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T H I R T Y E I G H T
- Finn -
I hadn’t bothered God since our family dog Booster died when I was thirteen. Until now, when I found myself praying for the strength to be patient with my brother. Yet again.
Maybe that made me a bad person, but nothing had changed. Sure, he was sober, and I was as sincerely relieved as I was proud of him. But he was still the same selfish asshole who’d pushed me to my breaking point after our double billing in Sacramento all those years ago.
He was on my couch right now because it was what best suited him, not what best suited me. Slurring or not, he still had absolutely no respect for my boundaries, nor did he seem to care how flagrantly and frequently he’d crossed them.
Otis and I were still in bed when we heard my unwelcome houseguest rifling through the kitchen cabinets. Maeve should’ve been in bed with us, too, and her absence was palpable. Made me hate Max even more for swanning in last night like he deserved a medal for realizing he’d rather spend evenings playing with his kids than praying to the porcelain god.
With a heavy heart, I slipped some pajama pants on over my boxers before grabbing a T-shirt on my way to the door. Meanwhile, Otis bounded along beside me, eager to investigate the ruckus. Turns out Max was dicking around with my coffee machine.
“Do you know how to use that?” I asked.
“Yeah, we’ve got one at mine,” he said, dumping a capsule in and pounding the delicate button too hard.
“How’d you sleep?” I asked, hoping he’d say “terribly” and leave with his overnight bag for a hotel immediately.
“Fine.” He turned and made his way back to the couch, which is when I noticed he had one of my sketchbooks open and had been looking through it.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked, grabbing it off the coffee table and refastening the elastic around its stuffed pages.
“Whoa, relax,” he said, showing me his palms. “I was just looking at some of your drawings.”
“Without asking? Who does that?”
“I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
I didn’t even know what to say. After weeks of ignoring his calls, why would he think I was cool with him going through my stuff? The guy was incorrigible.
“You’re talented,” he said, like I should be gracious for his expert opinion.
I shut the notebook back in the drawer under the TV stand.
“Did you ever consider going to art school?”
I spun around so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash. “Are you for real? Of course I fucking considered it. We chased your dream instead, remember?” That’s when it occurred to me that maybe he didn’t. Lord knows it was hard to quantify how much time he’d spent blacked out, looking straight through me and our bandmates with a zombie-like vacancy in his eyes.
“You could always go now,” he said. “As a mature student.”
“First you say I’m talented. Then you suggest I need an education. Do you ever think before you speak?”
His face flashed with genuine hurt, but I refused to pander to him. He wasn’t welcome here, and you can’t be soft on people who have a habit of using you or it’ll only happen again. He’s the one who taught me that. Still, for my parents’ sake, I needed to muster up some patience.
“You still writing songs?” he asked, going over to collect his coffee.
“I’m sick of your stupid questions,” I said, unwilling to admit that I was sitting on a pile of them myself.
“I was only being polite. Truth is I found a bunch of them in the piano bench last night.”
“Is that what you came here for? To rifle through my shit?”
He leaned against the counter. “Actually, I was hoping you’d give me a chance to make amends.”
“I wish you’d make amends by leaving me alone,” I said, going to make a coffee for myself. I really didn’t want to hate him. He was my brother, for chrissakes. My twin. But I didn’t know how to separate my feelings for him from my agitation at all he’d done wrong.
“Do you regret being in the band?” he asked. “Is that what your beef is? Because you’re treating me like you hate my guts.”
