Heartless Few Box Set

by MV Ellis

  “No, and no. What exactly was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, Marnie, I know you’ve been carrying a torch for my sociopathic twin brother since cavemen invented fire, but, hey, what about me? I’m over here in love with you, and I’m not a self-centered asshole. Unlike him, I’ll treat you with the respect you deserve, not like you’re just some kind of rent-a-pussy. Why don’t you give me a try?’ Or what about ‘Hey, Arlo, you know that chick who is totally in love with you, whose cherry you popped like a fucking Tic-Tac? The one you’ve been ‘casually’ screwing since you were teens but actually give zero fucks about as a human being? Well, I’m in love with her and always have been. Do you mind stepping aside so I can make a move?’”

  I raked my hands through my hair and tugged on it. It was either that or lose my ever-loving shit with Arlo. If I was pulling out clumps of hair, I wasn’t decking him, so I chalked that up as a win.

  “What was going to be the outcome of that conversation, exactly, pray tell, dear brother? We all know that everything in your life revolves around you—for you, and for everyone around you. You don’t share, you don’t compromise, and you don’t do anything unless it has a clear benefit for you.” Never had truer words been spoken. Marnie had been 100 percent right about that.

  “I’ve been telling you for years that her feelings go beyond the casual hookup, and you’ve been stonewalling me that whole time because ultimately you don’t give a fuck about anything unless it serves your agenda. Would it have been any different if I’d told you how I felt? I highly doubt it, apart from the fact that I would have looked like a sad fuck, and you would never have let me forget it. Excuse me for wanting to hang on to at least a shred of dignity in all this. So here we are.” I saw the recognition as it dawned slowly in Arlo's eyes. Finally! Thirty years and he finally got it. That was one small mercy out of this entire sorry shitshow.

  Ryan interjected, “C’mon, man, Arlo, you can’t seriously tell me you had no idea? I mean, I had an inkling, and we don’t share DNA. Fuck, he may be your identical twin, but unlike you, his poker face ain’t for shit, even less so when we were kids. He looked like a kicked dog when you and Marnie started hanging out, then hooking up. You really must be high on your own supply to have missed that after all these years. Even as adults, the way he looks at her when he thinks nobody is watching, the way he talks about her, the way he talks to her. The way he’d walk to the ends of the earth across molten lava if she needed him to. It’s all there if you ever bothered to take notice, or give a fuck about something or someone other than yourself.”

  Ryan’s words gave me an idea.

  Thirty-Four

  Marnie

  I sat in the attic for the longest time, back against the piles of dusty boxes containing more relics of my fucked-up family history, tears rolling down my face. I cried for my mom, for Mia, for me. For everything. I felt like, as a family, we had been pushed into a cycle of fucked-up shit, and I was still whirring in it, trying and failing to stop myself from being sucked further into the toxic vortex.

  When I felt like I’d cried myself inside out, my eyes were puffy, and my throat was raw, I made my way down the retractable staircase and shuffled into the bedroom. I sat on the end of the bed, turning the new information over and over in my mind.

  I heard Luke’s key in the door—since he was practically living at Mia’s and coming and going at all times of day and night due to his crazy studio schedule, I thought it made sense for him to have one—and scrambled for the bathroom. Though I’d been wallowing all day, I didn’t necessarily want Luke to know that. I was getting sick of him seeing me as the pathetic and helpless train wreck I had recently become. Letting someone, even Luke, witness me fall apart in my lowest lows wasn’t my MO. I hated feeling weak and vulnerable.

  “Marnie? Marnie? Marnie!” His voice got louder with each call, prompting me to move faster. I splashed cold water on my face, dragged a brush through my hair at lightning speed, and ran some toothpaste around my mouth. That would have to do. Judging by the frantic edge to Luke’s voice, he was going to send out a search party including air and sea rescue if I didn’t answer him soon.

  “Yeah, up here,” I called out, trying to keep my voice light.

  “Cool. Can you come down here a while? I need your help with something.”

  “Ummm… okay.” I really was happier hiding out in the top part of the house, but I made my way timidly downstairs to see what he wanted. I found him waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, clutching at the collars of his distressed leather biker jacket. What was he doing?

  “Uh, hello? What do you need help with?”

  “Well, it’s not me who needs help so much as her.” He nodded down toward his chest.

  “What are you talking about, Luke? You’re not making any sense. Are you high?”

  He laughed. He was the only one finding his weird behavior funny. He must have been high.

  “This little one. She’s looking for a new mom.” With those words, he pulled open his jacket to reveal possibly the tiniest and cutest puppy I had ever seen in my entire life. Luke undid his zipper, and she jumped off his arms and into mine so quickly that I had to scramble to catch her and hold her securely.

  “What? I mean… who…? Whose dog is this?” As I spoke, the little bundle of fluff in my arms promptly stretched up and nipped me on the chin with her tiny ineffectual puppy teeth before slathering me with doggy licks. I was tickled in more ways than one and could barely control my giggles.

  “I believe that would be you.”

  “What?”

  “She needs a home. Jake’s kids found her abandoned in a plastic bag at a local park. Some cruel bastard had just left her there. They brought her home for the night, but Jake and Kris were both insistent that they already had too much on their hands with two kids and their existing pets, so she had to go. The vet checked her over, and of course she’s not registered. They didn’t want to see her go to the pound, so they were looking for a new home for her.”

  “Right. So why do you now have her?”

  “Well, I figured she needed a home, and you needed…”

  “To snap the fuck out of my funk?” I finished for him.

  “I was going to say a little unconditional love, but what you said works also.”

  As if on cue, at the mention of the words unconditional love, the puppy started wriggling around in my hands and nipping at my fingers. She was a feisty little thing. So full of life and, no doubt, love.

  “I can’t have a puppy. Not only do I not know the first thing about looking after pet—I never had any—but more importantly, my life isn’t set up to cope with a puppy.”

  “What do you mean? Of course you can look after a dog, anyone can.”

  “This isn’t a dog, it’s a puppy, but either way, I can’t do it. I don’t have a backyard, or the time or patience to look after a pet of any kind, not even a goldfish.” Why the fuck would somebody get someone else a puppy without consulting them?

  “You do so have a garden. I very clearly remember watching you tending to it only a little while ago. You don’t forget a sight like that in a hurry.” He winked lasciviously, and I found it surprisingly hot, even while I was pissed off with him. What the hell was wrong with me?

  “Newsflash, douchey. I don’t live here, and nor does this puppy. I’m just hanging out here for a little while so I can get my head together until this video shit blows over. There’s no room at the inn for a tiny four-legged interloper.”

  Luke shrugged noncommittally and walked toward the living room.

  “Are you hearing me?” I strode after him, on the verge of properly losing my cool. “You need to take her back. You can’t just palm her off on me and walk away like it’s a done deal. It’s far from done.” While the conversation was unfolding, the pup had somehow managed to scramble up my chest and was nestled between my chin and clavicle. Okay, so that was cute as shit, but that didn’t mean she could stay.

  “I’m sorry, Luke, I re
ally appreciate the thought, and I know you were trying to help, but you were way off the mark with this. You have to take her back. I can’t do this right now.”

  “I can’t take her back. I promised Jake’s kids I’d find her a good home. It will break their hearts to find out I’d lied to them.”

  Jesus. Way to guilt trip me. I was starting to feel more like Cruella De Ville with every passing moment.

  “They wouldn’t have to know. Just tell them you found an amazing house with a big yard and loads of other dogs to keep her company.”

  “I can’t lie to them. Even if they never found out, I would know, and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I’m Zee’s godfather, for Christ’s sake.”

  Ugh. I hated the way he seemed to be able to switch his integrity on and off to suit his current mood.

  “Tell them I’m allergic to dogs or something.”

  “That’s still lying.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a little white lie. I’m not allergic as such, but I’m pretty much incapable of looking after her, or anyone for that matter, including myself right now. That’s kind of the same thing.”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Then you keep her.”

  “You know I would love to, but A.) I don’t really live anywhere, and B.) even if I did have a permanent abode, I’m almost never home. There’s no way I could keep a dog. She’s all yours.”

  “Luke! You can’t just fucking dump a live being on another person without their permission. It’s irresponsible, not to mention maddening.”

  “Sorry. Not sorry.” That sexy grin was back again, making it difficult for me to stay mad at him.

  “Arrrrgh! And to think that everyone thinks you’re the nice one, myself included until very recently. It turns out that you’re just as much of an asshole as your brother when you want to be.”

  “Justin? What has he ever done to you?” Justin was Arlo and Luke’s younger brother. Jones child number four of four.

  “You know full well I’m talking about Arlo!”

  “Keep your voice down.” He dropped his to a whisper. “I think she’s asleep.”

  “What?” Sure enough, as I contorted my neck in order to see her properly, I noted that she was definitely asleep, and as much as I was crazy pissed off that Luke had sprung her on me, I also appreciated that she was cute as cute could be. I could feel myself warming to her by the second.

  I made my way to the couch and sat down, reclining at such an angle as to keep her bed—aka my neck—level and not to disturb her. I looked down at her again, and in that moment, as she signed contentedly between tiny breaths, I knew I was in love. It was amazing to believe that something so tiny could steal my heart so quickly and completely, but she had. I stroked her gently as she slept.

  “I found them.” I spoke out of the blue, almost surprising myself with my words. I hadn’t consciously been planning on saying anything, especially not that. I wasn’t entirely sure where the admission had even come from.

  “Found what?” Luke responded, falling into the nearest armchair, his legs and arms spilling over the frame. “Mind if I turn on the TV?”

  “No, go ahead. Found who not what.” I carried on with the conversation I’d accidentally started.

  “Huh? Who did you find?”

  “My parents.”

  “What, having sex? I walked in on my mom and dad a couple of times, and Grandma and Gramps about a thousand times. Sadly, there are some things you can’t unsee.”

  “Dead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I walked into the front room and found my parents dead with syringes hanging from their arms.”

  Luke's head snapped toward me, and I suddenly had his full attention. He didn’t speak for the longest time, just searched my eyes with his piercing emerald ones.

  “You couldn’t have. The article I read said that they were found by a neighbor or friend, or something.”

  I held his gaze, unwavering.

  “It was both a neighbor and a friend. One of their junkie contacts.”

  “Right. So you didn’t find them. That other person did.”

  “Kinda. They found them after I did. I discovered them right before I went to school.”

  “Marnie, are you sure about this?”

  “You mean am I sure that I really saw my parents’ corpses? Yeah, I’m 1000 percent sure. It’s not something a person is confused about.”

  “Please tell me that didn’t happen.”

  “It did. And you know what I did right after I found them?”

  “What?”

  “I grabbed my calculus homework and I went to school. Not only that, but I carried on through the school day as though nothing had happened.” He was beyond freaked out. The horror and revulsion he felt was palpable.

  “I think maybe I thought that if I didn’t acknowledge it, it would mean it didn’t happen. Like in the soaps when they wake up from a three-year coma and everything that happened in that time was all a dream. Except my life isn’t a TV show, and there wasn’t going to be a happy ending.”

  “Fuck. I thought things were bad before knowing this. Now I don’t even know what to think. It’s so much to take in.”

  I nodded slowly. “Ya think?”

  He wasn’t wrong. The secret ate away at me every day. It eroded who I was, and who I could be. Tears slipped silently down my cheeks. I was fucking sick of crying. I seriously didn’t know what possessed me to drop that the way I had. After all these years of not telling a soul, especially my CPS-appointed quack, even though our session were compulsory. Still I had remained tight-lipped. They could force me to attend, but they couldn’t dictate what I spoke about once there, if anything at all.

  “Oh, Marns. I can’t believe you went through so much shit and can still put one foot in front of the other. This is major. It’s not fucking fair.”

  I spoke through my tears. “You know, they had scrawled their note, if you could call it that, and left it between them. One word. ‘Enough.’ That word haunts me every day. Because obviously, I wasn’t enough. If I had been, they would still be here.”

  Luke was off his armchair and onto the couch faster than I’d ever seen him move. He sat next to me and slid his arm around my shoulders, embracing both me and the still-sleeping dog. He used the other hand to angle my head to rest on his shoulder, stroking my hair rhythmically.

  “They’re no longer here because they were troubled, sick people. Period. That’s no reflection on you. You’re enough. You’re more than enough. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted.”

  “Luke.”

  “No. This needs to be said, and it needs to be said now. I’m pretty sure you know this already, deep down somewhere, but I need to put it into words and send it out into the world for you to hear loud and clear.”

  “Luke.”

  “No.” His voice took on that tone I knew not to argue with. “I love you, Marnie Rae Harloe. You’re more than the sum of your experiences, or your parents’ mistakes. You’re more than what has happened to you. You’re more than enough. I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you, the apprehensive and defensive new girl. I wanted to tell you there and then, and every time I’ve been with you since. And plenty of times I wasn’t with you. I’ve wanted to send you letters, texts, postcards—hell, I’ve wanted to send you my love in skywriting. It’s been on the tip of my tongue since day one, but I let my shyness screw me over. I sat back on the sidelines and watched you get with Arlo, then never had balls enough to say something to either of you. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry I didn’t have the guts to fight for you. I’m sorry I wasn’t enough.”

  “What did you just say?” My eyebrows flew up, and my eyes bulged in surprise. I was pretty sure you could have parked a semi-trailer in my mouth, it was open so wide.

  Luke shifted away from me a little, then angled his body toward me. Instinctively, I did the same, so that we were facing each other.

  “I’m sor
ry—”

  “Not that. The first part.”

  “I love you?”

  “Yeah, that part.”

  “Oh. I’ve loved you since the very first time I saw you, and I’m still crazy for you all these years later.”

  Thirty-Five

  Luke

  “I knew,” she admitted.

  “What?”

  “I’ve always known.”

  “How could you have? I’ve never said anything.”

  “You’re not the best at hiding your feelings, even less so when you were a kid. I just never thought I’d see the day when you admitted it aloud.”

  So everybody knew, yet nobody said a fucking thing to me. Everyone except Arlo, of course. Unbelievable. That seemed to be something else we had in common—our complete obliviousness to what was going on with the people around us. Arlo had missed the fact that I was in love with Marnie from the get-go, and I’d missed the fact that the world and his aunt was aware of my feelings, including the woman in question.

  “So now I feel like a total moron. Jesus. Why didn’t you say something oh, about a hundred years ago to put me out of my fucking misery?”

  “What was there to say? I knew we could never be together, so I busied myself elsewhere and pretended the whole thing wasn’t happening.”

  “Why couldn’t we be together? Because of your thing with Arlo?”

  “What? No! Not because of Arlo. The opposite in fact. Fooling around with Arlo kept my mind off things, not the least of which being the fact that as much as I wanted you, I could never have you. Arlo was the consolation prize. The ‘close but no cigar.’”

  I smirked internally. I bet she’s the first and last woman ever to describe Arlo as a booby prize.

  “He was the distraction from what I knew I couldn’t have. He was right for me because he was wrong for the world. You’re wrong for me because everything about you is right.”