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Rummaging through the closet, I found a clean pair of briefs, brown shorts that ended at the middle of my thighs, and a cream hemp shirt with rolled-up sleeves. I buttoned up to the middle of my chest and let the upper half spread open. Today, I might walk somewhere outside the campus and I didn’t want to look the way I felt. Not that anything mattered. I was a shell of a human with nowhere to be and nothing to do.
I strapped on my Roman-style brown leather sandals and circled the room while a wave of temptation pulled me toward the bed. I just woke up, I growled at myself. But the bed was inviting me louder than the outside world. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could just pass out on that soft mattress and let the world go on outside this room?
I didn’t have the time to decide. My phone vibrated in my pocket and I wondered if Phoenix had come up with some new idea to drag me out. My curiosity got the better of me. I pulled the phone out and my heart instantly dropped into the pit of my stomach. Mom. Not that I was allowed to call her that anymore.
My throat tightened as my thumb trembled an inch above the screen. It took me a moment to muster the strength to pick up, but that was about the extent of my courage. I was too far down to speak. And I didn’t have the will to fight or even to hear more judgment in her voice.
“Yes?” I whispered. It was as far as I could go.
She was silent, breathing in and out for a few moments. “You’re back at Northwood.” It wasn’t a question. Why she was keeping track of my whereabouts was beyond me after all she had said.
“Yes,” I confirmed anyway, my voice only slightly stronger. I realized I hadn’t spoken at all today. Phoenix had let me sulk over breakfast, and when he brought us lunch, he talked about his evening plans instead of prodding me with questions. I had murmured and grunted a few times since this morning, but these were my first words of the day.
My gaze moved to the window. The fire was waning and night was approaching. I might drag myself to the backyard and watch the stars tonight.
“Asher…” Her voice cut off abruptly.
In the silence, I found the barest minimum of what I needed to tell her. “If you’re about to remind me of what you said, you don’t have to. It never left my mind.”
A sound. I didn’t know what it was. It was too short and high-pitched to make sense. “Is he with you?” she asked after a beat.
“No.” It was the driest my voice could get. Couldn’t she say his name? It didn’t matter.
“I see,” she said. “You shouldn’t be alone.”
“Why do you care?” I demanded, fire bursting to life inside of me. “You walked out and told me not to call you my mother anymore. Why do you care if I live or die?”
Another sound. It was not an angry sound but a sob held deep inside, rising and being forced away. After she found her voice, she spoke, but it wasn’t answering my questions. “Jordan visited me.”
So that was how she knew where I was. He’d probably gone there to gather his things before she changed the locks. Still, my heart leaped at the mention of his name. I would have to see him soon. He would return here in a week or so to start the drills like everyone else.
“He came in the morning the day after I returned,” she spoke in a softer voice. I couldn’t read any of her emotions. “He must have been driving since before dawn. He walked in, sat down in the living room, and scared me to death when I saw him. I told him to leave, but he wouldn’t. Stubborn boy. I didn’t want to see him, but he said it was his home as much as anyone’s.” I could tell now that there was frustration tightening her voice. I let her silence go on for as long as she wanted. Whatever fight they had, she would either tell me or wouldn’t, but the outcome was the same. “I threatened to call the cops when he stared at me in silence like some psycho. I didn’t know he could be so scary, Asher. That sweet, clever boy, he looked like…I don’t know. I didn’t feel safe.”
“Are you seriously calling me to complain about Jordan? I didn’t even know…” I tried to vent my anger, but she ignored me.
“He just said it was his legal residence and he could sit there for as long as he wanted. So I let him. What else could I do?”
My heart clenched. Where was she going with this? The tingling of suspense rose from my heart, but I pressed my lips tight and didn’t make a sound.
“He sat there all morning, arms crossed, eyes on me whenever I passed through the room. Every now and then, he just said we had to talk, but I wasn’t going to be bullied, Asher.” Anger reached all the way up to my throat, hot and bitter. “And when I finally couldn’t wait anymore — he knew he was waiting for me to break, I tell you that — I demanded to know what he wanted from me. But he just looked me dead in the eyes and said: ‘You broke his heart.’” She choked up, that sob bursting from her tight throat and splitting my ear. If there was anything left of my heart, it might have cracked at hearing this. But there wasn’t. It had already been shattered into sand and dust. “Did I?” she demanded, her voice quivering. “Don’t you understand how I feel?”
Why should I? But there was no point in asking that.
“You boys…you were brothers in all but blood. For seven years, Ash, we were a family. And isn’t it bad enough that I should have lost seven years with a man I no longer loved? Isn’t it too much to see our sons do this…this…this thing that brothers should never even think of?”
“Stop saying that,” I growled.
She stopped speaking altogether for a moment, then regained some control over her tone. “You sound just like him. ‘We were never brothers. We were never even friends.’ That’s what he told me. He told me how little you spoke to each other all these years. We knew, George and I. We knew you weren’t getting along, but b…stepbrothers are like that. You were both changing and you were growing up; it was hard enough as it was.”
“What do you want?” I asked. I couldn’t go through another round of this. I couldn’t listen to how my carelessness had cost us the lives we had known.
She was silent for a few heartbeats, then sniffed a little. In a calmer voice, she spoke again. “I didn’t mean for everything to go the way it went, Ash. My life’s falling apart around me. Jordan says that this woman from work isn’t even straight. That she’s married to another woman. I know I have to face some hard truths.”
I would have cut her off there if I could. She was speaking about things that meant nothing to me. I didn’t want to listen to her rambling and I didn’t want to be her therapist.
“I let my years go by, baby, and it’s turned me into a bitter person.” The whimper that followed made something vibrate and throb inside of my chest. “I didn’t mean to push you away. I just…couldn’t stand the thought that you and Jordan could have what we lost along the way.”
“You blame us for your wrong choices,” I stated in my flattest tone.
