CHAPTER NINETEEN
CONNECTICUT, AGE TWENTY-THREE
It had been a year since we’d last seen Melanie.
It'd been about that long—minus a day—since Luke had left his job at her father’s auto repair shop, and it’d been just as long since we’d heard anything about how she was doing. What she was doing.
Not that her father had offered much information to his daughter’s ex-fiancé when my brother stopped by the shop to quit and grab his things, other than to let him know that she would be fine.
I wondered often if she actually was—fine, I mean.
Because we sure as hell weren’t. Yet we were getting by.
Somehow, the world hadn’t stopped turning the moment Melanie walked away, no matter how much I felt like that spider on the back of my door, caught in the middle of a storm he couldn’t imagine weathering.
Somehow, Luke had quickly found himself a new job at another mechanic’s shop. My work at the cemetery was still going strong, and I could say with absolute certainty that my brother hadn’t stepped foot inside a bar.
Over the past year, the wins might’ve been few and far between, and I might’ve had to squint a bit to see them at all. But they were there, and that had to count for something. I just wasn't sure I could say we were fine . Not in the way I hoped Melanie was. But I hoped we would be eventually, and apparently, Luke did too.
“We should go out. Do something,” he suggested one night after I picked him up on the way home from work.
I raised a brow with a blend of suspicion and shock. “Uh, what?”
He and I never went out. But there he was, in his grease-stained coveralls and backward hat, motor oil beneath his nails and smeared over one cheek, asking if I wanted to do something.
“We should. You know, just to get out of the house for once.”
I actually laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”
He lifted one shoulder and glanced at me, his gaze nonchalant. “Why? You don’t wanna do anything?”
“I didn’t say that. I just …” My lips turned downward as I shrugged. “What would you even wanna do?”
“Well, I’d suggest a bar if I didn’t think you’d rip me a new asshole.”
I lowered my brows and slid my unamused glare in his direction.
Luke smirked and huffed a laugh. “I dunno. What would you wanna do? Grab some dinner? Go to the library? Pick up chicks at a comic store? I mean, what kinda shit does a guy like Charlie Corbin even like to do?”
It was my turn to smirk as a chuckle rumbled through my chest. “Is that something people do? Pick up chicks at comic stores?”
“You tell me, man. You’re the nerd around here.”
“Hate to break it to you, but I don’t go to comic stores.”
“Get the hell out of here. Yes, you do.” Luke stared at me, incredulous.
Now, I was laughing and shaking my head, unable to remember the last time any moment between us had been this lighthearted and—dare I say it—sort of normal.
“No,” I said, “I really don’t. I think I went to one once, but that was back when … God, I think I had to be ten, maybe eleven? I don't remember, but it was forever ago. Dad had taken me.”
Luke scoffed, disbelief crinkling the corners of his eyes. “The fuck do you read then?!”
“Not comic books!”
“Since when?!” He sounded shrill, the words squeaking out between bursts of his own laughter.
“When the hell have you ever known me to read comic books?”
“Oh, come on. You used to read, uh … what was it?” He snapped his fingers, commanding the words to come to him. “The one with Pinhead. It was a movie. Uh …”
“ Hellraiser ?” I supplied as mirth continued to tug at the corners of my mouth.
My face began to hurt; I was smiling so much.
“That’s it! And, uh, Sandman , right? Oh! And, uh, The Crow ! No, wait, that was a movie …”
My laughter settled as one side of my mouth curled up in a soft, almost-melancholy smile. I had never realized Luke paid so much attention to the things I’d been into over the years—apart from my drawing.
He always paid attention to that. Even when he had been drunk.
“No, that was a book before it was a movie,” I corrected quietly. “And they’re graphic novels, not comic books.”
He groaned and shoved my shoulder. “Oh, shut the hell up. Same fuckin' thing.”
I didn’t bother suppressing my eye roll. “Graphic novels are longer and more complex than comics.”
“Oh God, whatever,” he groused, followed by a chuckle. “And where do you buy those?”
I raised a brow. “The bookstore?”
He raised one back. “The … comic bookstore?”
I snorted. “Just the bookstore, you dick. Or the library.”
He harrumphed and turned his attention to the radio. Neither of us had been paying attention to it since I’d picked him up, but now, it seemed to matter. Or maybe he was just trying to think of something else to say. Something to keep the moment of normalcy from fading, to prevent the usual air of sadness and monotony from filling the space between us.
He settled on Kansas’s “Carry on My Wayward Son” before leaning back in his seat, staring out the window and tapping his grease-stained fingertips against his thigh.
Then, after the second verse and I turned the car onto our street, he asked, “So, uh … where do you pick up chicks then?”
Surprised, I glanced in his direction and stared at the back of his head for a moment before replying, “I don’t.”
When the hell did he think I had the time to pick anyone up, besides him? My days consisted of waking up, driving us both around, working, cooking dinner, and going back to bed, only to wake up and do it all over again. There wasn’t room for anything—or anyone—else, and it was for the better.
Nothing good ever came from me letting my guard down and allowing myself or others to live .
“Hmm,” Luke replied with a short nod before dropping the topic altogether as we pulled into the driveway.
I cooked us a box of cheap pasta and sauce for dinner, and Luke carried his bowl back to his room, where he did God only knew what while I sat at the table and read that week’s book. Knowing damn well I wouldn’t see Luke again until the next morning, when it was time to drive him to work again. Wondering if we’d ever find that normalcy again and if it would ever stick around.
***
“Hey, so I need you to take me somewhere,” Luke said the next morning, interrupting my breakfast.
It was his day off, and the fact that he entered the dining room dressed, complete with his black leather jacket and boots, startled me from Stephen King's Bag of Bones .
“Where?” I asked suspiciously, holding a spoonful of oatmeal midair, still unable to believe my brother had woken up before noon on a day when he didn’t have to be awake at all.
Usually, if he didn’t have work, I’d come home after work to find him draped over the couch in his underwear and nothing else, snoring while the TV played an old action movie or ‘90s sitcom.
He proceeded to pull something out of the pocket of his leather jacket, unfolded it, and slapped it down on the table in front of me. I leaned over my bowl of oatmeal to peer at the crumpled piece of paper to find a picture of a motorcycle staring back at me.
“Guy’s selling it for an amazing price,” he explained as I read the paragraph of information beneath the picture.
It was a two-year-old Harley. The person selling it could no longer keep it and was looking for someone who’d appreciate it the way he did. He was selling it for just ten grand after buying it for thirty, which only made the deal seem too good to be true—a trap my brother was likely to fall for.
I dropped my spoon into its bowl as I shook my head and said, “I dunno, Luke …”
“I know what you’re thinking. But I talked to the guy on the phone last night.” He pulled out the chair across from me and plopped down, folding his arms on the table. “He's a tool. Fucked around behind his wife’s back, so she kicked him out, and now, he’s looking to make some quick cash. He doesn’t want to get rid of the bike, but he can’t afford to sell his car ‘cause he’s living out of it right now or something, so …” He grabbed the paper from beneath my eyes and folded it back up. “I told him I’d give him eight thousand for it, and he accepted.”
I slowly lifted my spoon again and shoveled the oatmeal into my mouth, then chewed as I replied, “Where the hell did you get eight thousand dollars from?”
“I’ve had it,” he muttered nearly defensively, lowering his gaze. “It’s left over from Mom and Dad.”
“Oh,” I replied before dropping my eyes to the gloppy oatmeal I no longer had the stomach to finish.
I still had most of mine too.
It always felt wrong to spend it, never knowing when I’d really need it one day. I always thought I would use it on something important, something I knew my parents wouldn’t have thought twice about helping me with—like fixing the car a couple of years ago when the belt snapped and needed replacing.
Luke’s half was to be spent on whatever he wanted, just as much as mine was. Honestly, I had thought he'd blown it all on booze. But now, knowing he still had some left, I couldn’t help but judge a little.
Would Mom and Dad have really wanted him to get a motorcycle? Was that the most necessary thing when the house was looking more and more like shit every day?
Why should I have to hold on to my money for the things we needed when he got to blow it on a fucking toy ?
“Don’t look at me like that,” he spat at me.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a fuckin’ idiot.”
I shook my head and dropped my eyes to the bowl of golden-brown mush on the table. “I’m not—”
“Yeah, you are. I don’t give a shit what you think, Charlie. It doesn't matter. I’ve thought about this, and I think it’s a good idea.”
“I didn’t say—”
“I can’t keep relying on you for everything. You need a fuckin’ life, okay? And you’re never going to have one until I get my own wheels.”
My gaze shot back to his. “You’d better not be doing this for me. I don’t mind—”
“Oh, trust me.” Luke sniffed a laugh, leaning back in his chair. “I want the bike. I’ve always wanted one. And that has absolutely nothing to do with you. But if it means giving you a little of your freedom back, then I’ll consider it a solid selling point.”
I lifted one corner of my mouth into a helpless half smile. “I don’t really care about having freedom or not. It’s not like I’m really missing out on anything.”
Luke groaned and tipped his head back against the chair, staring at the ceiling as he shook his head.
“What?”
“Bro,” he muttered on a sigh, looking back at me with an expression that said, What the hell am I gonna do with you? “Neither of us has gotten laid in over a fuckin’ year, and if you say you’re good with that, I’m calling you a goddamn liar.”
I kept my lips shut about that one.
“Now, I’m getting that bike, and you and I are going out. We’re gonna get our asses back out there, maybe find a couple of chicks and live our fucking lives a little. Because, I dunno about you, man, but I’m sick of moping around this place like I’m just waiting around to fuckin’ die or something. Shit needs to feel normal again, and the only way that’s gonna happen is if we act like it. So, finish your shitty breakfast, and let’s go.”