HER

I feel like giggling.

Not laughing, not chuckling, not outright belly guffawing.

Just... giggling.

Like, when you’re drunk and something slightly silly happens and you think it’s the funniest thing in the world.

Like when you’re staring into someone’s eyes and the nervousness tickles in the back of your throat and there’s nothing you can do to hold it in.

Like when you’re sitting on your own and think of someone or something that makes you smile, but more, so much more.

Like, when you’re just living, going about your day, and you realize, you’re happy. Just honestly and truly happy.

I feel like giggling. And never stopping.

“What are you giggling about?” a sleepy, muffled voice with a mouthful of my hair wonders from behind me.

“I wasn’t,” I lie.

“The shaking of the bed begs to differ.”

“I was... scratching.”

“Well, then what was making your funny bone itch, lady?”

“It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”

“Okay.”

And something about that exchange, makes me giggle.

***

“Ahem,” a male voice wakes me.

“What?” I growl, not ready to get out of bed yet.

“What, what?” Kaine counters.

“You just said ‘ahem.’” I say grumpily. It’s too early to have to explain myself.

“No, I didn’t,” he argues back. “Maybe you dreamt it.”

“It was me, bloody lovebirds,” a third voice, the original voice, cuts in.

We both jump up and stare at the intruder.

“Xavier! What the fuck, man?” Kaine yells. “Why are you here?”

I slide down into my pillows and pull the sheet over my bed and curl into a red-faced ball, willing him to go away.

“I’m working. What are you doing here?” he asks his boss.

“Why do people keep asking me that? I live here, asshole.”

“Can we help you?” I yell from under my linen cocoon.

“No, but I think I might’ve helped you. There’s someone out in the living who wants to see you,” Xavier says and I freeze, not sure I heard him right.

Kaine pulls the sheet down so my head is poking out, and he’s smiling at me.

“No.” I look up at him.

“Why don’t you go out and see?”

“Gabe?” I scramble out of bed, pulling the sheet around me like a toga. Once satisfied with the coverage, I run out into the living room, bracing myself for what I may or may not see.

“Gabriel!” I scream when I see him standing in the middle of the room and run up to him.

He catches me in his arms and I sob, the relief washing over me. “Gabriel! Where have you been? Are you okay?” I pull away and trace my eyes over his body, checking, checking his weight, checking for injuries, like I’ve been doing for the last six years.

I look up into his eyes, and they’re wet and red, and my heart breaks for the little boy who wanted his cute little head on a coin. I pull him back into my arms, sobbing his name.

“Hey, hey,” he whispers after a while, his head cradling the back of my head. “It’s fine, everything’s fine. In fact, it’s good. And it’s only going to get better.”

“Why, what do you mean? Where did you go? Why did you leave without telling me?” The questions come hard and fast, and I have so many more.

“Why... um, why don’t we sit down?” he says, gesturing to the chair.

“No, GABRIEL ANTHONY SINCLAIR, you will answer my questions, RIGHT NOW or I am...?”

“What? Going to tell Grammy?” he grins at me, and I’m surprised at how okay he actually does look. Maybe not physically, but definitely mentally.

“No. I’m...I’m going to tell...XAVIER!”

“Oy. Okay, I’m all yours, ask away. He is scary.”

“Hey!” Xavier protests.

“Shush, family reunion going on here. Go break some knees somewhere else,” Gabriel waves Xavier away.

“What? Did he...?’

“Let’s just say he’s good with the threats.”

I turn to look at Kaine, who has now followed us into the room. He just shrugs and looks sheepish.

“Whatever,” I brush his away. “I’m dealing with YOU right now. Why did you go?”

“I went... I went to get help, JJ.”

“JJ?” Kaine repeats, hearing Gabriel’s childhood nickname for me.

“Shush. Well, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because, it’s not the first time I’ve tried... and failed. And I didn’t want you getting your hopes up. I just thought if I disappeared this time, you’d worry for a little while but you’d get used to it, and one day I could just show up, and... be well, and clean and healthy and stop disappointing you. Because I’m going to do it this time, sis. I really am. The other day really scared me.”

“Aw, you idiot. I know you can do it.”

“Thanks, sis.” He runs a hand over his tired face. I reach out and run the back of my hand against the stubble on his chin. He looks older than I’ve ever seen him. Not old, but grown up. Maybe he really has.

“But you didn’t tell me, where did the scary man find you?”

“Hey!” Xavier protests again. And I shush him with a look.

“At one of the local shelters downtown. I was waiting for them to get me into one of their detox centres. It’s a quick fix, and there’s no guarantee I can get into a rehab program after, but at least I’ll be clean, detoxed to start.”

“Oh honey, you... you can’t do it that way, it’ll kill you.”

“The drugs will do that any way, sis. And this is all I, we, can afford. Anyway, I was just staying there overnight, they said they’d probably find a place for me today. So, I can’t stay here for long, as soon as there’s a spot I’ve gotta go. But Scaryman threatened my knees, so I came back to tell you I’m okay, and that I’m sorry. And to pray for me,”

“You’re not going anywhere. Well, not just yet.” Kaine comes up and gestures for us to sit down. He hands me a hoodie and I pull it over my toga before sinking into the couch next to him.

“What do you mean?” Gabe asks.

“We’ve... we’ve gotten you into a rehabilitation clinic upstate. Whenever you’re ready, we’ll take you,” Kaine explains. I grab his arm and he turns and smiles at me.

“No, I...” my brother starts.

“Don’t do it for you, don’t do it for me, do it for your sister.” His words are simple, but he delivers them straight into Gabriel’s eyes. And I see them burrowing into his mind.

“Please, Gabriel,” I say, not even knowing the look of begging flooding my eyes.

“Oh, sis.”

“Do this for her,” Xavier comes over and joins us on the couch. “And maybe I’ll let you keep your legs the shape they are.” He winks at me.

Gabriel takes turn looking at us. I can’t even pretend to know how hard this is for him. Facing us. In all the years he was in trouble, his pride never wavered. He would come back, swear up and down he had everything under control. And every time he fell off the wagon, the worst was watching the way it chipped at his self-respect. That was always worse than watching what the drugs did to his body, his mind; those wounds I knew could be fixed in time. How he would feel about himself when it was all over was another matter altogether.

“Jade?” my brother says, his eyes wet.

“Please. Swallow your pride and do this for me. If I mean anything to you, let Kaine do this for us.”

He takes a deep breath and exhales, and it’s like he deflates into a small, helpless young boy again.

“Okay.”

“Gabriel!” I jump up and run over to him, almost tripping on my sheet as I go as it falls out from under me, leaving me in just a long hoodie, barely covering my butt. He catches me in his arms and holds me as we cry. All we ever have is hope.

“Sis?” Gabe asks after we’ve calmed down.

“Yeah, buddy?”

“So, can I ask you a question?”

“Anything!”

“Why the hell are you wearing a bedsheet in a stranger’s apartment?”

I reach out and the squeal I hear is exactly the same as the one I used to hear whenever I pinched his ear.

***

Five hours later we’re on our way to East Hampton and the Dunes Rehab Center.

We’d spent the morning talking, catching up at the apartment, and then swinging by Macy’s after lunch to grab Gabriel some essential items for his stay.

Sitting in the limo now, next to Kaine, I’m watching as Gabriel’s head bobs up and down as he fights sleep.

I know a tough time is ahead of him, and I don’t know if this time will be any different, just that for the first time, even though we’d pleaded with him to do it for me, this time he’s doing it for him. He’s sick of being sick of his own reflection and he’s sick of wasting the life for which he has so much potential, that was meant to be limitless.

“Hey, you okay?” Kaine whispers into my ear.

I lean back against his arm and pull his other around my chest, enveloping me in him. We haven’t had a chance to talk about what happened last night, and what he’d said this morning, but I’m just letting myself enjoy having him as support right now. We will have to talk about him organizing and paying for Gabriel’s treatment, but I didn’t want that to get in the way of Gabriel accepting the help.

“When do you think it’ll be your turn?” I ask him.

“My turn for what?”

“To say thank you to me.”

“Every moment you let me be with you, look at you, kiss you, take you in my arms, is a reason to thank you.”

“Then kiss me again, so we’re even.”

“We’ll never be even, but I don’t mind racking up a long bill.”

I lift my face and take the kiss he gifts me.

“Ew. Stop kissing my sister,” comes Gabriel’s sleepy disgust.

“Can’t, buddy. We’re bartering.”

I see a smile tug at Gabriel’s lips as he leans his head back on the headrest and closes his eyes.

***

It’s sunset by the time we have Gabriel settled at the center. The first few days will be a contact blackout while he detoxes, but the counselors say it will be okay to come visit him next weekend.

I hug him goodbye and I bite my lip so hard I’m bleeding when my hands run up and down his back, rippling over his exposed ribs. How could I have let it come to this? What kind of sister am I?

He brushes my tears away with his thumbs as he pulls out of the hug.

“Shhh, JJ. It’s not your fault,” he says, reading my mind. “You always said I was too smart for my own good. I guess I always thought I was too smart to let it get too far. I was wrong. But without you, I’d be dead by now, so don’t you go blaming yourself. If you have to blame someone, blame me. This was all me. And now me is going to get better. For me.”

“I love you, baby bro.”

“I love you, bossy sis.”

“I’ll see you next week.”

“That’s a promise.”

“Come on, it’s time,” Kaine says, reminding me gently with an arm on my back.

“Good luck, Gabriel,” he says reaching out a hand to my brother, who looks at it for a second before grabbing it tight.

“Thanks. For everything. Take care of her while I’m gone. I know she can be a handful.”

A sob is my only response.

“Oh, dear lord, I’m not going to war! I’m in a freakin’ posh resort for millionaires! Go get!” he says and shoos me off, but not before I see a tremor of his bottom lip and a glistening in his eye.

I give him one last quick hug and hurl myself out the front door, refusing to look back.

Kaine follows me out to the car, but doesn’t force me to get in. He just stands next to me as I stare out into the garden, watching the other patients, wandering around, reading, or playing games.

“He’s going to be okay, Jade,” Kaine comforts me.

“The truth is, he couldn’t have gotten much worse.”

“So, this is a start.”

“I should’ve never let it get this far.” I ask myself again, unable to reconcile his comforting words with the truth.

“You did the best you could have at any given moment. Tell me, go back to any of those other times, what would you have differently”

He knows I don’t have an answer. He knows.

“Trust me, I’ve been there,” he offers.

“Been where.”

“Hopelessness. Helplessness.”

“With who?”

“My whole family,” he says. And stops there.

I stare at him open mouthed and all he can do is tilt his head, his eyes tender and full of pain.

“Kaine?”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now. I just wanted you to know, I know what it feels like. To feel like you’ve let down the people you love most.”

He drops a kiss onto my forehead and then helps me into the car.

We drive back to Manhattan in silence, our hands in each other’s. Each living our own nightmare but trying to find the way out together.