Bryan

I threw back another shot of whiskey as I growled at the burn. The amber liquid swirled down into my stomach, tainting my vision as my bones went lax against the bar. I dreamed about my brother all night last night. I saw his smile and felt his hugs. I remembered our trips to the beach and how he loved body-surfing back into the shore. I dreamed about us running along the beach as adults, keeping our bodies in shape as we laughed about all the shit we had to do in the coming days. I dreamed about what it would’ve been like to have him own the company alongside Drew and me.

I owed my entire recuperation to Drew. That man pulled me from the brink of insanity when I lost my brother. He was there the night my parents called me, the night the hospital contacted them and told them he’d overdosed. Drew sped through red lights and outran a police car to get me to the hospital before he later had to pull me away from my brother’s dead body. I had thrown myself at him. Picked him up from underneath the white sheet and held his limp body close to mine. I could still remember how pale his skin was and how he had already begun to turn gray as his eyes stared blankly up at the ceiling.

Drew had run into the room and peeled me from his body.

Drew had been there during the funeral, patting my back throughout the entire ceremony. He carried my brother’s casket up and down the aisle and rode with me to the burial site. He stayed with me that day and got shitfaced drunk while I screamed about my parents not even attending the funeral.

Then, he cleaned up my house and put away the countless dying flowers and Tupperware containers of food as I snored drunkenly on my couch.

I owed Drew a great deal for my sanity. He had pulled me from the brink more times than I could count. When I wasn’t mentally stable enough to run our construction company, he stepped in and temporarily took over. He coordinated building sites and continued to hire the homeless people to help them get back on their feet. Not a beat was missed while I was grieving the loss of my brother, and it was all thanks to him.

My best friend.

I came back to reality and saw another full shot glass in front of me. The amber liquid was calling to me, even though I was seeing double. I brought it to my lips and threw it back, grimacing as it went down hard. I wanted to drink until my memory couldn’t think back any longer. I wanted to drink until I could convince myself that John died around people who loved him. I no longer wanted to think about how he died alone, cold, on the streets with an insane amount of heroin in his system. I didn’t want to think about how empty his hands were, with no one to hold him as he slipped from this earth. I didn’t want to think about the pain he must’ve been in and how his body must’ve shaken as he choked on his own vomit.

I quickly slammed back another shot as my mind began to swirl in a different direction.

Was there something I could’ve done? Was there a meeting I could’ve taken him to? He was clean. I knew he had been. I knew what he looked like high, and I knew what he looked like sober. For months, I’d seen him clear-eyed and determined, more than I’d ever seen him. What signs did I miss? How did he backslide? What triggered him to break the sobriety I knew he was working so hard for?

I should’ve set my business aside and gone to Los Angeles. My brother moved there to get away from my parents and how strict they were with him once they found out he was first doing drugs. Mom made him move back into the house, and Dad had cut him off financially. The first time he got sober, it was forced. They locked him in his room while he detoxed. He could’ve fucking died, and it wasn’t until I called a doctor to come over that he detoxed the rest of the way properly.

And my parents had been spitting fire at me because someone else was witnessing what was happening to my brother.

I saw him as much as I could while I was building my business with Drew. I wondered if I should’ve offered him the chance to build it with us. He could have been a third partner in the construction business we were getting off the ground. But by the time Drew and I had agreed to offer him a position, he had already backslid into doing drugs again.

Only this time, he was selling them in order to get out from underneath Mom and Dad’s reign.

He moved to Los Angeles, and I barely ever saw him. I traveled on my free weekends to see him, but he was always with the seediest characters. We still took brotherly beach trips, and we still laughed over beers, but I could always tell when he was high.

Which was why I was ecstatic to see him whenever he was sober.

Week after week I’d see him, meeting him halfway between San Diego and L.A. Every single time I saw him, he was clear-eyed. He was thinking straight. He was talking about how he was getting out of the game and how he was cleaning his act up. His pockmarks were no longer fresh, just scars of a life that used to be lived. I restarted talks with Drew about adding him to the company and finding him a position he could work.

I wanted to get my brother back to San Diego, even if it meant I never saw Mom or Dad again.

And then he just died. Overdosed, just like that.

And I somehow felt it was my fault, that maybe, had I gotten into the company sooner, had I gotten him home sooner, or hell, had I moved the fucking company out to L.A., maybe he would still be alive.

Maybe he just needed a support system that was willing to move with him instead of him always moving to them.

I threw back another shot as an argument wafted to the forefront of my mind. It was the last time I’d spoken with John before everything happened. I told him to come stay with me. I’d just purchased my home with the money we obtained from nailing our first massive job with the company, and I had more than enough room to house him. I told him I could support him. Offer him a job at the company. We could live out our days on the beach and fuck beautiful women and live the lives we’d always wanted to live.

For some reason, that suggestion made him angry.

Looking back on it, it was possible he had already been using again. There were many things my brother was, but angry wasn’t one of them. Everything rolled off his back. It was incredibly out of character for him to get torn up about something like that.

The one thought that kept racing through my mind was that the argument we had before he drove back to L.A. in the middle of the night could have been the trigger that caused him to overdose.

I threw back another shot and screwed my eyes shut, trying to keep my tears at bay and shake the thought from my mind.

I had been so angry with him that night, screaming and yelling at him just like Mom and Dad did. My finger was in his face, telling him he was being an idiot and that I was offering him everything, and all he had to do was take it. He kept telling me he didn’t want everything, he just wanted a life he built for himself, one he worked for that he could be proud of. I should’ve been able to understand that.

Hell, I did understand it.

But not in that moment, I didn’t.

I threw back yet another shot as my vision began to blur.

I missed my brother. I missed him more than I could stand. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t see or experience something I wanted to tell him about. There wasn’t a moment that went by that a smell or a sight or a sound didn’t trigger a memory. John permeated my existence even now, but I was ripped from my thoughts when I felt something warm bump up against my forearm.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” a voice said. “Excuse me.”

I turned my head and saw a beautiful blonde woman sitting at the bar next to me. The seats were empty all around us, and that told me she intentionally meant to sit down next to me. My eyes grazed her thin body, clocking her long legs and her ruby red lips. She was a striking woman, that was for sure.

“I like your tattoos,” she said as her finger traced them. “What are they?”

“Well, the one you’re tracing is a 3-D spiral,” I said.

“It looks like it’s going right down into your arm,” she said.

“Yep. And a little farther up is a rose, but the petals reflect a piano keyboard.”

“Oh my gosh,” she said, gasping. “That’s absolutely beautiful.”

“And I’ve got another one on my arm over here that’s a fusion of different geometric designs,” I said.

“Oh, wow,” she said. “Do you, um, have any underneath these clothes?”

I could feel her fingertips slowly dragging down my side, her ruby red lips giving me that wholly innocent smile, but I knew better. The images flying through her head were tainted with nothing but unholy thoughts, and the way her pupils dilated told me everything I needed to know about why she’d sat down beside me.

“I’ve got plenty,” I said, grinning. “All depends on whether you want to see my chest or my back.”

“Oh, I have to pick?” she asked.

“Only good girls have to pick. Are you a good girl?”

The devilish smile that crept across her face warmed my pelvis. Her fingertips crept underneath my shirt, her hand fluttering up my chest as if she’d just chosen. I slid my shirt up and showed her the tattoo she had chosen, silently grateful that her hand hadn’t rushed up my back. The lower left quadrant of my back housed a tattoo that was gravelly personal to me.

A picture John had drawn in high school of our family at the cabin.

“Oh, I really like this one,” she said as it came into view.

“Most people do. I’ve drawn all these tattoos myself.”

“Wait, you designed all these yourself? That’s incredible,” she said.

I could hear a bit of sincerity in her voice as her fingertips continued to dance along the Phoenix with its wings stretched out the length of my chest.

“Yep. They’re more personal that way,” I said as I put my shirt down.

“I know a place where I could become more acquainted with them if you’re up for it.” The blonde with the piercing hazel eyes and the rosy-tinted cheeks bit down onto her lower lip. Her long leg crossed on top of the other, her tanned skin shimmering in the dimly lit bar. The world was swirling, and part of me wondered what desperate woman would be willing to sleep with a man who was as drunk as I was.

But I could tell I wasn’t slurring my words, so I probably didn’t look as drunk as I felt.

“Actually, I’ve got an early morning,” I said.

“Oh, that’s no fun. I could keep you company in the morning while you got up. Maybe accompany you in the shower,” she said, grinning.

“While that’s a tempting offer, showers at four in the morning are rarely as exotic as people make them. However, the least I can do is pay for your drink.”

I threw a fifty dollar bill down onto the table and told the bartender to keep the change. I took the woman’s hand and brought it up to my lips, giving it a light kiss before I told the bartender to make her one last drink. She giggled at me, her eyes lighting up as my tall stature loomed over hers, but when I looked back up into her face, I didn’t see the giggling blonde with the crimson red lips.

I saw the woman with the creamy-colored skin and the purple hair cut to just below her earlobes as she held the slightest smile on her cheeks.

But as quickly as I’d blinked, she was gone. I slowly walked out of the bar, trying my best not to stumble. I needed to walk off some of this alcohol before I got home and laid down in bed. I needed to make sure I would wake up ready to work. Ready to take on any emergencies that might occur in the middle of the night.

I still had to conduct myself professionally while I was drowning my sorrows in the refreshingly piercing brown liquid.

The crisp evening cut deep with the salt from the sea. I sniffed deep, allowing the cool breeze to blow through my hair before I started walking down the block. I crossed over streets, slowly feeling my body metabolize the alcohol. My vision became crisper and the world no longer tilted, and soon, I was feeling confident in the steps I took as I continued to walk blocks away from where I’d just been.

The bar was only three miles from my home, and by the time I took another deep breath of the salted air, I realized I was only a mile away. I stopped on the corner and waited for the street sign to beckon me across the road, but a movement caught the corner of my eye.

A homeless man, getting up to his feet and turning down an alleyway.

The street sign called for me to walk, but I backtracked. I followed the man down the dark alleyway as I fished for my wallet, taking out a couple of twenties before I called for him. He turned around, his eyes wide with fear before he realized what I was holding out to him.

He took the money and thanked me profusely before stuffing it into his pocket.

I couldn’t stop seeing my brother in all of their eyes. I knew there was a time where John lived on the streets of L.A. I knew there was a time where he literally didn’t have a home. It’s why I’d tried to convince him to come live with me and claim a room as his own until he could get on his feet. I wondered if people stopped for him while he sat slouched over in alleyways. I wondered if people stopped for him when he was in those drug dens, screaming for help inside his mind.

I wondered if people stopped for him while he was dying from a fucking overdose in the middle of the damn sidewalk.

I felt my blood boil as my fists clenched. I felt my vision swim as my blood pressure skyrocketed. I whipped my fist around and punched the brick wall of the alleyway, screaming out the hurt and anguish I’d tried to drown in whiskey. I shrieked at the top of my lungs, feeling the burning, searing pain ricochet up the bones of my hand. But the pain erased his face. The pain erased his gray skin. The pain erased the ringing of my phone and it erased the guilt I still harbored deep in the pit of my soul.

But when I stepped back out onto the sidewalk and saw people passing by me as if nothing had happened, I had the answer I was looking for.

No one stopped for him.

Just like no one stopped for me.