23. Blesk #3
I stand and walk to the sink, washing out my coffee cup until it is clean—not a stain left. How do I find the right words in this moment, how do I explain or excuse my relationship with my brother? Do I tell him about the touch game? Is that really an excuse for what Erik and I became?
I jump at the sound of a phone ringing. I turn, my eyes hitting his cell that flashes on the kitchen bench.
Konnor lifts the phone to his cheek. “Hello?” He turns to face me and leans backwards on the counter, crossing his ankles in front of him.
We occupy his kitchen together, him watching me, the bacon cracking beside him, and me washing a clean cup over and over.
“I’m okay,” he says. “Yeah… Yeah, she's awake... Yeah, you can send her up.”
Her?
Send her up?
Please don’t be Pembie.
He smiles tightly at me, talking into the phone, “Thanks, Adolf.” Then lowers it from his face.
I set the cup down and turn to face him, suddenly feeling as though I need to manage my messy life and this Erik business, just like he is obviously managing his life. “I have to make a few calls.”
“To who?”
“The hospital.”
He flicks the stove off. “Fuck that!”
My breath catches. “He’s still my brother.” The word brother scratches my throat like glass.
“No he isn’t! What the hell? Did I interpret what I saw wrong? Were you not crying?” He crosses the kitchen to where I stand. When he reaches me, he runs both hands down my arms and grips my hands. It’s not until he holds them in his, that I realise my fingers are trembling.
His eyes narrow. “This has happened before.” It wasn’t a question, and my face can’t hide the truth.
Yes.
Ashamed, I look down. “Not like that.”
When I look back at him again, his face is very still, each feature controlled. “Like what?”
“I used to flinch. When I was first adopted, I would flinch at everything. He taught me not to be afraid of touch. It’s as simple as that. I don’t flinch now.”
“Not with your body.”
Oh, God.
My throat thickens.
A knock breaks the intensity between us. I pull my hands up and his drop away. Konnor can't possibly understand how much I owe Erik for all those nights he listened to me cry, held me through nightmares, was my only comfort. He saved my life. In more ways than one.
Konnor hasn’t moved.
Another knock at the door.
“This conversation isn’t over,” he says, before walking towards the door, and I exhale hard as soon as he is around the corner and out of view.
“Donuts?” I hear Elise’s voice.
Relief moves through me.
She appears, stepping into the kitchen, holding a big brown paper bag. “I have cigarettes, too.” She forces a bright smile, but the worry in her eyes is there.
Jaxon and Elise dropped us here yesterday and left. I think we all knew things needed to be said, explained, and more—but just not now.
“Please, make yourself at home,” Konnor jokes.
After setting the donuts on the table, she walks over to me. I’m unsure what she’ll do or think of me now, but she embraces me quickly. I close my eyes. I hold her, too, my arms around her backpack. I know exactly what's inside it. As we hold each other, I hear Konnor moving across the apartment.
Elise whispers in my ear, “Wanna go?”
I open my eyes and find Konnor in the kitchen; the sight of him makes my belly flutter. “No, we can talk here.”
Elise releases me. “Donuts?”
“Do you want a drink, Elise?” Konnor asks as he collects a glass and a bottle of liquor from the cabinet.
Elise frowns at him. “It’s nine, Konnor.”
“Yep, it sure is,” he says, his tone taking on the edge of someone who hears her disapproval, maybe even feels it himself, but submits to the vice anyway. Gesturing towards the living space, he adds, “Take a seat.”
Elise moves to the sofa and sits down, glaring at Konnor as he tilts the glass to his lips. She stares at him. Waits. And there is a tightness to her energy, like a held breath.
“What the hell happened yesterday?” Elise finally asks, eyes on Konnor not me.
Konnor necks his drink, then murmurs something too low to hear before saying, “I’m so sorry you had to see that, Elise.” His brows furrow as he looks at her. “I have... I don’t know what else to say.”
“Say what happened,” she presses. “I had to take two showers last night. I was completely covered in blood. I deserve to know.” Her voice is relatively steady, given the situation, and I’m reminded she is stronger than she looks.
Konnor grips the nape of his neck, then drags his fingers through his hair with a low groan. “Elise... I’m not a dangerous guy. You don’t have to be worried.”
“Really?” she says dubiously. “Yep, okay. It’s just, you weren’t the one holding Erik’s face together.”
Konnor cringes.
My breath catches in my throat. I sink onto the couch near her. “Elise...” Erik… Erik was… The words twist on my tongue, not moving the way they should.
“Erik was hurting Blesk,” Konnor says, curt.
Her eyes widen. “Hurting you how?”
I don’t want to say it.
God, no, I don’t want to hear it.
“Blesk,” Konnor says. “You don’t have to say anything.”
I nod, but Elise is right. She was there. She was part of it, and she deserves to know why… Or what happened? My lips won’t form the words.
“What’s going on?” Elise says again.
Konnor spits it out. “Erik raped Blesk.”
Is that what happened?
She exhales hard, shaking her head. "I was really hoping there was some other kind of explanation for what I saw." She twists to hug me. Then pulls away and frowns at Konnor, but there is affection in her eyes now. "You're a psycho, Konnor. And the SUVs? The ones that followed the ambulance?”
That’s just The District. Something violent happens; the police have less than honest company. I just shrug. “Said he was Erik’s boss. I didn’t even know he had a job.”
Elise shifts and pulls the backpack to her lap. “I brought that thing. You know. While the psycho was being handcuffed and then unhandcuffed. You asked me to grab it.”
I chew my lip. Yeah. “Konnor.” I whisper his name. His lovely green eyes settle on mine as if there is nowhere else in the world. "I have something for you,” I say.
“I hid it under the stairs thirteen years ago.” While Jaxon spoke to police and Konnor was pinned to the grass being handcuffed, I begged Elise to grab it. I told her that Konnor and I share a past. That we've known each other since we were five. That's all I told her.
Elise pulls out an old fishing tackle box and places it on the coffee table between Konnor and us.
Konnor’s gaze follows the box from the bag to the table, his brows drawing together. “Come.” I stand, grab the box, and walk to the rug, sitting down in the centre. I tap the spot opposite me. “Sit here. We can go through it together.”
With a long sigh, he joins me on the rug, with the box between us. With our past literally sitting between us.
“These are your memories,” I say, glancing up at Elise who watches us closely.
"Should I go?" Elise asks.
Konnor shakes his head. "No. I think you should stay. You wanted to know. And you're right, I owe you the truth." Exhaling hard, he opens the box.
My head spins when I see inside; our shared memories wash over me. He touches the multi-coloured pieces of paper with his fingers, without drawing them out. I’m overwhelmed with too many feelings at once.
He picks one up. "Should I read it?"
“Only if you want to."
He unfolds one, his eyes lapping the text, a small smile begins to play on his lips. "Deakon: D is for dream,” he says, chuckling softly, and I try not to cry. “E is for Everything, A is for Armour, K is for King, O is for Oath, N is for New." His face brightens. “Did you write that or did I?”
“Liz did when she was five.”
I realise that speaking about myself in third person is another level of insanity, but Erik, Dad, and I have been doing it for so long now, it’s almost default. It was meant to be a positive shift in terms, a way of separating all the negative feeling I had about being her, but… it feels wrong.
He unfolds another piece of paper. “It’s a song.”
Konnor reads the words aloud again, his voice shaking as he says, "It's called One Day."
One Day.
We'll race up the hill when the daisies are new, I'll get there first, but I'll always wait for you.
We'll spin on the merry-go-round till we're sick, and eat all the hotdogs that we can fit.
We'll stay out till dark and we won't have to hide, We'll hang with the birds who never once lied, We'll dance in the kitchen with no one to say that my guitar is too loud or we have to obey, We'll do all the things that the other kids do, normal and boring and easy and true.
We'll yell from the hill, and we'll swear on our hands, That one day we'll live in the place that we planned.
One day's almost here. One day we'll be ready. One day we won't fear. One day.
After he reads the last sentence, he is very still.
"I thought–" He breathes out fast. "Fuck, that I'd never have this moment.
Reassurance that everything that had happened was real.
That you are real. Your memory started to disappear.
I fought to keep it, but I had no one to share it with.
It was like I'd made you up. I'd made it all up. "
Fuck.
I place my hand on his.
When he opens his eyes again, they are glossy. “Wow,” he breathes. “There is no way I wrote that song.” He looks sad and happy—an expression can be both. “Blesk, you’re a genius... How old were you when you wrote that?”
I glance at Elise, then back at him. “Eight.”
He puts his hand on my knee and strokes my leg tenderly. “Does it have a melody?”
I nod shyly. “It does now.”
He smiles at me. “Play it for me one day.”
“One day,” I say, as he hands me a piece of paper from the box, but I push it back towards him. “No, they’re yours.”
“They’re ours.” He gestures for me to take it.