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Brooks opens his front door, shouting out to me. “You coming in, or are you creeping in my driveway all day? I have shit to do after this.”
“Hold on,” I shout back, typing out one word and sending.
Tonight.
I power off the phone and shove it into my pocket, before I hop out and slam the door, heading inside. “Jesus, you’re like an old woman, always nagging.”
I drop the bag holding breakfast burritos on the table in front of his couch, flopping down in the chair and digging mine out. I check the time and note that it’s only nine. I need to make sure we’re done in the next two hours so I can grab Nala some lunch. No way is she subsisting on strawberry ice cream and whatever other weird concoction she comes up with.
“Are you even listening to me?”
I look up from my burrito and see Brooks staring at me.
“What?” I ask.
“What? Jesus, Mal, I’ve been asking you questions since you walked in. What the fuck is going on? You’re late; you’re distracted; you have a shit-eating grin on your face like you just got laid…” I don’t move a muscle, meeting Brooklyn’s stare head on. A muscle ticks in his jaw, but I don’t let it intimidate me. Brooks and I, we’ve gone a few rounds in our friendship, mostly because we love hard and aren’t afraid to fight. Sometimes, that can be a dangerous combination.
“Where were you? This morning?”
I swallow the bite I’ve just taken of my burrito, setting it down and wiping my hands on my napkin. “Rushing home so I could pick up breakfast for you and get here in time for an inquisition.”
Brooks clenches his fists. “Rushing home from where? Don’t fuck with me, Mal.”
“Christ, you’re like a parent. I was rushing home from Nala’s, right after I sent her off to school with a pat on the ass and a promise for more later.” His face darkens, and it takes my good mood with it. Because I can actually feel the anger rising and filling up my limbs the longer Brooks stares at me like I’ve done something wrong, I stand and walk into the kitchen, grabbing a bottle of water from his fridge and chugging it down.
“Is she all right?”
My hand clenches into a fist around the water bottle, and what’s left gushes out the mouth and onto the floor. “No, she’s a wreck. Apparently, the whips and chains were too much for our first time together.”
“This isn’t a fucking joke,” he snaps.
“You think I don’t know that?’ I shout, slamming the crushed water bottle into the sink. “Jesus Christ, Brooks, what do you want from me? First, you hound me because I’m not moving fast enough, and now, you act like I forced her, like I’m some kind of goddamn monster who wouldn’t takenofor an answer.”
Something flashes across his face, something that makes my gut clench, words and feelings from over a year ago floating in and out. Before I can make sense of them, put it all together, he’s shaking his head and leaning against the counter.
“She’s my sister. Not like my sister,” he clarifies. “Nala…she’s mine.”
“No, she’smine,” I grind out. “If you have a problem with it, you can go fuck yourself.” He grabs my arm on my way past him, and I whirl, fists clenched. “Watch it, big guy. I’m not against punching you in the face, no matter how close we are.”
He holds his hands out. “Calm down, hothead, I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I know you care about her, I just…” he trails off and scrubs his hands over his face. My anger isn’t fading—it rarely does when I’m this worked up. But I’m old enough, and Brooks and I are close enough, that I can see he’s being honest. My fists clench and unclench, and I work air through my nostrils and into my lungs, doing my best to calm the fire.
“Nala was devastated when you left. I was all she had, and I couldn’t make things better, couldn’t protect her. And then Ashton died…”
He doesn’t finish, and I don’t make him. Sometimes I forget that when Jacks and I went pro, we left Brooks home to take care of everyone. Nala, Ashton, Vanessa…Brooks watched over all of them. And then I came home and broke Nala’s heart, and left him to pick up the pieces.
Goddamn, but I wish there was a time machine. I take a deep breath, and then another, working to get through the red and the guilt that keeps eating at me, along with the feeling that something else happened, something big, and that it might be my fault.
“I know she’s your sister, but you know how much I love her.”
Brooks pauses, hands falling away from his eyes when he looks at me. “Does she?” he finally asks. “Does she know you love her?”
I nod. “Yeah, she does. It’s not just sex,” I tell him. “It’s…everything. She’s everything.”
We both let that sit for a minute. And then Brooks stands up straight and claps me on the shoulder, his big-ass hand pressing hard enough to fell a tree. I grit my teeth and accept the warning it was meant to be. “About fucking time.”
An odd sense of relief blows through me, but I don’t let him see it. “Yeah, it is.”
