When I feel Jay start reaching out toward the nightstand for his wallet, I sit up and stop the train that is currently careening for Sexville.
"What? What's wrong?" Jay gasps for breath. For an athlete, he really has a penchant for being constantly out of breath when we get a little hot and heavy.
"Nothing," I place my hands on his chest, pushing him off of me so I can give him some room to catch his breath. I push the hair off of his forehead, which is extremely sweaty and, quite honestly, gross, and add, "It's just that I don't think we should continue down this path."
He scrunches his eyebrows and asks, "What path?"
"Sex, Jay. Sex," I snip. "We now have three fairly young kids in this house, and I can't afford the embarrassment of the explanation that we'd have to give them if one of them walked in."
He deflates, all of the desire draining out with his sigh. "You're right."
I lay my hand on top of his on the comforter. I give him a sincere smile and say, "Of course I'm right."
He laughs and shakes his head. Then, abruptly, he beams at me and latches onto my hand. He jumps off the bed, pulling me with him. With his free hand, he retrieves our shirts and we unlace our hands to shrug them back on. He leaves me to cross the room and set his phone up to the speaker on my desk. Scrolling through all of his music, he settles on a song that I don't recognize.
"What's this?" I ask about the song.
He vacates his phone and comes back over to me. "Ed Sheeran. I think you'll like him."
I've heard of him before, but I don't think I've ever listened to his music. The twins' generally sway towards my mom's old CD collection when we're in the car, and I hardly ever fight them about it because listening to music with her was always one of my fondest memories of her. She sang along even if she didn't know the words, and it was the only time of day she was able to let loose. After she left, a lot of my memories of her were tarnished, but not the ones of her and her music. Those memories are rust-proof, forever locking in the wonderful woman she once was.
Jay extends his hand with his palm facing up and inquires, "May I have this dance?"
"I can't really decline, can I?" I smirk as I set my hand in his. He tugs me toward him and wraps an arm around my waist. I throw an arm across his shoulders as he answers my question, "Nope."
I try to listen to the words of the song, but all I can really focus on is the way Jay's looking at me right now. It's the way a groom looks at his bride as she walks down the aisle, or the way a father and mother look at their child for the first time, with total and utter love.
"I love you," I blurt out. His eyes go wide with shock as do mine in response to his.
Jay said it a couple of days ago without warning, and without giving me a chance to say it back, so I guess I felt the moment was right by the way he was looking at me. But now, with the way his face has gone into shock mode, I'm wondering if I made the right decision or misinterpreted what he meant by saying it all those days ago.
Maybe it was just a friendly way of saying goodbye after all.
As he eyes shrink back to normal size, I notice the beginnings of a grin on his lips. "You sure do know how to keep a man waiting on his toes."
"Well, somebody hung up before I could respond," I say while we sway along to the lyrics and guitar playing. "And, besides, I just don't think saying it over the phone has the same effect as saying it in person anyway."
He throws his head back and laughs, realizing that was a dig at him, but after his bout of laughter, he turns back on the charm that first made me fall for him. "Sorry I don't know the protocol. I've never said it before."
My jaw drops.
I guess I just figured he'd said it a million times before to a million other girls. I had no idea I was something special. "Really?" I ask skeptically. "I find that hard to believe."
"I'm not gonna lie, I've had a few girlfriends and some meaningless flings before."
I frown at him. I've had my suspicions about his life before me, and yes, I figured there was a list of girls he'd either dated, slept with, or both. I'm not stupid. I know how highly sought after he is.
"Yeah, you probably didn't want to hear that," he bites his lip. His arm wraps tighter around my back, squeezing me closer to him. We dance clumsily along to the music. He dips me, nearly whacking my head against the footboard of my bed.
As he pulls me back to him from my near concussion experience, he whispers in my ear, "I love you, too."
When I'm right side up again, I plant a chaste kiss on his lips, agreeing with him. We end up dancing to the rest of the song in silence with my head on his shoulder and his hands on the small of my back. The song changes from the melodic and beautiful words of Ed Sheeran to the every-other-word-is-'bitch' rap of the early 2000s.
While my mother always did favor Phil Collins, I distinctly remember some rap from the college stations livening up the car from time to time. She was a relatively young woman when she was raising us, and it shone through every once in a while.
"Want me to change it?" Jay questions. I lean back a little and place my forehead on his. "No. It's just fine," I tell him because as much as it reminds me of my mother, it's okay.
It's okay because that's the mother I want to remember.
The one who gave it her all on Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight."
--------------
At first I think my alarm is going off, but I realize even through my sleepy haze that alarm clocks don't repeatedly tap people on the shoulder. My eyes open hastily to find a small figure standing in front of me. It takes me a moment to register who it is.
"Annalise? What're you doing awake?" I check the clock on my nightstand and see that's almost three o'clock in the morning. Then I prop myself up on an elbow, waiting for an answer.
"I had a bad dream." She won't meet my gaze, choosing to fumble with her pajama top instead.
I've had experience with bad dreams before with both of the twins, namely Connor, and also myself. A habit of mine when I was around seven or eight was climbing into my parents' bed, feigning either a bad dream or a headache, which always worked because I was my daddy's little girl. When the twins' got to be around the same age as I was, they did the same things. More recently, with all of the desertion and abandonment running rampant around this house, Connor has woken up in the middle with bad dreams and has wandered into my room.
"Jay wouldn't wake up," she whispers. I look over my shoulder at the sleeping rock next to me, snoring away while laying flat on his back and arms stretched out above his head.
"I don't doubt that," I mumble, "Do you want to sleep with us or are you good?"
"Can I sleep with you guys?" she says so softly I almost don't hear her. I nod my head and she climbs over me and in between Jay and me. I pull the comforter over her while she nuzzles her head against the crease of our pillows.
I roll over to face her. "You good now?" She nods and closes her eyes.
I wish I could fall asleep as quickly as this kid.
But just as soon as I think she's asleep, her eyes flutter back open as wide as they were a second ago. She eyes me down and whispers, "You know Jay lied earlier."
She definitely jumps right in, not a bit of subtlety about her, I guess. Yet, her lack of subtlety grabs my attention, captivating me by what Jay apparently lied about, which in turn worries me to no end. "What'd he lie about?"
The duration of time it takes her to answer me seems like a full lifetime. I could've married Jay and had five kids who would've given me grandchildren in the time it takes Annalise to answer me. But when she does, she has my undivided attention. "Jay lied when he said he didn't know where my mommy is."
"Well, where is she?"
"I don't know," she says quietly. "Jay wouldn't tell me, neither would my daddy."
Given the information she has just expressed, I realize how alike her and I are at the moment. Neither of us know where our mommies are.
I brush a lock of blonde hair out her face and tell her, "Don't worry. I'm sure wherever your mom is she misses you bunches and will be home soon."
And with that last sentence, our alikeness comes to a screeching halt because while her mom will, hopefully, return and continue to be in her life, mine is long gone. Hers may not come back for a week or a month, depending on where exactly she is and what she's doing, but at least she'll come back.
And that's how I fall asleep, envying a seven year-old whose mother hasn't completely abandoned her.
----------------
"Morning sunshine," I smirk at a very disheveled and hungover Tony as he stumbles in from the garage. "I'm glad to see you alive and, you know, not dead behind a CVS or something."
He grumbles something inaudible as he grabs a bottle of water from the fridge and downs an asprin with a gulp. When he glares at me, I notice the redness in his eyes and the scruff on his face. He looks like shit. God, Tony, what are you doing to yourself? I want to ask him, but I'm not sure I want to know the answer.
Tony has always seemed to have it together, and obviously he no longer does.
He catches me staring at him and mutters, "What?"
I give him a weak smile and say, "Nothing." Then I gesture to the pancakes and microwave bacon perfectly portioned out onto six plates, "You hungry?"
His face turns a light shade of green, and I take that as a no. "I'll save it for later. You should probably go sleep that hangover off."
He lingers for a moment before doing something he hasn't done in a while. He hugs me from the side and kisses my cheek. "You're my favorite person," he mumbles.
"Because I make pancakes?" I jokingly ask.
"No, it's because you actually give a shit about me. God knows neither of our parents does." He pulls away from me and stretches his arms over his head. I notice he's in the same clothes he was in yesterday morning when he left for school.
"Tony-"
"You can't defend them, Sarah," he interrupts, voice on the verge of breaking. "You can't."
I wasn't trying to defend them. I used to try and defend them, but now that I've shouldered their load, I don't make excuses for them. You can't make excuses for two adults who let their seventeen and eighteen-year-olds take care of a house and their twin brothers. "I wasn't. I was going to ask about you. What're you doing to yourself, Tony? You come traipsing in at all hours of the morning. You're always partying, always drunk, always hungover. What's going on with you?"
His face is devoid of emotion. Not a hint of anger or anguish is visible on his pale skin as he turns away from me and starts to walk away toward the basement door. "Tony," I sternly say.
He stops, but makes no attempt at facing me. He poises his hand over the doorknob as I ask, "Is this about Jay and I?" I have no idea how Jay and I's relationship could effect him this much, but maybe it has something to do with whatever Jay and Tony were talking about when I was eavesdropping. Something about how Tony told him not to fall in love with me, but Jay did anyway. Does Tony feel betrayed by Jay? Is this what his spiraling out of control is about?
"Mom," it's barely a whisper, but I manage to hear his voice breaking just a little bit more with each letter. "It's about Mom."
I run my fingers along the hem of Jay's borrowed t-shirt, trying to keep my breathing normal. "What about her?" I say flippantly.
"When she showed up at the twins' birthday, she didn't even ask about me, did she?" He whips around to face me, leaning his head and back against the basement door.
I nervously bite my lip. I don't know how he knows that she didn't ask about him or demand to see him, but he clearly knows his mother, the woman who gave birth and raised him for some seventeen odd years, didn't care enough to ask how he's doing. She didn't even acknowledge him as part of the family that she abandoned. "You would be correct."
"That's what I thought," he sighs and closes his eyes. "But I didn't want it to be true."
His eyes open back up, tears brimming at the edge, waiting to dribble over. "It's like I don't even exist." It comes out strangled, muffled.
His breakdown is the first of its kind for my big brother. I've seen him cry before, but only out of happiness or physical injury, not because our mother made him feel like he's nothing more than a speck of dirt. "I tried to do everything she ever wanted for me. I played football, got a scholarship, stayed out of trouble. I tried so hard to fit into her mold of what a perfect son would be. I tried so hard to be the kind of son most people are proud of, but she didn't even ask how I was."
Tony wipes away the stray tears that are rolling down his cheeks with the back of his hand, while I stand rooted in place a few feet away from him and unsure of what to do. He's always the one to comfort me. He's always the one who has it together. Now the roles have switched, and I have no idea what to do.
Only when he starts to talk again do I realize how to help: just listen. "Do you know how hard that it is? To feel like nothing? Nothing, not even to your own mother. She acknowledged Jay for God's sake! He's not even her son!"
He looks at me, red, tear-rimmed eyes filled with anguish. Wiping away another batch of runaway tears, his tone becomes more somber than angry, a sign he's cooling off. "And I didn't want to talk to you about it because we agreed to never talk about it. I didn't want to upset you. Instead, I thought if I stayed out with my friends that it'd take my mind off of the harsh truth that this dreadful house is laced with."
"But I was wrong," he takes a deep, yet shaky breath. "And alcohol doesn't numb pain. It amplifies it; makes it a thousand times worse than it already was."
I don't say anything, and I'm sure what I would say if I did speak. Tony was the one who needed to talk, not me. He doesn't need my input; he just needed to empty his jar of pent-up feelings.
So when I hug Tony, I don't say that it'll be okay.
Or that our mother's a bitch.
I don't say anything at all.