65. Tom Cobalt
TOM COBALT
Iwake in the middle of the night to see Phoenix sound asleep. It’s my favorite rare event. Too rare, really. Maybe one day it’ll be my favorite reoccurrence.
I’ll never ever confess that he kicked me awake and disrupted my beautiful sleep pattern. There are some things you have to take to your grave for the people you love most. This is definitely one of those things.
He’s tangled in the black silk sheets, and I smile watching his deep slumber. My face heats more remembering his lips on mine, his body on mine, after two months apart. It was everything my soul wanted.
It’s going to make him leaving at the end of the week an agonizing experience. I don’t know how to prepare myself for the moment I say goodbye to Phoenix again.
Holy shit, I need to not think about sad things at this precious hour. He’s asleep. We fucked like superstars. Everything is better than I hoped it could be.
Then it hits me—I never put a tie on the fucking door to signal a do not enter to Ben.
Great, great.
In my defense, I was totally in the moment and not thinking about my roommate situation. Then again, Ben knew Phoenix would be coming over tonight, so maybe he just crashed on the pull-out and didn’t attempt to enter.
I crawl out of bed to check on him.
Using my phone’s flashlight, I make a quiet search for my boxer-briefs on the floor. I slip them on and then peer behind the privacy curtain. Ben’s bed is made, blue-green quilt neatly tucked into the wooden frame.
Mister Feathers dozes off on his perch by the window, and the city glitters Ben’s side of the room. New York is beautiful tonight. Truly.
I backtrack to reach the door, passing my bed—Phoenix still asleep—and I make a quiet exit.
I’m louder heading to the darkened living room. Hoping Ben is awake so I can tell him tonight was the best night. Greatest. Worth the wait—not that I want to wait that long to see my boyfriend again. But I will.
“Ben Pirrip,” I whisper, about to scale the back of the couch and slide down onto the pull-out beside him.
I skid to a complete stop.
The pull-out mattress isn’t unfurled from the couch. No one is lying longways on the cushions. No extra blankets are out. No bed pillows anywhere. He didn’t sleep on the couch then. I check the time on my phone. 2 a.m.
He should be here.
He’s not allowed at Harriet’s dorm past 10 p.m.
It doesn’t hit me at first. Reality. My frown feels like a hundred pounds weighing me down. I turn on my feet. Like maybe he’s playing a prank and right behind me. But that wouldn’t even make sense. Ben doesn’t pull pranks, and there’s just emptiness and shadows as I spin around.
I intake a short breath and dial his number. Hand on my head, I breathe deeply. Once, twice—
“Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system.” I hear the mechanical response. I call him again and again while I check the entire apartment. I’m being sent straight to voicemail over and over and over.
Ben isn’t in a closet, a bathroom, under the sink—because my six-five hockey player brother hiding there is logical.
I wake up Eliot. I wake up Charlie. I wake up Beckett. Very thankful none of my brothers brought any girls home tonight.
“Have you called Harriet?” Beckett is pulling on cotton pants.
“I’ve tried. Eliot has tried,” I tell him, a knot forming in my ribcage. “She’s not answering.”
“She’s probably asleep,” Eliot theorizes.
Charlie jerks his arms through a V-neck sweater as he leaves. He’s going to check downstairs. The eighteenth floor. Ben is friends with Xander Hale. He could be in our cousin’s apartment.
Turns out, he’s not with the Hales.
Turns out, he’s missing.
My little brother is missing again. It slams into me like a freight train when I find Ben’s phone on the kitchen counter.
He left his phone behind. Just like he did when he left for Alaska. When he hoped to never be found. When he tried to save us from himself.
It’s happening again. I’m going to lose my brother.
I’ve already lost him.
He’s not here.
Bile scalds my throat, and the sensation of being punched in the chest has me heaving for air. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.
I hear my brothers on their phones like an echo in a faraway tunnel.
I’m wandering quietly back to my bedroom. Ben’s bedroom.
Our bedroom.
Phoenix is still sound asleep, and I quietly shift the privacy curtain along the track. And I reach Ben’s side of the room.
He’s gone. He’s really gone this time. My eyes burn as I rotate my head and see my tenderhearted little brother in everything.
His elephant ear plant has grown five feet tall since he’s been here. His hockey trophy sits on an Ecology textbook. His sticker-decaled water bottle, the blue one he brings everywhere, keeps his stuffed lion company on his nightstand.
I look up and go still at the sight of the oil painting. The Arcadian. Lush green hills, trees, people dancing—an earth uncorrupted by man.
I’m pummeled backward. My calves hit the frame of his bed.
And then big white wings come flying toward me from the window perch. Ben’s bird settles on my shoulder and head-butts my cheek. He shifts his little feet excitedly, and he chirps, “My home, my home, my home.”
Pain radiates through my chest, and my legs give out. I slide down the side of Ben’s bed, sitting on the floor, and I call out, “Ph…” I can’t breathe. “Phoenix.” I struggle for air.
But that’s all it takes to wake him.
“Tom?” Phoenix rushes toward me, stepping into his boxer-briefs and lifting the elastic band to his waist. “Hey? Talk to me.”
“He’s…he’s gone. Ben is gone.” A hot silent tear rolls down my cheek. Phoenix sits beside me so quickly. He grips my jaw, staring into the deep pools of hurt in my eyes. I see it reflect in his.
My face crushes with this unbearable agony. I can’t…I can’t take it. I don’t want to bear it alone, but I don’t even know if I’m able to give it away.
“Tom,” he breathes.
I’m shaking my head at him, my eyes drifting all around me. Ben’s things. Our room. I’ve been his roommate. “I’ve…I’ve been a good roommate…haven’t I?” My voice cracks, and a sob rips out of me, jostling me with anguish. I pinch my wet eyes.
“Tom.” Phoenix’s voice fissures as I crumple into his chest. He holds me so tight against him, and my body rumbles in waves of grief and pain.
“I’ve watched him…” I intake sharp breaths. “I watched him win a championship. I made him laugh. He made me happy. I came back for him. I’ve stayed…I would’ve stayed longer. I would’ve stayed forever for him. I would’ve never left his side. I would never—” I bawl. I’m bawling into Phoenix’s chest.
“Shhh,” Phoenix consoles. “Try to breathe.”
It fucking hurts to.
Everything hurts.
Especially the realization that even my best might never be enough to defeat his mental illness. It’s all I want. To carve out all the things that hurt the person I love and grind them into dust. It’s not fair that I can’t.
“Eliot!” Phoenix calls out but doesn’t let go of me. I’m glad because I’d slump into the ground and disintegrate into the floorboards if it weren’t for his strong arm around my body.
Soon, all my brothers, minus Ben, crowd into my room.
I lift my heavy head off Phoenix and inhale a strained breath, staring up at Eliot like I’ve been stabbed. The only reason I’m not bleeding out is my boyfriend.
Eliot takes a knee in front of me. His deep blue eyes hold unbending purpose as he grips the back of my skull. I would grip his too if my arms didn’t feel like dead weight.
“Eliot,” I choke out.
“We’ll find him, brother,” Eliot decrees. “Don’t doubt we won’t.”
I am doubting. “I found his phone.” My eyes fill with hot tears again. “He’s gone, dude,” I croak.
“Where is it?” Charlie asks, and I swallow a lump in my throat and hand him Ben’s phone.
Eliot rises and inspects the phone too. Charlie taps the screen, then tells Beckett, “It’s dead.”
I nod a few times, glancing from Eliot up to Beckett. “Maybe Eliot would’ve been a better roommate—”
“No,” Beckett interjects calmly. “No, Tom.” Now Beckett is crouching down to be eyelevel. “You have to accept something.”
“I accept,” I say instantly.
Beckett smiles—no, actually, he’s sharing a subtle smile with Phoenix. It is a true miracle how Phoenix ingratiated himself with my two oldest brothers. Stuff of Cobalt Empire myth.
It calms me.
Our lore. Being engraved as we live and breathe. I just want Ben to be a part of it always.
Then Beckett tells me, “You will never be the reason our little brother leaves. None of us will be the reason. If, one day, something were to happen to him, it will be his OCD.”
I nod to myself, letting this fully sink in. “I was the best roommate, best brother.”
“You still are,” Eliot says firmly.
I still am.
I blink and more hot tears fall. “I will always be the best brother to all of you,” I say, trying to steady my quaking voice, “because I don’t know how to give you all halfway.
I don’t even want to.” I nod more, stronger.
“And I’m starting to realize…I can’t control the outcome—I never could.
But I can still show up because I love him, and that’s what brothers do. ”
“Oui,” Beckett professes deeply. “It is what we do.” His eyes are knowing, understanding—love and power. “Ensemble.” Together.
“Ensemble,” I nod, breathing in all of their strength.
As Beckett stands up, my face starts twisting in confusion. I ask, “How are none of you torn up over this? Why the hell am I the only one on the floor?”
“I’m on the floor too,” Phoenix points out.
“Because you’re my boyfriend. You’re obligated to sit on the ground with me.” I sniff hard.
His lips twitch. “It’s definitely a choice.” And he’s not leaving my side. It warms me. He wipes my wet jaw with the heel of his palm. I’m about to tell him to leave my tears. They might grow a garden on Ben’s floor for when he returns. We don’t know how magical I am.
I could be a garden nymph.
Charlie seems aggravated.
Eliot has a look of concern aimed at me.
Beckett is turning more toward Charlie, so I address my oldest brother. “You all know something I don’t?” I ask him. “You have a game plan to find Ben? I’d like to be looped in, thank you.” I’m pissed. Why are they withholding this intel?
Charlie shifts back toward me and Phoenix. “You have unresolved trauma from the last time Ben left. We don’t,” Charlie snaps. “That’s why you’re on the fucking ground and we’re not. But this is not like last time.”
I process with two slow blinks. “You know what? I’m happy to know that I might be overreacting in this instance,” I tell them. “The only instance I’ve ever overreacted. All other times were justified reactions.”
Eliot agrees, “This is an outlier.” We’d grin if there wasn’t a very big presence missing in this room. My eyes must speak the loss. Because Eliot assures, “We’re going to find him.”
“His phone is dead, not erased,” Charlie tells me. “He didn’t leave a goodbye letter. Very likely, he rushed out of the apartment without his fucking phone or his bodyguard because that’s Ben. He’s emotional. He reacts off fucking emotion.”
Beckett says, “This might have nothing to do with his OCD. We need to find Harriet.”