by Elise Faber
“What’s wrong?”
Shit.
“Nothing,” he said, forcing his tone to be his normal cheerful. “I went to Coit Tower today, and it was . . . well, it was a big tower in the middle of the city, and yesterday I went to this beach—”
“Brad.”
Double shit.
Now he’d triggered both Jaime’s oldest brother side and his intuitive he-cares-for-animals-who-can’t-talk vet caring side.
Which basically meant, Brad was in for it now.
“How’s the honeymoon?” he asked instead, going for diversion. He didn’t want to hash through what was in his head. Not when he felt like it might be the key to a lot of the shit that had twisted him up for so long.
“The honeymoon’s great,” Jaime said. “Except for a certain younger brother, who thinks that he can get that shit of an attempt at distraction past me. “What’s going on?”
“Seriously. I’m fine.”
“And that’s horseshit. What’s up? Your flight to your future destination get canceled?”
“I’m staying in California.”
“For a few more weeks until we get back?” His brother sounded thrilled. “That’s great, we can catch up some more before you fly off again.”
“No.”
“Oh.” Disappointed now. “But at least with you living so close, we can hang out during the times you’re back.”
“No, Jaim.” Brad sighed. “I mean, I’m staying in California permanently. I’m thinking that most of my traveling days are at an end.”
A beat then, “Who are you, and what have you done to my brother?”
He sighed. Of course, Jaime wouldn’t understand. Brad barely knew what was going through his head himself. All he knew was that he wanted Heidi, he wanted something more permanent and fixed, he wanted a place to live that wasn’t a tiny, dark, questionably clean apartment, where he could build something that wasn’t fueled by excitement for the next grand thing out there.
He wanted to be happy with who and where and what he was now.
Because . . . he had a feeling he’d spent all these years running.
“Brad?” Jaime asked. “Did I lose you?”
He clenched his jaw, released it. “No, I’m here.”
Jaime’s voice gentled. “I was just kidding, you know.”
Forcing a laugh, he said, “I know. It’s fine. How’s the resort?”
“The reason I won’t ever seriously complain about all your traveling,” Jaime told him. “Being sequestered here with Kate is definitely no hardship.”
“Is it as good as I remember?”
“Better.”
Brad hadn’t stayed on site—it was a bit too expensive and catering for his tastes, especially for a single man traveling by himself. But it was perfect for a honeymooning couple who’d deserved plenty of pampering, pool-side service, and good restaurants for whenever they decided to emerge from their room.
“But just because I’m getting copious amounts of exercise with my beautiful wife—and I don’t mean in the gym—”
“I never thought you did,” he muttered.
“Just because I’m having copious amounts of glorious sex with my lovely wife,” he corrected, “doesn’t mean my brain has rotted. I know something is up with you. So, out with it already. Otherwise we’ll both be here all night.”
“I can just hang up.”
“I’ll call back.” A pause. “Or I’ll sic Mom on you.”
Sighing and rubbing the throb that had mysteriously appeared in his temple, he tried something else. “Look, I’m just a little tired tonight. I stayed up late working on a project and . . .”
“And what?” Jaime pressed.
“Did you ever wish you were different?”
That hadn’t been the thought he’d been forming in his mind, the words he was trying to pull together were going to be more along the lines of something to put his brother at ease, a way to move on with this conversation. But, as silence greeted him over the airwaves, Brad realized it was the most important question.
The thing that was at the crux of everything.
Why the souvenirs from his travel meant so much, but also made him feel sad by reminding him that he’d missed out on a lot.
He’d had grand adventures, but he’d used them to build his identity, until that identity was more him than he was.
He was that guy—the one too busy looking to the future to appreciate the now. Hell, he’d been too enamored of that future to be anything but terrified of the now.
But the thought that was nagging at him was why.
Why was he terrified to be present, to be fully in this moment?
Was it because it might not live up to expectations? Or . . . was it something else?
And why didn’t he know? Shouldn’t he understand what was going on in his own brain?
Seriously. Why the fuck didn’t he understand what was going on in his brain?
“Different how?” Jaime asked quietly.
Brad blinked away the thoughts, the questions that, at that time, were frustratingly unnerving and unanswerable.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted.
“That’s not an answer.”
A bolt of anger shot through him, and a retort was actually on the tip of his tongue before he bit it back. This wasn’t his brother’s fault. It was his own irritation that he couldn’t understand the tangle in his mind and heart, when he wanted to be clearheaded in both.
“I want to answer you,” he said, voice tempered. “But I don’t fucking know how.”
Jaime released a long, slow breath, sending static through the speakers of Brad’s cell. “Mom always told me you’re the one she worries the most about.”
Somehow disappointed by that reply, somehow wanting his big brother to have the proverbial answer to the flurry of thoughts and concerns and questions in his mind, even though it wasn’t like he was doling out exceptional wisdom in this conversation with all his I don’t knows and I don’t know hows, he sank down into the chair on that roof, the coolness that lingered on the plastic seeping in through his jeans, chilling the backs of his thighs, and forced out a cordial response. “Well, that makes sense,” he said. “I have traveled to some pretty sketchy places in my time.”
A beat of quiet.
Then, “Ask me when she told me that.”
Something in his brother’s tone had Brad sitting up a little straighter, tearing his eyes from the stars overhead and shifting them to the roof of the opposite building, even though he wasn’t really processing the rectangular lines. Instead, he stared at it, almost unseeing, a feeling of foreboding pressing heavily on him, anticipating that he was about to learn something monumental.
“When?” he asked, the question barely audible, even to his own years.
A long pause. “When she was sick.”
Brad inhaled sharply.
Their mom had been diagnosed with cancer when Brad was eight. He remembered it being a terrifying time, with her being in and out of the hospital for surgeries and treatments. She was healthy now, had been in remission for a long, long time, but he didn’t think he would ever forget the way she’d looked while in that hospital bed or the sound of her retching after she’d received the chemo.
He’d been worried he might hurt her, had been so afraid to touch her, to hug her.
To get close to her.
Jaime began talking again, intruding on those memories, but Brad was happy to let them go, relieved to be able to shove them down into the locked box in his mind. “I had gone to visit her in the hospital one day. It was when she was really sick, and well, you guys were younger, and I don’t think you recognized how touch-and-go it was, so I needed that extra time with her, I guess.”
“I knew,” Brad whispered.
That feeling sitting heavy in his gut, knowing that he was going to lose the single most important thing in his life. His dad had been around, of course, had been great then, just as he was now, but it wasn’t th
e same as it had been with his mom. There was just something special about moms, he supposed.
And though his parents had tried to shield them from the worst of it, he knew from firsthand experience that the type of battle his mom had fought permeated everything.
Colored everything.
“What?” Jaime asked.
Swallowing hard against that recognition, he said, “I knew that she almost died. Not as an adult, but back then as a kid. I knew.”
His brother was quiet for several moments. “I get that. It was probably hard to try to hide much from any of us, but I guess . . . I’d always assumed that you and Tammy were too young to understand, to truly get how precarious it was.” He sighed. “We’re lucky she’s here.”
“Yes, we are.”
“I wasn’t trying to bring you back there. It’s just”—Jaime hesitated—“I swear, I’ve never forgotten what she told me that day. I just didn’t know how it fit in, especially with—” He broke off. “I’d gone after school to see her before soccer practice, and she was white as a fucking ghost, lying there with her eyes closed.” His breathing was unsteady for a few heartbeats, and Brad had the sense that his brother was trying to hold on to his typically even-keeled personality in the face of what had to be a really dark memory. “Well, I thought she was dead, and I think I would have run screaming from the room if not for her opening her eyes.”
Brad stilled, a chill going through him.
Jaime cleared his throat roughly. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to erase that, the way she looked, the horror I felt, and shit, it’s been what? Like almost twenty years since she went into remission?”
“About that,” he agreed.
“So, she opened her eyes and waved me over, and I sat down next to her, heart pounding, trying to pretend I was totally fine when I was a thirteen-year-old kid pissing his pants and wanting to crawl onto the bed with her, wanting her to just hold me and tell me everything would be okay.”
Brad clenched his jaw, eyes stinging.
“Instead, I started pulling out my homework before she even asked—because you know she would have asked.”
He laughed. “Yes, she definitely would have asked.” Their mom had always had her finger on the pulse of their family, somehow recollecting which of the four of them had a project due or a dentist appointment or needed to wear something special for an event at school.
“But she saw right through me. She knew that I was upset, that I was taking it really hard, and she ordered me into bed with her.” He released a breath. “I resisted, said I was too big, too old, but she wouldn’t let it go. She made it an order until I finally got into bed with her. And then . . . she just wrapped her arms around me and told me everything would be okay.”
Brad released a shaky breath.
“We laid like that for a long time, and I remember at some point looking up at the clock and realizing that I had to get to practice, so I packed up my things, got ready to walk my ass over to the field, and then just before I reached the door, she stopped me and said, ‘You need to watch out for Brad.’” Jaime inhaled, released it slowly. “And I remember grabbing onto the door handle and saying something to the effect of ‘Why? What do I need to protect myself from?’ Thinking you’d stolen my Legos or were planning some prank, like you were always doing as an eight-year-old little twerp.”
That made him smile, enough that he could actually muster a light retort. “You’re just saying that because I always got you.”
“I’m glaring at you right now.” Jaime laughed. “But, yes, that’s also true. Still, she wasn’t talking about the Legos or one of your pranks. Because in response, she told me, ‘I worry for your brother because he’s the type of person who always seems happy on the surface, and those are the people who are usually hurting the most underneath. That’s why you need to watch out for him.’” Jamie cleared his throat. “You were a kid, a pain in the ass kid, but you weren’t ever sad or down or anything other than an annoying kid brother, so I thought she was being ridiculous.”
“I probably was stealing your Legos or planning something,” Brad said lightly, even though his throat was tight, and his heart was pounding in his throat. He actually felt a little dizzy, as though the Earth had just suddenly shifted on its axis.
“That’s possibly true,” Jaime agreed. “But I’ve also finally gotten old enough to understand what she was saying . . . and to understand why she said it. She put on that good front, wanted to kick cancer’s ass, but it had to have crossed her mind that she might not be here and that she wanted someone to know . . . well, to know that.”
“I—” He struggled with words again.
Was that what he was? What his mom had said? Was he unhappy?
He didn’t feel unhappy spending time with Heidi or when he was with his family. He never felt unhappy when he was traveling—which was probably why he’d clocked so many hours on planes and in other countries.
“I don’t think she was thinking you were sad all the time,” Jaime said, “but more that you’re really good at putting on a mask. You come across as so easy-going that people don’t often recognize that you need more from them.” He blew out a breath. “And I think Mom needed me to know in case—”
Pulse pounding in his ears, Brad had to joke.
Because otherwise he might cry.
And God, he really didn’t want to cry that night.
“Must be all the gray hairs,” he said on a laugh, and even he could hear that it didn’t sound remotely right. “Mom always said my superpower was giving her new ones hourly.”
Jaime chuckled. “It wasn’t the gray hairs, though I can’t deny that I’m now old enough to find a couple of those now and then.” His tone went serious. “But, Brad, it’s only because I have Kate now that I understand what Mom was saying then. Because my Kate was one of those people—the ones who seem happy on the surface, but who was hurting underneath.”
Heart pounding, Brad couldn’t bring himself to form a response.
Which was just as well, because Jaime wasn’t done talking.
“So, bro, my question to you is . . . what’s beneath the veneer? What’s that proverbial grain of sand in the oyster, rubbing you raw? Or maybe it’s a big spike that’s jabbing at you over and over again, something that’s hurting you and just won’t go away, no matter how hard you try to ignore it.”
“I—” He shook his head even though his brother couldn’t see him. It was all he could manage, when all he could think was . . .
Happy on the surface.
And what was beneath?
Nothing.
Empty.
Unfulfilled.
Fuck, that was gloomy. Fuck, that didn’t make him feel better. Fuck, why didn’t he know what the hell was in his own brain?
“Just think about it,” Jaime said. “Okay?”
“Okay,” he whispered after a moment. “I will.”
They said their goodbyes and hung up, Brad continuing to sit on the chair with the stars overhead, continuing to berate himself for not knowing his own mind. But the problem was that he didn’t feel jabbed or raw or even hurt.
He just felt . . . alone.
For the second time in as many minutes, he went completely ramrod stiff, not breathing, not moving as he realized that, no, he wasn’t necessarily unhappy or depressed.
He was empty.
Because he’d filled his life with all the wrong things—or perhaps, most of the wrong things, because he did have his family. But he didn’t have any close friendships, and he’d used traveling as a tool.
To avoid connection.
To avoid getting too close to anyone . . . because if he did get close then he might care about them and they would leave, or they might get sick and die. But if he left first, if he was too busy or off doing his own thing, then he wouldn’t be as hurt.
That was why the first night with Heidi had freaked him out so much.
That was why he’d run.
Because he
’d known she was different, known he couldn’t leave her behind.
The only question was whether he had the strength to fill that empty void inside him, whether he had the strength to put that need to keep people at a distance behind him.
Heidi’s smile flashed through his mind, the pride on her face when she’d stared up at him with the amazing cake creation to replace the mess he’d made, the tears she’d wiped from her eyes when she’d watched Kate and Jaime kiss at the altar, her joy when she’d caught the bouquet, her arms as she’d walked toward him, the slender limbs laden with presents from the wedding. Hell, even her glares.
None of that had made him feel empty.
None of that had made him feel alone.
“So fuck that,” he whispered. “Fuck the void, fuck the distance.”
He was done with running.
He was ready to live a life that was so fucking full it was spilling over.
And he wanted to live it with Heidi.
Six
Heidi
Sighing, she shut down her computer and stretched her shoulders, knowing that the calculations weren’t quite right but also knowing that she was too tired to sort out where exactly she’d gone wrong.
Gathering up dirty coffee cups and muffin wrappers—her guilty pleasure was the banana chocolate chunk ones from the best bakery in town, Molly’s—she made sure all the equipment was either shut down or properly collecting data they’d retrieve in the days and weeks to come.
Her assistants had left several hours before, but she was playing catch-up after having had a meeting with the board earlier in the day. Which meant she’d spent more time schmoozing than mathing—and had hated every minute of it.
She understood the need for the schmoozing. She just was never more at home than when she was in her lab. A lab that was hers and hers alone. Well, hers alone if she ignored the fact that the funding came from the company and she had to clear her research with the board members. But for the most part, they left her to her electron microscope, her spectrometer, her calculations.
Aside from the schmoozing.
Thankfully, that only happened quarterly, and the rest of the year, she was left to her own devices, in her own lab. That she was in charge of.