by Peter Styles
Greg shrugged. “Don’t ask. I have no idea. We haven’t been talking too much.”
“Wow, this is pretty!” Bethany was slightly bent over, admiring one of his paintings.
“Thanks.” He looked back at Mark. “Why are you here?”
“I told you. No one could get a hold of you. I figured you sealed yourself up in some weird art kick.”
Greg took a sip of his drink. It tasted exactly like a sundae. Bethany was right. It was delicious. For the first time in a week, he felt a bit like a human being instead of a painting machine trying to avoid feelings. He took another sip as Mark stared at him, waiting for him to reply.
“This is really good,” Greg admitted.
Bethany clasped her hands together. “Oh, I am so glad!”
Mark scowled a little. Greg took another sip. It felt strange, but in a good way, that his brother had come by to make sure he was okay. That wasn’t something that would have occurred even a month earlier. Even though his brother looked grumpy, Greg couldn’t shake the warm feeling spreading out across him. It was the first time in a week he had felt something other than a sense of deep grief and loss.
“You can’t just… you know. Seal yourself up in here and not talk to anyone,” Mark said.
“I didn’t mean to. I had fallen behind on work a little. I needed to catch up,” Greg replied, even though it wasn’t entirely true—he just couldn’t seem to stop painting.
“Your stuff is really nice,” Bethany said, as she admired one. “I like this one.”
The painting she enjoyed was the most generic one in the bunch. It showed a field of flowers with a bright blue sky. A little old lady commissioned them from him, although Greg had no idea why she wanted so many paintings of something she could buy a thousand times over in any major store.
“Thanks,” he replied.
“Listen, just don’t vanish, alright?” Mark looked uncomfortable now, avoiding looking at him. “I don’t want to come over here again with this overpriced coffee.”
Greg fought off a smile, nervous that it would scare his brother off. This was real, true concern. He wished his parents were here to see it, here to see them trying to mend the bridge they previously assumed would be forever destroyed.
“Well, I appreciate you checking in on me, really.”
“We have to figure out what is going to happen with the house. If we want to keep it or… one of us wants to move in there or what.”
Greg hadn’t given it much thought. Catherine had moved out, already having found a new person who needed her care, leaving the house empty. The thought of the house that he had grown up in being sold and someone else living there made him feel uncomfortable.
It must have shown on his face because Mark said. “If Jewel is back with Stephen, maybe this roommate thing is coming to an end soon, right? You might want to think about moving in there.”
Greg blinked in surprise. “I don’t think Jewel is going to… I mean… you think she’s going to move out?”
“Oh, I love this one!” Bethany exclaimed.
He didn’t look, too busy focused on Mark, who replied. “You don’t? She lost her head about this guy before. They were going to get married, for fuck’s sake, I mean, she only dumped him because she finally caught him in the act of cheating. Everyone knows he’s cheating on her. I think he just likes keeping someone wrapped around his finger. No idea why a smart woman like her falls for the same shit from the most boring guy.” He gave a small shrug. “Besides, whenever you’re around her, things feel weird. Not how they used to be.”
“Yeah, they’ve been… different. I guess things started changing when Ben told me something that she never told me.” The memory felt like a lifetime ago. “And it just snowballed.”
“Ben.” Mark shook his head. “There’s another one I don’t understand.”
Greg’s heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing. You’d think, after being around someone for so long, I’d know at least something about him. But I don’t know much. Maybe because you hung out with Jewel instead, I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. He still came to the hospital when Mom was there. Came to the funeral too. There’s a heart in him somewhere, I suppose.”
Greg fought the urge to talk about Ben, afraid that his feelings would be clearly expressed on his face. Even though Mark was finally speaking to him civilly, there were still issues to be delved into, and he didn’t want to start talking about his personal life to him quite yet.
Bethany accidentally knocked something over in the kitchen. He heard her apologize and pick whatever it was that had fallen back up.
Seeing a chance to change the topic, Greg spoke. “You and Bethany. Are you serious? At first she didn’t seem like your type. I thought maybe she was like a fling. Or something.”
“It started out like that. I know. She’s younger than I am and blonde. Looks like I’m trying to get a trophy wife or something. But it isn’t like that now.” Mark hesitated. “I love her.”
It was then that Bethany bounded into the room. “Your kitchen is really cute. I like the color scheme in there.”
“That was all Jewel.”
“Oh, I’ll have to ask her about some things then. For our kitchen.” This was directed at Mark.
“You moving in together?” Greg asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. That’s one of the reasons I came by, actually.”
“Oh, well, congratulations. That’s awesome,” he replied and he truly meant it.
Bethany wrapped her arm around Mark’s. “You’ll have to come to the house warming!”
Seeing how happy she looked, along with the fact that Mark was trying to fend off a smile, Greg replied, “Yeah. Of course.”
She looked pleased and kissed Mark on the cheek. They were an odd couple. But if Mark was happy, then nothing else mattered.
Dimly, he thought of Jewel and Stephen. He had been angry with her for going back to Stephen to the point that it was affecting their friendship. Staring at Mark and Bethany, he wondered if he had been too hard on her. It felt complicated; he didn’t want her getting hurt again, but she deserved to live her life her own way.
“Since we’re going to be moving in together, that’s why I wanted to talk to you about the house.”
“You don’t want it? I mean, if you guys are moving in together and everything. It just makes more sense for you to move in.”
“I don’t think it will be good for me to live there right now,” Mark said, without preamble.
Greg understood instantly. The memories would eat Mark alive; it was too much too soon to move there and be surrounded by their parent’s things.
“You don’t have to move there either,” Bethany said, quickly. “If you don’t want to. We just thought it made sense to offer it to you. In case you would like it.”
“I’ll think about it. Thanks.”
“Okay. Well, we’ll let you get back to… whatever you were doing,” Mark glanced at his paintings. “Just keep in touch.”
“Yeah, I will. Thanks again for coming by. And for the coffee.”
After they left, Greg stood in the living room lost in thought. His mother’s death seemed to have snapped his brother out of the fog he had been living in. He appeared focused, determined to mend broken bridges and take the next step with Bethany.
Meanwhile, Greg had stuck his head in the sand. He could convince himself it was because he cared about work. But he knew it wasn’t just that. The grief had taken root inside of him, spreading out across his body like a twisted tree. It’s only been over a week, he argued with himself. Grief takes its own course.
True, yes, but what had unfolded in the week he had cut himself off from the world. He couldn’t even remember the last time he spoke to Jewel. He should check up on her, figure out what she had going on…
He went into the dining room, picked up his dead phone, and plugged it into the charger. Then he studied his paintings as if they would tell him what to do.
The paintings were slightly askew, moved out of their original positions by Bethany. He would like to paint her sometime, he mused as he put them back in their places, in bright colors. In that pink dress she had been wearing. It would look nice on the canvas.
His thoughts were interrupted by a painting shoved in the back. It had been thrown there carelessly. The less time Jewel had spent here, the more he had been overtaking the dining room with his art. This particular painting had gotten shoved behind a slightly larger one. He only saw it now because the edge peeked out and the corner was entirely black.
Greg tried to remember a painting that had a black edge but nothing came to mind. Tugging it free, he held it in his hands and looked at it, trying to remember.
It came to him slowly. It had been a self-portrait he had worked on before his mother had ended up in the hospital. His face in the center, strange colors dancing across his face, and darkness in the back. The darkness felt familiar, something he had been heading toward when he painted this… something…
With a small noise of surprise, the painting clicked. Greg recalled how therapeutic it had been painting it, even though he didn’t understand it. But staring at it now, he understood.
The darkness behind him in the self-portrait represented Ben. Ben, who had wiggled into his heart from the start, even though Greg hadn’t noticed. Memories of Jewel pointing out how easily Ben could get under his skin came back to him. His heart skipping a beat when he saw Ben outside, letting the dog out in the backyard. His annoyance at his dry laughter, the fact he had been unable to resist going over to him in the coffee shop. Greg had thought it had been to tell him off. But he wanted to talk to him.
The memories came over him so suddenly that it left him breathless. He had thought he struggled with his feelings for Ben. But the struggle felt like a joke, some sort of lie he created so he didn’t have to accept the truth.
He had fallen hard for Ben, in all ways, upon seeing him in Jewel’s bedroom. He had just fooled himself this long into thinking he hadn’t been drawn to him. Even after they slept together, he had been debating bout his feelings for Ben, when now, it was perfectly clear.
Putting the painting down, Greg hurried to his phone and turned it on. It had barely charged. He sat down on the nearest chair and waited for it to boot up. He decided to call Ben. He didn’t know what he was going to say. He knew things felt different since they slept together. But he needed to tell him—wanted to tell him just how he felt.
His phone lit up with messages from Mark. One from Jewel saying that she was fine, just hanging out with Stephen. And four missed calls from Ben and three text messages, all various versions of “Pick up the fucking phone.”
Alarmed that Ben seemed angry and all the messages were from today, he hastily called him. As the phone rang, he wondered if Jewel had gotten hurt. His heart thumped in his chest.
“Finally. Where the fuck have you been?” Ben demanded.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It isn’t me that’s fucking things up.” His hostile tone was edged with something else: a hint of panic.
“What is Jewel doing?” Greg asked.
“She’s marrying that idiot!”
He frowned, perplexed. While Jewel announcing her engagement to Stephen sucked, it made sense in that he had assumed she was hiding something. But Ben’s tone sounded off, more upset than he expected.
“Alright. But…”
“No, you don’t understand. She’s marrying him today.” Ben said impatiently.
That brought Greg up short. “Today?”
“Yes! Today. You need to get down here. Mom and Dad are coming to stop her, but it might not be enough.”
He thought of Bethany and Mark, how happy they seemed together even though they were so different. He thought of Jewel and all the times she had cried over something Stephen had said or done to her. The brief glimmers of happiness she had felt seemed to die quickly when it came to Stephen. The way he had her under his thumb, the unhealthy way she responded to him.
There was allowing your friends to make their own choices, and supporting them even when things went bad. And there was standing idly by and watching them dive head first into a mistake and not trying to reach out. Greg knew then it was different from what Mark had with Bethany—and no matter how distant he felt from Jewel lately, he couldn’t stand by and let her marry Stephen.
“Give me the address. I’ll be there,” Greg said, pushing aside how he felt about Ben for the moment.
There were larger things to deal with.
Chapter Sixteen
Greg had been expecting the courthouse but, when Ben gave him the address, it was to a small church on the outskirts of town. He parked his car and stared at it. Jewel had never been one for churches. He could count the number of times she had been inside on one hand. It felt like Stephen’s doing, no doubt, to convince Jewel to get their marriage license and run off to a church to get married.
Cliché. So cliché that, if Jewel had seen it in a film, she’d have rolled her eyes and scoffed. But with Stephen, she thrived on clichés. Each cliché Stephen presented her seemed to prove that he cared about her.
Ben’s car was already here. There wasn’t any sign of their parents yet. Greg hurried out of the car, heading toward the church. He figured Ben would be throwing a fit loud enough to bring the wedding to a grinding halt. But he would be hostile and Jewel would be defensive. It would be up to him to try to get through to her.
He yanked the doors open and stepped inside. The church was tiny, with dust swirling in the sunlight coming through the windows. He wrinkled his nose, trying not to sneeze.
At the front of the church stood Stephen, Jewel, and Ben, as well as someone Greg had never seen before. The minister was nowhere to be seen. He had probably run off when he saw Ben coming toward them.
“You don’t get to come here and tell me what I can do with my life, Ben!” Jewel yelled.
Stephen didn’t say anything. His arms were crossed, glowering at Ben. Greg wanted to punch him.
“This guy is an asshole and you know it! When you’re with him, you aren’t even yourself, Jewel! Why would you marry this guy?”
Greg hurried over. Stephen saw him first and rolled his eyes. Greg ignored him as Jewel looked up. Her lips pressed together, a small tight line on her face, as relief swept over Ben’s features.
“Good, you’re here. Maybe you can talk sense into her,” he remarked.
“Greg, what is this? Are you just taking orders from my brother now?” Her sour tone took him slightly by surprise, but he didn’t show it.
Instead, he laced his arm around hers. She was wearing a white dress he had never seen before. It appeared to be a size too large as if she picked it up on sale somewhere. The thought made him sad. This isn’t how Jewel should be getting married.
He managed to get her away from both Ben and Stephen, risking the chance that Ben would punch Jewel’s fiancé in the face.
“Your brother called me, yeah, but only because he’s concerned. He called your parents too.”
She balked. “What? That bastard. He is so—”
“Annoying, bossy, frustrating, yeah I know,” he replied swiftly, not wanting to focus on Ben. “But it all comes from the fact he loves you and is worried. I am too. But I didn’t come here to stop you.”
At this, Jewel blinked in surprise. She risked a glance at Stephen, but Ben had dragged him into an argument and he didn’t notice. She chewed on her bottom lip before looking back at him.
“Why are you here then?”
Greg had no idea if this new tactic would work. But it was evident that Ben shouting wasn’t going to accomplish anything and it wouldn’t help if he joined in. So, he forced himself to relax his shoulders.
“To watch you get married.”
Now, Jewel definitely looked surprised. Her eyebrows shot up as she struggled for a response.
Greg kept going. “I’m hurt you didn’t want m
e here. Who is that person?” He pointed to the man standing in the corner, looking at his phone.
“A friend of Stephen’s. Our witness. His wife is coming by to be the other one. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d want to be here. I thought you’d want to stop it.”
“Your parents would want to be here too, regardless of how they feel about Stephen. You’re getting married! Tying yourself to this person for the rest of your life!”
His words had the intended effect. Jewel flinched. Behind her, Greg could see Ben staring at Stephen in disgust as he said something, probably a rehearsed speech about why he loved Jewel.
He pressed his advantage. “We all want to support you. Even Ben, although he shows it differently. We just want you happy. And if you’re happy being with Stephen, after everything you two have gone through together, then I am happy for you.”
For a second, Greg thought it had worked. She looked unsure of herself. Whatever lies Jewel had been telling herself, maybe it was worth it to have Stephen back. She could ignore the cheating, could ignore the times he made her cry or convinced her to isolate herself from her family to see him, all because she loved him.
But Jewel shook her head, clearing her mind of doubt and replied. “Thanks, it means a lot. Really. I know Stephen and I have had our low points. I know all of that. But I want to give him another shot. Getting married will prove I am serious about how I want to be with him.” Clearly on a roll now, she kept going, “Because that’s what love is. Being with someone even if it’s hard. Or strange.”
Greg found himself staring at Ben, tapping his foot impatiently as Stephen scowled. Something about Jewel’s words resonated in him. It felt strange to care about Ben; never in a thousand years had he expected to fall for someone like him.
In that moment, he knew what he needed to do.
“Jewel,” he said, and something in his voice made her freeze. “I have to tell you something. He doesn’t know yet. But I’m going to tell you first.”
“What? Who doesn’t know?” Jewel asked, puzzled.
He tore his gaze away from Ben. “I’m in love with your brother.”