’t safe.
He almost drowned that day. If the lifeguards hadn’t been so quick, if the CPR hadn’t worked, Andrew might not be here.
Agreeing to the bet from Charlie had been reckless, uncharacteristically so for Andrew, but the sun had been bright and his joy big, and he’d wanted to beat Charlie by swimming further past the buoy despite the warnings. He wanted to have fun. It was the last time he made that mistake.
Andrew hadn’t died that day, but a part of him had.
“Yes,” Charlie answers. “What does that have to do with this?”
“You cried, Charlie. I’ll never forget choking on salt water, coming back to consciousness with that taste of bile and the sea in my mouth and the sight of your face. You were hysterical.”
“Well, yeah, my favorite person in the whole world almost fucking drowned.” Charlie wraps himself around Andrew as if he can physically keep the memory at bay.
“Jason and Theo were so quiet, but you were sobbing, and Alec’s little face was as terrified as yours.
He tried to reach for me, but Jason held him back, and then you fell to the sand wailing.
” Andrew tries to breathe in deep, but he’s too congested and ends up coughing.
Charlie is surprisingly quiet, patient even, waiting for Andrew to speak again. “It was horrible.”
“I can’t imagine almost drowning.”
“Not that,” Andrew says. “I mean, yes, but—making you all worry. For a while, I wished they hadn’t saved me because the guilt was almost more than I could handle.”
“Why the fuck would you feel guilty for almost dying?” Charlie’s hold on Andrew verges on painful.
“Because I was reckless. I knew better than to accept your dare. It was my job to keep you in line. I’m the oldest. I was the one who watched out for you, for Jason and Theo and Alec. It was my job to be responsible.”
“We were fourteen, Annie. You were a kid.”
“I knew better. I knew better, and I made everyone worry, and I hated it. The guilt was suffocating. I’d wake up from nightmares, and you all thought it was because of almost dying, but it was because of the living part—waking up every day knowing I disappointed you all.”
“No,” Charlie interrupts, voice like venom. “No.”
“I did,” Andrew says, wishing he could stop the silent tears.
He doesn’t want them. They’re going to make his nose run, and his head hurt more.
He doesn’t want to say this, but after living with it for so long, there’s a release too, like pushing on a wound that hurts—the sharp pain almost a relief in a strange way.
“I promised myself I’d never do that again.
You guys needed me that day, and I let you down.
I decided after that I’d make sure it didn’t happen again. ”
“Fucking damnit, Annie.” Charlie is definitely crying which makes Andrew cry harder.
God, Andrew hates being sick. He’s definitely blaming all of this on his illness. He hates crying, and he hates being vulnerable, and he hates upsetting Charlie, yet somehow he’s doing all three.
“I’m sorry,” Andrew whispers.
“Don’t you dare apologize. I should’ve known.
I should’ve fucking known. You started pulling away, but I thought—you’d get overwhelmed so easily.
I thought I was helping. After Alec was diagnosed with ADHD it wasn’t that many years before we realized you were autistic, I thought—I thought I was too much.
I know I’m a lot. I can’t imagine needing routine and order and being stuck with me. ”
“I like being stuck with you,” Andrew interjects, unable to imagine his life with anyone but Charlie. His beautiful, bright, pain in the fucking ass twin.
“It can’t have been easy though, and I thought—I thought maybe it was helping you to have that time alone when things were too much. And all this time you thought—fuck.”
“Please don’t blame yourself, or I’m going to feel worse. It’s my fault.”
“No, it’s my fault.”
“It’s both of your fault because despite being relatively well-adjusted adult men, you’re both fucking idiots,” Eden says, standing in the living room carrying a tray with a steaming bowl of something that smells achingly familiar. “I made sopita de fideo.”
“I don’t have stuff for that,” Andrew says, wiping his nose on the back of the sleeve of Nicki’s hoodie he borrowed.
“All the ingredients were at Charlie’s place already.
I didn’t have time to make it from scratch, but I thought—well, Charlie told me once your abuela used to make it when you were little when you wouldn’t eat anything else.
It won’t taste like hers, it’s literally just that tomato chicken bouillon that Alec uses when he makes rice and some fideo but—,” Eden shrugs, trailing off like remembering Andrew’s favorite childhood safe food and making it when he’s sick isn’t one of the kindest things he could do.
“Thank you, Eden.”
“Also, fuck you for making me agree with Nicholas.” Eden groans, lowering the tray with the sopita onto the coffee table. “He told us you don’t take care of yourself so we have to, and then I agreed with him. I’m never going to live this down, Andrew.”
“If you ever make me agree with Nicholas we’re done for,” Charlie pipes up.
“Liar,” Andrew laughs, which turns into a coughing fit that ends up half-knocking Charlie off the couch.
“I can move,” Andrew says once he’s finished coughing, realizing Charlie is now hanging off the back of the couch and there’s not enough room for Eden.
“See,” Eden says, making an exasperated face at Charlie. “He’s sick, and he’s trying to move for us. Fucking ridiculous.”
“I think that’s just how he’s wired,” Charlie tells Eden before turning his attention to Andrew to help him into a sitting position, half-leaning against Charlie’s shoulder. “But don’t think we’re gonna let you get away with this shit anymore. Not now that we know.”
Andrew tries to contort his long legs, but Eden simply climbs under them and situates himself at the end of the couch, fanning his skirt then pulling Andrew’s legs into his lap.
“I’m fucking doomed. You’re going to tell Alec too, aren’t you?”
“Yup, and Jason.”
Andrew groans loudly. “They’re going to smother me.”
“Not as much as Mom and Dad will.”
“Traitor.”
“I love you, Annie. Please be more trouble.”
Andrew plucks at his sleeves, an uncomfortable feeling making his throat tight. He’s never wanted to be trouble. At least, not more than he already was. But maybe—maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to let the people he loves see him be a little less put together.
“I love you guys, too.”
“I fucking hate that I’m going to say this—I hate it so much it is physically painful,” Eden says with the same air of dramatics as Charlie. “I need you to appreciate what this is costing me, Andrew.”
“What?” Andrew and Charlie question.
“I think—oh my god, I don’t want to say this.” Expecting the worst, Andrew is entirely unprepared for what Eden actually says. “I think Nicholas fucking Whitmore might be…good for you.”
The way he says the last part, as if he’s going to be sick, makes Charlie burst into laughter.
Andrew would copy him, if laughing didn’t make his head feel like a balloon about to pop.
He settles for smiling, unable to put into words how much it means that Eden thinks so, and even more so that he’s admitting it.
He wasn’t joking before when he told Nicki that Charlie and Eden were a package deal.
Charlie is a part of Andrew, his other half, which means that by extension Eden is too, albeit in a different way.
If either of them didn’t like Nicki, or vice versa, it would never work.
“Do you have mouthwash,” Eden sighs, “or maybe bleach? I can’t believe I just fucking said that.”
“He’s not as bad as all that,” Andrew says, poking Eden’s stomach with his toe.
“He is a hot-headed hockey player the size of a fucking semi-truck who is so wealthy it makes me sick. I hate everything about him. Except for the part where he makes you happy.”
There’s really nothing Andrew can say to that.
No denial. No lies. He feels like maybe he should tell Charlie the truth about how it all started, and he will, but for tonight he just wants to revel in this feeling right now.
Well, not the congestion and fever and the headache, but the support—of letting in his favorite people and having them here.
“Pass the sopita,” Charlie instructs. “He needs to eat.”
“I’m sick, not a toddler,” Andrew grumbles.
“You are a stubborn motherfucker who gets no say in his own well being anymore.”
Andrew frowns. “I think that’s a little dramatic.”
“You’re just making me say shit I hate today,” Eden sighs, leaning forward to retrieve the tray with the sopita off the coffee table and carefully deposits it in Andrew’s lap, “but I agree with Charlie.”
“Aw, baby,” Charlie croons.
Eden glares at Charlie, flipping him off. “Shut the fuck up.”
“He loves me,” Charlie says in a stage whisper, his tone smug as shit.
“He’s going to be insufferable all night now,” Eden groans.
“He’s always insufferable,” Andrew points out, lifting the spoon.
At the first sip of the savory soup, the familiar hint of tomato along with the rich chicken broth, heals him in a way no store bought medicine ever could.
He takes another bite, making sure to get some of the pasta this time, relieved when it doesn’t appear to make his stomach turn.
While Eden and Charlie bicker, something Andrew has no doubt is their own weird version of foreplay, he slowly eats his soup, relaxing into his brother’s shoulder and letting some of his earlier tension melt away.
By the time he’s finished three quarters of the soup, he’s done for, his stomach unable to handle more, and his head so fuzzy sitting up makes him dizzy.
Once Charlie realizes Andrew is light-headed he fusses, resituating them so Andrew is laying on the couch, but with Charlie and Eden at his feet so Andrew can have a mountain of pillows.
He feels a little guilty taking most of the couch, but since Charlie looks like Christmas came early pulling Eden into his lap under the guise of giving Andrew space, it’s probably okay.
Despite feeling physically miserable, when Andrew closes his eyes, his chest is lighter than it’s been in a long time. His last thought before he succumbs to his exhaustion is that maybe letting people in isn’t so bad.