44
Much to my silent dismay, the room division isn’t much better than the motel.
Sam and Oliver each have their own rooms, and Tennyson and I are sharing one.
And it’s not like I thought me and Sam were going to get a room together, but maybe if Tenny and Sam were sharing, I could feasibly and arguably inconspicuously sit on a bed with Penny for five minutes and it wouldn’t have to be a secret.
The assumed ticking clock that’s hanging over whatever the fuck me and Sam Penny are weighs heavy on my mind as I wade through all the things I’ll likely never get to do with him before we have to go our separate ways. Not dirty things either, just normal ones…
Staying up all night talking.
Getting hooked on a Netflix show together.
Going to the grocery store.
Getting into bed and having a fight about who should get up to turn off the lights.
Getting caught in the rain.
Watching him fill up the gas tank.
Reading a book next to him—
And maybe daydreaming about doing those things is wasteful with him because he’s the übermensch, but also he’s just the boy I love now, and I’d love to get the opportunity to text him one day to bring home some milk, but I don’t think I’ll get to.
It’s the knock on me and Tennyson’s hotel room door that jerks me out of my grief over a life I’ll never live.
I try not to make eye contact with Sam Penny as he walks in with Oliver, for two reasons.
One, I think he sees through me, and I know my eyes would look raw because my heart is; and two, indifference should keep Oliver off our tracks.
Oliver tosses himself down onto the couch. “How’s the recon going?”
I drum my fingers on my Macbook impatiently, tipping my head back and forth, unsure.
Sam leans back against a table, looking around the room. Holy days, the things I’d have him do to me in this room were I afforded the opportunity, but alas—parental infidelity awaits.
“Do you remember the address?” I ask Tennyson.
“What address?” Oliver asks.
Tennyson and I both look up and over to him, staring for a few seconds before looking at each other.
“I could find it.” Tens turns, grabbing his own laptop, sitting down next to Sam Penny—who I’m a we with, by the way, in case you’ve forgotten.
“What address?” Oliver repeats.
“Just—another address.” I shrug, but it’s weak sauce, even for me. It’s why you should never multitask when you lie; it’s where you’ll slip up.
My focus is on research at the minute, so I’m not focused on the delivery of the lie, and it comes out like garbage. I’m mouth-shrugging and AU14-ing all of the place. My face pulls, my mouth dimples; I’m lying and even a toddler could spot it.
Oliver squints at me. “Bullshit.”
I glance over at him.
Nothing makes Oliver happier than catching me in a lie. It makes him feel like Superman.
He’s eyeballing me hard, brows up, waiting impatiently, and I can feel Sam watching me too, but I can’t look at him—it would be telling if I did—so I just look at Tens.
Tennyson grimaces and Oliver’s frown deepens.
“What?” Oliver looks over at me. “You two have secrets now?”
Tennyson shrugs, not sensing the tenderness. “You guys have had secrets for years.”
I can’t steal Sam and win over Tennyson in one week. “Just tell him.” I shrug.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Oliver asks, pointedly.
Oliver’s eyes hold mine and they’re asking a lot of questions, and not one of them has to do with the girl I didn’t tell him about. I think he’s…betrayed? It’s splaying out on his face as an AU7. Eyelids tightening to a squint—it could be anger, and maybe he thinks that’s what he’s feeling, but it’s unlikely.
Betrayal is likely.
And I get it. We were, for so long, each other’s only people.
And that’s not normal, I know that’s not normal, or even vaguely functional, but we were all we had. And that really only changed a few years ago after Grandpa died. The weight of our lives up until then became too heavy for just the two of us anymore, so it crushed us, but in a silent way neither of us knew how to put words around.
“Whose address is it?” Sam asks, watching me how he shouldn’t. Even though he’s moving the conversation along to help me, his feelings are too raw in his eyes.
If Oliver wasn’t having a mini-crisis in his mind about the state of our relationship, Sam’s eyes at this second might have been enough to tell Oliver all the secrets I’m hiding from him.
“Dad was wiring some money to an account down here for a while,” Tennyson says. “I thought it was weird—asked him about it—he said it was for an office space and to ignore it.”
“But it wasn’t—” I shook my head. “When Tennyson looked into it, it was a residential space.”
“For who?” Oliver frowns.
And I shrug. “We’re guessing, probably Alexis Beauchêne…”
Both Oliver’s and Sam’s eyebrows lift in surprise.
“I called the real estate agency asking for a name, but they said they could only speak to Dad.” Tens scratches the back of his neck. “The address has got to be somewhere. I would have written it down.” He’s tapping away at his computer.
Oliver gets off my bed and walks into the bathroom, and I follow him.
“I’m sorry,” I say as I close the door behind us.
“What else aren’t you telling me?” He sounds a little hopeless.
Fuck.
He already looks hurt and sad; if I tell him now, it’ll crush him.
I widen my eyes a little and tilt my head. “Oli, you’re overreacting.” I can’t believe I’m lying to him again. Three days ago, I loved the truth more than anything, and Sam Penny’s waltzed in and usurped its crown.
I don’t want to lie. I hate lying.
But the only thing I hate more than lying is hurting Oliver.
What am I doing? I get a wave of nausea.
“What happened to us?” he asks, folding his arms over his chest.
He doesn’t really want the answer. He’s scared of what the answer might be, but he’s found himself in the peculiar emotional dilemma where the pain of not knowing outweighs the security of ignorance.
“You and me—” He wiggles a finger between us as though I didn’t know who he meant. “We used to be everything to each other—what happened?”
I pull my head back and give him a small shrug. “You became a flaky drug addict who pissed away a million dollars on powder and cars and boys.”
My brother scoffs, but his mouth does an AU25. His bottom lip drops open just a fraction—he’s hurt. “So it’s all my fault?”
“I didn’t say that—”
“And you just fucking disappeared!” Oliver thumps his hand down on the bathroom sink. “You got me arrested, put me in rehab, and then fucking vanished!”
“Who the fuck do you think paid for Betty Ford, you dumbass?”
“So who asked you to?”
“No one!” I growl. “And no one had to. And I would do it again a hundred times over if it helped you.”
“I didn’t need your help!”
“Of course you needed my help! You always need my help!” I yell, but the last part’s an accident. His head pulls back in surprise and hurt, again. Why am I hurting him so much right now when I’ve spent my whole life trying my best not to? “Shit—that’s not what I meant.”
“Well, what did you mean?” He juts his chin forward a little. Contempt.
I press my lips together and think before I speak this time. “You got to a place where you couldn’t help yourself anymore. And you were the only family I had, so…” I trail.
He leans back against the vanity. “So you had me arrested.” He sighs.
I look up at him tiredly. “Do you know what the last thing you said to me before you got sober was?”
Oliver eyes me suspiciously but shakes his head.
“‘I’m just gay, you’re the slut. Why’s my sex worse than yours?’”
“Fuck.” His head drops into his hands. He looks up at me, eyes all heavy with sorry’s. “I was—”
“I know. I know who you are, Oliver. So I knew when you said that, you weren’t you in that moment.”
He nods quickly, but that’s not an answer and it’s not a resolve. What he said isn’t what happened to us though, and we both know it.
I take a big breath. “I can’t tell you properly—or in a way with words that give it the gravitas it deserves—what it’s like to watch someone you love more than anyone else kill themself. And that’s what you were doing. Just…slowly. And I didn’t know how to be there for you in that, when you were drunk or high, and every time I was with you when you were those things, there’d be this tipping point where it became obvious that you resented me for something”—he opens his mouth to say something, and I cut him off—“and that’s okay if you do! You’re entitled to feel whatever you feel—I’m not mad at you for it, it’s just…I really felt like I spent so much of my life pouring myself out for you, and I couldn’t stomach the idea of me failing you too.”
“Oh, Gige.” He frowns in a different kind of way. “You and—” He blows air out of his mouth. “Maybe now Sam? Are the only people in the world who haven’t, so…”
And I could cry. Honestly, I could weep on the spot.
What am I doing? And what the fuck am I going to do?
My brother steps toward me and wraps his arms around me tight. “I’m sorry.”
I take a deep breath, steady my racing heart. “Me too.”
“For what?” I hear the frown in his voice.
And I’m so glad he can’t see my face. “For everything.”