by Sunniva Dee
Connor gets a call too. This one is from the old lady across the street. He’s always been nice to Mrs. Plant, who seems to consider him her slightly younger non-consummated lover. She has two cats. Tonight, they’ve both supposedly escaped and the coyotes could be hunting them.
The air in the Queen is tense when Connor leaves and Diego stands and stretches. His fake yawn slips off his face as he moves toward the parlor. “I’m going to hang with a couple of my Gs. I’ll be at the Alibi Room if you need me. See you guys later.”
Luka remains on the couch, long legs stretched out in front of him and hands cupping the back of his head. He’s flaunting his perfect body, lazy as a lion and with the half-lidded aloofness of one too.
I stand slowly. Since Julian’s death, I haven’t had to be alone with Luka, and I can count on one hand the conversations we’ve had. I want it to remain this way. I try to stroll toward the door like it’s no big deal that Marlon’s babysitting his nephews in Thousand Oaks. Thank goodness Nathaniel is home. Just, he’s not in the TV-room anymore.
“Well, goodnight,” I say to Luka. “Mañana.” No way I’ll fall asleep this early.
Luka doesn’t change position. My gaze draws down the outline of him, carved features, the pink curve of his mouth—exactly like his brother. The taut chest, abdominals that are so ripped I see them through the shirt.
I turn and stalk to the stairs before I can let the outline of his crotch make an impression on me.
“Babe?” Nathaniel. I’m on the flight of the stair, already knowing I won’t like what he says next.
“Yes?”
He strokes his skull while he peers at me, gaze uncertain. “I’m gonna head over to the Alibi Room too. I need a beer after that shit-fest of a movie.”
“You’ve already had beer,” I burst out. Then: “There’s more in the fridge.”
Awkward silence. It hangs over us, because the beer isn’t why he wants to leave and my suggestion won’t change his plans. He doesn’t invite me along.
“Okay, have fun.” My lip hurts. His dark eyes draw to my mouth, and I realize I’m chewing on it.
“Call me if you need anything.”
Sure, I-need-you-to-stay-thanks.
I want to ask when he’ll be home. Last-minute emergency solutions swirl through my head: the cat lady’s just across the street. I could head over to look for Connor. Also, I’m not too buzzed to drive. I could bum-rush Joy.
I wave awkwardly as the front door closes behind him, and for a moment I remain on the stairs, listening. The TV still rattles in the living room. Not a sound comes from Luka’s corner.
I blow a nervous sigh and move upstairs as quickly as I can. In the bathroom, I get ready in record time. I change into Julian’s pajamas pants and my own oversized cotton tee because I know Luka finds me attractive. Not that it makes me feel special. His libido seems damn happy with most females.
I hurry to get under my sheets. Luka isn’t predictable, so there’s no guessing what he plans to do next: go to bed, keep watching TV, or barge into my room unbidden. But in case he follows the pattern set by the other Fratters, I won’t alert him to being awake.
An hour later, all I’ve done is hold my breath and listen intently to every creak of the old house. I’m setting myself up for insomnia/suffocation by not locking the door.
I get up. Click that magic lock-button. Then I stumble over my own shoes on the way back and land with an arm twisted under me. It’s painful and annoying, but I suppress my ouch.
“Geneva?” Luka’s voice is muffled through the door.
I slink back into bed without a single spring squeaking. That’s a first.
“Are you okay?”
I’m asleep, idiot. Zzz.
There’s a hushed click as he wiggles the door knob. It doesn’t relent. “Geneva. Are you there?”
Duh, where else?
Silence. Until—
“I’m coming in.”
Yeah, good luck with that.
The door explodes open, and Luka strides in. I shoot up, pulling the covers up to my chest. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“Are you okay?”
“What does it look like? Go bug someone else. Go hang with your porn chicks or whatever and leave me alone.” It jumbles out of me on a wave of adrenaline.
Luka’s arms are weighty along his hips, shoulders wide and Julian-like. If he walked toward me from our bathroom, he would have been Julian. My heart slows and does a stutter.
“I heard you fall. Then you didn’t answer.”
“Seriously? What are you, some knight in shining armor? New one.”
He breathes, taking my jab, and somehow my conscience wobbles over that.
“Thanks for checking,” I clip out and cross my arms. “It’s all good. Nothing to see here.” Seriously, because I’m so warm under this comforter I’m ready to bounce out and turn the A/C way down.
“Why aren’t you asleep? It’s one thirty, and you have school in the morning.”
“As do you. Go back to bed, Luka.” He’s wearing a black wife-beater and a pair of boxers. He was definitely in bed.
“This isn’t about me,” he murmurs. “I can manage. Are they taking over?”
I blink. “What are you talking about?”
I see his shrug in a silhouette against the hallway. “The guilt and the regret. All the what-ifs over Julian.”
My arms overlap and scissor until I’m hugging myself. “It doesn’t matter. That’s not why I can’t sleep.”
He’ll ask me why, now, and I’ll launch into how it’s his fault, how we’re alone in this house and I don’t trust him.
“I think it is. Do you wonder what would’ve happened if you’d come home in time? If you’d done shit differently? If it were you and not me finding him?”
“No I don’t!”
“I do.” He hisses it out, and I want him to leave the room. Instead, he elbows the door shut and returns without taking his eyes off me. “I wonder exactly, exactly that. What if I was the wrong one to find him? What if you’d been there, if you hadn’t gone to school early and let him sleep in? Maybe I did it wrong? If I’d woken him up half an hour earlier instead of making coffee and shooting the breeze with Diego in the kitchen. Who the fuck cares that he had an eleven-o-clock at the department? He could’ve gotten up earlier.”
His honesty hits my chest like an atomic bomb.
“No! That’s crazy!” He can’t wedge himself into my grief and my guilt. “You were there. Don’t you see? You were fucking right there, while I wasn’t. You, the biggest jerk I know, got your brother help, and you know what time that was?” I blink to see him through my blur of liquid.
He nods. “At ten twenty-seven in the morning. I was impatient when I went up to wake him, ready to give him an earful about getting a grip on his own schedule. I was seething about how we’d both be late because he didn’t go with you.”
I huff out a laugh. “Ha, that was right when I was taking a coffee break. You know what I was thinking about? Not my fiancé. I wasn’t wondering how he was doing. No, I was too busy worrying about how the cafeteria was out of hazelnut syrup!”
I try to pull in air, but my breath shudders, and Luka grabs my shoulders before I can stop him. I wrench out of his hold. For a moment, his hands linger in the air, half-closed, but then he drops them along his hips.
“You didn’t know. That’s why.”
“I was his girlfriend. I should have seen it happen.”
“We were both here.”
I scoot on the bed, pulling downward with my feet until they hang over the end of the mattress. It makes me feel less vulnerable sitting upright like this, with my comforter swirled around me. The air conditioner. I wish I had turned it way down.
Luka follows me, the size of a Russian bear with the elegance
of a lion. His shadow obscures the moon through the window. Eyes glinting, he slides down the wall until he’s seated, knees bent on the floor, a few feet away from me.
“We were both here,” he whispers again, filling my space with all the guilt I’ve tried to control since Julian died. “But the thing is, what happened was his fault, not ours. He didn’t tell us he was struggling—fuck, I’m his brother and I should have known how out of balance he was.”
“I shared a bed with him, Luka. I didn’t even realize he was self-medicating.”
“He just shouldn’t have done what he did.”
“Doesn’t help now, does it?” I cry out, and for one instance, I’m glad the others aren’t home to hear me.
He agrees, pressing two fingers over the bunch between his brows. He rubs it. In a flash, I want to relieve that pain he feels. I know it exactly, so much.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to understand the grand plan of things. We’re supposed to deal with it and probably learn something. You know?” He lifts his face again, directing wet eyes at me.
“I’m not there yet, Luka.”
My lips twist uncomfortably. Luka’s expression doesn’t change. His is the quiet grief of an ice sculpture waiting for another to melt.
“I’m still trying to change the past by regretting it enough. I want to be back in time, get up at seven in the morning, and shake Julian awake. I want to not let him off the hook when he groans and slumps into the pillow. Sometimes, that’s how sleepy he was. Now, I wonder…” I slap a hand over my mouth.
“...if it was drugs,” Luka finishes.
“It was.”
“Yeah.”
“So we should just snap out of it, then, right?” I throw my hands open. “He made his own bed. Done deal, and now he’s gone.”
Luka reaches for me. His arm is long enough to find my leg and pull on it.
“Don’t,” I say, but he keeps pulling until I’m on the floor in a heap of bedding. My face is drenched. Luka’s eyes water too, but it’s mine he wipes with the corner of my sheet.
“He was perfect. The good ones die young.” My chin doesn’t stop quivering.
“My brother was anything but perfect, and it’s a pisser that he left us this way.”
I jerk away. “How can you say that? You met him.” And then I chuckle at the inanity of what I’m saying. Twins meet their brothers quite early, right? Mirth balloons beneath my sternum. I feel crazy.
I want to wipe away Luka’s words.
“He wasn’t, Geneva. You saw it too. We can’t forget that, you know? If we do, it’ll just make everything worse.”
“Shut up! What did he ever do to you, except be your sweet, chill, nice brother who didn’t live a despicable life?” I fumble behind me and find the bed. I pull myself back up again, away from his nearness. I need him far away.
Tears glitter in his eyes without falling. “You want to hear it?”
“Yeah, so I can slam in your face how wrong you are!”
He shakes his head, stare fixed on me. “No. You’re not ready for this.”
“What the hell? You saunter in here against my will, telling me that my fiancé sucked, and now you’re holding back when I want to hear? You’re horrible.” I swallow. Swallow and swallow. In my peripheral, he stands up, looming in front of the window. He takes one insecure step toward me, but I hold my palms up against him.
“Don’t even think about it. I don’t want your hands on me. I remember what you said the other day, you know? Freeloader. You need to stop backstabbing your brother when he’s not around anymore to defend himself. How dare you? And for the record, people aren’t freeloaders just because they take out student loans. We pay them back, Luka, once we start working. With interest.”
I narrow my eyes at the low sigh he expels. His shoulders sink like he doesn’t have a secret ace up his sleeve. “That’s not how Julian paid for his studies.”
“What are you talking about?” I straighten and glare at him. It doesn’t matter that my eyes still water. “Of course it’s how he paid for them. We even talked about our cumulated student loans and how tough it would be in the beginning to pay them back. We were talking about getting side jobs and start paying them off before we finished our studies. Get a head start on the interest,” I add on a gasp, because now, now—
“Geneva?”
“What?”
“Julian didn’t have a dollar in student loans.”
I’m at the library. My classes are over, and I’ve had my meeting with my now official supervising professor, Dr. Bergstein. The steel and tile around me is a needed break from the silk wallpapers of the Queen. I can’t stomach going back home yet.
Last night, I shoved Luka out of my room, his yellow stare like ice while I did. I left without breakfast this morning so I didn’t have to see him again.
I’m so disgusted. Luka is a fixture at the Queen now. He used to spend more time than anyone outside, partying it up with his bimbos whenever he wasn’t quote-unquote working or, god forbid, doing med-studies-related stuff.
I can’t believe the way he tried to defame his brother, insinuating that Julian too worked flesh shifts for a living. And that’s not me being naive. Even if Julian had that much time on his hands outside, there’s simply no way my fiancé could have pulled off having sex on command.
Joy is coming to pick me up. We’re having a late lunch slash early dinner at a student joint around the corner. If I choose the right food, I don’t even need dinner at the Queen. The thought makes me feel bad for the other guys though. They’ve gone all out for me. My face heats a little at the thought while I download the latest research on the Lara’ people.
There’s an MA student who’s done a little digging into the beliefs and superstitions of the Lara’ women in particular. This far in, there isn’t much I can use, but I’ll keep reading.
I’m at a study desk by the window, my favorite spot here. It reminds me of the freedom of the Reading Room. Joy knows to look here and rolls down her window outside, firing off a friendly tap of the horn. I gather my stuff and walk out to her.
“That was quick.” She unlocks the passenger door while I let my backpack slip off my shoulder.
“Yeah, I was browsing at Barter’s. They have the bestest sale right now.” She tips her head sideways toward the mall. “You sure you don’t want to do Mexican for lunch?”
I smile. “So we can get an early buzz on?”
“Nothing wrong with margaritas, right?”
At Don Juan’s—seriously, that’s the name of the restaurant—we’re seated in a deep orange booth in a deep fuchsia corner. The rainbow threw up in here and somehow landed more than one color in our margaritas too.
“What kind is this?” I ask.
“El Unicornio,” she pronounces almost perfectly.
“Wow. This is a sign. Everyone I have beverages with lately prefers unicorns.”
Joy performs her folding of fists, one inside the other, before she leans her chin on her grip and stares deeply into my eyes. “So train wreck last night?”
“You could say that.”
“Loved your text rant during class today.” She can’t hold back a grin. “It wasn’t that it was funny per se—you know what I mean? It was just how you said it.” She undoes her studious pose to lift her hands against me, knowing I’ll object.
“It was bad, Joy. I hate him so much. I think I need to move out of there.”
“Because that makes sense when you’re heading off to the Amazon in a few months anyway, right?” Joy still has a ways to go on the whole how-does-that-make-you-feel approach to her future clients.
I open my mouth to reply. She’s right though—I won’t jump on my decision before I leave the country. Then, by the time I’m back from Brazil, it’ll almost be winter break and I’ll spend Christmas with my family.
“So you hate him. What made that particularly apparent last night?”
“He insinuated that Julian ‘worked’ too. I know for a fact he did not.” My cheeks grow hot with fury just recounting it.
“As in working in adult entertainment?”
“Yes. He all but said it out loud.” I crunch down on a warm, crispy tortilla chip heaped tall with salsa. Any other time in my life, this would have lifted my mood substantially.
“Yeah. Julian wasn’t the type,” she agrees.
“And he didn’t have the time. When would he have done that? There were no mysterious absences. Besides the Verenich family Russia trips, he and I were together nonstop, working on our projects, at home, even on vacation.”
“True. He definitely wouldn’t have had time for that.”
“And you’re right,” I say. “He wasn’t the type. I remember once I was feeling frisky on the beach. Everyone had left and we were in this secluded part of the bay. I was even wearing a skirt. He couldn’t do it.”
“He couldn’t get it up?” Joy grins.
“Nope. My man wasn’t a public sex kind of guy.”
In just a few weeks, our behavior at the Queen becomes the norm. The second week after my return from Portland, the Fratters keep an ear out for me after bedtime to see if I fall asleep without them. I don’t.
The third week, the routine evolves. The guys let me get ready and to bed, but then they enter and climb in on their own without waiting for me to get restless.
The shadow in my doorway becomes predictable too. Diego comes on Mondays, Lenny on Tuesdays, and Marlon on Wednesdays. The second half of the week has James on Thursdays, Nathaniel on Fridays, and Connor on Saturdays. Every night, I’m comforted in the arms of a warm, understanding man, someone who’s alive and caters to my needs.
I still have to work on my guilt once I’m out of the house in the morning, but even so, I won’t lock the door the next night either. I need them. I crave them. My head is black and my heart empty without them.