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“You two on the outs, then?” Leo asked, swirling his drink around his glass.
Oliver rubbed his face, leaning his head back with a long-suffering sigh. “I don’t know what the fuck we are right now. I made a complete fucking arse of myself the last time we went out. We’re…taking some time.”
“Ah, the kiss of death to every relationship. How well I know it.” Leo pressed the side of the glass to his temple. “Whatever, you know. I mean…it happens.”
Not to me, Oliver thought. And it was true, because Gabe had been his first, and letting Gabe go would be like carving out one of his own organs. But what else was he supposed to do? He had no idea how to make a relationship work. He was a hopeless case, and he knew it. He wasn’t going to stop trying, but it was almost funny how he could see the end just along the horizon.
He was two more glasses of whiskey into his drinking binge when the door to the suite opened, and Ren walked through the door. He looked well put together, of course, in his expensive suit and short-clipped hair. His shoes made a faint tapping on the tiled floor as he approached the siblings, a somber look on his face.
“The car’s waiting downstairs. Please tell me you’re not drunk.”
“Not drunk enough,” Oliver said, easing himself to his feet. “Proper drunk,Otosan,” he sneered.
Ren blinked in surprise, then scowled. “Please don’t make a scene, Oliver.”
Barking a laugh, Oliver sauntered over to the table and set his drink down. Hard. He ran his fingers through his fringe, making sure it fell into place, then gave his father his most winning smile. “If you’re worried I’m going to embarrass you—don’t be. I’m here for propriety’s sake, and the sooner I can get the bloodyfuckout of this city, the better.”
Ren looked over at Leo whose face remained passive. His eyes raked down Leo’s dress, but instead of ordering him to change, he merely let out a weary sigh and beckoned them along.
It was a small triumph, Oliver supposed. He walked close to his sibling, elbows touching, grounding him in the moment which he desperately needed. Leo seemed to realize it and kept close to him as they headed for the sleek black car parked right out front.
Ren took the front seat, letting his two children have the back, and no one spoke a word as they pulled onto the main road. London traffic was still as bad as Oliver remembered it, the car nearly at a stand-still, and had a sudden vision of himself bolting from the car and taking the tube somewhere—anywhere that wasn’t here. It would be too easy. They were moving at a crawling pace, and the door handle was right there.
A hand on his thigh stopped his train of thought, and he looked over at his sibling who was staring at him with a knowing expression. “It’ll be over soon,” Leo muttered.
Oliver felt his throat constrict, eyes burning with tears because Leo might not have suffered the same, but he knew. He knew like no one else did. “Yeah. I’m…I’m alright.”
Leo barked a low laugh in the back of his throat. “You’re about as alright as I am.”
Oliver rewarded him with a smile, which was returned, though strained. They didn’t say anything more as they approached the church, and the car pulled around to the side where the vicar was waiting at the side door.
The viewing wasn’t for another hour, meaning the immediate family would have some time alone with the body before the public was let in. Their mother hadn’t been a very popular woman, not even in her social circle. The name Alice Mary Worthington Sasaki didn’t command a lot of compassion or respect in her community, and very few were there to grieve her passing.
But people would show up. People who respected her husband, and distant relatives who only showed their faces at weddings and funerals. Oliver assumed he’d have a few cousins there, maybe even a few old friends from school, but no one he cared about seeing in particular.
Really, he just wanted to go home. He wanted his little beachside condo with his sibling upstairs and his boyfriend in his bed. He wanted warm arms and comforting kisses, and to forget this had ever happened. He wanted to erase her, to burn her out of himself with the violence she used to try and burn out his demons.
He would have no such luck, though. The estate in Chelsea was left to him, his father having long since abandoned London. He would have to deal with it at some point, he knew, along with any other unfinished business she’d left behind. He would have to perform the role of functioning adult, prepare the house for sale, and take care of any final debt.
Oliver had known all along that’s why his father insisted he show up here. He wanted proof his son was worthy to be called son by him. If only Oliver truly cared, really. If only he had a reason to.
Climbing out of the car, Oliver stuck by Leo as they made their way to the vicar who looked slightly taken aback by the sight of the siblings. Oliver had to assume he looked about as well as he felt, and he knew everyone would be looking twice at Leo’s attire. But he had never been prouder of his sibling, and he found himself standing up a little straighter as his father made the introductions.
“Ah, here are my boys,” Ren was saying as the pair approached.
Oliver bit down on his tongue with the urge to correct his father when calling Leo aboy, but he knew that was Leo’s choice to fight that battle. His sibling, it seemed, didn’t want to bother. It made Oliver’s stomach twist that he’d gone so wrong with Gabriel at the bar, especially when respect was so easy.
He shook his head mentally, knowing this was not the time to relive that moment. Instead, he stuck out his hand. “Good to see you.”
The vicar didn’t seem to look directly at him, shaking Oliver’s hand, then Leo’s with only a hint of trepidation and a second glance at the dress. The pressing rain had them all hurrying inside shortly, however, which Oliver was grateful for. The longer they stood around and made pleasantries, the longer the day would drag.
He wanted nothing more than to see his mother’s body put in the ground and buried under six feet of dirt. She could lay there for eternity, and he wouldn’t find it in him to care that she was dead and rotting away. Maybe she was in her own heaven, or maybe she’d found her way to the hell she so loved to threaten him with.
Maybe, he thought with a wry grin as they walked down a dimly lit corridor to the viewing room, he would see her there one day.
The vicar opened the door, the hinges giving an ancient squeak, and he stepped in first. The parlor was very low light, the heavy scent of both flowers and perfume coming from somewhere which Oliver assumed was to mask the smell of either death, or chemicals used to embalm the body.
The place had a slightly homey feel to it, which surprised him. It reeked of old Anglican rituals, but the chairs were soft, and there were small tables laden with tissue. Her casket sat against the far wall, the lid propped half open, and he could just make out the stark white profile of her face. From where he was standing, she didn’t look real. Nothing like the hateful woman who had spit venom at him as he and Leo took their things and left for good.
