7. Tom Cobalt
TOM COBALT
Three days pass, and compromise with Phoenix St. Pierre is beginning to feel more like cutting my chest open and handing him different body parts to play with.
Truly, he might as well be fisting my lungs and liver. It feels eviscerating having to concede on even the smallest details when they’ve been a part of the band for seven years.
“Now you have an issue with the font?” I asked over a phone call last night after a series of back-and-forth texts that went nowhere.
“It’s generic,” he said.
“It’s classic,” I countered with heat, but I knew I wasn’t winning this one. Not when I insisted the album cover be a shade of blue. He’d already relented, and now it was my turn to give in.
“Tom?” Ben dries his wet brown hair with a terry cloth towel. Another wrapped around his waist. I barely heard him come into our room after a shower.
“Huh?” I ask.
“You all right?” He sits on the edge of his queen-size mattress, beads of water rolling down his bare chest. “You keep strumming the same three chords.” His eyes fall to the indigo guitar in my hands.
Dammit. I set the instrument against my end table.
The curtain divider between our beds is currently open, and the two sides of what used to be just my room couldn’t be more different.
On Ben’s side: about five potted plants, hockey gear, a blue and green checkered quilt, sky-blue walls, Latin and science textbooks—granted, those belong to his pre-med girlfriend—and a floor-length window that overlooks NYC from twenty-one stories high.
My side: guitars hung systematically on black walls, black bedding, Green Day posters, band stickers on my furniture, and a mini-fridge. No window.
I gave Ben the side with light, seeing as how my baby brother is like the plants he loves and needs sunshine. I’ll survive in the dark.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say more tensely than I should.
Ben might be the jock of the family, but he has brains and can sus out if I’m actually not fine. He’s the sixth-born empathetic, overly feeling Cobalt. I mean, you don’t become vegan without caring even a little bit about something. In his case, it’s animals. The environment. The fucking world.
I can’t imagine caring that deeply, that extensively, about so many people, things, life. It feels like it’d rip me apart.
I prefer to focus my concern on my siblings.
Him.
And Ben does not need to be worried about me right now. Not when he’s going through major stuff on his own. Like dealing with a newly diagnosed mental illness.
He pushed us all away to the point where he gave up his money and booked a one-way ticket to middle-of-nowhere Alaska.
He didn’t want to be found.
I think that’s the scariest part. That he seriously planned to just disappear off the face of the earth forever.
Eliot keeps telling me that it wasn’t suicide, but it felt a lot like a form of suicide.
Then there’s Charlie, who said that death would’ve been imminent for our brother—that Ben would’ve eventually taken his own life if we never found him.
That hurt more to know.
I’d thought maybe I’d just been projecting. Because being alone forever feels like death to me.
I can’t be alone for five minutes.
My little brother, I thought, was the same. Ben is the most social of my siblings. Always has friends on speed dial and constantly attracts people with his unthreatening baby blue eyes and golden retriever heart.
He’s a human magnet for other humans. But things have changed. His legion of friends turned into one girlfriend, and she was helping him…but I don’t think anyone could really help Ben when none of us knew the extent of his issues.
He didn’t even know he was dealing with a form of OCD that made him think avoiding all of us would save our lives.
Magical thinking. That’s what my therapist called it when I explained what’d happened. It’s been two months since his Alaskan field trip, and I’m well aware that he’s not spontaneously better. He hasn’t miraculously overcome all his issues.
Like he’s so far from being okay.
There are times I see him breathing sharper, physically uncomfortable just being here. And I’m trying to understand that his brain is telling him being around us might hurt us. He could leave a candle burning and start a fire and kill us all. Something like that.
His response is to bolt. To leave. Avoid.
My goal is to make sure he understands everything is okay. Living with us, spending time with us, isn’t going to harm us. In fact, I want him here more than I want a sold-out tour or an award-winning album.
I would choose to lose my voice over losing my brother. I don’t think I can go through him disappearing again.
And I’m terrified it might happen.
But Ben isn’t hyperventilating or sobbing or dashing for the door. He’s currently looking at me like I’m two seconds from self-combustion.
“You sure you’re fine?” Ben asks, sounding skeptical. He stands off his bed. “If you’d rather talk to Eliot, I get it—”
“Dude, no, it’s not that,” I interject fast, watching him go to his plain wooden dresser. “Really, I’m good.” I expel an annoyed breath. “I mean…Phoenix has trespassed inside my brain and now is living there like an unlawful resident. Other than that, yeah, I’m good.”
Ben peers back at me with an emerging smile. I love when he smiles, so I will take this solid win. “Is this the real Phoenix?” he asks. “Or the fake brother Phoenix?”
I informed my family about my new bandmate. It’d been hard to keep it under wraps when my siblings and parents knew I had the deadline coming up for The Carraways. They all have their opinions on the situation, but I think most are just happy that my dream hasn’t been turned to ash.
The label loves “the look” of us together apparently. They were sold on the rock-duo concept the minute we stepped into Riot’s corporate offices in Midtown.
“The real Phoenix.” I rise to my feet. “And the fact that that needs clarification is all kinds of screwed up. Who gives their real name to their brother to use? It’s psychotic.” I lace my hands on my head. “Fuck. I think I have a psycho in my band.”
Ben laughs, and I grin. Yeah, I’m acing this whole roommate situation. Maybe by the end of this, he’ll be heartbroken at the idea of separating from me. He’ll never want to leave.
Ever again.
He tugs open his drawer and slips on drawstring pants. “Maybe real Phoenix has a legitimate reason.”
I make a face. “Like what?” I go to the mini-fridge. “I can’t think of a single legitimate reason. I’d rather eat clay than let any of you fuckers use my name.” I pull out an energy drink and shut the fridge.
His wooden bed frame squeaks as he plops down. “I think the feeling is mutual with the others,” Ben says.
The others. He means our other brothers. “Not you, Ben Pirrip?”
“Use my name all you want.” He smiles with deep sincerity.
I blink. “Ben.”
“What?” He laughs while slipping a sock on his big foot. “It’s just a name, Tom.”
“A name isn’t a couch or a ball cap or a cup of sugar you give away.
It literally defines who you are. It belongs to you.
” I point at him with my energy drink. “Tell me you’ve forgotten that your name is trademarked and that by giving it up you’re actually losing money.
” Our parents trademarked all of our names when we were younger.
Ben slips on his left sock. “You want me to lie to you?”
“No, definitely don’t do that,” I mutter, trying not to freak out over the fact that Ben would intentionally sell his name.
I’ve known that he’s selfless. I’ve known that he does impulsive shit. I’ve also known he could be eaten by a human piranha one day if he doesn’t grab at least one piece of armor.
It’s just hitting harder after his disappearance. All I want to do is place him in a padded room and never take my eyes off him. Which is creepy and deranged on my part, so yeah, I’m not suggesting that. I take a hefty swig of the carbonated drink.
Is Phoenix like Ben? Is that why he gave his name to Birdie? I don’t…see it. I can’t really get a good read on him, and it’s driving me batty.
“What if his brother took it without asking?” Ben theorizes.
“He stole his name?” Fuck. What do I know about Birdie? He’s a prick. But I would say the same about Phoenix. Two peas in a rotting pod.
Ben moves his laptop over to his nightstand. I think he’s been working on a college assignment since he’s in his sophomore year at Manhattan Valley University. I can’t remember which classes he’s enrolled in this semester.
A sudden wave of brotherly guilt hits me.
I should know this about him.
I know stupid shit about Eliot, like how many pairs of shoes he has in his closet. So remembering Ben’s courses shouldn’t be hard. I’m about to get all the info when he looks up at me and asks, “Do you still talk to that RJ guy?”
RJ. The name conjures a wave of complicated feelings.
“Occasionally.” I sink back down on my bed and face Ben. “Why?”
“Just making sure you’re not avoiding a hookup with RJ because I’m rooming with you now. The whole ‘tie-on-the-door’ rule applies to you too.”
I’ve hesitated to kick Ben out of my room for any reason. Having sex is up there. It’s unnecessary. Does not need to happen. I could hook up literally anywhere else if I really need to, but I won’t die from lack of dick. I would be the same Tom if I were still a virgin right now.
“I’m aware of the rule.” I shift the tab of my can back and forth. “I just don’t know if it’ll ever come to fruition. RJ and I are like a seasonal thing, and the current season is nuclear winter. A desolate, barren landscape of cold, lifeless nothing.”
Ben frowns. “Why is that?”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t texted me in weeks. We’ve never been serious. When we first met, that’s what I wanted too. Just a hookup, but I guess it changed for me and not for him.”
Ben looks surprised I’m admitting this to him, but it’s not some big secret. I am, mostly, an open book with my brothers. There are such few things I wouldn’t share. Now, my little sister is a different story. Audrey—no.