by Lux,Vivian
He reached out and pressed his finger to my lips. "I'm falling for you. Did you know that?"
*****
His words echoed in my head the whole drive back to my parents' house. With each sensation, with each pang in my body, I remembered what we'd done, what we'd shared. And all the while his voice rang like a bell in my mind. "I'm falling for you. Did you know that?"
I fucked a rockstar onstage at the Bayfront. Zoe Chandler. Me.
I could picture myself rocking in the nursing home, telling the tale to any and all who'd listen. I wished there was some way these bruises could last for fucking ever, to mark this moment as real. I imagined myself rolling up to a tattoo parlor tomorrow and asking them to ink reds and purples into my flesh, the shape of his kisses claiming me as his.
Driving through the dark streets was like flying through space, but pulling into my neighborhood was definitely pulling me back to earth. As I drove down the normal, familiar street, I realized that I had suddenly returned to my real life.
This night had been something like a dream, so different from my reality that it may as well have happened to a completely different person. If it weren't for the marks on my skin, I might have actually believed that.
But it had happened. And it had been incredible. And even if it never happened again, I'd still have that to fall back on.
I pulled up to our darkened house. Or at least it was darkened save for one bright light shining in the upper front window. Max's window.
"Shit," I breathed, throwing my car into park. It was well past one AM. Mom and Greg would never turn the light on if he got up in the night for fear it would disrupt his sleep schedule.
A light on this late meant he never went to bed in the first place.
I crossed the lawn at a run. I could hear Max's wails from out here. Not cries of pain that could be healed, or screams of anger that could be soothed. He was well past just plain upset. This was a full-on meltdown, and nothing could bring him out of it once he got this way. You just had to batten down the hatches and wait it out for as long as you could stand.
My mind was racing with strategy. Diversion and redirection rarely worked anymore. Maybe I could just spot my parents, let them have a breather.
Then I heard something that made me stop in my tracks, my heart squeezing in my chest.
My own name was mixed in there amidst the shrieks. A high, keening "Zo-weeee! Zo-weeee!"
I grabbed my keys from my purse and took the porch steps two at a time. Max's cries were even louder from the front door, which meant they must be deafening inside. Mom and Greg had to be losing their minds. "Shit," I said again, putting my key in the lock.
The front door swung open with its distinctive creak.
The wails paused. Like Max had taken a breath and was listening.
"Hello?" I softly called up the stairs.
The wails stopped like someone had cut the sound. I heard the dull thud of bare feet on the hardwood floor. Then the sound of Max's door, the one that always stuck a little, popping free.
And then my pajama-clad brother appeared at the top of the stairs. His hair was sticking out at crazy angles, his face was red and puffy with tears.
"Hey, Maximus," I said. "What going on?"
He stretched his arms for me, and I quickly climbed the stairs and scooped him into my arms. His little body hitched once against mine, and then went still, and he sighed a great sigh. His lashes fluttered against my cheek as his eyes closed for probably the first time tonight.
Bewildered, I looked up at his doorway to see Greg emerging, rubbing his neck. "He refused to go to bed when you weren't here in the house," my stepdad explained.
I felt my stomach drop. My poor parents. My poor brother..."Why didn't you call me? I would have come right home."
"We weren't going to call and ruin your date," my mother said flatly, but she sounded exhausted.
"Well you should have," I said, moving to put Max in his bed. He clung to my neck tighter. "Okay, buddy want me to lay down with you a sec?"
"Lay down with you," he repeated. His pronouns always got more screwed up when he was agitated.
I was agitated myself. "I can't believe you guys let him go on for hours like this," I hissed. Guilt was squeezing my voice box. I'd fallen asleep onstage at the Bayfront while waiting for Low, and all the while hell had been breaking out at home. "I could have come home and gotten him to bed in two seconds."
Indeed, my brother's body had already gone limp and heavy. He closed and opened his eyes, wanting to fall asleep but also wanting to make sure I was still right there. I kissed his forehead with a lump in my throat.
"Zoe, he's not your responsibility," my mother said firmly. "We're his parents."
For some reason, that stung. "But he wanted me."
"But we also need to teach him that the world won't always bend to his will. You give in to him too much."
"He calmed down literally the minute I came back." I wanted to yell, but Max's breathing had slowed, so I had to content myself with a shouted whisper.
"Yes," my mother said in that sing-song voice she reserves for small children and crazy homeless people, "but you won't always be there for him."
I snapped my head to stare her down there in the doorway, hot blood beating at my temples. "Of course I will!"
My brother wiggled into me, pressing his little body flush against mine and burying his head in my neck. I rubbed his back in slow circles. "Of course I will," I repeated in a gentle, soothing murmur. He squeezed me tighter and gave a great sigh of contentment.
I turned away from my mother and blinked, staring at the ceiling. After a long while, she left the doorway. I heard the tap running, and her and Greg talking in muted voices. Max shifted, flopping his leg over my knee, and I pulled him tighter, clinging to him like he was a life-raft and I was drowning in a sea of fierce guilt and even fiercer love.
Chapter 24
Low
I could still smell her on my fingers, but now that I was back home again, the overwhelming rush of being with Zoe was starting to fade, and in its place came the anxiety about what to do next.
"The pain stops here." It was a promise my sister and I had made to each other. No, it was more weighty and solemn than just a promise. It was a fucking vow.
When Pepper told our parents what Uncle Mitch had done to her, she did it because I told her everything was going to be okay. How could it not be? Our parents were the adults after all, and in my blind, childish trust, I believed they would make it all better. They would believe her, not just because she was their child but because she was telling the fucking truth.
I knew she was telling the truth because she was my twin and I knew her face better than I knew my own. Even if I hadn't seen what happened, I would have still believed her because Pepper couldn't lie to me.
But I had seen it. I had seen it with my own five-year-old eyes because I was the only one looking out for her that day. I had stood there watching as she wandered back to the party with her underwear balled in her fist and a dazed expression on her face. I hadn't been able to be there for her back then because I didn't know what I was seeing.
But once I knew, I understood, I made sure I was there for her, quite literally, that horrible evening just before our twelfth birthday.
I stood in the doorway of our living room, leaning against the wood, hoping I looked strong for her. I listened to her tell our parents - in a calm, clear voice - that Uncle Mitch had taken her away from the party that summer's day when we were five. That Uncle Mitch had kissed her. That Uncle Mitch had done more than just kiss her.
My mother jumped to her feet. So did my dad. They both leaped up.
I remember that because I think it was the last thing they ever agreed on.
Pepper and I now look back on that day as the moment our family fractured down the center. But in reality, it took days, then weeks, then months for the reality to set it. My father didn't move out that day. My mother didn't go after
her brother-in-law with a hunting knife on that day. Pepper didn't stop speaking that day. Everything took time, like a slow-acting poison flowing sluggishly through the bloodstream of my family.
But that day was the day I hugged my weeping sister tightly. "I shouldn't have told," she said, over and over again. "I shouldn't have said anything." And what could I say to her? We were twelve. We weren't adults. We didn't know how to handle this mess. So I promised her. I made that vow.
The pain stops here.
Family isn't about blood. I took my sister out of the toxic wreckage of our blood family and built a new one for her. Our musical family, this silly fucking band, it had been everything to her, to me. We weren't going to continue the cycle of fucked-uppedness. We would stop the hurt, make the world a better place by not being shitty fucking people.
That day that Pepper told. The pain stopped there.
What happened to my sister fucked me right up. There was no escaping the shadow that lived over us both. But as the years went on, I liked to think that we'd found our own ways to exist side by side with the shadow, to step into the light from time to time.
For Pepper, it's by being a bitch.
Yeah, I love my sister, but she is, indeed, a fucking bitch. Sarcastic as fuck and really fucking hard to like. She wears her wounds like armor and always attacks first.
I am, of course, the total fucking opposite. Because we're the worst twins ever.
But I want people to be happy. In particular, I want to make women happy. Make them smile. Make them feel beautiful, loved and worshipped. That's what I want. To see grins, blushes, and shining eyes. To hear laughter, gasps, and those moans that escape their lips when you know they're trying to be quiet. I lived for making chicks happy, but when I inevitably fucked it up - made them cry, made them shout - well, then I fucked on out of there.
Over the years, I got this shit down to a science. You never stay too long. Just for the good stuff, the bloom of the first rush of togetherness. When everything is still new and exciting and you can get them to smile just by saying their name.
Pepper noticed of course and gave me a new nickname. "One-Week-Woe."
She was a huge bitch, after all.
Tonight with Zoe... fuck. I liked it. I liked her. A whole fucking lot. I was falling for her and I could see it, stretching right out to the end. With the hurt and the choices, the ultimatums she'd make about my sister, my band, the life I'd chosen. And then I'd hurt her because none of that would...could... ever change.
I'm going to have to end this shit quick. I liked her too much to let it get fucked up.
Chapter 25
Zoe
Sometime during the night, I woke up with a crick in my neck and the whole right side of my body numb. I disentangled myself from my brother and crept back to my room to fall face first into my bed.
I was still in that position when my east facing window got hit with the full sun of late morning and my room started heating up like a greenhouse. I woke up, soggy, and stiff, and rubbed my face in confusion at the still quiet house. Only then did the drama of last night replay itself in my head.
My night with Low, my wonderful, incredible night, had caused exactly the kind of disaster that all along my gut knew it would. Here I had gone into this...this fling, consciously ignoring all of the warning signals, hell-bent on having a little bit of fun...
And then this had happened.
It was like the universe was sending me a clear and direct signal. Zoe, it said, dating a rockstar is just a fantasy. This is not real life. This is not YOUR life.
This is not for you.
I numbly stared at my ceiling, running through the facts as I saw them, numbering them on my fingers as I did so.
Low and I clearly had...chemistry. If chemistry was an adequate word for the spontaneous fucking combustion that had happened between us. And he told me he was falling for me and I knew, on some deep and personal level, that he always told me the truth.
But he was a fucking rockstar and anyone with eyes could see that he was poised to be a huge star in his own right.
Number one: Why on earth would he want to settle for an inexperienced, unemployed, slightly chubby chick in the first place?
Number two: And even if he did want to make a go of it with me, what would he do once he found out that I was packaged together with an unpredictable younger brother with autism?
Number three: And that I might have to care for that brother, or at least check in on him, for the rest of my life?
Because I might find a job. I might lose this weight.
But I was never going to lose Max.
Who would be there if Max got to be too much for my parents in their old age?
Me.
I needed to stick around, be available, helping out...
Forever.
And truth was, I was fine with that. I loved my brother and accepted that loving him meant responsibility.
But very few other people would.
I took a deep, gulping breath and then reached inside myself and shoved down the feelings of denial and sadness that tried to worm their way to the surface. This wasn't time for a pity party. I'd deal with those feelings later. Maybe never.
Once I got the facts straight in my head, the next thing to do was figure out how to move forward. I narrowed my eyes at the ceiling and tried to make a plan.
I could sit down and explain things to Low. Talk rationally and calmly, like an adult, and list out all the reasons why this wasn't going to work. Maybe I could graph it out in some kind of, I dunno, flowchart or something.
Maybe get some posterboard and a laser pointer while I was at it.
I closed my eyes and pictured a whiteboard on an easel, the kind that we had in the conference rooms at Grip. In my mind, I dragged the dry-erase marker down the center of the board, separating it into two columns, and then wrote the title at the top.
The Pros and Cons of Telling the Truth.
If I told Low everything now, it would save us both from getting in too deep.
That was a definite Pro.
But if I told him, I'd have to explain about my brother and there was very little chance he'd understand.
That was huge and insurmountable Con.
When Max was first diagnosed, my parents and I made an agreement. We weren't going to make this about us. When the time came and he was ready, it would be up to Max who he wanted to tell about his challenges. But until then, we would only share with the people who absolutely needed to know. Doctors and teachers and close family friends who had to interact with him regularly. Like, Jason. Not people who didn't need to know. I didn't need to try to excuse his behavior to the busy-bodies at the playground. My mother didn't need to defend herself against the judge-y stares at Target. We were strong enough to suck it up and smile without needing to explain.
We decided this as a family and as a family we stood firm.
Telling Low would mean taking him into my confidence and exposing my family's private struggle. It would mean telling Max's story for him, something I swore I wouldn't do. It would mean I thought Low had a right, no a need, to know. I'd be letting him into my confidence. Was that really something I wanted to do with someone I'd be breaking up with anyway?
And how could I explain why I wanted to break up in the first place? Saying, I can't see you any more because my brother has autism made it seem like I was ashamed of my brother.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
What I really needed to say was, My brother's future is more important to me than this fantasy, no matter how hot it is.
But how the fuck was I supposed to say that?
Maybe it would be better to just not say anything at all. I could wait it out, and just let Low naturally lose interest like he surely would.
That would be easier on my heart and expose my brother to less scrutiny.
That was it. I knew what I needed to do.
I nodded at the ceiling like the two of us h
ad come to an agreement and then rolled over to get up for the day. I expected to feel relieved and accomplished after reaching my decision.
I was surprised to find that I was actually really fucking sad.
Not resentful, not guilty. Just quietly... sad.
I crept silently past my little brother's room, sneaking a peek in through the slightly opened door.
Max approached sleep the same way that he approached everything else, with wild, full-throttle abandon. This morning, he was completely upside down on his bed, one foot on the pillows, the other hanging off the edge. His hair flopped into his eyes and his wide-open mouth had a puddle of drool pooling on the sheets below. Last night's trauma seemed to have left no mark on him save the dried trail of tears down his squished up cheek.
My heart squeezed at the same time tears pricked my eyes.
I smiled and gently shut his door, just in time to mask the sound of metal clanking against the floor. "Son of a beeswax," my stepfather hissed downstairs.
I stifled a laugh. "You okay, Greg?" I called softly from the top of the stairs.
"Yeah," he sighed from the direction of the dining room. I headed down to make sure he wasn't lying.
He wasn't. He sat at the table, pieces of something vaguely electrical spread out in front of him. After a second, those pieces resolved themselves into the doorbell that had refused to work for the past three weeks.
"Hey Pops," I said.
"Hey there Sunshine," my stepdad sang out.
I shuffled to the doorway and peered at him skeptically through the curtain of my hair.
"Did you have fun last night?" he asked, all full of innocent curiosity.
I folded my arms across my chest and regarded him. "Are we going to talk about the meltdown?"
He looked over his glasses at a coil-y spring looking thing. Maybe it was actually a spring. I had no idea. "Nope," he said.
"Really? You don't want to say anything about how I was right and how you should have called me right away?"