My brother was already waiting for me when I walked out of the room, freshly showered and ready to go home.
He had a duffel bag filled with his clothes sitting next to his feet near the couch. He was coming home with me, and he'd be staying there at least until the short Thanksgiving holiday ended. I could barely wrap it around my head, the fact that I was here right across the room from where he was sitting, and now he was finally coming home, even just temporarily.
A part of me understood his reasoning, how he left because he felt guilty for being one of the reasons why the accident happened, but I felt—no, I knew—that it was more than just that.
Looking from his perspective, I could see myself reacting the exact same way if something happened to Cole. But Tony didn't have to be gone for too long. He didn't have to completely leave me—hadn't he said that he missed me? What about Mom and Dad and Leann and Cole and everyone else he'd left? Hadn't he missed them too?
And the fact that my parents never let me talk about him still confused me. I understood that they were very mad, furious for what had happened, but didn't they see that it was hurting me to be away from my own brother? Tony said that he had chosen to leave, but why did they let him? He also said that he'd been talking to them occasionally, so they must've forgiven him at some point, right? So why wasn't I allowed to see him anyway?
The easiest way to get all of my questions answered was to ask Tony himself, but I didn't want to ruin this moment. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth and really told him how miserable I'd been, we would go into an argument. I didn't want that. It had been four years since the last time I'd seen him. Today was about getting him back into my life. All those questions could wait. I'd been waiting for years—a few more days or weeks wouldn't hurt that much, would they?
Tony's legs were lightly bouncing up and down for a while, until they stopped, and his eyes stared far away into the television. His fingers slightly twitched, forming a fist and then loosening it, and it kept going for a while, even when I finally sat down next to him. He was probably nervous and had a lot of things inside his head—after all, this was as much of a big deal for him as it was for me, to come home and see our parents. He hadn't seen his family in four years. How he could deal with that, I didn't know.
I sure as hell would ask him, though. As soon as we got home.
I reached out and grabbed his hands on his laps, but he seemed to ignore my touch for a while, until it was as if something inside his brain switched and he blinked, looking down at my hands on top his. He finally squeezed back, slowly, and I smiled.
"Sorry," he said after a while, as if he had been composing himself. "I spaced out."
"It's fine." I took a deep breath. "You okay? Nervous?"
He slightly nodded with a sigh. "I don't know what to expect. I'm excited to go home but at the same time I'm about to shit my pants just thinking about it."
"Did you ever see them?" I asked quietly. "I mean, do you guys ever meet up or something like that?"
He shook his head. "I never gave them my address. Just my number. And e-mail." He smiled a little. "They send me pictures of Cole every once in a while. He's so big now."
"He is," I said with a chuckle. "Smart, too. Smarter than any of us were when we were seven. God knows what goes on in that little brain of his."
The smile on Tony's face lit up. "Tell me about him?"
"He likes to draw stuff. And build stuff from Lego. But what he makes aren't child's creations." I shook my head. "One time, he built the New York City skyline. It's not perfect, but it's far from what you'd expect from a small child. I mean, it's a city skyline for God's sake. And he prefers watching documentaries over Sponge Bob. Graduated from Animal Planet real fast, now he's into MythBusters reruns."
"Wow," he gaped.
"It's not like he doesn't like watching kiddie shows, though," I said. "And sometimes he's very wise." I smiled to myself. "For a seven year-old kid, he's pretty wise. He knows what to say to calm me down when I'm about to lose my shit, so it's pretty wonderful of him."
Tony smiled with me, but then it slowly dimmed. "Does he... talk about me?"
I brushed a strand of hair behind my hair. "I don't know if he remembers you. He was very young when you left, and no one at home talks about you." I heard his sharp intake of breath. "But I think he does know he has a brother. He's just smart enough not to bring it up to upset anyone." I look up at his face and backtracked, "I mean—"
"I know. I understand," he said, offering me a weak smile.
I shook my head. "I mean, it's just that when I tried to talk about you to Mom and Dad, it always led to an argument, and I think Cole noticed that." I frowned. "I don't understand why, though. Why they never let me talk about you."
Tony was silent, biting his lip, and we settled into silence for a few minutes, both not willing to get up our asses and start driving home. I felt a little disappointed that he pointedly didn't answer my question, but I reminded myself that today wasn't about getting answers. Not yet.
Suddenly, he groaned as if he was in pain, and I looked up in alarm.
"What's wrong?"
His face scrunched weirdly. "My stomach..."
"Why? Are you hurt? Do you need to go to the hospital? You didn't eat breakfast, did you? Tony! You know you have problem with your—"
"No, dumbass," he stopped me with an irritated look, and I pulled back in confusion. "I need to poop. Bad."
All the worry in my eyes drained, leaving me with annoyance. "You had me worried, asshole."
"I haven't pooped in days!"
"That's so gross!" I threw him a pillow from the floor.
He stood up with a groan, clutching his stomach. "I should've pooped when I had the chance."
"Stop saying poop! Oh my god, you're still so immature!"
"Poop, poop, poop," he repeated as he dragged his feet to the bathroom, and I should be mad at him for making me think that he was sick when he just needed to take shit, but then I ended up laughing to myself because before this day I never thought I would have the chance to ever throw a pillow at his face again, or to yell at him for getting under my skin, for yelling poop at me.
"Grow up!"
[]
I stared at the phone on the table as it vibrated, informing me that I had an incoming call. My fingers played with the faux engagement ring on my hand almost absent-mindedly, and it took me a while to realize what I was doing. Almost immediately, I took the ring off my finger and shoved it inside Kate's jean's pocket—the one I was borrowing—and turned my eyes toward my still vibrating phone.
The screen was lit up with a picture we had taken just a few days ago in the park. Just a few days ago, yet it felt like a lifetime since then.
We were sitting on a swing set, and I demanded that we took a selfie, and so we did. A smile threatened to appear on my face as I remembered how it had taken us twenty times to get a decent picture, because he had no idea how to smile for a camera and he would end up frowning or making a constipated face.
My head was on his shoulder as I held out my phone in front of us. I had my eyes closed and my mouth open mid-gasp at that moment when the picture was taken, because the arm that he had on me had snaked around my waist, and he accidentally—or maybe purposefully—had tickled me there.
And Jonah, he had his eyes on me right at that moment.
The ringing died and I finally reached out to take my phone, my thumb lingering over the screen, noticing that he'd left me a voicemail. After a few seconds of hesitation, I tapped on the screen and his voice came out from the speaker.
"Hey, it's me." His voice was quiet. "I heard that you've talked to your parents. They wouldn't tell you where you are, but honestly, I don't give a shit where you are. I'm just glad you're okay."
My breath hitched as his voice slightly broke, followed with a cough.
"So, yeah. I'm—I..." He cut himself off and took a deep breath. "Bye."
"Who's that?"
I tensed and turned around, almost dropping my phone to the floor. Tony stood a few steps away, staring curiously at me while one of his hands played with Mom's car keys.
"Just a guy from school," I said quickly, discreetly wiping my wet eyes. "Are we leaving now? You done pooping?"
"I thought you didn't like the word poop," he retorted, and I rolled my eyes at him. "And yeah. It felt so good. Very relieving."
"Ew."
"You asked," he said as he approached me and offered me a hand before pulling me up into a standing position. He told me to wait for a while as he went to get his bag, so I chose to let my eyes roam around the quiet, peaceful living room.
There was a picture of me in my ballet costume, probably when I was around six years old. I remembered loving the tutu skirt so much I wouldn't take it off for hours after we got home. That was when Cole wasn't born yet.
I followed him as he walked out of the house, bringing his duffel bag, and waited as he locked the front door.
When we got to Mom's car, he snatched the keys from my hand and said, "I'll drive." But I noticed the shaky inhale that he took as he gripped the steering wheel before he pulled out of the driveway.
It was a pretty much silent ride, save from his favorite songs blasting out from the music player. His music taste never changed, and it should annoy me because we had so very different taste in music and his favorite songs annoyed me, but it made me feel warm instead and I found myself nodding my head to a song by Linkin' Park. The minutes ticked away and I got tired of watching every single thing we pass by, so eventually I fell asleep against my will, my head leaning against the window next to me. Before I completely fell asleep, I noticed that Tony's hand reached out to turn down the volume, and I smiled at that.
It felt like a second until I was shaken awake again. On-the-road naps never did count as restful naps to me, so it didn't surprise me when I woke up feeling even more exhausted than before.
"We need to eat," Tony simply said to me once I was done feeling disoriented by my surroundings. The sky already slightly darkened, and I wondered how long I had been asleep. "We're only about half an hour away from home, but there's a war inside my stomach that I cannot ignore. World war three, I'm afraid."
I shook my head in amusement and unbuckled my seatbelt, realizing that I was hungry myself. I didn't remember the last time I had eaten, but I didn't eat anything at Tony's house other than a piece of leftover cake he apparently had bought the night before.
"I couldn't find any diner nearby, but there's this grocery store," he said as we walked in. "I hope we're served real food when we arrive."
"Hopefully," I said, cringing to myself when I remembered that I was at risk of being grounded for the rest of my life. There's no guarantee that we would be served real, good food when we arrived.
We went in and grabbed some ready-to-eat sandwiches, and he snatched a few big bags of snacks. Then he told me to grab some drink for us because we ran out of water back in the car, so I parted ways and walked toward the beverages aisle.
I grabbed two bottles of water, and an energy drink as Tony had requested. Then I hummed to myself, walking along the aisle as I searched for what I really wanted to drink, until my eyes stopped at a particular can of soda, and my feet stopped as well.
Had it been only months that I'd let my stupidity take over and basically risked my life pouring this same soda all over Jonah Gibbs?
It felt like a lifetime ago.
I reached out and took the can, feeling it weighing down my suddenly weakened hand. It was cold, and I still could feel the same coldness running down my hair like it was yesterday.
Sometimes I forgot how we really got there. Sometimes I forgot that it wasn't fate that pushed us together—it was me that forced fate to push us together. It was my hands that "accidentally" turned this can upside down, letting the liquid fall all over his chest, causing a train of events to happen after that. And I wondered if it was ever worth it now that I knew where we would end up: nowhere. We would end up nowhere. We did end up nowhere.
What if I hadn't dared spilling this red soda all over him? Would I have gotten hurt as much as I had last night? Would I have ever found out what really happened that Thanksgiving night, that the boy that I thought was the reason why I pulled through the worst year of my life was the same driver whose mistake nearly cost my life and my brother's?
Would he have ever fallen in love with me, like he said he did?
I needed to get my head cleared real fast, because these trains of thoughts were slowly fucking me up. I felt a tap on my shoulder and nearly jumped through the roof, but it was only Tony.
He stared questioningly at me. "You want that soda? Just throw it inside the cart."
I shook my head. "No. I've been swearing off soda for a while. Gotta watch my sugar intake," I lied, putting the can back to where it had sat. Instead, I grabbed a bottle of apple juice, but then paused again when I realized what I was doing.
"Too much sugar in apple juice?" Tony asked, his eyebrows raised. Apple, apple, apple—why did it make my head spin, just thinking about a bottle of fucking apple juice?
I mumbled something and grabbed an orange juice—nevermind that it probably had more sugar in it than the soda—and left in hurried steps before my brother could ask questions about my weirdness.
[]
"Do you, like, have a boyfriend or something?" Tony asked randomly, and I felt a weird jabbing inside my stomach. Too soon.
We were close to home. I already recognized the neighborhood and it shouldn't take more than one 30 Seconds to Mars song to arrive. So it was pretty weird how Tony decided to bring this kind of talk right now when we barely have time to talk anymore. He probably needed to take the anxiety out of his chest—I could practically smell it from here. He was nervous, he was freaking out, and he wanted to both fly as fast as he could to reach home and get away from this neighborhood at the same time.
"Why do you ask?" I answered after a minute too long, dodging the question.
"So I could kick their ass," he answered seriously. I snorted. "Boyfriends meant trouble and trouble meant making my sister cry. I saw it way too many times with Leann."
"That's just because she dated around and got into way too many different high school dramas than I could count," I pointed out.
"So you're not like Leann? You don't date around or get into high school dramas?" he asked and I shrugged. He sighed, relieved. "Thank god. Seriously, though. I need to make up all these four years I've failed as a brother—" I smiled at him, "—and you need to tell me if there's someone whose ass needs to get kicked, okay?"
I could list it down for him, but I didn't comment further. "So protective."
"I'm supposed to be," he huffed. "But do you have a boyfriend?" I didn't answer, because I didn't know the answer. "Do you have an ex-boyfriend? Oh my God, how many guys have you dated?"
"You don't need to kick anyone's ass. I'm fine."
"But how many—"
"Tony." I didn't look at him. I was staring right ahead, cringing to myself. "We're here."
He followed my line of sight and took a deep breath, and then, "Shit."
It felt too soon that we were already pulling up in front of our house. Tony stayed silent for a while, studying the same house he had lived in four years ago and noticing the slight differences from the house he remembered, and he took a shaky breath. The sound of the car engine must've let our parents know that we were here already, but to my surprise, neither one of them burst out of the door to get us. We slowly got out of the car and approached the front door in slow, hesitating steps.
"You okay?" I asked Tony.
He nodded. "I don't know what to expect," he said, repeating the same words he had said to me earlier.
"Nothing much had changed," I told him. "Are you happy that you're home? Or are you dreading the fact that you're here because you needed to drive me home?"
Tony stopped me and slightly turned my body around. "It wasn't a burden to drive you home," he said to me, straight in the eye. "You're my little sister and it's my responsibility. Not the other way around," he added in a small voice. "And in fact, I was planning to come home this holiday anyway. I just didn't think it would be this soon. I wasn't mentally prepared." Slightly louder, he finished with, "And I'm happy to be here. I'm just freaking out of my mind right now."
"Don't worry, I am too," I said, and he chuckled. "They're gonna murder me as soon as we walk in."
"Yeah," he agreed.
I rolled my eyes and took a deep breath. "Alright. Let's go."
When I opened the unlocked door, I was expecting for everyone to jump out and us and yell at us—me—right there, but instead, I found everyone calmly seated in the living room, though it was too quiet for a normal family night.
Cole jumped first to hug me, followed with Leann who then whispered in my ear, "You little shit."
"I love you too," I said. "And welcome home."
"We really did think you ran away," she said, frustrated, though she was relieved that I was here. "You guys are always a bunch of trouble," she continued, acknowledging Tony who stood two steps behind me for the first time, completely frozen in time and space as if he had lost the ability to command his brain to work. Directly to Tony, Leann said, "And welcome home to you, stranger."
Mom didn't look all too angry at me. In fact, she looked happy to see me, but it might be just calm before the storm. Either way, I was very glad when she silently took me into her arms. Dad joined the hug, and I exhaled out all the energy left in me, sagging in their hold.
I looked behind my shoulder to see that Tony and Leann were hugging each other tightly, and Cole looked confused but I was sure he was slowly putting pieces together, and my eyes felt teary when my elder brother looked up at me with a smile I'd never seen on him before. I gestured for him to join me and our parents, and he did, along with Leann and Cole, and then there were six of us, a whole, a complete family once again, in one huge bear hug so surreal it felt like an imagination.
[]
We were all inside Cole's bedroom, the one that used to be Tony's. Leann decided that we should all spend the night here and maybe stay up to play a board game (don't ask—she was obsessed with board games), but Cole was already passed out, as well as Tony who was probably exhausted from the ride. Both boys were on the bed, both curled up like babies with a matching pout in their lips, and I smiled from where I was sitting down on the thin mattress on the floor, next to Leann, who was also slowly falling asleep.
It didn't take much explanation for Cole to understand. Sure, I could see the hundred thousand questions swirling inside his clear blue eyes, but I was right about him being smarter than he should be. He already knew, or at least had a hunch, who Tony was when he saw him earlier when we arrived. He said he'd seen his face from the hidden albums in the attic whenever he wanted to take his old toys to experiment on them. It probably would take a while for him to get used to Tony as his brother, because no matter what, Tony had left before Cole was old enough to keep him in his memory, and none of us had talked about his existence to him before.
Tony had almost cried when Cole had personally given him a hug right after the group family hug, and I could see how much he'd missed the little boy. Cole never asked questions when he knew that the answers would come to him, so he patiently waited until we were all seated again in the living room and talked about (most of) everything out.
Including how I was cut off half of my allowance for the rest of the year. Thank god it was November already, so the "rest of the year" was only about a month and a half left. They hadn't realized it, I wasn't about to try to correct them.
But now I was sitting, wide awake on the floor, with my phone in my hand and Jonah's face lighting up the screen.
I quietly stood up and got out of the room, trying not to wake anyone up as I got into my own bedroom. I sat down on my bed for a while, listening to the silence, and tapped on my screen to listen to his voicemail.
"Hey," he said, and I broke all over again. "I'm sorry for leaving these messages. I know you're annoyed by them. By me. I know why you're not answering my calls but I just—" He stopped to let out a shaky breath. "Is there any way, any way I could fix this? Tell me, Hannah, because I think I would gladly snap myself in half if it means that I can make this alright again. And I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know what I'm thinking and I can't sleep and I need you. I know I've hurt you but I need you and it kills me to know that you don't need me as much as I need you because I was a stupid kid and I ruined—" I balled up my fist and stuck it in between my teeth to keep the sound of my gasps to myself. "I ruined everything before it even started. Long before anything even started."
The voicemail ended, but it didn't take long for my phone to lit up again. I waited. Another notification popped up. Another voicemail.
"Hannah." The way he said my name, like it physically hurt him to spell out the letters. I grabbed my aching chest like my heart would jump out of my chest. "I don't want you to stay away from me, but I understand. Even I would stay away from myself, you know. It doesn't mean that I'm okay if you leave me, because it's not, but I get it. And I should probably stop trying to call you because I have no idea what I'm thinking and what I'm talking about and I know I'm not being myself right now but fuck if I know who I really am because I'm only ever myself when I'm with you but now I'm not and I'm talking like a crazy person I think I need to sleep but I don't know how. To. Fall. Asleep—" There was a strange sound coming out of the back of my throat, the same time I heard a sound of pain from the other line. "I'm sorry. For everything. It won't take away the pain I've put you through but that's all I can say because I have no idea how to fix things but I know how to fuck everything up, that's all I ever know. And I'm sorry for hurting you when I promised that I wouldn't. I—I don't think I should keep calling you like this. I—Hannah. Love, I'm sorry."
The voicemail ended and I was a crumpled mess on my bed. He sounded delirious as he talked, and I wanted so bad to reach out and told him that I would be alright, but would I really be? I couldn't even think of him without thinking about how much pain I had to go through, both emotionally and physically, and knowing that he had a hand in it was making my own thoughts swirl inside my head like a tornado waiting to destroy everything in sight. A logical part of me kept screaming that he was hurt as much as I was right now, but the other part was yelling at me and telling me that if it hadn't been him, nothing would've gone wrong, and I didn't know which side to believe. I loved him, I loved him or I think I did, but I hated him, I hated him for turning out to be the monster under my bed who filled my dreams with nightmares.
I loved him and I hated him, and every cell in my body contradicted each other, telling me one thing and yelling me another. It should be easy to forgive him because at the end of the day, no one was hurt anymore, but it wasn't. It wasn't easy to forget everything that happened before today, before I saw my brother again.
Suddenly, it was three a.m in the morning, so I closed my eyes and forced myself into sleep.
In five hours, I had school.
In five hours, I had to see him again, and I still hadn't decided which side I should believe.
[]
My five hours was up, and I sat, hesitant to get out of the car while Tony was staring at me weirdly from the driver's seat.
"Why are you acting weird?" he asked cautiously.
I shook my head. "I just have this huge Math test and I haven't studied, so," I lied through my teeth. "Thanks for driving me."
I hurried out of the car even though I didn't want to, trying to blend into the crowd so Jonah couldn't see me and I couldn't see him, but then I found myself looking around like a moron, and I cursed myself a thousand times.
I walked through the hallway, and I saw him at his locker. I couldn't see his face, but I could recognize his figure anywhere, robotically transferring his books from his backpack to his locker, back and forth, while his other arm held Daisy. Daisy, our baby project, our stupid baby doll, ours. I couldn't believe I'd forgotten that we still had the rest of the project unfinished. Today, we returned the doll, and for the next two weeks, we had to complete our essays. How was I supposed to work on this project with him when we couldn't even look at each other, when I couldn't even see the silhouette of him without my eyes tearing up and my chest threatening to blow up?
He looked like he was physically here, but mentally elsewhere, and I fisted my hands on my sides to keep myself from reaching out, because I shouldn't do that. So I kept walking, away from him, away from Daisy, and temporarily away from the rest of the world until I got the ability to think straight again.