“Well, don’t strain yourself,” she huffs and shakes her head, trying to cover up for her panic.
“Very funny.”
She actually smiles at that. “Oh honey, it’s so good to see you coming back to yourself at last.”
“At last?” I rub at my forehead, something I’ve been doing so much I probably dug a groove. “What do you mean? I’ve only been here a day.” I think about this. “And a night. Right?”
Mom shakes her head again, but this time she claps a hand over her mouth and gets up hastily to go. “Matt wants
to see you,” she mumbles and goes.
Okay, that was weird or is it just me?
“Why’s mom upset?” I ask Matt when he ventures inside and plants his ass in the chair.
It feels like an interrogation chair. Only I am the one asking the questions – and getting no answers.
“She’s not upset.”
“Bullshit.”
“Up your ass.”
“Up yours.”
“Fuck you, Matt.”
“Now remember who has the bigger dick in this room.”
“You mean who is the bigger dick? Cuz that’d be you.” A stab of pain goes through my head and I wince, lifting my hand to rub at my eyes. “Fuck.”
“Do you need the doctor?” The chair screeches as Matt gets to his feet.
“I’m fine. Gimme a second.”
To his credit, he does, instead of freaking out and yelling for the doctors to come save me.
I admit, he isn’t such a bad brother after all.
It takes a while for the pain to subside, and by then I’m so exhausted it’s a struggle to keep my eyes open.
“Is Hailey here?” I ask around a yawn that just about cracks my jaw in two. “She said she’d be back.”
“She will. Don’t worry, little bro. But I should go, see how Octavia and the kids are doing. I left them in the cafeteria and Mary has a cold.”
But he doesn’t leave just yet. He just sits there, staring at me.
It strikes me that he looks like a completely different guy since he shaved off his beard. Younger. More like the brother I remember when we were kids. Plus he seems less… severe. Less angry at the world.
Happier.
I’ve always been the lighter versions of him. Blond hair, blond beard. I scratch at it now. It’s grown longer. I haven’t bothered trimming it in a while, because…
Because what? Again that elusive memory that hurts my chest.
And it also strikes me now how alike we are, despite the difference in our colors. I am just like he was before he met Octavia. Despite being in a hospital bed, cleaned up and covered to my chest in sky-blue blankets, I feel unkempt, rumpled, filthy.
Like I don’t care about how I look, about how I live – and a flash of memory strikes through my brain like a spark, making me groan and grab at my head.