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I don’t want anything to eat. I want Daphne. I would take any opportunity to taste her, but right now I want her with me so much that the emotion has become a beating wound in my chest. I focus on the curve at the neck of the bottle and its contrast with the black label. All the beer in the world won’t stop what’s going to happen. What’s already happening.
“Family dinners were fucking terrible.” Will taps at the screen of his phone. “This is going to be better.”
“Having dinner with your fugitive brother?”
“I don’t care if you’re a fugitive.” The corner of his mouth curves up. “It’s hilarious, actually, that you’re on the run and not me or Sin. He’s the one who’s always throwing himself off buildings.”
“He doesn’t do buildings.”
“Doesn’t he?”
“He’s more into rocks. Free climbing. BASE jumping. Crawling down into caves.”
“Sounds like your thing.”
“What?”
“Being in a rock tunnel to experience the joy of absolute darkness or whatever the fuck Sin does.” A subtle shiver matches the shadow in his eyes. “Remember that time Dad was out on a bender?”
Will’s going to have this conversation while he’s ordering food from an app.
“Which time?”
“The time that lasted five days.”
“That wasn’t you.” Lamplight carves itself into the outline of a door. It would start from nothing as the sun rose, strengthen over the course of the day, and fade out again in the evening. “That was me and Sin.”
“Where was I?”
“That camp you got into.”
“Oh, shit. Yeah.” Will frowns at his phone. “He was furious about that scholarship. I still remember it, though. That time in the closet.”
“Extrapolation from other memories. And Sin telling you about it after you got back.”
“It was always longest with you, wasn’t it?” Will meets my eyes. “He hated you.”
“I don’t think he felt anything as complex as that. He just wanted to see if he could break me.”
“And he didn’t.” Will holds up his phone and presses the side button.
I snort a laugh. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No. Most people would have just died in there. You got out. I give you shit about your beach house all the time because I’m a prick, but it’s great.” My brother sits up and tosses his phone onto the side table. “You own it because Dad lost. That, and you’re rich as fuck.”
“So are you. So is Sin.”
“Right, and Dad is one jealous motherfucker. He wants to be you so badly he’s willing to throw you under the bus. He’s garbage. I hate him. He made life hell.”
“It was hellish,” I agree. Another bond between us. Perhaps Will’s jackass behavior over the years was not, in fact, about mutual loathing. Perhaps it was about something else entirely.
“Why do you think I have such a nice place now? I’m making up for it.” He grins at me as if it’s a joke, but he’s serious. We’re all compensating, in our various ways, for the past. Will does it with his bright, fancy apartment. Everything’s fresh. New. Tidy. It looks like he hired a designer to put it together for him with its coordinating pieces and subtle details. It’s not a frat boy’s place, though Will’s the only one of us who joined a fraternity in college.
He could be right about our father. Maybe he didn’t destroy us, but he prematurely destroyed what I had with Daphne. Now I won’t get her back.
“Food should be here in forty,” Will says.
“Good.” I drink the beer without tasting it.
