The Fuck Up

ix.

It was our first fight since we’d become…whatever we were. I was angry. After everything I told him about those…people, he wanted me to go back there?

I hadn’t gone back since I left right after Xavier’s funeral; since I’d made a big disturbance there and screamed at the whole church.

Ha. A church. Despite them believing my brother was some abomination to the Christian religion, they put him to rest in a church. That’s what pissed me off the most.

“I’m not going back there, and I’m not taking you there either, you bastard,” I shouted at him, ready to throw the TV remote that was in my hands.

“What about your sister?” Harley tried to calm me down, though he was failing. “When you talked about her, it was clear you didn’t hate her. Don’t you want to see her?”

“Don’t,” I seethed, my cheeks flushing as I became angrier. “Don’t use her to guilt me because I won’t fucking have it. I am not fucking going back.”

“Please, Reed.” He used it. That slight exasperation, that slight desperation. It was all there and I couldn’t refuse him.

I glared at him even though I gritted out, “Fuck, fine.”

I didn’t talk to him for three days but he ended up making me talk to him. How did he make me do things even when I didn’t want to?

When I called my sister and told her we were coming, she was ecstatic. I didn’t really mention Harley; just that I was bringing someone extra. But I did mention that she should inform our parents that if they made a single remark to me that rubbed me the wrong way I was gone.

When we packed our duffel bags and drove to my hometown, Harley held my hand the whole one and a half day trip. When Harley pulled my car up in front of my old home, I changed my mind.

“No,” I simply said, causing Harley to sigh.

“Reed, we’re doing this.”

“You can go in there if you want to. No one’s stopping you.”

“I know that, but I’m not going in there if you don’t come with me.”

I shrugged. “I guess we’re both not fucking going in there then.”

“Reed.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“Get out of the car, Reed.”

“No.”

He somehow got me to get out of the car anyway.

“You know I fucking hate you, don’t you?” I mumbled as we stood in front of the blue door that led to the source of my suffering.

He shot me a lopsided, goofy smile that made my heart lurch in my chest and grabbed my hand. “I know.”

My parents’ eyes nearly flew out their damn heads with the way they popped at the sight of their oldest son showing up on their front steps holding the hand of another male. My mother eyed our interlocked hands before pulling a strained smile onto her face. “R-Reed!”

That apparently please tone couldn’t fool me. A person’s eyes tell whatever they’re hiding, and I could see the displeasure clear in hers. That “God is the answer to everything” mentality of hers wanted to refute everything she was seeing, but I was family and she wouldn’t turn away family despite everything.

“Mother,” I replied stonily, my posture tense. My eyes shifted to my dad, who wasn’t looking at Harley at all. His eyes flashed as he stared at me and he made no attempt to hide his anger.