Older One

Cry Baby

"Why do you remember these things?"

"You forget them." 

A question I knew the answer to, a simple question. Yet the answer still stung me as it hangs there in the air. 'You forget them.' The answer wasn't wrong. I can't say it was all that correct either.

Forgetting them wasn't what I had been doing. It was hard for me to think of them. I hadn't wanted to remember them.

"Or is it just that you don't want to remember them?" The words struck into the air of the night wandering, lingering in the air, surrounding me with emotions and emptiness from inside, the feelings of one's broken heart until they hit my ears with a hard and sudden shock.

I gasped. Feeling almost as if the words that hadn't even left my own mouth, were choking me.

There was the answer. The answer he knew, the answer I knew, was the right one.

"I..." My voice was stuttering. I hadn't wanted to remember because it was just painful. Every thought I had of those memories made it harder for me to fight back tears.

Made is more painful for me, feeling my heart sink, feeling my heart break into pieces, feeling like darkness had taken over my heart.

"YOU ATE MY CHOCOLATE!" The words finally came out, they finally left my lips, they finally had sound.

"I know, I am sorry, I apologised so many times to you, will you ever be able to forgive me?"

"You know, that wasn't even the worst part! You ate them with your girlfriend!"

Silence. I really hated being angry at him. I loved him too much to be mad. 

A sudden smile lifted from his lips. Lifting up the gloom of the night, the stars glowing their brightest.

Standing in front of me, his arms moved from his side to my hands. Clutching my hands in his, holding them.

"Sis..." I know I shouldn't be mad at him, but with her? Of all people?

Pulling me in, I hear his soft voice, I can hear his calm breathing.

"I'm sorry."

I couldn't take it. I can never be mad at him.

"I know." Leaning into him, forgiving him, as he holds me close to his embrace.

"Sis, you're one hell of an overprotective person." His gaze dazzling around finding his way to mine. 

"I told you. If she hurt you, even just once..."

"Hm, I know." small amount of words, yet they gave off so many emotions and so much meaning.

His grip around me grew tighter, placing his hands on the back of my head, and waist.

"I cannot believe how much I missed this." The familiar embrace of my older brother. The one whom I hadn't seen for two years.

I had been doing my best to hold up, to be strong, to be perfect, but when he left, it only grew more difficult.

My mother had been injured severely in a tragic car accident driving on her way home from my school.

I had gotten away with minor injuries, I had been able to survive.

Mother had lost too much blood from the accident that, by the time the ambulance arrived, she had already slipped away.

My father had gotten shocked over the impact of losing my mother, he had a severe heart attack leaving him in the hospital too soon discover he had cancer.

I felt his warm tears slowly slip down to my shoulder, as he pulled me closer.

"I'm sorry..." His voice. His calm evasive sense was lost, his smile had suddenly vanished and in its place was a side to him he only showed to me. 

To the world, he was a simple kind hearted person, known to be stone cold, but cares the most, often doing as he likes. To them, there was nothing more, and nothing less.

Yet there was so much more to him than 'doing as he likes'.

He has a habit of speaking the open mind. Telling the truth of how it is, and an absurd skill of observation. Yet, his heart is just like the ocean, you can never see then end to his love that reaches across the globe.

"Sorry, and..." the tears raining down his cheeks, pouring onto my shoulder as he stood there "not just for the chocolates, I know you already knew I wasn't talking about the chocolates. I'm sorry about leaving you, back when we were kids, I'm sorry I wasn't there when you needed me-"

I couldn't listen to this, my older brother sobbing in my arms, no.

"No." I gripped him tighter, and wrapped my arms around him, it felt as if I may never let him go.

"But why?"

"Where are you?" My eyes beginning to slowly fill with tears,

"Where are you now?" I repeat to him, the grass beneath our feet swayed with the night's cool breeze. I loosened my hold on him, placing my hands up to his face, holding him there, wiping away the tears "...you're here, you're with me." His eyes were shut closed and his body was soon becoming weak. He allowed himself to be human. 

My 20-year-old brother was still the biggest cry baby.

I couldn't help but laugh at the thought, my brother, two years my senior, was still the same. Even after two years apart, it feels like he hasn't changed.

"I love you, Lexie. My little sister, I love you."

The tears stopped flowing. The crying had stopped. It was over now. Nothing else mattered in this moment, it was just us two, in our little park, on the grass where we first got along, where we first began to relaise how important we were to each other. That was the moment our lives had changed.