Chapter 24
Max
Weeks have gone by without a word from Chris. I expected to see him the night I went to work for Dad after I sent him away but he wasn’t there. After I cooled down from our fight I tried texting and calling. The calls went to voicemail. The texts went unanswered.
Worry was starting to consume me. I was close to calling my dad for help tracking him down and that spoke volumes. I never asked him for a damn thing. But my brother was gone and it was my fault. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that Chris was hiding from him for a reason.
When my thoughts cleared and the anger receded I knew him and Lacey were right that day. I overreacted.
Chris shouldn’t have done what he did. Shouldn’t have disrespected me or my budding relationship by pushing it to its death. But at the end of the day he was my brother. The only real family I had that didn’t make me want to change my name and move to another country to escape.
Then one evening there’s an unexpected knock on the door. At the time my thoughts had drifted to pretty brown eyes and soft smooth skin under my touch. Sugary sweet kisses and angelic songs.
I open the door half expecting to see Lacey standing there.
Instead I find Chris. He pushes past me without greeting and heads straight for the fridge. I stand in the doorway dumbfounded as he pulls out a beer and chugs half of it before coming up for air.
“God. Where have you been?”
He belches loudly, finishes the rest of the beer and tosses the empty bottle in the trash. “You tell me to fuck off and then ask where I’ve been? You need to work on the mixed signals, bro.”
“I’ve been trying to call you.”
“My phone broke.” He pulls a takeout container from the fridge, opens it and scrunches his face. “This is disgusting.”
I look down and notice the molded half eaten Salisbury steak. It’s been in there at least a week and I had pushed it to the side of the fridge, not giving enough of a shit to throw it away.
Chris tosses it to the trash and takes the time to look around the apartment. Several pairs of shoes are scattered across the living room floor. Coke cans and beer bottles litter the coffee table. The carpet has mud stains by the front door that I never bothered to scrub clean.
The messiness is so far from my norm even my slob of a brother looks stunned.
“Is everything ok with you?” He asks carefully, eying the clutter. “You seem….off.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah you’re fine or yeah you’re off.”
I take a moment to decide if I should lie to him or just go ahead and admit the truth. He can clearly see it by the state of my apartment.
“Off.”
He nods. “When was the last time you left this place? Or more importantly when was the last time you showered?”
He takes a step away from me and it takes me a moment to realize it’s been two days since I showered. Four since I left the apartment and that was only because Dad called on me to be his muscle against a guy that owed him money.
I hadn’t been to class all week and the only thing saving my grades from going down the toilet was that my professors posted PowerPoint slides of their lectures on Blackboard. I had to show up for an exam next Wednesday.
Aside from that I had no immediate plans to leave. There was no need to venture into public. I could order take-out and do my homework here.
“Come on, bro. Go take a shower. Get dressed. We’re going out tonight.”
“Out?” I groan, not even pretending to want to leave. “Out where?”
“Blue’s.”
“No.”
“Why the hell not? We always go to Blue’s. It’s chill there. And they have Lady’s Night on Thursday’s.”
“I don’t want to go to Lady’s Night. And I sure as hell don’t want to go to Blue’s.”
“Lady’s Night was for my benefit, not yours. Aren’t you practically a married man now? Lacey spends damn near every night here.”
“Not anymore.”
He chuckles under his breath. “I see. That’s why you aren’t taking care of your basic hygiene and we can’t go to Blue’s? The two of you split?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“She dump your sorry ass?”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Ok. She just seemed like a sweet girl. Different.”
“Yep.”
“I liked her.”
“Stay away from her Chris.” I snap, shooting daggers at my brother.
“You still like her too.” He says with a knowing smile.
A denial is on the tip of my tongue but I can’t quite bring myself to say the words.
“It doesn’t matter if I do or not.”
He stares at me carefully until I get uncomfortable before finally speaking up. “Regardless of what you might think of me I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t mess with your girl.”
“That’s not what you were saying the other day.”
“I know. But I was here long enough to see you feel something for her. And I was just fucking with you.”
My mouth opens but he cuts me off before I can say anything.
“Don’t give me any bullshit.” I stay silent. “I would ask why you didn’t tell me about her before I showed up here. But I guess I know the answer to that.”
More silence from me.
“To be honest the first day I thought she was just some girl you were screwing.” Chris picks phantom lent off his jeans, refusing to look at me all of a sudden. “Remember when we were kids?” I nod although he can’t see me with his eyes cast downward. “We were so close. You used to tell me everything. We told each other everything. You were all I had back then.”
The last words are whispered so softly I almost wonder if I imagined them.
“I remember.”
“You think we could ever be like that again?”
I pause. “I don’t know.”
Silence fills the room but it isn’t awkward. We both take the time to think. Reflect on the past and the present. Finally he slaps me on the back roughly, jarring me from my thoughts.
“Let’s go. Get a shower so we can go out.”
“I told you I’m not going to Blue’s.”
“Fine. We won’t go there. You still need to get out of the house and get some fresh air. It’ll be good for you. Always works for me when I’m hung up on a girl.”
“When the fuck is that?”
“Every day.”
I laugh to myself at his ridiculous way of life, jumping from bed to bed. I shower and change my clothes into something presentable. We climb into his car and he drives us somewhere surprising. I laugh freely when I see the sign lighting up the parking lot.
The arcade.
“I can’t believe this place is still here.”
“I know.” Chris concurs. “I’m glad it is though. I’m about to school you in Final Fight just like last time we came here.”
The last time we came here was at least ten years ago. My entire mood lifts as we go inside. The sounds of beeping, dinging and clinking fill the room noisily and it brings me back to simpler times. Times I shared with my big brother back when I looked up to him and followed him around everywhere he went.
Times had changed. I can’t deny that fact. But the moment we walk back into the arcade it’s like time has remained frozen. It sounds the same. Looks the same. Feels the same.
Chris shoves me playfully and takes off for the back wall where we both know Final Fight should be. We find it right where it should be, in the same corner as always. It’s aged considerably in the ten or so years since we’ve been here. If we wait another ten to return there’s no way in hell this game will still be working.
We blow off steam on Final Fight and boast of our athletic abilities at NBA Hoopz. We bowl at the mini glow in the dark lanes that seem so randomly placed against the wall furthest from the entrance. I beat him during our first round and he demands a rematch.
We laugh and bowl three times before he finally wins, throwing his hands in the air and doing a stupid dance in victory. It’s such a Chris thing to do. Rubbing it in my face had always been his favorite part.
I haven’t laughed this hard in months. Maybe years.
At the end of the night Chris drops me off at the apartment and goes back to his hotel. The air between us has been cleared after our night of fun.
He has five days left at his hotel and I invite him to come back to the apartment when his days are up. No sense in him staying at a hotel. I had been pissed when I kicked him out. His accusation that I was being a hothead? Maybe it was accurate.
But I was a hothead for Lacey and I didn’t regret that.
He could help me with the utility bill and we can share space without the tension from before. Lacey was long gone from my life now. There was no one around to shelter anymore from Chris’s questionable decisions.
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I come to regret extending the invitation within days of Chris moving back. I may not have Lacey to shelter anymore but maybe I should have considered sheltering myself. I sure as hell didn’t want to walk in the front door to witness my brother shoving a needle in his arm on my couch.
I didn’t think I would care so much. I knew what he was up to when no one was around. I guess I tried not to think about what it meant. What it must look like. How he could kill himself chasing this high.
It should piss me off that he was doing it right here in my fucking apartment when I told him to keep that shit out of here.
But the rush of panic for him, of grief for what he had become, flooded me unexpectedly. His eyes, the mirror image of mine, look up from his task in surprise. He didn’t expect me to be home yet and the turn of the doorknob pulled his attention from his arm.
I stand there staring, feeling muted. He breaks the eye contact and squeezes the poison from the needle, surging it into his veins slowly. It was like he couldn’t stop himself at that point in the process even if he wanted to. Even with his little brother as an onlooker.
Nothing could pull that needle from his vein until it was filled and sated.
His eyes close in ecstasy and if I don’t get the fuck out of here I’m going to be sick. So I storm downstairs, jump in my car and drive off without a destination in mind.
Like always when I’m troubled I find myself driving to the beach. The sun has already set and the darkness of the sky with the sounds of waves crashing into the shore reminds me too much of Lacey.
The scene is the same as the first night I spent with her, downing tequila on the sand and trying to escape life’s problems. Seems I’ve come full circle except this time sans tequila and Lacey.
The breeze wafts the salty ocean aroma over me and my frazzled nerves begin to settle.
Letting go of Lacey was the right thing to do. If I had done it any differently, any less cold, she would have tried to talk sense into me and stayed right by my side.
I didn’t want that.
I wanted her to go, to give me space to clear my thoughts. Because when she was around I was under the influence. Just as enlivened as Chris was when he snorted a line of coke. As complacent and unguarded as when he shoots a syringe full of heroin into his veins.
That’s what Lacey did to me. She altered the chemical makeup in my brain and body.
Maybe that’s what I did to her too. She clearly made shit decisions when she was around me. She may have been pissed off the night I made her leave but she hadn’t tried to call me since. Hadn’t shown up at my door or sent a single text.
It seemed she saw the truth in my parting words and decided to take heed and move on. I needed to do the same. My thoughts kept wandering back to her. She was a hard one to forget.
I come to the steady, stable beach to think.
Sometimes I come out here to talk to my mother, hoping somehow she can hear me. Yearning for the motherly advice I imagine she would give if she were here.
What would she say if I told her what Chris became? A heroin addict that occasionally broke free from the clutches of addiction to function as a normal human being. As normal as he could be given who our father is. Given what we had witnessed years ago and every day since.
But it never lasted long before he fell under the spell of addiction and chased after his next high without regard for anyone else. Without regard for me.
I sit in the sand for hours, letting the waves soothe me. The steady crashing against the shore comes unfailingly as always. It’s still the only thing I can depend on. That’s why I always come running here when life becomes too much.
My mom is gone.
My dad is sadistic.
My brother is self-destructive and unreliable.
And now Lacey is gone too.
But the beach would always be here when I need it. It couldn’t die or lie or leave.
The hopelessness of it all breaks something inside of me and I let it break. It feels good to not grasp at my strength and sanity for a minute. The tears freely fall and I let them, knowing there’s no one out here at this time of night to witness it.
I don’t even bother to be quiet about it which is how Chris is able to sneak up on me without notice. He sits his ass in the sand next to me with about two feet between us. I appreciate the distance and honestly wish he would just take his ass somewhere else entirely.
But I’m too emotionally drained to voice that thought so instead we sit in silence, watching the waves together until my eyes dry and the tightness in my chest loosens. I can’t even look at him so I keep my eyes straight ahead at the waves that are illuminated by the moon glowing above.
“Mom wouldn’t want you out here like this. Still coming out here for her.”
“She isn’t the reason I’m out here. You are.”
I see him flinch from the corner of my eye but he keeps talking. “This was where she died, Max. Not where she lived.”
“Where she died is what I have a problem with.” I force my voice to even before I finish what I have to say. “I come out to the beach to deal with my problems. You shoot yours up your arm.”
He nods silently and we let the waves fill the silence. I start to think he’s going to shut up since he isn’t exactly one to be dishing out advice but he starts back up again.
I guess he feels compelled to spew his last two years of pent up brotherly guidance in one night.
“Sometimes I go sit in front of the old house. I park across the street at that park we used to play at and just watch the house. Pretend like maybe it’s Mom behind the kitchen curtain, cooking us dinner like she used to do. Do you remember that?”
“Yeah.”
Damn it. My eyes sting again but this time I fight against it.
“You were little then. Before dad started dragging everyone in his shit.”
When did he not drag everyone in his shit? Maybe Chris is right. I was too young to remember a time like that. It probably ended before I was even a fucking fetus.
“I sit at that park, watch our old house and miss the hell out of her. Miss you. That’s where I use most of the time. It’s the only thing that made it better at first. Made me feel better about how life has turned out.”
“It’s not making anything better, Chris. You’re killing yourself.”
“I know.”
Waves continue to crash.
“Is that what you want?”
I don’t know if I want the answer to that. Not sure if I can handle the truth once it comes out.
“Maybe.”
“You’ve got to stop doing this.”
My tone is pleading. Even I can hear the hint of desperation. Of begging.
But I can’t help it. I want too badly for him to get clean and take care of himself. I want too badly for him to live and keep being my brother and I know if he stays on this path he’s going to end up in a pine box, six feet deep.
“What difference does it make? I’m not doing anything with my life. I’m not like you.”
“You don’t have to be like me.”
“It wouldn’t make a difference if I was gone. There’s no one that would care.”
“I would dammit. I would.”
“You want me to quit for you?”
As much as it hurt to watch him waste away and self-destruct, it couldn’t be for me. That just wouldn’t work. At the first sign of conflict, our first argument, he would turn back to drugs to numb his emotions.
Getting clean for someone else was a setup for a relapse down the road.
“Do it for yourself, Chris. No one but yourself.”