Even though I didn’t want to, even though I wanted more than anything to stop, I still dragged my finger across the tablet, rewinding the video to the beginning again. The stupid blasting music, the white, italicized letters—how many of the millions of views this video had racked up were mine?

“I’m Gabe King and I’m the King of Pain!” the tiny, arrogant, unbroken version of me shouted into the camera. I hated his fucking guts, but the urge to punch the tablet screen had faded into a faint buzz in the back of my brain. I wasn’t watching out of self-hatred anymore. I wasn’t watching it punish myself. I was watching it out of...habit? 

The thought made the corner of my mouth jerk into an unwanted smile, like someone had grabbed my lip with a fishhook. I coughed and then laughed, a dry mirthless sound, aware that sitting alone in my bedroom and chuckling to myself didn’t exactly say much for my fraying, already suspect, sanity. Only I could make a habit of watching myself almost die. Only I could get bored of seeing my body broken and dashed against the rocks.  

With a brand new wash of self-hatred, I nearly mustered the strength to turn it off. My finger hovered over the pause button, but I kept watching, transfixed right up to the moment the me on the screen leaped off that bridge. 

“You’re watching that again?”

I looked up, feeling as guilty as if I’d been caught with my hand down my pants. “What are you talking about?” I asked, trying to slowly drop the tablet out of his sight.

Beau shook his head as he walked into my bedroom. “The video. You’ve been watching it a lot.”

“Stalker much?”

“Obvious much?” he countered. “You were always terrible at hiding things.” A shadow crossed his face. “Hey, don’t look at it anymore, okay?”

I hated the look of concern on his face because it was the same one he wore when he, Finn, and Claire had confronted me about my pill-addiction after the King Brothers imploded. The same wary sort of caution that you’d wear around a madman with a gun, or possibly a beloved family dog gone rabid. I never thought I’d make him have that look again, and I didn’t want to think about what it meant he was thinking. So I tried for a lame attempt at humor. “Look at what?”

The concerned look stayed put. “You know what,” he said, his voice so level you could use it to hang a picture on the wall. 

Of course I wanted to protest that there was nothing wrong with what I was doing. Even though I could feel how wrong it was with every sweat-soaked, self-loathing viewing. I could feel it eating away at me. It was like climbing out of quicksand and then belly-flopping back in again for a second go-round. Willingly letting it suck me under. I glanced down at the tablet again. The video had ended, the white, italicized words scrolling by, letting the voyeuristic viewer know that Gabriel King survived his brush with death with two broken ankles, seven broken ribs, and a laceration on his side requiring twenty-two stitches to close and that filming of “King of Pain” was on hiatus, its fate uncertain. I sucked in a huge lungful of breath...

And then threw the tablet to the floor. “Take it,” I told Beau. 

His nostrils flared slightly. “Gabe, I’m not gonna fucking confiscate it from you like you’re a bad little boy getting his toys taken away.” He snorted. “Fuck, I’m not Claire.” Then his eyes softened. “Just...be careful, okay?”

All at once my eyelids felt far too heavy to keep open anymore. “Take it,” I urged. It was easier to talk with my eyes closed, easier to tell the truth without seeing him react to what I was saying. “I... I can’t be careful, Beau. You know I don’t know how.”

His silence was more of a response than any words could have been.

“Take it,” I pleaded with my eyes still closed.  

"I've got it," he said.

I breathed a sigh of relief. 

When I opened my eyes, Beau was no longer holding it. Whether he had shoved it up under his shirt, or quickly hidden it somewhere in the room, I had no idea. I didn’t want to know. He knew I needed it gone right then and there. 

Of course he did. He was Beau. “Now what are you going to do with yourself?” he asked me.

I stared at the ceiling. What I wanted to do was have Everly come over and give me another sponge bath, only this time she’d get in with me. I licked my lips, knowing full well that wasn’t an answer Beau was going to want to hear and I was frustrated. “I dunno. Read a fucking book or something,” I hissed. My eyelids were heavy again. I just wanted to sleep until Everly came over. 

“Mom’ll be happy to hear that,” Beau said.

For a second I thought he had read my mind, until I realized he was talking about me reading a book. “Oh god no, don’t tell her, she’s gonna come home from work with an armload of books,” I sighed. Beau was the type to sit there in a corner with a giant book in his lap, making frowny faces as he turned the page, but I’d never been able to sit still long enough for reading to work for me. “Oh god, and they’re all gonna be about World War Two, I bet.”

“Because you were interested in it.”

“For like three months. In fifth grade.”

Beau smiled. “Mom doesn’t let go of things easily.”

“Yeah, I know. She’s still working at the library even though she and dad could have retired five times over by now. Especially with what we all gave them.” A flicker of something crossed Beau’s face. “What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Beau said, then kept talking. “You gave them a cut?”

“We all did,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “We talked about this way back when.”

“I know, and yeah, I gave them mine, and I’m pretty sure Jonah did his but...” he trailed off and I could see the internal fight. Loyalty to the family or loyalty to his twin.

Because I already knew what he was going to say. “Finn never gave his?” I asked, bristling.

Beau raised his hand to quiet me as he glanced at the door. “Mom and Dad don’t know.”

“How do they not...” I trailed off. “Oh.”

Beau looked sheepish. 

“You covered it for him,” I sighed. 

“It wasn’t a big deal.”

“What happened to his money?” I asked through clenched teeth. I still had most of my King Brothers money left in the bank and it wasn’t like I’d been living a life of Spartan austerity these past few years. “How the fuck did he blow through...”

“He’s gonna pay me back,” Beau interrupted, waving his hand. “And it’s not like I didn’t have it either. I can’t really think of a better use for my money than helping out my brother and my parents at the exact same time.”

I mimed retching noises. He rolled his eyes. “Look, it’s not like I didn’t have enough to go out and get some toys.”

“Toys. Now you’re talking my language,” I said. “What’d you get, an ATV? A jetski?”

“A fishing boat,” Beau said proudly.

“What the fuck?” I breathed. 

But he ignored me. “I take it up to Ganagua Lake in the summer. It’s almost trout season too, so I have a few spots I want to hit. The creeks are all swollen with all this rain so it’s not even safe to go out there in waders. You’d need a boat.” His eyes got this faraway look. “Uncle Gid showed all his secret fishing places to me and Grandpa King showed them to him. Like a family secret. I’ll fish them someday with my kids.”

This was a side of my younger brother I’d never seen before. “You want kids?”

He grinned. “A whole pack of ‘em. Like us. Only smarter.” He narrowed his eyes critically at me. “And better looking.”

“They’re gonna have to depend on their mom’s genes for that, then.”

He eyed the heavens and then gave me the finger as he stood up. “I’ll take you out if you can promise not to be a gigantic prick about it.”

“Thanks,” I sighed. “I’m gonna need a new hobby soon enough.”

He looked at me like I had three heads. “Why a new one? Your guitars are over in Dad’s shed just gathering dust.”

I swallowed. “Yeah, maybe,” I said, trying to sound like I was thinking about it. But I wasn’t. Ever since Noelle, the music that used to ring through my head at top volume fell silent. It was like losing a limb and I had no idea how to explain its loss to my brother who would undoubtedly tell me to just pick it up again and ignore how wrong it felt. I looked up at him, hoping that my expression was one of complete sincerity. “I’ll do that, yeah.”

Beau nodded. “In the meantime I’ll have mom find you some books on the Battle of the Bulge.”

“Oh god,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. I could hear Beau’s laughter ringing all the way down the stairs. 

For a moment I closed my eyes in the silence he left behind, hoping for sleep to overtake me and rescue me from the restlessness that crawled under my skin. But after several long breaths I opened my eyes again. A nervous energy was coursing through me. I stood up carefully and hobbled to the window, then gazed out, earnestly scanning the trees, the omnipresent gray clouds, the rain-swollen creek like they were hiding something. I heard my pulse thudding in my temple and realized I was holding my breath and let it back out again. 

She wasn’t coming today. 

She had her boards. 

I knew this. 

But the prospect of a whole day spent without her hard-won smile, without her unexpected laugh, made the day seem even bleaker than the gray clouds could. I missed her. 

I fucking missed her. 

 Glancing at my phone, I counted the hours until she came over again. And then called myself pathetic. And then decided I couldn’t get much more pathetic than a half-crippled shut-in standing by the window like a dog waiting for its master to return so why even bother caring? And then I gave myself the mental middle finger. I really was pathetic. I was even standing here imagining I could hear the sound of her terrible car starting, the coughing wheeze of an evil asthmatic, but that was stupid since there was no way I should recognize the sound of her car.

But I did. I was hearing it, and it didn’t sound right. I felt the back of my neck prickle and before I knew it, I was strapping on my boots.