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“No,” I say, leaning against the counter. “You talked to Levi, I guess?”
Caleb nods, walks to the table, and grabs a cookie.
“She break up with you again?” he asks, mouth full.
There’s a moment where all I can hear is the blood, rushing through my ears.
“Get the fuck out,” I tell him.
He swallows.
“I —"
“Yeah, we broke up again and I don’t need you to come rub it in my face that you were right again,” I say, voice building. “I know this happens. I know this always happens, and I know the next thing out of your mouth is going to be Delilah’s an evil soul-sucking witch, so how about you just leave before that, okay?”
“That’s not why I’m here,” he says, calmly, holding out his hands, half a cookie still in one.
“She’s not,” I say, louder still. I push the top of the stand mixer down, toss a spatula into the sink so hard it bounces back out. “She’s — she paints murals and she does yoga and she feeds raccoons and she’s a little weird and pretty funny and her hair smells nice and she’s not a bad person. She’s just a person.”
“Seth,” Caleb starts.
“So you can fucking leave,” I say, both hands on the kitchen island, leaning in. “Don’t you dare come to my house and be shitty about Delilah.”
Caleb takes a deep breath.
“I didn’t come to be shitty about Delilah,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’ve been an asshole.”
I crack the knuckles on one hand, anger already dissolving.
“I came because you’re my brother and I knew you’d need me,” he says, shrugging.
I take a deep breath, bend over the counter, rest my head on my hands for a moment.
“Sorry,” I say, eyes closed.
I hear him come over to the island, pull out a stool, sit down. A plate clatters onto the countertop, and then he puts a hand on my head and pets my hair.
It’s nice.
“I don’t hate her,” he says, slowly. “I just hate how much she hurts you.”
“It’s not her fault,” I say, voice echoing off the counter.
He keeps petting, his hand slow, thoughtful.
“I hate how miserable you always are after you see her and things go badly,” he says. “I hate that you’ve gotten your heart broken over and over again, and blaming it on her was easy.”
Finally, I look up. Caleb cracks his knuckles, considers my face for a moment.
“You look like shit,” he says, gently.
“I did it again,” I say. I sound hollow, even to myself. “I fucking did it again, Caleb. I didn’t learn. I’ll never learn. I tried something different and I thought it was working but then I went and did it again.”
“Well, I think both of you did it again,” he points out. I tense, instantly.
“What did I just —”
“I’m not making a judgment. I’m stating a fact,” he says, taking a cookie off the plate and putting it in front of me. “You’ve never gotten into a one-sided fight with her before and I’m guessing you didn’t this time, either.”
I shove half the cookie into my mouth, come around the island, grab a stool, carry it back to where I was standing. I eat the other half of the cookie.
“I found a box of stuff from when she was with her ex,” I admit.
I tell my little brother everything. Everything everything, starting with Ava’s wedding and going through to last night and me driving back here in my pajamas, watching the sunrise through the mountains. Halfway through he gets up and makes us tea, so when I finish I’m staring into a mug of chamomile.
“Shit,” he says.
“And that’s just this year,” I say.
There’s a brief silence. Caleb glances at the cookies, then watches me.
“What if this is it?” I ask, chin in hand, elbow on counter. “What if this is just how it is, forever? The two of us back and forth and up and down, over and over, like that graph that does the —”
I wave my finger in the air, demonstrating.
“A sine wave?” Caleb asks. Of course he’d know.
“Yeah, that.”
“You need to get some sleep.”
My eyes feel like someone’s been walking on them.
“I know.”
He mirrors my position, thinks for a moment.
“You missed it, but at dinner, Levi spent a good five minutes complaining to me about how June never remembers to clear the hair out of their shower drain, so inevitably it backs up, and when it does it becomes his problem. And he’s annoyed about it, because no one likes backed up shower drains, especially when it’s someone else’s hair.”
“Wedding still on?” I ask, sipping tea.
Caleb laughs.
“Of course,” he says. “He still lights up every time she looks at him, even when he’s annoyed about the drain.”
“I wish my problems were about hair in the shower.”
Caleb goes quiet, tapping his tea mug with a few fingers.
