Buckley Bennett took absolutely no one and nothing serious. Since the moment he'd stood and walked for the first time, he'd gotten into anything and everything possible, without even a second to spare to consider the repercussions of his actions. My mother had said that he'd always kept her on her toes, that Phil had been the child to make her want more, but Buckley had been the one to make her question that decision. Fortunately, she'd been blessed with Sam three years later, and he was opposite of Buck in every way imaginable.
As I dragged the zombie of myself back through the front door after trying to wrap my head around Damien's words, I felt a wave of relief wash over me when I spotted my blonde headed brother on the couch, his bare feet kicked up on the coffee table. I'd easily be able to sneak passed him without being bombarded with questions.
Or at least I had thought I would, but as soon as I pressed the door gently behind me, Buck's eyes flickered from the UFC lighting up the flatscreen to my hunched figure in the doorway. "How'd your day go? Did you get the job?"
It was so casual, so nonchalant, so Buckley.
"It went okay. I got the job, and also found a female friend to escape to when all the toxic masculinity in this house gets to be too much." I answered.
My brother's entire body shook with laughter. "I take it you met Cady then."
I nodded, but my brother lowered the sound on the TV and patted the vacant spot next to him. "Get over here, Ari. I promise I don't bite."
I leaned forward on the tips of my feet before breaking through my hesitation and crossing the room to him. As soon as I was at his side, he grabbed the lavender fleece blanket to his left and draped it over my lap. Noticing my look, he gestured toward the door with a suggestive look.
"Don't need Damien or Nix getting the wrong idea with you just sitting here in a bikini." He said, then considered his words and added, "Though, I'm pretty sure Nix has been fantasizing about you without them since you got here."
I smiled a little, shoving at bicep playfully. "Stop. It's not like that."
"Oh, it's definitely like that." Buck said, reaching for the remote on the table between his feet. "I promise I'll be the first to make sure that your bedroom doors are open when you're alone together."
I buried my face in my hands, feeling the warmth spread throughout; Buckley just chuckled softly to himself. The words hung in the air for a few minutes before he broke the silence once more.
"So," He smirked. "Is there a special guy back home?"
I could feel my eyebrows draw in confusion, not in regard to the question, but why he was asking. There must have been some sort of ulterior motive behind it.
"No. Nope. Even if I did, I wouldn't be talking to my older brother about it." I replied.
"But I'm the cool older brother." He touched his hand to his chest in mock hurt. "I remember when we were kids, all you little idiots turned to me to try and sweet talk you out of punishment."
His smirk stretched into a full, genuine smile as he reminisced in the memory. Being as close as I was, I could see the lines of exhaustion around his eyes, the dark bags that circled them. To say he looked tired would be an understatement; he look so utterly exhausted it made my heart hurt a little for him. I knew all too well the type of exhaustion he was feeling wasn't fixable by a decent nights sleep, it was so far beyond that, it was close to impossible to obtain.
"Look, Ari." He touched a hand to my elbow. "I know this isn't how you wanted to spend your summer. Hell, you probably wished for everything except this. But I, for one, am so happy you decided to come back. It's a nice break from the, what'd you call it? Toxic masculinity in this house."
I rested my head against his shoulder, feeling it relax a little under me. When I didn't respond, he continued on, "I can also see that you don't trust us, and I get that, you have every right not to. I know you don't think we care. But we do, Ari, you're our baby sister. You always have been. We just took a break for a little while."
I lifted my head back up and stared at him, but the words that left his mouth only added to the mess of the twisted motivational speech Damien had given to me on the beach earlier this evening.
"I'm sorry we weren't there for you and Mom." Buckley retrained his eyes back on the bright TV screen. "Just try to understand that the woman that raised you wasn't the same woman who raised us."
*
I tried for over an hour to sleep. An entire hour of tossing and turning, counting sheep and flower petals inside my head, turning every light off and focusing on the sound of the water outside my window. But every time I closed my eyes, I found my mother's staring back at me. Not the beautiful ocean blue I found in every one of my brother's, but the lifeless pale muddied blue as her she drew her last breath. In that moment I had so much I had wanted to say; for years I'd kept a journal of everything I'd say to her when the inevitable happened, but all I could do was stare. Stare as her hand grew limp in my own. Stare as the last of the life in her eyes fizzled out. Stare as the last, ragged breath broke passed her chapped lips.
Every ounce of my being wanted to scream for her to come back, to hold her still body in my arms so nobody could take her from me. Instead, I watched helplessly as her nurse unplugged every machine and pulled the edge of my mother's blanket over her face. It was then, as Nurse Desire and I stood in a long, agonizing silence, that it hit me. It wasn't like anything I'd ever felt before. It felt as if I'd been punched with the force of a thousand men in the gut and it permanently knocked the wind out of me. My chest and stomach ached, my heart full of a pain so dark, so heavy, that I'd collapsed on the ground beside her bed and buried my head in my hands until I felt nothing.
Finally becoming consumed by my own thoughts, I threw my legs over the side of the bed, jumping a little at the coldness of the wooden floor beneath my bare feet. The floorboards creaked beneath me as I stepped out into the hallway, touching my fingertips to the small wall the divided my room from Nix's. His door was open a crack, as if he'd forgotten to shut it all the way behind him. Sitting with his bare back to me, I half expected to find angel wings protruding from his shoulder blades. Instead I found a gorgeous back tattoo of a Phoenix, something I'd never got a good enough look at to make out the few times I'd seen him shirtless. Some sound must of escaped me, because he shifted on the bed, giving me full view of the sketchbook on his lap as he glanced over his shoulder.
"Couldn't sleep?" He questioned, setting the sketchpad at the end of the bed and turning the rest of his body in my direction. "Come in. It gets cold out in the hall."
It was then, as the words registered, that I realized I'd wrapped my arms around myself. It hadn't been because of the temperature, but almost a guard around myself to prevent my thoughts from overwhelming me again.
"Fae?" Nix stood, opening his door a little wider and stepped aside so I could join him. Nodding, I brushed passed his bare arm and sat at the edge of the bed, eyes trained on the sketch. It was obviously the framework of a picture of me, but it had yet to be shaded and detailed.
"You draw?" I looked from the picture to Nix as he shut the door as gently as possible. "I do too. I'm not nearly as good as you are, but Mom used to ask me to draw her anything and everything. It was a good distraction for both of us from the. . ."
My voice caught in my throat, but of course Nix pretended he didn't notice and grabbed the sketch as he sat down. "I love drawing. It's always been an outlet for me too."
I touched my index finger to the girl in the drawing. "This is beautiful. She's beautiful. I don't look like this right now."
"You do." Nix set the book down again and touched a hand to my knee. "Just more fragile and lost. You really don't know the effect you have on people, do you? Did guys not approach you at school?"
"You're talking about yourself. The effect you have, Nix, is undeniable." I responded, then added, "Sure they did. I just wasn't interested in wasting time getting my heart broken when I could spend those moments with my mother."
Nix's eyes softened, a sad smile touching at his lips. "That's my Fae."
I looked away and at the chipped nail polish on my pinky toe. "Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"Why do you still call me Fae?"
He looked almost relieved with the question. He probably was too tired to try and conjure up some philosophical motivational speech to combat his brothers. Nix bit at the bottom right corner of his lip, pinching a strand hair between his fingers, the same thing he'd done a couple days ago.
"Because I don't know Arianna, just like you don't know the men we've all become. But I know Fae, and I still see pieces of her in you." He dropped my hair and touched the back of his index finger to my cheek. "You're still the same beautiful fairy that draws everyone in. Enchants them. Unfortunately, Fae's are also deceptive."
"You think I'm deceptive?"
He shook his head, a black curl falling into his left eye. He swatted it away and took both of my hands in his own.
"Not in the way you're thinking. I think that beneath all that beauty and emotionlessness your hiding. That under it all is a scared and broken girl just wanting to be loved and heard."