Nothing Like Him

by Jessica Roe

I stare at her with an open mouth for long, silent moments. And then I begin to laugh. “Of course it was your idea.” This has Phee written all over it. The old Phee. My Phee. “Of course it fucking was.”

  “What actually happened?”

  I shrug a shoulder, sitting back on my heels. “Damned if I know. I guess they left this morning after the rest of us shmucks passed out. Right now they're on their way to sunny old Florida to get hitched.”

  She smiles. “To have the simple wedding they wanted.”

  “Exactly.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “They left a fucking note on the kitchen counter, the assholes.” But I'm grinning, because I can't help but begrudgingly respect the shit outta the pair of them. And I can't blame them either, to be honest. “I woke up an hour ago with a mouth that tasted like a cat's ass so I went to get water and I found the damn thing. Apparently I'm the only one with an ounce of sense around here 'cause I got those fuckers on the phone and talked them down. Or I managed to persuade them to wait until we could get everyone up there before they tied the knot, anyway.”

  She looks relived at that, probably imagining a herd of angry family members throwing out blame since apparently the whole thing was her idea. “So they're waiting?”

  I pull a wry smile. “There's a three day wait after a Florida marriage license has been issued before the ceremony can actually take place anyway. Idiots didn't think about that. That gives us enough time to get everyone's shit together and drive up there. I've just been out and hired a coach to transport us all 'cause I'm willing to bet my ass there's not a single person who ain't ready to drop their shit for a few days to watch those two bozos get hitched.”

  “Okay.” She rubs at her eyes sleepily, still processing everything. Taking hold of her shoulders, I grin and shake her gently.

  “Get your cute ass up, Phee. Gonna need your help to round up the troops and get them on that coach.” I go to move away then, but she reaches out quickly and grasps one of my hands to stop me. I fall back to my knees in front of her, closer this time. Our faces are inches apart. Kissing distance.

  I forget how to fucking breathe.

  “Everything you've done for them this morning. . .” she trails off, looking at me with the softest eyes. The same soft eyes she'd look at me with back when she was mine. It was the look that always made me feel on top of the whole world, which made me feel like I could do anything at all so long as she kept on looking at me just like that. “You're amazing. The lengths you'll go to for the people you care about. . . I'm glad it's something that hasn't changed about you in all these years.”

  I glance down at our hands, resting on her knees. Somehow our fingers have become entwined.

  My eyes meet hers again and I release one of her hands, but only so I can cup her cheek and thread my fingers through her soft hair. I can't not touch her when she's looking at me like that, I just can't. Her eyes close at the contact and she lets out a small sigh, as if the touch is affecting her just as much as it is me.

  “Phee. . .”

  Her eyes flicker open.

  “Why's there a big friggin' coach sat outside?” comes Ivy's voice from behind us, and I whip around in surprise. She stumbles into the room.

  Phee slips from my embrace and I immediately miss the contact. Crave it. But when I turn back to her, she's smiling shyly. And she doesn't stop for the rest of the day.

  WITH MY HEART still pounding against my ribs and my entire body shivering with a cold sweat from the news of Phee's pregnancy, I made my way home to confess all to my parents. The dread felt like a dozen writhing snakes inside my stomach; they may not have been able to control me any longer, but they were still my parents and the prospect of coming clean to them about everything was terrifying.

  I was grateful, for once, that they were already home when I arrived. They were eating in the smaller dining room and so with a deep breath, I walked in with my head held high and blurted out everything; about my relationship with Phee, all the secrets I'd kept and the lies I'd told, about the baby. My mother sat frozen, her fork held halfway up to her mouth the entire time I spoke. Horror paled their strained faces, and they remained deathly silent until long after I'd finished.

  “I'm going to be there for her,” I told them firmly, absolutely resolute in my decision. “And the baby too, if Phee decides to keep it. I know what you're thinking and there's nothing you can say that will change my mind about this so don't even try.”

  I waited then for an explosion, but it never came. The deadly silence was by far worse.

  Eventually, after agonizing minutes, my mother spoke. Her clipped voice was low and terrifyingly calm. “You will cut off all ties with that girl. Immediately. You will have nothing more to do with her, or that thing inside her.”

  The rage that overcame me was swift. “Do you understand that I'm willing to cut off all ties with you, right here and now?” I demanded, staring into my mother's icy blue eyes so she could see exactly how serious I was. “If you force me to choose, I'll do it. And you won't win.”

  “Nathan-”

  “Don't make me choose, Mom. I don't want to have to do that. I don't want you to lose another son, and despite everything, I don't want to lose you either. We're family.”

  “Enough!” my father suddenly hollered, rising so quickly from his chair that it fell over backwards behind him.

  “No!” I shouted back, truly standing up to him for the first time in my entire life. “We've already lost enough! Why have more loss when it's not necessary?”

  A shattering of glass on the opposite wall. I whipped around to stare at where my mother had thrown her wine glass, watching with wide eyes as splashes of blood red liquid trickled down the wall. The maid, Tilly, popped her head around the door, but took one look at us and silently backed right out again.

  “Not necessary?” Mom hissed, standing slowly and resting her balled up fists on the table. “NOT NECESSARY?! That godforsaken family are the reason my first born son is dead!”

  I shook my head and stepped forward, trying to push the angry red haze aside so that I could reason with her. “That's not true and you know it, Mom. Just. . . It's time! It's time to leave the past in the past, can't you see that? We can't let what happened then affect us now, not when it comes to something as huge as this. As huge as a new life. An innocent life!”

  “Spencer died because-”

  “Spencer died because he was a drug addict!” I blurted out. My parents both froze and for a second I regretted my outburst. But just for a second. I inhaled deeply to calm down and forced myself to talk to them rationally. “What happened to him wasn't Micah's fault, and it sure wasn't Phee or her family's either. I know it's easier to blame them instead of him, but the truth is that it was Spencer's decision to take drugs. Every single time he did it. It was his choice and no one else's.”

  It hurt more than I could say to talk about my big brother like that, but it was time I spoke up. It was finally time. Because it was the truth, and somebody needed to step up and say it to my parents because they were never going to come to it by themselves. I'd needed to say it out loud to them for years. I should have, but I'd never been strong enough. Things were different now though. I had people who relied on me, who I was responsible for.

  Phee and the baby, they needed me to do this. They deserved this. They deserved my strength.

  And then my parents crashed my whole fucking world to smithereens around my feet.

  “Come with me,” Mom snapped.

  My father tilted his head to one side, like he knew something I didn't. His eyes were disapproving. “Caroline-”

  “No, Jonathan! It's time he knew the truth!”

  “What are you talking about?” I wanted to know, but she ignored my question and simply stalked from the dining room. I chased after her. “Mom?”

  Following the sound of her heels clicking on the marble floors, I caught up to her in my father's office. She was digging through a se
t of draws.

  “Mom?!”

  With a satisfied smirk, she pulled out a thin folder and placed it into my slack hands with a flourish. “Go on then, open it.”

  Confused, I did as she said. There was a single sheet of paper inside. A handwritten letter. I held it up and dropped the file to my father's desk. “What is this?”

  “Read it.”

  So I did.

  Something dark and cold grew within me as I read the contents of the letter. Micah had written it to my parents a month after Spencer's death. Each sentence was brimming with guilt and angst and self-loathing, and there were more apologies than I cared to count. He’d written to them, confessing to giving Spencer the pills that had taken his life. He admitted to not being sure of their origins, but taking them anyway because they were cheap. He'd been high and hadn't thought about the consequences – he and Spencer had never cared about the consequences. It was why they'd become friends in the first place.

  And he was sorry.

  Yeah, he was fucking sorry.

  Apparently Micha hated himself for what he'd done, would never forgive himself, not for as long as he lived. He vowed that Spencer's death had changed him, and that he would never go near drugs again in his life.

  Like that was some kind of silver lining, the ass.

  His guilt had helped him see how far he'd fallen, and he couldn't live keeping the knowledge of what he'd done a secret.

  I deserve every second of your hatred, he'd written. And I deserve the punishment I'll receive when you hand this letter in to the police. I'm ready for it. It's no more than I deserve.

  When I'd finished reading the thing through for the third time, I threw it violently away from me like it burned to touch. I watched, almost in a daze, as it floated back and forth before landing soundlessly on top of my father's desk.

  “But Micah was never arrested,” I said, my voice croaking with emotion. I couldn't even look at my mother, so I continued to stare at that damned piece of paper.

  “We wanted to hand it in to the police as evidence,” Mom assured me coldly. “I don't know what would have come of it, if anything. I wanted him tried for manslaughter.”

  “But you never handed it in?”

  “Your grandfather persuaded us not to,” came my father's voice from behind me. I hadn't even realized he'd entered the room, and I had no idea how long he'd been standing there. Maybe the whole time. “He reasoned that Micah was simply a stupid child, as stupid as Spencer had been, and that the roles could just as easily have been reversed. We were. . .forced to admit the truth of that.”

  I blinked at my father's strained words. It was the first time I had ever heard him accept the fact that Spencer hadn't been as perfect as he and my mother had always claimed.

  A slow burning rage began to consume me. My fists clenched. “He should have been punished.”

  Mom folded her arms across her chest. “Yes, he should have. But your grandfather was adamant that the letter only went to show how much the boy was punishing himself enough as it was. Certainly more severely than any judge ever could. He begged us to forgive, and when we couldn't do that, he asked us to be merciful. To this day I still don't know whether agreeing was the right thing to do.”

  “We didn't hand the letter into the police,” Dad added. “But we ran that boy out of the state the way he deserved.”

  Everyone had lied to me, for years. But my anger wasn't for them. It was for the bastard who had killed my brother. “Why didn't you ever tell me?”

  For the first time in my entire life, my mother looked at me then with an almost. . .maternal expression. Almost. “You were young,” she replied simply. “and already burdened with more than a child your age should have to bear.”

  For the second time that day, I'd been left completely floored by life altering news. I was devastated. It felt like I'd lost my big brother all over again, and this time the grief was rawer than ever before.

  I'd spent years thinking Spencer had been the one to blame for his death and it hadn't been true. His death, it no longer felt to me like a tragic accident. It felt like Spencer had been stolen from me. Snatched away by a stupid, drugged up little fucker who'd cared more about getting high than he had about my brother's life. Micah and Spencer, they had been fucking friends!

  The rage, it blinded me. It was ugly and dark, and layered over a fresh bout of grief and bitter resentment.

  And it was with all of those things swirling around inside of me that I snatched up the letter and stormed out of my father's office. I didn't look back once as I drove out to the lake.

  Chapter 19

  Ophelia

  GETTING BLAIR AND Silver's family and friends down to Florida is easier than I'd anticipated. Almost every single one of them somehow finds a way to make it work around their schedules.

  The atmosphere is magic. There's just something about a spontaneous wedding like this that makes everyone happy, and the fact that we're all experiencing it together fills every one of us with delight.

  The moms, they finally got a grip and realized they'd been acting like a pair of bridezillas. Or. . .momzillas, or whatever two crazy ass moms who've gone completely out of their minds are called.

  “I'd call them pains in the butt,” Jemma had said with a grin when we’d laughed about it.

  “This really is such a beautiful way to have a wedding,” Paget announces with a dreamy sigh over breakfast on the morning of the ceremony. The guys are elsewhere, but all of us girls are surprised when Felicia agrees with her and the two of them wander off, arm in arm, to get their hair and nails done together.

  “Our moms both belong in a loony bin,” Blair announces cheerfully as she nibbles at a piece of melon, and I have to agree. “Look at 'em. Total bff's for life.”

  “Just like you and me,” Ibbie sings, slinging an arm around her shoulder.

  “Vom,” Blair replies, but she kisses Ibbie on the cheek regardless.

  Seeing them together makes me miss Nellie. We've talked on the phone every day since I've been gone, but it isn't the same as being with her in person.

  I think about my own mom back home in bed, and I try to stick the guilt I feel about leaving again inside a mental box for later. Mom had been adamant that she and Dad and Aunt Ellie would be fine for a couple of days without me and demanded I came along on the trip, even knowing Nathan would be here. It seems she's finally at peace with the past and has been able to let it go, though I suspect if she had any idea about how close Nathan and I have gotten since I've been back she would've been a little less pleased about us being here together.

  But that. . .that can go in my guilt box for later. Much later.

  +++

  THE CEREMONY IS beautiful and completely drama free. It's held on a breathtaking beach while the sun is high in the sky, shining down on those of us sat in the rows of chairs set out.

  Silver radiates happiness as he stands beneath a wooden arch decorated with wildflowers, Nathan and Nash waiting proudly beside him. His eyes are only for Blair, walking down the aisle between the rows of chairs towards him. And Blair, she glows. Dressed simply in a white bikini with a sarong tied around her waist and a flower behind one ear, I think to myself that she must be the most stunning bride I've ever seen.

  Silver's eyes are damp with joy by the time she comes to stand opposite him.

  I dig my toes into the warm sand beneath my chair as I watch them join hands, barefoot like most of the guests.

  The wedding is amazing. It's so easy and simple and beautiful. A golden aura of happiness and the overwhelming sense of love spills from Blair and Silver, casting a glow over the rest of us. It swarms my senses until it's the only thing I can feel.

  It affects Nathan in just the same way. I can tell, because while everyone else is watching Silver and Blair recite their vows and exchange rings, his eyes are focused solely on me. They’re dark, consuming.

  He wants me.

  “. . .and it gives me great joy to pronounc
e you man and wife!” the wedding officiate announces with a beam. He slaps Silver on the shoulder and winks. “Go ahead and kiss that wife o' yours.”

  Silver doesn't waste any time. He takes a step forward and grasps Blair's cheeks between his hands, leaning down and kissing her with all the bliss one man can possess. He kisses her so hard they stumble back a little. She laughs sweetly into his mouth, winding her arms behind his neck. Silver wraps his arms around Blair's waist and squeezes her tightly, lifting her up into the air as their kiss continues.

  By the time they pull apart, there are tears of happiness in both of their eyes.

  +++

  “DANCE WITH ME.”

  I look up from my seat at a table, startled from my conversation with Zac. After the ceremony, our large group made its way to one of the local beach bars and we've remained here for the rest of the day; eating, dancing, celebrating. The sun has begun to set, the sky is darkening, and there's a pink glow over the horizon. I can't imagine anything more perfect than this.

  Nathan stands over me, his body a silhouette against the last dark orange beams of sunset, a hand held out for me to take.

  I can't say no. There's not a single part of my heart that wants to say no.

  Wordlessly, I place my hand into his and let him pull me from my chair. He leads me over to a spot on the sand where other couples are dancing to the soft, live music. Nearby, Silver and Blair are swaying together, holding each other close. I don't think I've seen the two of them let one another go the entire day.

  In the center of the pairs of dancers, Nathan suddenly spins me around then pulls me in close. He wraps both arms around my body and we begin to move to the slow music. We're close, closer than is appropriate, but I couldn't pull away for anything in the world.

  We dance. I don't know how long for, and I don't care. We dance and sway and hold each other tight. I feel curious glances being thrown surreptitiously our way from some of the others, but I don't care about that either. I just dance, letting Nathan guide me, letting him take over my senses completely; his warmth, his smell, his touch. It's so familiar, yet achingly new at the same time.