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THEDAYISsurprisingly warm. I leave the office around four and head to my brother’s place for a beer. It’s Saturday, so Zoe has been to ballet class and she’s refusing to get out of her uniform. If Gabe let her, she’d eat, sleep and shower in pink tights, matching legwarmers and her black leotard with the dance school’s logo.
Even now as we sit out back, shaded by the veranda and big, sweeping jacaranda that’s in the early stages of blooming with purple flowers, Zoe is diligently practising herpirouettes. She flies around with abandon, her thick-framed glasses sliding down her nose. I know her vision is getting worse, and it breaks my heart.
“Don’t say a word.” Gabe takes a long swig of his beer. “I can’t talk about it today.”
I nod. My brother wants to pretend we’re a normal family with normal problems. That’s hard for me—because I’m like a dog with a bone when it comes to this stuff. I want to tell him about every aspect of the trials, about the experts I’m hiring and all the hope I’m pouring into this work. But some days it’s too much for him and I have to respect that.
“Tell me something good,” Gabe says. He pulls a pair of sunglasses over his eyes as the clouds shift and bright light filters under the veranda’s edge. “What have you been up to?”
“You told me not to talk about it.” I sip my beer. I let the relaxation filter through my muscles.
“I mean besides work.”
“There’s nothing besides work.” Though that’s not entirely true. There’s Blondie—the sexy anomaly in my otherwise perfectly structured life.
I had phone sex like a horny teenage boy. I don’t know what I was expecting when I dialled her number, but hearing that sleepy, gravelly voice was so utterly intoxicating. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It took all my willpower not to go to her apartment and bang on her door so she’d let me inside to bang her.
Fuck. I need to get her out of my head. Even today—Saturdays are quiet, so it’s my most productive day—I couldn’t concentrate. Blondie is occupying way more of my brain than I want her to. That she’s occupying anything at all is a problem.
“You need something besides work, man.”
“Like what? A relationship?”
“It wouldn’t be so bad. Don’t use me as a yardstick for what it’s like.” Gabe is self-deprecating like that, but he has no idea how much pain his words cause. “My failure of a marriage shouldn’t deter you.”
His failure of a marriage might be my fault. Here’s the thing—Gabe and I have been best buds since the second I was born. He’s older and he looked after me, showed me the ropes, and I’ve always looked up to him. Idolised him, even. It killed me when he married Monique, a woman who didn’t deserve someonehalfas good as Gabe.
He was steady and she was irresponsible. He was strong and she was weak. And selfish. And judgmental. She undermined him, manipulated him—spewed her negativity into him until he was a husk of the man I knew. Things started to change when Zoe came along...until they figured out something was wrong.
Then Monique started partying. Sleeping around, from all accounts. She was killing my brother and neglecting her child.
I couldn’t take seeing Gabe like that anymore, so I decided to lay it all out for her. Help her have a “come to Jesus” moment about what she was doing to her family. I told her straight—no bullshit—that she was lucky to have Gabe and Zoe, and she was throwing it all away. I thought I’d gotten through to her, helped her to see the error of her ways.
The following morning, she packed her bags and took off, leaving behind a note that said she didn’t have it in her to be the wife and mother that Gabe and Zoe needed. They haven’t seen her since.
And I’ve never told Gabe about that conversation.
“I don’t have time for a relationship,” I say flippantly, shoving down the shameful memories. “I certainly don’t have the headspace to deal with another person’s baggage.”
“For someone who’s so intent on making himself out to be a selfish bastard, you sure do visit us a lot. Baggage and all.” Gabe smirks. He knows I’d take a bullet for my family. “You could cut that time in half and find a woman. Be happy.”
“That’s not going to make me happy.”
“Then go out and get laid, at least. Christ. One of us has to live.”
I glance over and see the crinkle between Gabe’s reddish brows. We’ve got the same colouring: red-toned hair, blue eyes. None of that got passed onto Zoe. She’s her mother through and through—chestnut hair, hazel eyes and skin that tans at the drop of a hat.
“Fucking around isn’t living,” I reply. “Despite what pop culture would have us believe.”
“So you don’t want a relationship but you don’t believe in casual sex. What’s left?”
I grin, though it’s hollow. But I don’t want to bring Gabe down. “A peaceful, drama-free life of solitude and meaningful work.”
“That’s sad.”
“It’s freeing.” I shrug. “I don’t need someone else to make me happy. I’ve got all I need right here.”
“I don’t buy it.” Gabe shakes his head. “You were the guy in university who had all the women flocking to you.”
