Chapter 2 Brek
brEK
Lorissa is exactly the kind of woman I imagine the Van Doren sons with. I think she has some Caribbean blood in her. While she’s not pale white like I am, she’s also not beautifully bronzed like Honey Bee. There’s certainly something island-y in her heritage.
She’s beautiful. Her smile is very model-like. Especially when she’s wearing makeup. The way she frames her lips in red lipstick is sensual. The dark framing of her eyes with black liner makes me think of a glamorous showgirl.
Her hair is short now. I heard her say that long hair is too difficult to keep up with when she’s fat with a baby since she’s always sweaty and her long hair was only adding to it.
Speaking of being fat with a baby, she’s such a stunning pregnant woman. I could see her on magazine covers. In commercials. She’s just so… elegant.
Her smile makes me blink from my thoughts. Jalon is handing her a teacup with a saucer. Voss is sitting beside her, his hand on her round stomach.
My gut twists. I feel so stupid that my stomach feels sick at seeing this domestic moment between them. I mean, of course, Voss is excited about his baby. Of course, Jalon is excited about his grandson. It’s his first.
Well, it’s his first in actual biology. Emerson might be his nephew, but I’ve heard Uncle Noaz and Briar refer to him as Grandpa Jalon to their son since Emmy’s birth. Relationships are what you make them. There aren’t any mandatory rules that need to be followed.
Even if there were, the Van Dorens make their own rules.
Lorissa looks at Voss. He might have said something, he’s sitting at such an angle that I can’t see his face, but the smile she gives him makes my chest hurt. The ache tightens when he takes her hand in his and kisses her forehead.
I turn and walk away. I’m ridiculous. I have no reason to be upset about their being together. She’s having Voss’ baby, for fuck’s sake. Why am I feeling so weird about it?
Taking a breath, I let my feet absently lead me where they want to go. Not for the first time, I wonder if I should move out. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere.
I find myself on the deck out back. In the distance, I can see Levis as he practices aikido with his wakizashi. He’s in gym pants that are snug around his lean waist as the sun shines off his tanned skin. He moves smoothly. Fluidly. As if he’s liquid moving with the air.
Sighing, I drop into a chair and watch Levis move.
I’ve watched him do this same thing for more than a decade.
When we were kids, we were all hypnotized by him.
It was magic when we were children. Complete and utter magic.
He was like a ninja right out of a graphic novel.
We were convinced that Levis led a secret life in which he was a superhero.
The memory makes me smile. I miss the simplicity of being a kid. Kid problems. Kid worries. Even though my best was never enough for my parents, I was still a kid and optimistic that someday, they’d be proud of me. Someday, I’d reach my potential.
In the meantime, I had my best friends. As long as I had them, I’d be happy.
Now my best friends were creating lives and moving away.
Yes, I’m dramatic, since none of them are more than a couple miles away.
They’re on the same family estate! Yet, it always feels like they’re days away.
I can’t just walk down the hall and step into Oakley’s room, him lying on his bed with a book in hand, or find Briar downstairs playing video games.
Seeing Levis out back is almost nostalgic. This one little thing hasn’t changed. He’s still in the backyard, a lone figure in a sea of green grass, the sun glistening off the metal of his sword and blinding me.
“Hey.”
I jerk at the voice and twist to see Voss just stepping outside.
He’s the one Van Doren who has kind of been a constant presence in my life since they moved in across the street from us in the Rolling Green Estates.
One day, he showed up on our couch when Loren had to take a business trip, and he’s kind of been hanging around since.
At the time, I was pretty sure his presence had to do with Oakley. But Oakley isn’t here often, and he’s still always around.
The constancy of his being there is comforting. In a world that won’t stop shifting and changing around me, he’s been a beacon that’s always in view.
Except for when he left for New York for several months and came home with Lorissa carrying his child. That was an unexpected disruption in my already upturned existence that I still haven’t quite made the waves calm down from again yet.
“Hi,” I say and turn back to watching Levis.
I’m very aware of his footsteps as he gets closer. There are more than a dozen options for seating here. I usually play a mental game when someone joins me and guess where they’re going to sit. I interpret their distance from me as how they subconsciously feel about me that day.
Voss sits in the chair beside me. Usually, this means we’re friends today. Maybe there’s a warm undercurrent between us when he sits this close. But seeing him with Lorissa and Jalon as a little family, not more than ten minutes ago, has me doubting that warmth.
“How long has he been doing that?” Voss asks.
“You mean today or his whole life?”
“Both.”
“I think he was three when he began. His father is an Aikido master or whatever. Today?” I shrug. “Dunno. He was already going through the motions when I came out here.”
“That’s a lot of dedication. Twenty years?”
“More or less.”
“You think he continues because he enjoys it or because it’s expected of him?”
I tilt my head, studying Levis. “I think he enjoys it. I’ve never been under the impression that he was pressured into continuing with it, even as a child.”
“Aikido is a lot of discipline, no?”
“It is. It’s conditioning muscles and giving them all practical application when you don’t actually have an opponent. In a way, it’s about lifestyle. Peace and respect, discipline.”
“Have you ever tried it?”
“When we were little, sometimes we’d do some moves with him.” The memories make me smile again. “Mostly, we were just laughing at ourselves, but Levis was always so damn patient. Oakley was kind of uncoordinated, so there was a lot of laughter.”
Voss laughs quietly. “I can imagine Oakley uncoordinated.”
“It’s because he’s so thin. It’s like he doesn’t have enough weight on him to be fully balanced, right?” We used to joke with him about it. He said he had no center of gravity because he didn’t have enough mass to be a center.
We never said anything with the intention of hurting him.
Nor would we have joked about it over the years if he’d been self-conscious about his body image.
Most of the joking was derived from him.
I think the teasing made him feel better because it lifted some of the pressure about always being serious concerning his inability to gain weight or muscle mass.
Voss shakes his head. “I didn’t think of that.
In my observation, he’s always a little flighty.
Distracted. I’ve watched him walking in a straight line, but it’s like he has tunnel vision, and everything outside of the narrow path he’s watching doesn’t exist. He’s almost fallen on his face a few times because of it. ”
I snort. “Yep. That’s Oakley.”
We’re quiet for a minute. I think he’s watching Levis, like I am. I feel like I need to ask him something, but I don’t know what. I’d like some reassurance of what I see between him and Lorissa, or maybe the warmth that’s sometimes between us. Maybe I need to know why he always hangs around me.
“Hey, want to go for a walk?” Voss asks. “We’ll go to the property behind this one, where Dad’s been mapping out the new buildings.”
“Uh…” I watch Levis for a minute. “Sure. Okay.”
Voss gets to his feet and offers me his hand. I freeze just as I sit forward, and stare at it for a beat. What does this mean? I meet his eyes; he’s watching me. Waiting. Still offering me his hand.
I reach up to take it, and Voss pulls me to my feet. Kind of. I don’t actually need help getting to my feet. Maybe he’s in the habit of offering those around him assistance since Lorissa often needs help to get up.
Am I somehow confused in his head with Lorissa?
Voss doesn’t let go of my hand right away, and for a minute, I feel like I’m caught in the tunnel vision he’d just been talking about.
The only thing I can focus on is my hand in his.
I’ve never held a guy’s hand before. Actually, I’ve not held hands with anyone much at all.
That means I’d have to be in a relationship of some kind, and yeah… that’s never happened.
“You okay?” Voss asks. “Am I making you uncomfortable by holding your hand?”
I look down at our linked hands again, trusting that he’s not going to let me run into a table or something. “No,” I answer. “I’m fine.”
He chuckles. “You don’t sound so sure, Brek.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him I’m not sure I’ve ever held hands with someone before. Now that I’m tasked with remembering, I think I’ve briefly held hands with my friends here and there. But not… not like this. There’s something different about this.
Voss releases my hand when we get to the side lot, and he gestures for me to climb into the side-by-side. There aren’t doors on this one, but he still waits for me to sit before walking around to the other side.
The side-by-sides are loud. Auto companies work on making car engines quieter, but with anything that’s not a road vehicle, I think they attempt to make them as loud as possible. I can’t even hear myself over the unnecessary roar of the engine.
Thankfully, it’s quick, and we speed along down the paved path to the right of the house that winds around the lake.
We speed through the intersection where a left takes us around the top of the lake and toward the office building, and a right disappears into the woods where a dozen or more houses are.
The paved road ends, and we drop onto a packed gravel path.
There’s a break in the trees at the back of the property that has been cleared away.
Stumps remain, but they’ll be removed when construction truly begins.
Once we cross through the tunnel of trees, we stop in a small clearing, and Voss kills the engine.
There are stakes in the ground all over the place, the tips sprayed with different colored paints. Otherwise, it looks like a strange clearing in the trees.
“He’s really building a school, huh?” I say. Not so much a question, but kind of miffed.
Voss sighs. “Yeah.”
“Will it be ready in a few years when Emerson is ready for school?”
He nods as he walks almost aimlessly. I follow, remaining half a step behind him.
“Uncle Noaz was the first of us he pulled from public school. I was pretty young, but I remember the fight he got into with his parents when he wanted to take Noaz out. They insisted Noaz stay, and Dad lost his shit. I was probably three or four at the time, and I distinctly remember Grandma saying something about Noaz just needing to be a normal boy so he’d fit in. Then he wouldn’t be picked on.”
“Wow. That must have hurt Noaz’s feelings.”
“They weren’t there. Dad wouldn’t have had the conversation with his parents with Noaz present.
I’m not even sure he remembered I was there when he started yelling at them about how shitty they are.
Sometimes I wonder if Dad fought his parents to get legal custody of Uncle Noaz because he kind of raised his brother with us after that. ”
“That must have been better for Noaz.”
Voss shrugs. “I guess I’m rambling about it because I’m kind of surprised that he didn’t build a school back then for Uncle Noaz. He was there to see the crappy teachers Noaz had firsthand. Then there were the triplets when teachers tried to force them apart. And then Loren…”
“Because he’s a sociopath,” I comment.
He glances at me. Did I not manage to keep my voice neutral? I mean, I remember the murderous look in his eyes as he came after me for kissing Oakley that night.
“Yes.” He takes my hand and pulls me to his side so I’m walking in step with him. “The only time he’s ever a threat to someone is when they hurt his family or overstep his boundaries.”
I’m about to point out that I didn’t overstep his boundaries when he decided he was going to murder me. I don’t. I know these brothers. They’ll defend each other until they’re blue in the face.
Apparently, he knows exactly what I’m thinking about.
“You kissing someone else’s boyfriend is crossing the boundaries of both people in that relationship, Brek. Do you not understand that?”
“I understand that you believe that.”
He laughs under his breath. “Tell me something. Let’s pretend that you were Loren.
Oakley is your boyfriend. Now imagine I decided that I—even knowing Oakley is in a committed relationship with you—am going to kiss him.
Are you going to tell me you wouldn’t be angry walking in on me kissing your boyfriend?
You wouldn’t believe that I crossed a very bright line? ”
“But I—”
“No,” Voss interrupts. “Anything you say is an excuse for your behavior when we all know you were in the wrong.”
I scowl at him. Part of me wants to pull my hand from his. Even though that’s childish.
“You’re only refusing to agree because it’s Loren,” Voss says.
I don’t bother to comment, since anything other than agreeing with that would be a lie. I didn’t trust him. I’m not sure I trust him now.
“Look,” Voss says, and I expect him to have another scenario to explain to me. But he’s gesturing to the stakes in the ground. “This is the playground.”
I look at the stakes, wondering how he knows that. Did he memorize what all the colors mean and what sections they’re framing?
His fingers grip my chin, and he pulls my face to his. “How about we claim the title of the first kiss on the playground, Brek?”
My air whooshes from my lungs in the second before his mouth lands on mine.