Lola and I watch the sun come up at the lake near Montrose Beach. I don’t know if she remembers the significance of this spot, but this was the first place I ever had the guts to speak to little Lola B. I’d seen her before at school, but that was different.

Shy, awkward, nerdy. They were the first thoughts I had about her when she handed out papers for Mr. Eckels in English. She was a good girl. The kind who actually signed up for extracurricular activities at school. And I was the kid who sat in the back of the class with his hood up, hoping nobody would talk to him.

Incidentally, I also happened to be the one that she tripped and fell head first into that day. Everyone turned to stare, and the familiar burn of anxiety crept up my spine. I didn’t like to be the center of attention, and I hated her already. But when I got a look at her face, her cheeks blooming with pink, there was something about her that held my attention. She wasn’t much more than a string bean at the time. Skinny and clumsy. She had a beautiful face, but she was clueless about it.

I tried to forget she existed after that day, but it didn’t work. Fate threw her in my face at every opportunity. Our classes always seemed to let out near each other, and our lockers were a mere ten feet apart. Lola blanched every time she saw me, still humiliated by our first encounter. I always looked away. Or at least, I tried to.

But I wasn’t looking away the day that I waited outside on the curb for Ryan to pick me up. We’d known about each other for a few years by then, and he thought it was fun to come slum it on my side of the city for a change. He’d roll up in his Lexus and see which fruit was ripe for the picking. It wasn’t difficult for Ryan because he had the personality, the looks, the charm, and the car too. Girls from public school almost always went for it.

That day he was late. Or at least I thought he was. And I had my eye on Lola, watching her fumble with her books in a spectacularly awkward fashion as she tried to assemble herself for the bus ride home.

“Who’s that peach?”

The question had come from behind me, where Ryan stood. I had been caught staring, and immediately felt defensive as I tried to steer him away. But Ryan wasn’t having it. The moment he saw the challenge in my eyes, the game had begun for him. Everything was a competition to Ryan, and he never lost.

I thought that maybe he’d forgotten about it when we walked to the car and drove off, but I should have known better. He showed up at the beach that weekend with Lola in tow. And he made a point to rub it in my face all night long.

There was always an undercurrent of jealousy between us, but I never understood why. Ryan had everything. The money, the name, and a father who acknowledged him. It still wasn’t enough for him. He could have had any girl he wanted, but he picked her. He chose her to ride shotgun on his quest of self-destruction.

It didn’t happen all at once. It was a slow train wreck that I had a front row seat for. My loyalties were to my brother. He helped me out more than anyone could ever know. He gave me a retreat away from the crazy that was my mother and my life. But his ego was a cancer inside of him, and Lola was just another trophy.

Something changed between us that night he brought Lola here. The other stuff never bothered me. I didn’t want his trust fund or his dad or the big fancy house. But when he had Lola on his arm, he finally had something I wanted, and he knew it.

When he caught me looking at her, he kissed her.

I found a million reasons to hate her. She was weird. Too soft. Her laugh was ridiculous, and I couldn’t stand the way she would second guess everything she said to him. I thought she should have been more confident, more sure of herself. At the very least she could have faked it.

I thought my act was pretty convincing, but it turned out the only person I had fooled was myself. Ryan confronted me one night in a drunken stupor, trying to pick a fight with me. At first, it was petty comments. The way things usually unraveled between us. Talking to Ryan when he was drinking was the equivalent of banging your head into a brick wall. Our relationship was by nature the very definition of insanity. I can’t even recall how many times we went down the same road hoping to arrive at a different destination.

He’d self-destruct, and I would try to clean up the mess he made.

The events leading up to his death were a test of my already strained patience. I was tired of dealing with his shit. He was upstairs banging some chick in his room when Lola stopped by. I didn’t know she’d already seen him, and there were plenty of times I asked myself why I even bothered to hide it from her. In the end, I just didn’t want to be the one to hurt her.

That night, she came to me. She sought comfort from me, and it was something I was incapable of providing. But even so, I tried. I rubbed the soft sweater that covered her shoulders, and she rested her head against my chest. I wanted to keep her, but I wanted to punish her too.

She didn’t choose me. But I was the one who took care of her. I was the one holding her now. When she looked up at me with eyes so soft and sad, I had no words to give her. I didn’t need words when my emotions were plastered all over my face. She saw how I felt, and Lola finally cracked and confessed the thing I simultaneously dreaded and hoped for.

She curled her hands into my sweater and breathed me in and whispered her confessions in a moment we couldn’t take back. She told me she had feelings for me, and then said she shouldn’t have feelings for me. She was confused, and she wanted me to say something, but I wasn’t good with words then. I didn’t know what to tell her because either way, I would lose.

Ryan was my brother. And whatever she thought she felt for me didn’t matter because it was too late. She had chosen him, and I couldn’t believe she was trying to change the game halfway through. I got angry and pushed her away. I broke her all over again and sent her away in tears. And then I punched the wall, just in time for Ryan to step out from the shadows.

He laughed at me and told me I was pathetic.

“So, Lola thinks you’re the good guy?” he mocked. “The Adonis from Riverdale with nothing more than a whore for a mother to call his own.”

I’d punched him after he said it, and he wiped the blood from his mouth with a smile. It was exactly what he’d wanted me to do, and it only pissed me off more that I’d played into his twisted games.

“I bet it just kills you that I took her first. I bet that even still, you’d love to have a go at my sloppy seconds.”

I stared at the floor, numb. Ryan couldn’t know the inner turmoil I felt. I had no right to my feelings. I had no right to care how he talked about her or what went on in their relationship.

“This happens sometimes,” he said. “Lola gets confused about what she wants. It doesn’t take much to set her straight. Come tomorrow, she’ll go right back to hating you. Did you know that? She hates you because she thinks you hate her.”

I still didn’t answer. There was no need. Ryan had a destination in mind, and we would get there without my input regardless.

“She’s too pure at heart to see the way things really are,” Ryan spat. “Not like me.”

I met his eyes then, and mine burned with shame.

“Do you really think I haven’t noticed the way you look at her when she’s not paying attention? Or that you use any opportunity to step up and be her white knight all while acting as if it’s such a huge fucking inconvenience.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.

“Sure you don’t.”

We were both quiet for too long, and I didn’t know what else to say. Ryan was right, and there was no point in trying to deny it.

“It doesn’t really matter,” he said finally. “Because I know you don’t have the balls to do anything about it. That isn’t the point I’m trying to make here.”

“Then what is it?” I asked.

He slapped me on the shoulder like we were square then. “The point is you need to get laid, and I’m going to help you do just that tonight.”

I’d resolved to chaperone him for the night. The next day, I would talk it over with him again. I would apologize for being a fuckwit and tell him I’d stay away from Lola for good because that was the best thing for everyone. But I never got to make that promise.

Ryan was dead by the end of the day.

Sitting here with Lola now, I wonder if I really could have left her alone. Or if my guilt has only ever hindered my ability to do what’s best for her. She doesn’t know her worth, and she never has. She doesn’t know that she could do so much better than the likes of Tom or me or any other guy that she might meet online. Nobody will ever be good enough for her. Nobody.

“I’m sorry that he hurt you.”

Lola turns to me, her eyes still red and puffy from crying. Dried mud is smeared across her cheek, and her hair is a wreck from when I fucked her. I want to do it again, maybe even right here, but women like to talk about their feelings, and this is what Lola needs right now.

“He hurt you too,” she says. “He hurt a lot of people. What he did was selfish.”

She’s still bitter, even after all these years, and that’s how I know she isn’t over it. For whatever reason, Ryan’s actions have cemented the belief in her mind that she isn’t good enough. I’d tell her differently, but she wouldn’t believe it. Especially not from the likes of me.

Lola stares out at the water, tapping her fingers against her thigh. “In the end, I was beginning to wonder if he could even recognize the truth. Everything felt like a lie.”

“But you stayed with him.”

Hard blue eyes meet mine. “Don’t say it like that. Don’t talk about things you don’t know. Just because you were his brother doesn’t mean you know the whole story. You couldn’t possibly know the details of our relationship. The only thing you ever knew was what he chose to tell you.”

I don’t know what to say when she’s like this, so I choose silence. It seems better that way because at least she’s finally being honest.

“I tried to break it off,” she whispers. “More times than I can count.”

She scoops up a pebble from the sand and smooths it over her palm while she unburdens herself. “He would make me feel guilty. He’d beg and plead and tell me he couldn’t live without me. You saw Ryan when he was drunk, but you’d never seen him at his worst. When he couldn’t get out of my bed for weeks on end. When he was strung out on pills and whatever else made his problems disappear. I was the one who was there for all of that, Daire, not you. And I was the one he treated the worst.”

Her admission surprises me, even though it shouldn’t. Lola has always been good at faking that everything’s okay. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why would I?” Lola answers. “I thought you hated me. I doubted you’d believe me anyway. Ryan didn’t want anyone to know, and it felt like I’d be betraying him if I said something.”

“I never hated you,” I correct her.

“Could have fooled me.” She tosses the rock out into the water. “You wouldn’t even look at me half the time.”

“Because I didn’t want Ryan to get the wrong idea.”

“And what idea is that?” she asks.

My words aren’t coming out the way I want them to, and I know I should quit while I still can. But I’m tired, and I can’t find a single reason not to be honest with her right now.

“What I mean is that I didn’t want Ryan to get the right idea,” I admit. “I didn’t want him to think I had something for his girl.”

Lola is quiet for too long, and I don’t have the guts to look at her. She’s probably doubting my sincerity. Probably questioning everything. But she doesn’t voice it. Instead, she changes gears entirely.

“Will you tell me about your mom?”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because I want to know. You’ve never talked about her. I only ever heard things from Ryan, but I want to hear them from you.”

I want to tell her it’s none of her goddamned business. And then I want to go back to my place and crack open a few bottles of liquor. The ones I keep in the cabinet as a test of my will. That would be the easiest thing to do. But then Lola looks at me, and her eyes are soft, and she looks like a dirty angel right now.

“Fuck it.” I lay back on the beach and close my eyes. “What do you want to know?”

“Why didn’t you get along?”

This shit is so typical of women. Trying to psychoanalyze a man and figure out the root cause for all of his issues. I decide if Lola wants to pin all of my problems on my mother, I’m not going to stop her. So, I let her have it.

“She was a whore. A drunk and sloppy one at that.”

Lola sighs. “Don’t be a dick, Daire.”

When she says dick, it makes my dick hard. “You asked for the truth. And the truth isn’t pretty.”

“Maybe, but that isn’t all there is to it. You can’t hate someone without loving them too.”

“Are you talking about Ryan or my mother now?” Now I am being a dick.

She swallows. “Maybe I’m not talking about anybody. Or maybe not everything is always about Ryan.”

Her words are cryptic, and I’m still trying to figure out the meaning behind them when she lays back beside me and reaches out to touch my arm. It’s a simple gesture, but it tempers the frustration inside of me.

“It’s hard to care about someone who can’t even recognize her own son,” I tell her. “But I guess at the end of the day she was my mother, and that was the only mother I had. The only thing I knew at the time.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “You deserved better than that.”

I shrug, but the knot in my chest doesn’t go away. “It is what it is.”

Silence falls between us, and for once, it’s uncomfortable to me. I know I shouldn’t think about it or care, and Lola doesn’t need to know these things, but I start talking for real. The words come out of my mouth, and I can’t stop them once they start.

“The reason I was late yesterday was because I had to go home. Back to the trailer. They are trying to clean up the place, and they wanted it gone.”

“I’m sorry, Daire,” she says again. “I didn’t realize.”

“I didn’t go inside. I didn’t want to. The last memory I have of her is seeing her blackened body on the couch. She fell asleep with a cigarette in her mouth again, and I wasn’t there to put it out.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Lola assures me.

“I know. It was hers. Because she could never get her fucking shit together. She was disgusting. She was sloppy and foul, and I hated her, and the truth was, I was relieved when she was dead.”

I skip the part about my mother trying to fuck me before I left. I don’t tell her the worst of it because that would only encourage empathy. I don’t want to make excuses for my loathing. I want to own it, and I want Lola to accept it too.

“I bet you think I sound like a hypocrite,” I muse. “But I’m not like her.”

“I know you aren’t.” She squeezes my hand in hers. “I know that you’re nothing like her. And I’m sorry for what I said last night. You aren’t a gutless shitbag, or whatever else came out of my mouth.”

Her agreement doesn’t change anything. I have been weak like my mother. I’ve been a pathetic, sloppy, drunk mess just like her. And Lola has seen me at my worst, and she’s never hated me for it.

I roll onto my side and prop myself up because right now, I need to feel her. I grab her face and drag her closer so I can kiss her. I kiss the fuck out of her. Her fingers thread through my hair and hold me captive while her body warms beneath me. She smells like sunshine and dirt and fresh air.

She smells like something I’ve always wanted but could never have. New ideas are rolling around inside of my head. I never come unprepared to a pitch, but I want to pitch to Lola right now. I want to make her promises that I’ll probably never be able to keep. I want to close the deal. I want her on my team and in my bed for good with a contract signed in blood.

But maybe I am weak because I can’t say them. Instead, I settle for something simple. Something Lola expects.

“I want your cunt on my dick again.”

Spoken like a true gentleman.