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His eyes are marble hard. "I'm trying to protect you. He is going to hurt you."
"Then let me let him."
He snickers, no humor in the sound. "I guess that's your way isn't it? Finding men who are going to hurt you. Some kind of kink? Am I going to have to pull you out of a closet while you're hiding from him?"
I recoil, my hand up against my cheek like he's physically slapped me.
"Why were you two going out there anyway? Role playing being a slut and him hiring you?”
"Nathan, that's enough." Our father stands up, bracing against the arm of the chair, a little shaky on his feet from standing up too fast.
But I’m too focused on the argument with my brother to notice. "You're going to regret saying some of the things you're saying out of anger right now. And when you sober the fuck up, you're going to see that the two people who you supposedly love the most in the world, are happy together... without you."
I don't know why I say what I say, but he hurt me. And when I'm hurt, I lash out.
"You're fucking deluded. You act like you're going to change him. He is... was my best friend, you think I don't know who he is? I know everything there is to know about him."
Cocky Nathan is my absolute least favorite of the versions of my brother. Time to show him he’s not the fucking god of the world. That things happen in this world without his knowledge or approval. "So you know that five years ago I practically begged him to sleep with me, but he rejected me? Because of you? Do you know that I ran away to New York because I couldn't bear to be around you because that meant that he would be around? That he purposely hurt me, because he was afraid of how you would react? Do you know that?'
Nathan's mouth drops open, staring at me.
"I didn't think so. So much for the boy genius, Nathan Yin."
Dad’s voice is closer now, as he comes over to us. Shaking with anger. "You two, I said that is enough. Emotions are running high right now. Let's calm down and talk later."
But Nathan doesn’t listen. "All you care about is yourself. It's always been that way. While I'm trying to hold this family together, you just run around doing whatever makes you happy."
“Why does that make you so mad? Shouldn’t you want me to be happy? Or does that make it harder for you to control me like you try to control every other facet of your life?"
"It makes me mad because we worry about you every moment of every day! Dad hasn’t been able to sleep for months because he's worried about you. Don't you care about your own father?"
And then I yell the thing, I had vowed never to say. "He's not my father!"
Everything around us stills as my declaration hangs in the air.
"Kiara," Dad says, pain etched on his face.
And I'm instantly sorry, my head flooding with all the things I should say to apologize, that I'm not the heartless brat I sound like right now.
But there's no time.
He clutches his head, letting out a pained moan that steals the breath from my lungs.
And then he falls to the ground.
Everybody hates hospitals.
It should go without saying, but that doesn't stop us.
Nevertheless, hospitals are the perfect example of how our brains are geared to always have sadness trump happiness in the most devastating way.
All the lives brought into the world here, forgotten in the hours spent on the back breaking plastic chairs, gripping the mud-tasting coffee in our hands, looking up with hope every time a doctor turns into the hallway, only to watch them deliver life changing news to a different family.
Parallel experiences with complete strangers.
But isn't that what life is about? A series of events that just keep replaying, happening to billions of people before and after you, and each response is different.
"No update?" Nathan says when he comes back from taking a phone all, even though he's only been gone no more than three minutes.
