Trigger Warning.
Rivers pov
I drove over to his house to pick him up. He doesn't have his license, he's eighteen so I don't know why. I may or may not have listened to Sign of the Times by Harry a few times, it's been a rough few weeks, leave me alone.
"Why are we going to target?" He asks as he gets in the car.
I hold up my finger with one hand and pull my phone out with the other to show him the tiktok.
"Why?"
"Because it looks fun." I say, it should be obvious.
"Can we get food after tho I'm starving." He asks.
"Yeah, that's fine."
We start driving and go for about 10 minutes. "Oh my god." I say in realization and frustration.
"What?" He asks, concerned.
"Target's not gonna be open. I'm so stupid it closes at ten." I look up at my dashboard, "It's literally past one."
"Nooooo" He drags out.
"We'll just get food and go back to my house. What do you want?"
"Are you getting something?"
"Probably just a drink."
We got Mcdonald's. He got food and I just stuck to my Dr. Pepper. We went inside to eat because I thought it would be fun. No one's there so we could mess around.
We made it back to my house, the whole ride home I was complaining about Target being closed. Right now we're slowly making our way up my driveway. "Are you really still upset about it?" He asks.
"Yes, I really am."
"Give me your phone."
I comply and hand it to him. I can't see exactly what he's doing as I watch him take a picture of himself and startstyping. "What are you doing?" I ask.
He laughs, "Here." he hands back my phone.
I look at the screen and it's pulled up to my instagram. "Oh god, What did you do?" I ask confused on what i'm supposed to be looking at.
"Look at your story."
"Now you don't have to have the book." He says, proudly.
I smile at him. "Hurry up." I wave him on.
We get inside the first thing I see is Spencer and Cody.
"Hey guys." I say.
"River," she greets me and then gives a questioning look to the body next to me.
"Chris." He introduces himself, nodding his head.
"Hi Chris, i'm Cody." She says.
"We'll be upstairs." I say, grabbing Chris's hand and turn to the stairs. I don't want to spend more time catching up with people. That's all I've done the past two days. I just want to be in the moment.
"Woah, woah, woah. Come back." Spencer says, leading me to stop in my tracks. I dramatically turn around to face him again and sigh.
"Yes?" I ask annoyed, just wanting to go upstairs.
"Is that one of the guys Jordan likes?"
"That? He, but yeah." I say correcting him while letting out a small laugh. "Well she likes Matt."
"I see, yeah and clearly you like one too." He says pointing down to our hands intertwined.
Cody laughs in Spencers response.
"Okay," I drag out. "we're going now." I spin around again, this time determined to actually go.
We get into my room and I shut the door. The backpack he came in with, slides off his arm, making a thud as it hits the floor. "He talks the same as you." He says.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"He just says things the same as you, same mannerisms too."
I find it cute he notices those things. "Well he is my brother so-"
"Wait but I thought he was our age." He says in more of a question.
"You saw Noah, that's Spencer." I state.
"Oh yeah, I forgot you had two. How come i've never seen him?"
"He lives in an apartment with one of his friends, about an hour and a half away. He doesn't come home very often because it's more of a trip."
"Oh, is he in college?"
"Nope, it's just not his thing." I wave it off.
***
We're now sitting on the couches outside of my room. It's nice out tonight but we still needed a couple of blankets. We've been reading off the questions people asked, not answering any of them online, just to each other. Right now Chris is sitting up, my head is in his lap as i'm looking up at him. My legs are laying flat out onto the couch.
I read off the next question, "Describe your childhood in one word." He looks down at me to go first. I think about it for a second, "Playful, you?"
"Chaotic."
I laugh and look back at my phone, "What was the most meaningful conversation you had today?"
"You go first." He says.
"I just went first, umm with you."
"Me?" He points to himself.
"Yeah, everything felt so rushed today, like I didn't really sit down and talk to anyone besides you."
"But I thought you had the meeting today, how did that go?"
I smile, he remembered. "Good but bizarre. I thought it would be him and I in the same room but it was just me in a conference room on a zoom call."
"Creepy."
"That's what I thought!" I laugh.
"But other than that it was good?"
"Yeah. We just talked about different modeling opportunities that require me to travel."
"To where?"
"There's not too many options because of school but as of right now, LA, New York, and then either Colorado or Las Vegas." School makes everything harder, I swear.
"We go to LA for work too."
"Oh no way, maybe we'll be able to go at the same time. Ok, what what about you, what's the most meaningful conversation you had today?" I ask, restating the question.
"I don't know, either with you or Matt."
I've already been here for this conversation, "Tell me about Matt's."
"He just woke me up to tell me about Jordan."
I widen my eyes, "Guys really do that?"
He gives me a confused look.
I reword my question. "You guys talk about girls all the time?"
"Not all the time but sometimes, yeah."
"Interesting," I say squinting my eyes. "carry on."
"I don't know what I can say because you're her best friend."
"Shit, It's bad?"
"No not bad at all," he assures me, "but I don't know."
"Spill." I say, blankly.
"He just went on and on about the conversations they have, he over analyses things a lot."
"It's ok, me too." I say being able to relate to Matt. "Can you give me an example."
He thinks, "The only one I can really think of is one you've already heard about."
I furrow my eyebrows in confusion.
"The one where he knows she's upset but won't tell him why. He said he talked to you about it."
"Oh yeah." I say remembering back to that long night.
"Does Jordan talk to you about it?" He asks.
"Not really, we don't really go into detail when we tell each other things anymore." I say truthfully.
"Why not?"
"I'm gonna be one hundred percent, please don't take this the wrong way but most of the conversations would revolve around you guys. And one of us is always with one of you."
"No, that makes sense." He says not feeling offended at all. I'm glad he doesn't take things too serious.
"So I haven't heard about anything really."
"You guys should have a girls day soon." He suggests.
I smile up at him. Will didn't like when I was with other people without him, even if it was just Jordan. "You're-" I stop myself from continuing.
"I'm what?"
I rethink what I was going to say, "You're just a good person, that's all." Before he gets to ask any questions about what that means, I begin to read the next question.
"Nope, my turn. You've read every single one so far." True, it has been me for the past forty-five minutes.
"If you were a fly on the wall, what is the first thing you would do?"
"Easy, listen to other peoples conversation."
"Wow ok, I was going to say explore different houses."
I guess that too." I shrug.
I heard the porch door open from a distance. I quickly move off of Chris' lap and sit next to him, recovering myself with the blanket.
Spencer comes around the corner. "Hey sorry to interrupt but we made pizza do you guys want any?"
I look over a Chris to see what he wanted but I couldn't see his face because he was turned away from me. "I'm good I just ate but if you want some," he looks back at me, "i'll come down."
Spencer is leaving tomorrow so maybe we should. "Yeah i'll have some." I say getting up from the couch, Chris following me.
We get downstairs and Cody is already eating. She's so relatable, I would've done the same.
"Is it good?" I ask.
"Top-tier." She says as she takes another bite.
"Mhm", I hum.
Spencer sits down, already had a plate set out for himself at the table, next to Cody.
I walk over towards the cabinet that hold the plates, "Are you sure you don't want any?" I ask, lowly to Chris. Cody and Spencer are already having a conversation so they wouldn't hear if I spoke in a normal volume.
"Yeah, I'm good. Why are we being quiet?" His voice almost at a whisper.
"I don't know, just wanted to make sure." I respond, looking down at the pizza, "This looks gas." I say so Cody and Spencer can hear.
"Because it is." Spencer shoots back.
Once Chris and I were situated, we sat down at the table and joined in on their conversation. Cody decided to tell Chris embarrassing stories she remembered about me from when I was little. Chris was having a great time.
After a while, the conversations started to die down. Cody and Spencer are headed to the basement, basically his room when he comes home. Chris and I are now making our way back up the stairs. I feel face get hot as my vision goes burry, filling up with tears. As we get to my room, I shut the door, just like before.
I turn to face Chris and immediately his face turns into worry. Without saying anything, I wrap my arms around his neck.
He hugs me back, picking me up, causing me to wrap my legs around his waist.
We stay like this for a minute, me wanting to stay as close to him as possible. He walks backwards towards my bed behind him. He doesn't let go as he sits down, me now straddling his lap.
"What happened?" He asks, confused because he was there the whole time and nothing went wrong. It sounded more like a, 'tell me,' instead of a question.
I pull away from him and look down at my hands, playing with my fingers. I look back up at him, "I want to tell you but it's a lot."
"What do you mean by 'it's a lot?'"
"I mean the type of thing I've only told two people." I say as I take my hands and move them to the back of his head, running my fingers through his hair.
"Like the type of thing I told you?" He asks, trying to relate it to something familiar.
"Same idea, different topic."
He gives me a look that says 'go on.' I stare into
his eyes with hesitation caught in my throat. "You don't have to say it right now." He says.
"But I do. If I don't do it now it'll never come out. I'm already making it seem like it's a bigger deal than it really is." I say, my thoughts contradicting me.
"Take your time." He says. I watch him as he scans my face. I take a moment to think, as I do, I look down to his hands holding onto my waist. My eyes slowly travel back up into his. "What's going on?" he urges me, wanting me to break the tension.
I sniff and wipe my eyes with the back of my hands."I swear it's not that deep, I just don't know where to start." I say still trying to pull myself together.
"Wherever you want."
"Basically, Will called me today," I begin, "I didn't even notice he called and I didn't call back, I can even show you."
"You don't have to show me." He says.
"Are you sure?" I ask, reaching for my phone.
He stops me, "I believe you."
"Oh ok." I say a bit surprised. "And I don't know, that just brought me back to one of our fights that we had before we broke up." I feel bad talking about my ex when Chris opened up about his only two days ago. I just want to let him in.
"What happened?" He asks, again.
"Like I said, we got into a fight, as normal couples do, and he just said some messed up stuff."
"About what?"
"You didn't ask me that before." I mention, remembering back to the first night we hung out.
"I didn't know you before."
I sigh knowing i'm not getting out of this. I haven't even told some of my friends this. "About my brother."
"What do you mean? Noah's a G." He says. When people think of my siblings, they just think of Noah.
"The other one." I state.
"Oh, right."
Should I not say this? "I hate being this bitch but if I tell you this, can you promise me to not to tell anyone. It's not necessarily a secret, it's just private."
He holds outs his finger as a gesture for us to make the promise official. "Pinky."
I feel a small smile creep onto my face as we lock fingers. I take a deep breath, "So, Spencer was born three years before and me and Noah-"
"Wow, this goes way back." He chimes in.
"I'm just telling you the backstory first." I say shushing him. "Fast forward to when I was in middle school, that's when things starting getting rough."
I clear my throat, "He was struggling with a drug addiction. When we were way, way younger, he kept going to summer camps when we were younger to help with his," I try to think of a good word to use, "behavior." I take a deep breath in, feeling myself start to ramble. "When he would get home from them, it seemed like he was a different person for a couple of weeks, then things would go back to they way they were."
He doesn't respond, just staring at me. Should I not be saying this, is this going too far, too fast? "And then basically, things progressed and he eventually moved out and now he's two years sober." I say, quickly wrapping up the story, purposely not going into detail anymore.
"Don't do that." He says.
"Do what?" I play dumb.
"Dismiss it, keep going at the pace you were going at before. I'm just listening."
Well now I don't know if I want to. He needs to know though, I don't want to have to hide anything from him.
"How did you find out?" He guides me.
"I don't know if this is the exact moment I found out, all I remember is around the time I did. I was around eleven or twelve, sitting at the kitchen counter and Spencer hadn't came back for almost a day. This wasn't an unusual thing for him to do but my parents had enough. I specifically remember I was working on math homework, fractions." I feel my eyes start to fill up with tears again. "We heard a knock at the door and I thought it was him, it was a police officer. My parents explained everything and the cop stayed until he came home. When he eventually did, the was questioned on where he was and what he was doing. I remember watching the cop as he was holding a flash light up to Spencers eyes. He was high, still not sure on what though. Again, I don't remember if that exact moment I found out but it's all I can remember." I say, rambling on.
"Holy shit, I'm sorry."
"Don't be." I wave him off not wanting it to seem like a big deal.
"So then when did everything really start for him?" He asks.
"What's funny is, I actually had no idea until recently but he was in fifth grade, whatever age that was."
"Fifth grade?" He raises his voice in shock.
"Yeah. He told us one day he was walking home from school and to get home, you have the pass the middle school. He saw a group of guys smoking and joined them."
"Kid has balls." He says, lightening the mood.
"No because when I was in fifth grade, if I saw people smoking, I would hold my breath and pretend to cough just to make them feel bad."
He laughs, "Same."
"I wouldn't have even thought about walking up to a group of people and joining them."
"Me either."
"Anyway, when Noah and I were in high school and he was in his senior year, my parents had enough of it and he moved out."
"He didn't get to graduate?" He asks.
"No, he moved into a sober living home about a month into his senior year. He eventually got his GED though." I say trying to focus back on the good.
"What is he doing now?"
I usually don't like being asked questions about this stuff But, it's out of his own curiosity, not out of concern. "Trading school to become an electrician."
"So he's doing good now." He states.
I feel the back of my head start to ache, feeling my warm years against my checks again. "I know, that's exactly why I feel bad."
"I don't get it." He states.
I stare back at him.
"Like I don't get what you feel bad about."
"I wish he would have just stayed home." I clear my throat in hopes that will take away my headache.
"I think it's completely valid to wish that wouldn't have happened." He reassured me.
"He's just so different now. I didn't really know him before because he was so closed off but that was just him. He was the brother I wanted to get closer to. Noah and I always kind of just clicked so I wasn't trying to get to know him, I already knew him." I take a breath before I continue, "I don't know if this will make sense but I just wish current me could have a conversation with the past him, right before he left."
"Why couldn't you before?" He asks, confused.
"I didn't understand it."
"He was eighteen though, right?" He asks, trying to clarify.
"Seventeen." I state, blankly.
His eyes widen a little bit as he nods his head in realization, he was basically our age. It feels weird to think about it like that, we're so young.
"Did your parents kicked him out?"
"I guess, yeah. They explained it as, 'he couldn't be home because he wouldn't get better here.'"
"Oh," he lets out a sigh, "I'm sorry but I still don't get why you feel bad."
"I wish he was the old him. I wish it never would have happened. He messed things up and now everything's fine for everyone else but all of the sudden, it's hitting me like a fucking bus." I dump out, raising my voice in frustration, not towards Chris but towards myself. I wasn't even thinking as I spoke.
I try to gage his reaction by his facial expressions. Unsuccessful, his face still.
I again push my thoughts away and say what's been bottled up for so long. "And I feel so guilty thinking that because I never want him to struggle again or for my family to be upset about what happened years ago. He's the one who actually went through it and I know you can't control addiction but it just sucks. It sucked when it was happening and it sucks now."
His face softens. "Just because he was the one going through it doesn't mean the rest of the family didn't go through it either."
"But my parents have moved on from it and so has Noah. Literally even he, himself has moved on. It's just me."
"Everyone has different processing times." He says, reassuring me, once again.
"Yeah but like I said, my childhood was playful and fun and loving. Why is this affecting me so much when everything else leading up to it was pretty good?"
"Well does the good stuff out way the bad?" He asks.
"Yeah, I think so." I say nodding.
"Clearly not."
I start to feel defensive towards the whole situation, again. "I think I'm just being dramatic, it's not that deep. He's fine now and that's what matters."
"I didn't mean it like that." He says shaking his head.
"No, I know."
"What did Will say about it?"
I feel my heart sink and I think back to that night. "I can't say it."
"Why not?" He urges me.
"It's just not something I want to say out loud."
He nods his head, not pushing me any further.
"I don't know if that's what made me rethink everything again or not. It might just be that Noah is waiting to be accepted into college, it makes me think of how Spencer should have been doing that too."
"Oh, what college is Noah trying to get into?" He asks.
"Harvard," I let out a small laugh and sniffle, my head laying into his neck. "Sometimes you focus on the wrong thing."
"Sorry, I was curious." I feel him shrug against me, "Keep going."
"That was it." I say blankly.
"Say what you said again."
It was hard enough to say the first time, I don't want to say it again. "Um," I hesitate. "just that Noah is waiting to be accepted into college, I just think a lot about how Spencer should have been able to do that too. I just think about how we should be doing normal sibling stuff when he would come home to visit."
"But you guys are still siblings." He says, confused.
I pull away from him so I can see him, "Yeah but if that had never happened, he should be coming home from college. Noah and I just talk a lot about when we're in college and how we're going to party and drink together, just like we do now. I feel like we should be doing the same things with Spencer.
And not to mention, all we talk about at family dinners, when he comes home to visit, is how different his life is. Like all we talk about is him, the people he's met through programs, and the meetings he's going to. Oh, and I have to hear it multiple different times because when he comes home it's usually for the holidays. Now don't get me wrong here, I'm glad he's doing all that and that he has people surrounding him but that's all we talk about. Everything revolves around recovery. I feel bad saying that because I know it's not about me but I just don't like how it's the main point of conversation."
He scratches his head, "I'm not good at this stuff." He says, not knowing how to respond.
"I wouldn't know how to respond either." I say, my voice getting quieter than before. This is our family, our normal. It will be hard to understand if they have nothing to compare it too. "I don't know, it's not that deep. I just wanted you to know."
"Stop doing that too."
"What?" I ask, this time not playing dumb, just genuinely don't know.
"Saying that it's not a big deal, it is."
"But it's not, everything's good now."It's not like that. I'm fine. I just wish I could have been there for him. I know i'm the little sister but I still wish I could have protected him."
"I'm sorry." He says. I'm assuming that's all he can say right now, I get it.
"For what?"
"'Just because I didn't do anything doesn't mean I can't be sorry.'" He says quoting me.
"But I don't wanna be pitied." I say, shaking my head.
"And you're not gonna be. I can feel bad that you went through that but that doesn't mean I'll treat you any different." He says.
"How do you do that?" I ask.
"Huh?"
"You just get it. How do you do that?"
"It just comes naturally. Yeah, i'm just the whole package-"
"Enough." I him off, holding my hand out in front of him.
He laughs, "Ok, ok."
I take a big deep breath, feeling relief. I feel a wave of exhaustion. "Can we table this for now?"
He gives me a small smile and nods in response.
//