My Brother's Girl

by Sienna Blake

  “I just want to make sure you’re alright and then I’ll go,” I said.

  I reached out a hand to lay it on Eoin’s uninjured shoulder. He whipped around, his fist catching my jaw with a surprising amount of force. I stumbled back, holding my face as it throbbed with pain.

  “Alright?!” Eoin leapt off the hospital bed with a grimace. “You want to make sure I’m alright?”

  Eoin swung another punch that glanced off my cheek. When I stepped back to avoid the next one, I tripped on the leg of the chair beneath the old television set mounted in the corner and fell to the floor.

  Eoin didn’t seem to care at all that one of his arms was in a sling as he leapt onto me and drew his fist high into the air above me. My instinct was to block my face with my hands. But I fought against that surge for survival. Because I didn’t want to protect myself, I didn’t want to escape the pain, I didn’t want to keep myself safe from my brother’s attack.

  As Eoin hit me, I wanted him to hit me harder. As his knuckles cracked against my cheekbone, I wanted him to hit me faster. I wanted him to pummel his strength down onto me till his breath was ragged and his lungs were screaming and he was too exhausted to even think of lifting his fist again.

  I deserved it.

  I deserved it all.

  I didn’t fight the waves of pain in my face and chest as Eoin hit me. I welcomed them. I was so lost in their agonising embrace, I didn’t even hear the door open. Suddenly Noah was dragging Eoin off of me. Ma’s face hoovered over me, eyes with wide concern as I blinked lethargically through swollen eyelids. She cupped my face with both her hands, but I pushed her away.

  “I’m grand,” I said, voice rough as I eased myself onto my elbows and sagged against the wall. “I’m grand.”

  “You’re an asshole!” Eoin shouted at me from the edge of the bed where Noah was struggling to keep him contained. “A fucking asshole, Darren!”

  He’d managed to pop loose half the stitches from above his eyebrow so blood coursed down the side of his face. Even in the sling his left arm hung strangely.

  Still trying to hold Eoin back, Noah looked over at me on the floor next to Ma. “What the feck is this all about?”

  Eoin spat out a spiteful laugh. “Yeah, Darren, go on and tell them then. Tell them what this is all about.”

  I could only hang my head, chin against chest.

  “Tell them how you cheated with my fiancée, Darren.” Eoin’s voice was harsh and loud. “Tell them how you and Kayleigh were hooking up behind my back this whole time. Tell them how you betrayed your own brother.”

  I was too much of a coward to meet Noah’s eyes, flooded with too much guilt to turn to look up at Ma.

  “But you’re not my brother, are you?” Eoin continued. “Because brothers don’t hurt each other and brothers don’t take from each other and brothers don’t put themselves and what they want above each other.”

  I had nothing to say, because he was right. Of course he was right.

  “Eoin, let’s calm down. Alright?” Noah said. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

  “Calm down?” Eoin shouted. “Why the fuck should I calm down? You should be just as pissed as me, Noah. What if it had been Aubrey?”

  I heard Noah sigh. “Eoin, just—”

  “Why are you defending him?” Eoin growled. “Why are you on his side?”

  “I’m not on anyone’s side. I—”

  “You should be on my side,” Eoin barked. “He betrayed us all. You should be on my side!”

  My chin was still buried in my chest so I only heard Michael walk into the hospital room and say, “I brought us coff—what the hell happened here?”

  “Michael, love, would you go fetch us a nurse?” Ma asked quietly, still next to me on the floor.

  “I don’t need a nurse,” Eoin shouted. “I need him out of here.”

  “Who?” Michael asked. “Darren?”

  “He went behind my back with Kayleigh,” Eoin explained. “She’s leaving me because of him.”

  “No fucking way,” Michael hissed under his breath. I imagined his angry eyes drilling a hole into the top of my head, still bent in shame.

  “Michael, the nurse,” Ma repeated.

  “It can’t be true,” Michael insisted. “Daz? Say it’s not true.”

  “Michael,” Ma hissed. “The nurse. Now.”

  From there it all turned into the chaos I so feared. The fuse on a powder keg had been lit the moment I stepped into that bathroom and saw Kayleigh naked. I thought I had managed to dig my heel into it and put it out. But I was wrong.

  The sparking, spitting fire continued down the fuse and there was nothing I could do to stop it. There, in that small, crammed hospital room, it exploded. It exploded because of me.

  Ma, who normally kept her cool even in the most stressful situations, pushed herself to her feet and yelled at Michael about a nurse while he yelled at me to speak up. They were joined by Eoin cursing at me, and Noah yelling at Eoin to calm down before he hurt himself, the noise growing louder and louder as everyone tried to be heard over the others. From my place on the floor, I could barely make out one bellowing voice from another.

  I winced in pain as I eased myself up with the aid of the wall behind me. The pain wasn’t payment enough; it would never be enough for what I’d caused.

  My family was so engaged with their battles, they didn’t notice when I moved with a slight limp toward the door. I slipped out into the hallway and the door clicked shut behind me. It did little to dampen the noise of their fighting as I dragged my aching body toward the elevator. I was fairly certain even when the elevator doors closed, I would still hear it. When the glass sliding entrance doors slid shut and the sounds of honking cars and chattering pedestrians filled the busy city air, I was sure I would still hear it. I could get on my motorcycle and rev the engine and drive away, far, far away, and I would still hear my family fighting there in that hospital room.

  I would hear it in every waking moment and every sweat-filled dream. I would never stop hearing it.

  A nurse stopped me as I neared the elevator. “Jaysus, boy. What happened to you?” she asked, hands on my chest as she stared up at my bruised and blooded face. “You need to be looked at.”

  “I’m grand,” I said, leaning past her to hit the down button. “But someone needs assistance in Room 9.”

  She hesitated a moment at the sight of my swollen eye, but then hurried away down the hallway.

  I’d stood at an elevator just like this one after receiving the news that Jaime was gone. I remembered how empty I felt in that moment: hollow, drained, soulless. I thought I couldn’t possibly feel less empty.

  But now as I waited for the doors of the elevator to open, I realised that I hadn’t been empty, at least not entirely, because even after my brother’s death, I had something: my secret.

  I had the secret of where I was that night, why I didn’t make it, why I had left.

  It was something to hold onto, to cling to, to clutch tightly in the darkest hour of the night. And it was a relief—at least my family didn’t know.

  At least my family would be alright.

  But now the secret of Kayleigh and me was out in the open. I had nothing left to cling to, nothing to clutch in the darkest hour of the night. And my family was not alright.

  I wasn’t empty before. I wasn’t at rock bottom. I couldn’t have been.

  Because I was there now.

  Kayleigh

  When I arrived at the shop and found the garage door still wide open, I didn’t think anything of it. Darren was supposed to be there, after all. But as I rushed across the driveway calling his name, I heard nothing. Still, this wasn’t a cause for concern.

  He could be in the back office. He could be out in the alleyway taking out some trash. Hell, he could even be in the bathroom. I was far too happy to care that he hadn’t come running out to greet me. We’d waited so long to have our moment, what was a few minutes more?

  I wan
dered the empty garage, checked the bathroom, the alleyway and the back office where I replaced the phone back onto the receiver. There was no sight of Darren. It was then that I noticed that his motorcycle was gone.

  I pushed away the immediate thoughts of concern that tried to worm their way into my head: he changed his mind, he didn’t mean it, it was all a cruel joke that he was playing on me, that he’d been playing on me this whole time. I pushed them all away because they were ridiculous.

  I’d just spoken with Darren. We’d both been happy and relieved and excited. We agreed to meet at the garage. All of this was true.

  He just went out to get flowers, I told myself. He couldn’t possibly have known that I would have sped through two red lights, taken every turn too tightly, practically making my engine smoke trying to speed to him. He thought he’d have plenty of time to go out for flowers and get back before I arrived. He just went out to get flowers. And that was that.

  I sent him a quick text: I’m here.

  But my excuse for Darren’s unexpected absence became less and less convincing as time passed. I chewed at my nails as I tried to convince myself the florist had just been out on an errand, making Darren late. The street lamps turned on as dusk fell over the city, and it became harder and harder to believe that maybe there was a credit card issue at the florist shop. Or a flower emergency. Or anything, really, that would explain where in the hell Darren was. My calls to his phone went straight to voicemail.

  It was hours later when the glare of the motorcycle headlight finally swept across the dark garage. I shielded my eyes where I sat on the hood of an old rusted junker and then hopped off as the motorcycle engine sputtered and died. Darren tugged his helmet off as I ran across the driveway toward him.

  In my mind, he would greet me with a beaming smile, sweep me up into his arms, and kiss me like I’d never been kissed before, because for the first time we each knew what love meant. In my mind, the tips of our noses would freeze out in the cold, but we wouldn’t care as we held each other tight and cried, because we’d finally found one another. In my mind, this moment was the start of forever.

  But my feet slowed as I approached Darren because even in the dim light of the street lamps, I could see the bruises covering his face. I stopped completely when I saw the emptiness, the defeat, the dread in his eyes.

  “Darren,” I whispered, eyes searching his bloodied face. “Darren, what happened?”

  I tried to reach out a hand to gently brush his cheek, but he flinched away from me.

  Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

  “Please, talk to me.”

  Darren couldn’t even look at me. He stared down at his helmet and fidgeted with the chin straps. It didn’t escape my notice that he hadn’t even bothered getting off his motorcycle. It was as if he had stopped simply to make a delivery before jetting off again. I could sense his fingers twitching toward the key in the ignition.

  “Please,” I begged, my voice wavering just slightly as fear again wrapped icy cold fingers around my heart.

  Darren lowered his chin to his chest, as if too tired to keep his head up. He briefly covered his eyes with his hand, as if he knew a car wreck was about to happen right in front of him and he didn’t want to see the carnage. I tried to step a little closer to him.

  “Stop.” His voice was raw and it sounded painful to speak, as if he’d been screaming into the wind for all those hours he was missing.

  My chin was trembling. This was not the happy reunion I expected after getting off the phone with Darren. I thought it was strange that he never got back on the line, but I figured he just forgot in his excitement. I never thought it would lead to this, whatever this was.

  “Darren, please,” I whispered. “What’s going on?”

  Darren shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. I searched his shadowed face, his sagging posture, his tired sighs for any answers, but all I found was more questions.

  “You’re scaring me,” I said.

  Again I tried to lay a comforting hand on Darren’s shoulder, but he yanked himself out of my reach. “I can’t be with you.”

  “What?”

  Darren simply repeated his words as if the only problem was that I hadn’t heard him, as if he hadn’t just pulled forever right out from underneath my feet, crushing the tiny bud of “I love you” with the heel of his boot.

  “I can’t be with you.”

  Darren immediately grabbed the key to twist in the ignition, not even giving my heart enough time to skip a beat. I lunged forward to stop him with a hand around his wrist before he rode off right down the street and out of my heart.

  “Don’t you dare,” I whispered, words catching in my throat. “Don’t you dare.”

  Darren tried to tug his hand free, but I gripped his wrist tighter. His hand was shaking. Mine was, too. I tried to catch his eyes, but he was so focused on the ignition switch, he was barely blinking.

  “I can’t be with you,” Darren repeated, his voice small, almost childlike in its fear.

  “What happened?” I begged. “Darren, please, talk to me. Just talk to me.”

  Tears stung my eyes. I did my best to hold them back, but every time Darren tugged at my grip around his wrist, I found it harder and harder.

  “Please, look at me,” I begged.

  The first tear slipped down my cheek as Darren squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

  “I can’t be with you,” he said.

  “Yes, you can,” I insisted. I felt him slipping away from me, dragged back by a tide I couldn’t see, I couldn’t feel, I couldn’t control. “You can be with me.”

  “I chose wrong.” Darren’s words were laced with such pain that I felt the sting in my own heart. “I chose wrong again.”

  “What are you talking about?” I yelled. I was growing desperate. I tried to turn Darren’s face toward me, but he wrenched his face away.

  “Darren, please!”

  He twisted his hand away. In an instant he turned the key in the ignition of his motorcycle.

  “I’m sorry,” was all he said.

  The engine roared to life, the sound sending panic through my veins. I could not—would not—let him get away. Even as tears streamed down my face as I stood myself in front of Darren’s motorcycle, blocking his path. I placed my hands on the front tyre and stared him down.

  “I’m not letting you slip away again,” I said. “Darren, I love you.”

  Darren’s eyes, ringed with black and purple and traces of blue, were red and puffy. Tears clung to his long dark eyelashes as he finally met my firm gaze. His stormy eyes were wells of pain and heartbreak.

  “I love you,” I said again. “I love you.”

  Darren shook his head, tears springing to his own eyes, mirroring my own. We were the sky and the ocean, water above, water below. We were one. Why couldn’t he see that? Why couldn’t I make him see that?

  “Darren, I—”

  “Eoin’s in the hospital.”

  I stared at Darren in shock. I shook my head in confusion, like I’d just fallen and wasn’t sure where I was. “What?”

  Darren’s eyes were blank, empty and barren. “Eoin went drinking after you broke up with him. He crashed his car. He’s in the hospital. He’s in the hospital because of…”

  Darren’s words trailed off, but it wasn’t hard to fill in the blanks. Because of him. Because of me.

  Because of us.

  My brain struggled to comprehend this news, to put all the pieces together: Darren being gone from the garage, his return, his insistence that we couldn’t be. When I finally looked up at Darren, utterly dumbfounded, I found him not looking at me, but through me.

  He was looking at the black asphalt behind me. He was looking into the dark twists and turns he would race through on his motorcycle alone. He was looking into a future where I was nothing but a memory, nothing but a terrible, terrible mistake. I tried to look for Darren’s eyes, but he was already gone.

 
; He was already gone.

  Realising there was no hope left, I stumbled back out of the way of Darren’s motorcycle. Darren slipped on his helmet, put up the kickstand with his heel, revved the engine, and accelerated past me. There was no last glance, no last words, no last kiss.

  He was down the road.

  He was around the corner.

  He was gone.

  Gone where I could not follow.

  Kayleigh

  “Well, well, well, look who came crawling back into Papa Claus’s arms.”

  In the dirty, crammed office at Dooley’s Bar, I tried to shake off the disgusted shiver that crept down my spine at the sight of Andy, my old pig of a boss, leaning back in his mouldy, Cheetos-stained desk chair. He stretched his arms above his head and reclined into his hands with a contented sigh of victory. His considerable belly, dotted with wiry red hairs, spilled from his two-sizes-too-small Dooley’s-logoed polo and oozed over his belt that was clinging on for dear life. I avoided looking at the mustard stain in his untrimmed red moustache as he grinned at me with that yellow, toothy predatory smile I knew all too well.

  Andy knew that he had all the power in this situation, and he was milking that for all it was worth. I’d returned to Cork a week ago and I was pushing the offer to crash on my friend’s couch to its limit. It didn’t help that all I’d been doing was lying around, surrounded by empty pints of ice cream and grease-stained pizza boxes as I moped around in my pyjamas and heartbroken misery. I had to get a job. I had to make money. I had to get my own place.

  I had to move on.

  “Did you miss me?” Andy asked, biting at his lower lip as his eyes scanned my body from head to toe.

  I predicted this, of course, and made sure to wear my largest ill-fitting sweatpants and a giant puffer jacket for this interview.

  “Did you dream about me, little Kay-Kay?”

  I gripped the armrests of the flimsy plastic chair next to a disorganised filing cabinet overflowing with unpaid invoices and years-old receipts. It seemed not even a single piece of paper had been moved since I left.