The Waiting Game

The Third Letter

As I expected, the moment he captured my hand, he pressed them to his lips. The move was so smooth that it must have been practiced and mastered on a million girls before me. Even though my other hand was connected to his little brother, he didn’t once look away from my eyes, trying to entrap me with the eyes that were so different from his brother’s.

The boy with the chocolate brown eyes was so different from his brother. It was hard for me to believe they were even related.

I quickly realized that he was quite the player, and probably a damn good one. He had that uncaring attitude and that simple handsomeness, like he wasn’t even aware of it even though he used it to his advantage every passing moment. He was smart and calculating, always judging and analyzing the moves I made before he made his own, as if we were engaged in a chess game. As if that chess game was our lives.

He had the same dark hair as his mother but his was gelled up in that stylishly messy way that only the good-looking bad boys could pull off, his smile a sin and his eyes seeing too much. He knew all of the right words to say and he used his looks to send his messages. His long body was sprawled out but still safely curled and tucked, his posture always casual but I read a tension in the eyes he thought that no one could unlock. He dressed in that effortlessly fashionable way with low-hanging jeans that hinted at the boxers he wore underneath—red plaid—and a dark dress shirt, feigning as though he dressed up for the occasion.

From the moment I met him, I knew that Devon was just another kind of person altogether. Over the year I had known him, I realized how much of an understatement that had been.

He might have been only five years older than his brother and me, but there was something about his eyes that made him seem older, aged. Wizened by whatever he had seen.

Knowing the story of their father, I figured that I understood.

That being said, I studied Devon the same way he studied me, but we didn’t back into our individual corners because we stood on common ground. In fact, I think that was what made it worse.

We clashed. We butted heads often and when we were in the same room we usually ended up dissolving into an argument, even if it was over something trivial or otherwise pointless and unnecessarily. It was like a constant pissing contest with him, one I didn’t even want to compete in, but he made it impossible to decline. When Devon got ahead, I wouldn’t stop until I turned the tables.

It got to the point that I just ended up avoiding him entirely. When I would get a text message from the boy I loved asking me to come over when his brother was there at the same time, I would find an excuse not to come. I know that he noticed—they probably both noticed—but I never got asked. I never knew what I would even say if I did.

The last time I saw Devon was before his little brother died, two months before. When I had seen him at the funeral, a defeated stance to his shoulders and pain concealed in his eyes, it made me wonder why I had hated him so much.

Why I had let him get to me.

I had still avoided him during the funeral even though I could feel him watching me, waiting for me to look up and for my gaze to fall onto his. I never did. I didn’t want to look into his eyes and see that he knew what had happened here.

I didn’t want to see the way that Devon was going to look at me knowing that I couldn’t save his brother.

But the words were written on the page, and I had sworn to the starry skies he used to watch that I would do as he asked of me.

I know that you don’t like him, sweetheart, but Devon is my best friend.

He’s always been there for me, no matter what. He’s stood up to our father for me even if he knew that my father would just turn on him, too. He’s fought my battles even if I didn’t want him to, but what counted was that he cared so much that he blindly threw himself into a situation like that so selflessly. He’s my older brother no matter what and I know him in a way that no one else does.