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Alice rested her forehead against his and breathed in the crisp, invigorating Alex smell. She pressed soft kisses on each of his cheeks, then one last quick peck on the lips before lowering herself back to the ground.
Patting his chest, she smiled, more to herself than to him. “I should get the kid home. Thank you, again. For everything.”
Climbing into her car, she stared at him through the passenger window before starting the engine. What the hell was she doing with this guy?
And what was he doing to her?
Olivia slept the whole way home, meaning Alice had to carry her into the house, lugging the child’s weight up the front steps and wrestling with the locked front door using only one hand. In the hall she caught a glimpse into the living room, and her heart sank. She didn’t give herself time to absorb the mess, hoping she could ignore it into nonexistence.
Taking Liv to her bedroom, Alice undressed the girl and tucked her in, bringing the soiled jersey with her so she could put a stain treatment on it. In the laundry room she steeled herself while applying the blue gel to the sauce marks. All her happy feelings from the night started to leach away as the stain faded.
Leave it to Kevin.
After placing the jersey in the washer, she returned to the living room and braced herself on the doorframe. At least Liv hadn’t been awake this time. It was getting harder and harder to laugh off Uncle Kevin’s lapses so Liv wouldn’t worry.
Seven empty beer bottles crowded each other for space on the small coffee table, and one of Kevin’s old high school yearbooks had fallen from his hand onto the floor. He wore only his boxers and had passed out facedown on the couch, his cheek smushed into the fabric, looking like a little boy, not a grown man.
Alice collected the bottles quietly, finding one of his prescriptions in the mix. She emptied the small white pills into her hand and did a mental count. No, nothing to worry about. She dumped them back, but her heart was still tripping with the fear from seeing his pills in among all the booze.
That’s how he’d do it.
Shut the fuck up, she shouted at the stupid, know-it-all part of her brain. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do that to her. She’d made him promise after the last time that he wasn’t going to try again. That had been high school, and he’d been true to his word for a decade. Since she’d gotten pregnant with Liv.
Capping the prescription bottle, she returned it to its place in the bathroom, lining it up with several others all bearing the name Kevin Darling. She touched each one lightly, thinking about what the medicine did for her beloved brother. One to soothe the depression, one to make that pill less aggressive and keep suicidal thoughts at bay, another to help him sleep if those two pills got his brain running too much, and one more for his heart because all the goddamn meds were a lot for his body to handle.
Everything was too much for Kevin to handle.
She closed the medicine cabinet and returned to the living room, picking up the clothing he’d discarded in some fit of rage or frustration, taking it to the laundry room and putting it in with Liv’s jersey.
Sometimes it felt like having another child instead of a bonus adult. She loved having him around on the days he was his old self, the funny, relaxed, easygoing Kevin she’d grown up with. But the more time she spent with this new, anguished Kevin, the more she realized this part of him had been with them all along, only now it was winning.
Back in the living room, she sat on the floor beside the couch and stared at him, her face inches from his. She smoothed back his tawny hair like she used to do with Olivia when she’d gotten sick as a baby, only this wasn’t a sickness she could cure with ginger ale and soda crackers.
His eyes fluttered, and he let out a small groan. “What time is it?”
“Close to ten.”
He looked past her to the coffee table, a sudden guilty expression on his face. Alice understood it. He’d meant to have the evidence gone by the time she got home.
“Al…” It was his I can explain voice. But there was nothing he could say she hadn’t heard before.
“You know what Dr. Wright said about mixing your meds with booze. You know they don’t work as well.”
Kevin grimaced, an expression somewhere in the middle of indignant and guilt. Alice hated how much she sounded like a mother when she said things like that, but since their mother had stopped looking after Kevin a long time ago, someone had to take on the role. As was often the case, the unpopular job fell to her.
“It’s no big deal.”
“It is a big deal.”
“Jesus, Alice, lay off. I’m fine.”
His defensiveness stung her, and she wanted to slap him for being such a prick. “How about you don’t pass out in your fucking underwear on my couch, and stop being an ungrateful dick.” She felt horrible for saying it, but loving him didn’t mean she had unlimited patience, and sometimes he wore her down so much she lost her buffer.
“Sorry,” he said, suddenly sheepish.
“Did you take your meds tonight, or did you just bring them out to have a staring contest with them?”
“I took them.”
