by A. Marie
I angle my face to the side, sending up a silent “fuck you” to Hope and her torturous games.
“Is that him?” I ask, pointing to the picture. The picture of my entire family captured on a 4x6 rectangle. My parents—when my dad was still alive—my four brothers, and me. It’s funny how whole generations can be immortalized on a piece of fucking paper, a pathetic excuse of a material, but completely erased from a person’s brain, one of the most complex organs in the human body.
No matter what doctors say, I believe the heart is where these snippets are kept. Buried deep down away from the deceptions the brain notoriously plays on us. The fabrications we make ourselves believe during moments of intense heartbreak. Except it isn’t our heart at all, it’s our head telling us we hurt, warning us away from the danger. So, we hide those most precious memories where no amount of trickery can reach, where we feel without thinking, like breathing without trying—our hearts. While disease is busy rifling through the brain, searching for anything it can ruin and twist and manipulate, the heart protects each individual memory, only allowing clips to shine through for brief flashes before tucking them away again for safekeeping. I just hope my mom’s heart is strong enough to store all of us in there. Big enough to fit our large, overbearing, crazy-as-hell family.
The problem is humans are inherently greedy, always wanting more of what we can’t have. And I’m no exception, yearning for my mother’s love again like a starving seagull scouring the beach for leftovers. I’ll take whatever I can get but still want more. Always more. The shell of my mother who Alzheimer’s has carelessly left behind will never fulfill me in the maternal way I crave but, just like the idiotic bird, I continue to wait, hovering in the crosswinds, eagerly hunting for any scrap of her past self, whether it’s shown organically or I have to bear my own claws and fight for a glimmer.
That’s one of the reasons why she’s here now—with me. Between all my brothers, they were able to pay for her to live in a different place, but it wasn’t good enough. Not even close. Working in the same field, I wanted her close so I had a better chance at catching those rare bits of my mother’s old self, so I’ve been saving up for months and even gave up my beloved single-bedroom apartment.
I considered moving into my brother Jesse’s spare room, but I couldn’t do it. Seeing my own despair every day in the mirror is bad enough without adding his pain. We’re all suffering without our mother but I can’t step in as a cut-rate second-hand replacement. I won’t. We’ve already been there, done that, got the butt-ugly t-shirts.
Having four older brothers and no father meant exactly what you’d think—overprotective assholes on power trips constantly watching my every move and not allowing me a life of my own. They thought they needed to band together to give me—the baby of the family—a father figure. As much as I love them for it, they also blurred the lines between sibling and parent which ultimately became confusing for everybody.
Once I graduated high school and moved out, my life finally began, and it was great experiencing all the things I’d been denied. Any spare minute I had outside of nursing school and the part-time job I somehow managed to stay awake for was filled with vices of my own—the three B’s: booze, boys, and bikes. Unfortunately, it was all cut short with Mom’s diagnosis, ending my dabble in debauchery quicker than it started.
I’d still prefer to live with Paul Bunyan and The Babe than those turds though. Nick is the worst. Only one year older than I am, he made it his personal mission to spoil any and all fun for me that he himself partook in greedily. We’re the closest of the five siblings but we also fight the worst. Love hard, fight harder—that’s Nicky and me. All of us really.
I meant what I told Marc and Beckett, living with them will be easy compared to growing up with four overbearing brothers. And if that blustering blue-eyed behemoth stays out of my way, I should still be able to splash around in the overflowing fountain of fun life has to offer a twenty-year-old looking to loosen the noose of misery constricting her throat.
Ignoring my question or maybe unable to answer, my mom just repeats quietly, “I miss him.”
My name being called over the radio breaks the heavy silence and I retrieve the picture before placing it on her nightstand. Taking one last look at the smiling faces of an almost unrecognizable family, I rub my thumb over my smiling parents.
“Me, too,” slips out before I can stop it.
* * *
“Shit,” I say, looking at my CBR sitting useless in the spot I parked her in last night.
Remembering Cynthia already took off for the day, I pull up my oldest brother Jesse’s name on my phone. He doesn’t answer until the fourth call, gritting out, “This better be an emergency.”
“I’m stranded on the side of the freeway. Can you please pick me up?”
A groggy rumble is the only response I get.
“Jesse! Wake up!” I scold. “It’s not even that early. Come on, my bike won’t start. I need a ride home.”
“Call someone else,” he mumbles, sounding like he’s rolling back over to sneak some more z’s.
Not on my smartwatch.
“You know what? Don’t worry about it. I’ll just stick my thumb up and see if I can hitch a ride. Serial killers are probably out of business now since Uber’s so popular.” I wait a bit, letting that sink in, then add, “Right?”
“Don’t even think about it.”
His sharp and very much awake tone has me chuckling.
“Where are you exactly?”
I ramble off the address, squinting even though he can’t see me.
“Wait, isn’t that Sunbrook’s address?”
I don’t answer. He knows it is.
“God, you’re a bitch. I’ll be there in twenty.”
“Make it sooner and I’ll buy you a coffee.”
“That’s already included in my fee.”
“Maybe I should’ve called someone else,” I mutter, then hang up before he can renege.
Even though I plan on hitting my bed as soon as I get home, a chai tea latte will help soothe my nerves after the long night I just endured; but really, I’d use any excuse to get the sweet, milky drink so it’s a moot point. Or mute point, as my brother Nick used to say then arrogantly defend when we’d correct him. It kinda stuck and now we use the term as an inside joke.
Thirty minutes later, a grumpy but extremely pretty Jesse pulls up. With high cheekbones, light eyes, and a clear complexion partially hidden by a short beard, my oldest brother is definitely the prettiest in the family. After our gorgeous mother, of course. We used to joke that all the beauty was used up on the firstborn, leaving odds and ends to make up the rest of us. Caleb has a perfect nose, Tysen has well-defined muscles, and Nick has plump lips while I have the hair. Well, technically we all have the same hair color but I tint my long, mahogany waves with dark, berry-red undertones to make it my own.
I’m sitting at the curb with my elbows resting on my knees when his low-to-the-ground Toyota screeches to a halt in front of me. The window rolls down and he barks, “Get in.”
Asshole. I love him.
Seeing my oldest brother is like taking my first breath after a long swim—it hurts but in a really, really good way. It’s…been a while.
“Morning, sunshine.”
He grunts something about dropping me off on a real freeway but I ignore the empty threat. I wouldn’t have to lie if he’d just answer my calls.
Looking over my white nightmare as we pull away, he asks, “When are you going to stop driving that already? You need to get a car. A reliable car. One that you didn’t buy off the internet from a fifteen-year-old child.”
“First of all,” I say, counting by putting my middle finger up instead of my pointer finger, “he was sixteen.”
He releases a deep chuckle, lighting up his entire face along with mine. Jesse is such a stoic person that when you get him to crack, even if for a moment, it’s addictive. You’ll do anything to get him laughing again and
when he finally does, it feels like winning the best kind of competition there is. I keep a mental tally every time I get him to break character.
He doesn’t even realize the power he holds in his smile either. Most pretty people don’t. Well, the good ones anyway. And Jesse, he’s the best. But I can’t tell him that. Sibling rivalry is alive and well in the Christensen family and I can’t have him realizing how much in the lead he actually is over the rest of us. Plus, we haven’t spoken lately, and I can’t just vomit how much I love and miss and need him. I tried already and he just retreated even more from me, from us.
“Second,” I put up my other middle finger, “he knew more about bikes than me. How was I supposed to know the thing had problems up the tailpipe?”
The snort he lets loose warms my chest straight through. It’s close enough to a laugh I mark it down as a win, immediately looking forward to my next one.
“And third,” I drop both hands to my lap, “you drive a car, you ride a bike. We all have our faults. She’s mine.”
“She?”
“Oh yeah, she’s definitely a she. She’s beautiful and moody and the baddest bitch on the block.”
“She’s a piece o’.”
“What’s that?”
“A piece o’ shit!” His loud laugh is so unexpected that while it fills me with pride, it also grates on my nerves that it’s at my expense. I do not mark it as a win.
We grab drinks from the drive-thru of a little coffee stand called Latte Da. I’ve never heard of it but Jesse swears by their specials, specifically one they call the mocha-swirl latte but no longer serve for some reason. I stick to my tea drink before I direct him toward my new place at Creekwood Apartments.
Tysen, the quintessential middle child, was the brother I had help me move in the other day. He and my new roommate, Marc, both lifted the heavier items, whereas big, bad Beckett stayed behind his closed bedroom door, most likely pouting. He seems like a pouter. A very tall, very sexy pouter. I watched with wide eyes as Tysen and Marc did that bro handshake thing upon first meeting. Marc is a tough nut to crack but my brothers are expert ball-busters and Ty had him laughing about something within minutes. Ty has a higher laugh count in the Jesse department than me but he also gets decked when his idiocy reaches intolerable levels, so who’s the real winner?
“Tell me about these guys you live with.”
“No.”
His head snaps to mine after he parks, asking, “Why not?”
“Because I don’t need you to go all big brother on them, essentially making me look like an incompetent little girl who needs J-bone’s constant protection.”
“Don’t call me that. That’s the dumbest nickname I’ve ever heard.”
I shrug my shoulders, keeping my comments to myself. We had four teenage boys in the same house at the same time, not to mention the insane amount of other teenage boys those four accumulated. We’ve all heard, and said, worse. Much worse.
“Regardless, I was barely able to get Mom in the door at Sunbrook, and in order to keep her there, I need money. Lots of it.”
“What was wrong with where she was before? It was fine and didn’t cost a fortune.”
“It wasn’t fine.” At all. “You’d know that if you visited more often.”
It’s a low blow but it’s true. Jesse filled the paternal role more than the others and took Mom’s rapid decline the hardest. He’s still recovering. Or self-punishing, I’m not sure. He’s a fucking mess and rarely sees our mom anymore. Which is probably for the best, considering, but I still wish he’d try. With her and with me. By cutting her off, he cut me off too, and that hurts just as bad, if not worse.
“You’re telling me this was the best solution you could come up with? Shacking up with two strange guys? Did you find them online or something? It all sounds suspect as fuck.”
Shacking up? What a chauvinistic shit. Believe it or not, men and women can not only be friends but also cohabitate and not shack up. I spent my life around men, like a continuous conveyor belt of guys, and I never hooked up with any of my brothers’ friends. Not even on my sixteenth birthday when a bunch of us were sleeping outside on a trampoline and I convinced one of Tysen’s friends into being my first kiss. Or at my junior prom when I snuck Nick’s BFF into the bathroom with me after pretending someone spilled punch on my dress and needed someone else to clean it up—with their mouth.
Actually, he might have a point. A tiny, inconsequential point that nobody, especially none of my brothers, needs to know about.
“Seriously? I cut my rent in thirds by moving in here. Probably even more because my first place was expensive.”
He moves to follow me over to the stairs leading up to my second-floor unit.
“What are you doing?” I ask, packing on a healthy dose of attitude. He doesn’t bother with seeing me for how long then insists on doing what exactly? A clean sweep of an already clean apartment? Intimidating my roommates?
Unfortunately, I already know the answer to both: yes. He plans on doing both. Thoroughly. Just like Tysen did in his underhanded I’m not a threat until you make me one type of way.
And when the next brother down the line comes to visit, he’ll do the same, too. They’re all the same.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“They’re probably not even here, you know? They work.”
“Where?”
My eyes roll on their own, I swear.
“Some new garage,” I say, remembering my interview with them there. It was nice. Really nice. They both own it with their old roommate apparently. Everyone working there knew their shit when I scoped it out while waiting on the tallest one to finish a job. Honestly, they probably don’t even price gouge their customers. Fraud tends to happen when the lips spewing it are as clueless as the ones devouring it and I doubt anyone within those walls is thirsting for lies, not when their skills speak for themselves.
I open the front door, dropping my backpack full of my scrubs and stethoscope on the floor.
Jesse whistles behind me and I spin to see him checking out the new digs.
“Right? Fully furnished. And they actually have decent taste, unlike the hooligans I grew up with.”
He shoves me as I pass to the bathroom making me laugh, then I take my time washing my hands and face. The repurposed whiskey bottle used as a soap dispenser is my favorite thing in the blank canvas that is my new bathroom. Excuse me, shared bathroom. The thought of Beckett and I showering in the same space—separately, of course—sends tiny chills along my arms. His big, naked body lathering up where my naked body lathers up.
My eyes land on his body wash. The scent is faint, thankfully, but it’s there. It’s everywhere. A mix of wood and vanilla, earthy yet sweet, the notes tease my nose and I lose the battle, inhaling deeply. The moisture hanging thick in the air hints at his recent shower and my face heats at the images now flashing through my mind.
I find Jesse asleep on the worn brown leather couch when I return to the living room. Ah, the joys of being a man and not having any reservations about falling asleep in a strange place.
Why is he so tired though? He doesn’t even work nights.
I watch him for a while, just staring at my big brother, and wondering what else I need to do to get our family back in order. When will we be normal again?
When were we ever?
Technically, we’ve never been normal with enough boys in the house to start a sports team but that didn’t matter to me. I loved them. I love them. I love us as a family of differently cut pieces standing together as a whole.
Without our mom, the most important piece, we’re sliding further and further apart. I can only hope we find our way back to each other. And soon.
Shaking my head, I lay a blanket over his sleeping form then head to my room to do the same.
CHAPTER 4
Paige
I toss the lettuce, smothering it with the homemade Italian dressing before distributing it evenly between two plates.
Jesse pretends to gag so I add more to his, piling it high. The brief smile I catch is worth the curse word that follows. At twenty-seven years old, you’d think he’d be out of his vegetable hating phase. He’ll be fine eating one salad.
I think.
“Can you drop me back at work?” I ask, eyeing his fork as he pushes around his heavily-coated lettuce with it.
Waking up from a restless sleep filled with vanilla scented woods, I came out to find Jesse watching TV like he owned the joint. I made him help me with the box of DVDs I haven’t had time to unpack yet before getting myself a shower and making us dinner.
We haven’t spent this much time together in a long time and I don’t want it to end.
“I can’t. I have plans.”
My lips dip as I rush to hide my face.
“You do? Like a date?”
Growing up, I knew Jesse had girlfriends but he never spoke about them or brought any around. The boys were relentless in giving him shit but he’d never waver. He was always putting Mom’s needs first and often forgot to be a kid himself.
He stands so suddenly, he almost knocks over the barstool. “Yeah.” He snaps like he just remembered. “A date. Where we eat. At a restaurant. So, eating this…would be rude. Sorry.”
I narrow my eyes, treading behind his mad dash to the door. There’s practically skid marks on the tile. This idiot really hates veggies.
“Fine, scaredy cat. Wait until I tell Ty. He’s gonna roast your ass for running from a salad.”
He ducks his head back in, screwing his face up. “I don’t give a shit. I can still beat Ty’s ass.”
This is undoubtedly true. Jesse pulls no punches—literally. But again, I can’t tell him that.
I pretend to scoff, saying, “I don’t know. I saw him lift my dresser without breaking a sweat. He’s a beast. He probably eats his greens.” The last part barely makes it past my lips without me cracking up.
“Good. Have him finish that pile of slop you’re trying to force on me.”