My Brother's Girl

by Sienna Blake

  Darren’s thumb moved just the tiniest bit to run along the very edge of the file folder in his lap. Maybe he had hoped I hadn’t seen it. But I saw it. And it gave me hope.

  “But Darren,” I said after a long, quiet pause, “can’t you see? Can’t you see your family never left your side?”

  The sob that escaped Darren’s lips, voluntary or not, grabbed my heart with cold iron fists and wrenched it apart.

  “All this time you thought you were alone,” I whispered. “But you were wrong, Darren. Your family, they came to you, they came for you. To your darkest, loneliest, pain-filled place, they came. Again and again and again.”

  I reached over and tapped the thick file folder with my pointer finger. “This is proof, Darren. This is proof that they love you, that they will always love you.”

  Darren finally looked up at me and his eyes were red, his eyelashes stained with tears. He looked young, far younger than he was. He looked for just a moment like a fifteen-year-old boy again: stricken with the loss of his twin and buried under a sea of guilt when he knew well and good he couldn’t swim.

  “Your family loves you.”

  I wondered if he heard those words that terrible night; I wondered if he believed them. I wondered if he believed them now.

  “Darren, your family loves you.”

  Tears fell across Darren’s wind-chapped cheeks as he clasped the file folder tight to his chest and leaned towards me. I held my arms open for him and he sagged against my chest, nestling his head against my breast.

  “Your family loves you,” I whispered, leaning over him so I could reach his ear with my soft words. I wrapped my arms around him and held him as my coat soaked up his tears.

  “Darren, I—”

  I knew the words I wanted to say and yet my voice halted into silence in that tiny back office. I wanted to hold Darren tighter, but his heart fluttered against mine like a butterfly and I was afraid of what would happen if I held too tightly, if I tried to keep something that was never mine in the first place.

  Darren, I love you.

  That’s what I wanted to say. That’s what my heart longed to say. But a string of questions one after the other kept me from uttering those simple words:

  Would he believe me?

  Was he ready to believe me?

  Would he ever be ready to believe me?

  And how was I supposed to go on if the answer was “no”?

  Darren

  Our footsteps across the cracked sidewalk leading to Ma’s house were silent in the still of the night. I tried to insert the key as quietly as possible and pushed open the door inch by inch despite the frigid cold outside, praying that it wouldn’t creak. We slipped inside like ghosts across the threshold, careful of the loose floorboard that would moan under the pressure of any heel. The small foyer was drenched in darkness, and Kayleigh and I were forced tight together on the small doormat by the low shelf stacked with mud-covered boots on one side and on the other, the coat rack nearly sagged under the weight of winter jackets, scarves, hats, mittens and gloves.

  “We should take our shoes off,” I whispered as softly as possible.

  In the dim glow of the street light through the narrow windows on either side of the door, I saw Kayleigh nod.

  We knelt as if the welcome mat crusted with dirt beneath our knees was a smooth, cold pew in a candlelit church, our small, nervous exhales the only sound in the sleeping house. We were crammed against one another as if we together shared a confessional booth, the mahogany walls pressing tighter and tighter against us. Her hair, which curtained her face as she leaned over toward her feet, smelled of incense, thick and rich and lingering.

  My fingers shook as I pulled at the laces of my boots, and I wondered if it was the same for Kayleigh. Was this a sacred moment for her like it was for me? Here on the floor in my ma’s house? Silent and hushed and alone?

  “Here,” I whispered, closing the distance between us and laying my hand gently over hers.

  My fingers were ice cold, the tips tinged blue from the freezing ride home, but Kayleigh did not flinch. She tucked her long red hair behind her ear and her green eyes flashed in the dark as she watched me gently ease off her unlaced boot. She moved her other foot so I could do the same, and I didn’t dare glance up at her as I did so.

  Because if Kayleigh was sitting at the end of my bed instead of just inside the doorway, I would not stop at her boots. I would slide down her wool socks, fingers grazing along her silken skin, tracing the shape of her ankle, her foot, her toes. I would take my time unbuttoning her jeans, because I would want to remember every flutter of her stomach, every flinch of her fingers resting by her sides as she tried to keep herself from touching me. I would press a trail of kisses down her thighs as I pulled off her jeans. I would whisper for her to lift her hands over her head.

  In our socks, Kayleigh and I stood without speaking. She stared up at me, our chests just inches from one another, before reaching up and brushing her thumb along my cheek. Then without a word she climbed the stairs and disappeared around the corner. From the base of the stairs I heard her door creak slightly once, then twice.

  I let out a shaky exhale and sagged against the front door, dragging a hand over my face. I was just about to go upstairs to my childhood bedroom to lie to myself about getting some sleep when the front door swung open, slamming into my side.

  “Shite, sorry, sorry,” Eoin hissed as he slipped inside, tugging off his hat. “Oh, Darren, hey. Beautiful night, am I right? Have you ever seen a more beautiful night in all of your life?”

  I frowned at my brother. “Yeah, I guess it’s alright.”

  Eoin suddenly tugged me into a breath-stealing, lung-crushing hug.

  “Okay, okay.” I struggled to push him away. “That’s good.”

  “What are you doing up?” Eoin asked as he finally released me.

  Avoiding Eoin’s eyes, I scratched at the back of my neck and shrugged. “Work, you know?”

  “Right, right,” Eoin whispered as he kicked off his massive boots.

  I was on the first step, hand on the railing, when I paused and looked back at my brother. “What are you doing up?”

  Eoin’s hands fidgeted in his pockets as he bit his lower lip to hold back a grin.

  I turned around on the step to face him and raised an eyebrow. “Eoin?”

  Eoin’s eyes shone brightly as if it were Christmas morning all over again and he was about to run down the stairs to see what Santa left him underneath the tree.

  “Eoin?” I repeated, stepping back off the stair as my suspicion grew. “What’s the story?”

  “I was going to make it a surprise for everyone tomorrow…” he said hesitantly, his fingers tapping on something solid in his coat pocket.

  I frowned. “It?”

  Eoin chewed at the inside of his mouth, clearly debating something in his head.

  “Eoin?”

  Finally Eoin looked over at me with a massive grin. Before I knew what was happening, my brother had me by the wrist and was dragging me along behind him toward the crammed little study. He pushed me inside and I stumbled into the office chair as Eoin looked up and down the clearly empty hallway several times before hurrying to close the double doors behind him. He stepped past me to switch on the floor lamp, and I stared in confusion at his huffing and puffing chest.

  “Eoin, what in the world is going on?”

  Practically hopping with excitement, Eoin fished a small box out of his coat pocket, flipped it open, and displayed for me a diamond ring.

  Eoin tried to keep his voice as close to a whisper as he could as he said, “I’m going to propose to Kayleigh tomorrow!”

  I stared at the glistening rock in the black velvet box as my mind sputtered. I shook my head. “Propose what?”

  I glanced up at Eoin, who laughed and violently smacked me on the arm with his bear cub paw. “You’re so funny, Daz,” he grinned before sighing in relief. “Man, I’m glad that I ran into you. I’ve
been dying to tell someone. I’m just so excited, you know?”

  Again I frowned in confusion at the ring in Eoin’s big palm. My mind couldn’t put together what it was for, who it was for.

  “Eoin,” I managed to say slowly. “Are you talking about proposing marriage?”

  Eoin nodded emphatically, turning around the ring so that he could see it. “Isn’t that deadly?” he asked me.

  But I had a question of my own, a very pressing question. “But…to who?”

  Eoin pointed a beefy finger at me, shaking his head. “Brother, when did you become so funny?” he laughed. “So do you think she’ll like it?”

  My eyes were growing wide and I wasn’t entirely sure I could feel my fingertips. “Who?”

  Eoin chuckled. “Kayleigh, of course.”

  Eoin handed me the diamond engagement ring. I pulled it gently from its plush cushion. It felt heavy in my sweaty palm.

  I thought I knew real. I thought Kayleigh’s ankle in my hand as I pulled her foot free from her boot was real. I thought the brush of her thumb along my cheekbone was real. I thought the pounding of my heart as I watched her climb the stairs was real.

  But all of that suddenly felt like a mist in the wind, like a drop of dew on a velvet petal that would soon fall, like a lingering dream that would be forgotten by the next night compared to the hard, cold diamond sparkling beautifully in the lamp light.

  Panic flooded my chest. I quickly shoved the ring back toward Eoin, not bothering to put it back inside the box.

  “Eoin, do you know what this means?” I asked him as I pushed myself up from the office chair.

  I couldn’t sit still, not when my world was falling apart.

  Eoin just chuckled. “It means peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a few weeks,” he joked. “That’s what this means. My accountant is going to be pissed on Monday, that’s for sure.”

  This couldn’t be happening. This could not be happening. Eoin was grinning proudly down at Kayleigh’s diamond ring when I stalked over to him, grabbed him by the shoulders, and pushed him down into the chair. Leaning over, I gripped the armrests till my knuckles shone white. “Eoin, you just met her,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “You don’t even know her.”

  Eoin frowned. The ring box snapped loudly as he closed it, like the jaws of a crocodile around the neck of its doomed prey. “I know everything I need to know,” Eoin defended himself. “I know that we’re soulmates and that we’re meant to be together.”

  I growled in frustration before throwing my hands up into the air. “Soulmates?! Soulmates, Eoin?” I was having a hard time keeping my voice down as the grandfather clock in the corner neared midnight. “Eoin, what does that even mean? What does soulmate even mean?”

  Eoin’s own frustration mirrored mine as he, too, threw his hands up into the air. “What kind of a question is that, Daz?” he demanded. “Everyone and their ma knows what a soulmate is.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “What?” Eoin stared up at me from the chair.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned forward slightly. “Then tell me what a soulmate is, Eoin. If it’s so obvious and ‘everyone and their ma’ knows, then tell me. Tell me what the fuck is a soulmate.”

  Eoin was silent for a moment, lips parting and closing, parting and closing as he searched for an answer. Finally he shrugged and dismissed me with a casual wave of his hand. “Stop fucking with me, Darren,” he grumbled. “I’m proposing tomorrow because Kayleigh and I are meant to be together. And that’s that.”

  “But how do you know?” I exclaimed before realising everyone, including Kayleigh, was asleep upstairs, and I repeated in a whisper, “How do you know you’re meant to be together?”

  Eoin shrugged. “I don’t know. You just know.”

  I dragged my fingers through my hair, clenching my eyes shut to try to regain some self-control. “But how? How do you know?”

  Eoin just blinked up at me, clearly bewildered by my impassioned interrogation.

  “Do you know you’re meant to be with her because every time you see her, you’re filled with heart-aching anguish because you know at some point she’ll have to leave and you’ll have to survive somehow till she’s with you again?”

  Eoin was silent.

  “Do you know you’re meant to be with her because you butt heads and fight and argue and you haven’t cared about anything or anyone enough to butt heads or fight or argue with in such a long fucking time?”

  I don’t know when I started pacing back and forth wildly in front of him, but my feet suddenly couldn’t stay still any longer. Eoin’s eyes followed me this way, then that, like he was trapped watching a frantic tennis match.

  “Do you know you’re meant to be with her because she makes you feel everything so strongly, so vividly, so clearly—love and anger and passion and desire and drive and freedom and happiness—when everything before her had been numb and dull for year after year?”

  My words were tumbling out so quickly, my thoughts whirling so rapidly, that I didn’t even see Eoin in the office chair anymore. I didn’t even see the office anymore, for that matter. I was back in the Dublin Mountains with Kayleigh in the ice cold. My lips were back on hers and they were fire.

  “Do you know you’re meant to be with her because she sees your mess and doesn’t run from it? Do you know you’re meant to be with her because she sees your past and doesn’t turn away? Do you know you’re meant to be with her because she sees the mud and tar and grease on your soul and isn’t afraid to get her fingers dirty?”

  I was panting as I came to a stop in the centre of the office. I saw the rug again instead of a forest floor of pine needles. The rows of books replaced the rows of twinkling lights of Dublin in the distance. I saw the lamp, the computer, the desk.

  I saw Eoin.

  I sucked in a shaky breath as he stared at me. I felt like I’d run all the way back from the Dublin Mountains: cheeks red, lungs burning, skin hot.

  Eoin laughed. “Yeah, brother, something sort of like that, I guess.” Eoin pushed himself up from the chair and patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “Alright, well, I’ve got a big day tomorrow, so I’m going to head off to bed.”

  He turned toward the door, but I had to ask. I just had to. As Eoin was reaching for the door handle, I finally asked the question I feared asking above all else.

  “Do you love her?”

  When Eoin asked “What?” I at first thought that he hadn’t heard me, my words had been spoken softly, like a prayer. But then I saw the confusion on Eoin’s face as he glanced back over his shoulder at me.

  I repeated, each word more fearful than the last, “Eoin, do you love Kayleigh?”

  Eoin frowned slightly before quickly saying, “I already told you, Darren, we’re soulmates.”

  I shook my head, stepping closer to my brother. “But, Eoin, do you lo—”

  “I’m going to bed.” Eoin opened the door, stepped out of the office, and closed it roughly without another word, leaving me alone. At least I wished he had left me alone.

  I wasn’t alone.

  Eoin had left me with that unanswered question ringing in my ears, echoing in the small office again and again.

  Do you love Kayleigh?

  Do you love Kayleigh?

  Do you love Kayleigh?

  Eoin didn’t have an answer.

  But I did.

  Darren

  Perhaps it went without saying that I didn’t sleep that night. Perhaps it went without saying that I didn’t even try.

  The sheets of my childhood bed remained stiff and tucked up neatly beneath my carefully arranged pillows while my thoughts tossed and thrashed. Every time I fell just under the surface of sleep, I awoke without fail in a cold sweat as if from some terrible nightmare.

  I was living my nightmare.

  After Eoin went up to bed, I paced the short, narrow hallway outside the row of rooms till I feared I’d worn a hole in the carpet. I considered
knocking on the door where Eoin and Kayleigh slept. I could make up some excuse why I needed to talk to Kayleigh at 1:47 in the morning. Alone.

  But every time I held my fist suspended up against the door in the dark, knuckles no more than an inch or two from the peeling woodgrain, I stopped myself.

  What was I going to tell her?

  So what if I knocked on the door? If Kayleigh opened it just an inch or two, squinting bleary-eyed out into the hallway. If I managed to convince her to sneak out with me, got her to the kitchen where we could talk in private.

  What was I going to tell her?

  “Kayleigh, Eoin is offering to give you more in one day than I could ever give you in a lifetime, and it would help me out a ton if you could just say, ‘No thanks’.”

  “Kayleigh, you have a chance at happiness and I’d like very much for you to throw that away for me.”

  “Kayleigh, you’re about to get the possibility of a brand-new start. But maybe instead, you’d like me to drag you down with my past, my guilt, my misery? Maybe you’d like that instead? Yeah?”

  So every time, I pulled my fist back from the door and pounded it instead in frustration against my forehead. I watched the hazy light of dawn crawl across the living room floor and drove myself crazy wondering what the fuck I was going to do.

  My red-rimmed eyes stung and weariness tugged at my eyelids like anchors by the time Ma came down the stairs the next morning.

  “Darren, honey, are you alright?”

  I nodded as she leaned over to give me a kiss on the cheek. I should have given her my usual response of “Of course,” my Band-Aid of choice for the last ten years, but that morning I just couldn’t manage anything but a nod.

  Ma cupped my face in her hands as she studied my sleep-deprived eyes. “Come help me with the pancakes?”

  She slipped her hand around mine and gently but firmly pulled me out of the chair and toward the kitchen. We worked together in the silence of the early morning. I stirred the batter as she buttered the griddle.