Chapter One #2
Straight to the wound, the way he always does.
I drag two fingers hard across my eyebrow because Jackson is genuinely the last person on this earth I want to talk to about David.
Not because he'd gloat, but because he wouldn't. He called this whole thing from the jump months ago, and he'll have the good manners now not to remind me of it, which is somehow worse than if he stood in the street and boasted.
A gloat I could work with. A gloat I could return fire on.
It's the kindness I can't deal with this morning.
“Nothing. Got rerouted home, about to go talk to Bennet now.”
“I called him. He's not answering. I've been trying since yesterday. We brought a PR firm in Friday, and he needs to get on board with it right now, not after it's on the second news cycle.”
“Fucking hell.” I jab the elevator button harder than the situation strictly requires, as if the button is where the day's been going wrong.
My elderly neighbor and her grown son both turn to look at me with the specific, delicate trepidation of people rapidly reconsidering whether they want to share an enclosed steel box with whatever I've got going on.
I roll my eyes at the wall. I am fresh out of the number of fucks it takes to be soft for an audience.
“I'll talk to him. Just getting on the elevator.”
“Are you sure you're okay? You sound way off.”
I genuinely hate how much I wish he'd stop asking.
I wish, just once, he'd let a single thing slide past him unnoticed. Take the fine at face value like everyone else in my life gratefully does and let me carry the rest of it up to the next floor in private, the way I carry everything, the way I prefer, the way it's safe.
“I'm fine, Marcus.”
Ugh.
For fuck's sake.
I regret calling him that before it's all the way out of my mouth. It's so cold and detached, and I don’t do it intentionally. I just always reach for it when I need a foot of space between us and don't have anything else handy to put there.
There's a pause on the other end.
“Got it.”
“Wait, Jacks—”
I go to apologize, but the line's already dead.
Could this day get any fucking worse?
“We'll take the next one,” the neighbor's son says as the elevator doors open.
I look at him.
He looks at me.
“Good call.”
They back away, and the doors slide shut on my last opportunity to pretend I'm behaving like a normal member of society.
For the first few floors, I'm fine. Completely fine.
Then the remnants of the last hour start in on me. David and Jet. The sounds the two of them were making. The look on David's face when he saw me. Jet fighting for his life against a pair of pants.
And then, because my own brain is a hateful little bitch with excellent archival storage, it starts supplying the sounds David and I used to make.
Nope.
I squeeze my eyes shut and shake the reel loose because I don't care. I genuinely don't.
This is one more blow in a long, well-documented and distinguished career of taking them standing up, and I am nothing if not practiced. I have a whole résumé of this. References available upon request.
So what if I thought he was the one?
That's hardly a crime.
So what if I gave him a key?
People give people keys every day. Locksmiths would go out of business otherwise.
So what if, on the drive home Tuesday, I caught myself idly thinking about what month would be best for a wedding?
It wasn't a plan. It was scheduling.
I schedule things professionally.
And the seating chart was purely hypothetical. Mostly.
The only real, actionable takeaway from this entire episode is that my gaydar has developed a fault and requires recalibration, possibly a full factory reset.
That's fine. That's fixable. A maintenance issue.
Maybe I should've known something was wrong when he cared that much about throw pillows.
No. That's homophobic.
See? I'm already growing from the experience.
Everything is fine. Everything is absolutely fucking fine.
The elevator keeps climbing. And somewhere around the twentieth floor, the bullshit stops working.
I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes.
I loved him.
There.
Fucking traitor.
The thought sits in my chest now that I've finally let it surface, and I hate it because it makes this morning something I can't file under David is an asshole and move on from.
I loved him.
For once, I'd managed to aim my heart at someone I could actually have instead of leaving it parked where it's sat uselessly for years, pining after a man who was never going to be mine.
I did the healthy thing.
I chose the sane option.
David was age-appropriate. Available. Uncomplicated. He didn't come attached to my brother or years of history or a marriage certificate with another woman's name on it.
He was someone I was allowed to love.
So I did.
And look how fucking well that worked out.
By the time the elevator doors open on Michael's floor, I can feel myself slipping. The whole morning is catching up at once, at the worst possible threshold, right where I have to walk into another disaster and be the composed one.
Hot pressure builds behind my eyes.
Absolutely not.
I don't cry.
I don't cry for anything or anyone. I made that arrangement with myself a long damn time ago and have honored it through funerals, lawsuits, family catastrophes and several truly terrible haircuts.
I am absolutely not breaking that streak now.
Not in a hallway.
Not over David Fucking Walker and Jethro Can't-Put-My-Pants-On-Properly Farrow.
I have standards. AND WHAT KIND OF FUCKING NAME IS JETHRO ANYWAY?
I suck in a deep breath and stare at Michael's door.
Get your shit together, Rosalie.
“Sis?”
I jump.
Michael is standing in the open doorway staring at me.
I've been having my private mental breakdown directly outside his apartment long enough for him to notice.
“We need to talk.”
I stomp past him before he can get a good look at whatever is written on my face, because the very last thing I need this morning is my baby brother, the one person on the planet I've spent the better part of my adult life keeping the hard things away from, clocking that his big sister has been fighting back tears in an elevator over a man who wasn't even worth the ride up.
“What happened?”
“Sit.”
“Rose—”
“Michael.”
He takes one look at me and decides against whatever argument he was preparing.
Smart man.
I go straight for the television, find the news channel I already know is running this on a loop because that's precisely the caliber of day we're all having, and set the remote down on his coffee table.
Michael lowers himself cautiously onto the couch.
I sit beside him.
Together, we take in the morning's featured segment, which is, in the broadest and most literal possible sense, my brother's cock.