11 #3
“I don’t think you know how to do friendship, dude,” he says, and kicks the ball so swiftly the flames go out, right before it hits me hard in the chest.
“We hung out all the time,” I protest, catching the ball before it hits the ground. I don’t know why everyone keeps harping on this. Normally I would just brush it off, but even Ava agreed before.
“Sitting at opposite ends of the room doing unrelated boring things for hours and hours is not friendship,” Aiden scoffs. “I wish Dad would have let Mom get you evaluated for something.”
“Hey,” Shawn snaps at him, putting on the eldest brother voice of authority, “friendship looks like a lot of things. He doesn’t have to do it the way you do.”
Aiden grumbles as he re-lights the soccer ball and kicks it to Shawn instead.
“I picked Celine because she’s one of my closest friends. I wasn’t going to be like Dad and . . .”
I don’t know how to finish that thought. He made it clear how little thought of our mom, how often he disregarded her opinion, the way he started talking to Shawn and me about running the family business when we were only kids.
The will that left her out and gave everything to his sons.
“You think you’re not gonna have the same life he did, when you’re following all the same rules?” Aiden asks unhelpfully.
I don’t need Aiden to point out that I’m just as terrible and rigid and cold. Too often, I feel like I am becoming him. I don’t know how to be anything other than that. It’s inescapable. I hate every moment that I feel like I understand why he behaved the way he did.
I hate feeling like my anger fills the entire house. It’s no longer just mine, it’s everyone’s burden. It made me miss the anonymity of being the middle child.
“If you’re so enlightened, why didn’t you say anything before?” I throw a glare in Aiden’s direction. “You don’t get to keep saying ‘I told you so’ when you didn’t say shit to me beforehand.”
Aiden opens his mouth to reply, but bites down on his answer. His jaw works furiously for a moment, but the silence draws long. He hadn’t been enthusiastic about my choice before the wedding, but after everything went to shit, he’s been a little too eager to harp on everything I did wrong.
Shawn kicks the ball to Laura, and it makes the rounds between us without a word, the mood uncomfortably somber. The soccer ball flares red each time it impacts against someone’s foot, only to return to a dim, close burning blue as it flew through the dark evening.
“So, you and Ava,” Shawn says, a little too judgmentally for someone guilty of the same crime.
“There’s no me and Ava,” I insist, and Laura makes a derisive noise.
“Yeah, that was some real platonic lip action.”
“Not quite as platonic as the one with Celine,” Shawn comments, clearly ready to fill her in on what she missed last Sunday.
“What?” Aiden exclaims, apparently left out of the loop on that one.
“Right? What’s going on there? I sure as hell don’t kiss my exes,” Shawn continues, and before I can tell Shawn that’s patently untrue, the evidence is in the kitchen right now doling out quiche, Aiden breaks the pattern and kicks the ball to me with a little more force than necessary.
I react in time, and the ball goes rolling back into the woods, the fire out again. Aiden jogs after the ball with a groan when it becomes clear neither of us will.
“I am . . . handling things with Celine,” I tell them, taking in a long, deep breath.
“And Ava?”
“There’s nothing happening there.”
“Come on, we saw the same thing,”
“No, I believe him about Ava,” Laura puts in unexpectedly, before she says, “Somehow Logan found the only person in Mystic Falls more emotionally unavailable than himself.”
That doesn’t feel great to hear.
“Let’s entertain the thought experiment, at least. Humor me,” Shawn insists.
“If I thought there was even half a chance it would work,” I start to say, and with a glance to Laura and Aiden, don’t bother to finish the thought. I would do whatever I could to keep her, but there’s no point declaring that to them.
Shawn knows what I mean without clarification. “Before you told her what you are? Or . . . without ever?”
I feel their eyes all fall upon me.
“Go ahead, admit it. You would have done the same thing I did. Why would you be completely honest with someone when you have so many doubts about how it could actually work? But here’s the kicker. It’s not going to work unless you tell her. You have to take that chance.”
“There’s no point. The risk outweighs the consequences.”
“I guess the difference is, you act like your cowardice is something to be proud of.”
I glance up at the sky. The moon is bright and high, an imperfect shape. The mere sight of it makes my skin start to prickle in anticipation of the change. I have maybe another week before it’s full. That means it’s been almost a whole month since I last tried to maul my brother in the woods.
“There’s nothing between me and Ava.”
Shawn barks out a disbelieving laugh. “Oh, shut up. You quiver like a dog balancing a treat on its nose while she insists you’re just friends.”
I may not make it a whole month.