Page 77 of Furious
Heather lowers herself into a chair at the kitchen table and keeps crying, her head resting on her arms.
“Heather came over yesterday,” Mom says, shedding some light on the situation. “She was looking for you, Ares. Apparently she had tried to call you and you didn’t pick up and came to your apartment and saw your car parked in your spot. She rang the doorbell, but you didn’t answer. She got worried that you might have… hurt yourself.”
“Huh?” Ares looks at Mom as if she had spoken in a foreign language. “I don’t understand. Why was she looking for me and why on earth would she think I would hurt myself?”
Heather lifts her head from the table and starts screaming at Ares. “Because it was your birthday, asshole! I called you to see if you wanted to go visit Atlas with me and I texted you ten times when you didn’t pick up my call.” Her eyes are full of tears and she’s crying and screaming at the same time.
The tick in Ares’s jaw is a telling sign that he’s about to lose his shit. I’m proud of him for not yelling back at Heather. But I can hear in the way his tone is shaking that he’s struggling to keep his cool. “Visit Atlas? With you?” he’s livid. “Why?”
“Because it was his birthday and I miss him so much and I thought… I wanted to bring him some flowers and go with the other person who’s supposed to miss him just as much as I do!”
Ares grabs the back of one of the chairs with white knuckle force. “First off, Heather, it was my birthday, too. Thank you for wishing me a happy birthday. And you know I don’t visit Atlas, so quit the theatrics.”
Heather stands up so fast that the chair capsizes on the floor. “Where were you yesterday?”
“Home.”
“So why didn’t you answer the door when I came over?”
Ares rolls his eyes. “Because, like I told you last year, I’m not interested in spending the day memorializing our loss. All I wantis to forget that there should be an identical-looking version of me, a fucking part of me, to celebrate with. So I stocked up on booze and I spent the day drinking myself into oblivion.”
“Bull fucking shit!” Heather screams.
Mom intervenes. “Heather, sweetie, I know you’re upset, but please watch your language.”
“Sorry Kelly.” Heather’s voice breaks. “But Ares is lying. I just wanted to support each other. I don’t understand why he hates me so much.”
Ares grabs his head with both hands, pulling at the short strands of his blond hair. “I don’t hate you, Heather. But this kind of behavior isn’t helping our relationship one bit. I told you last year that I just wanted to be left alone on my birthday and on the anniversary of Atlas’s death. I don’t want to go to the cemetery with you. I don’t want to attend a service. I don’t want to talk about him. If you want to do all those things, it’s your prerogative. I don’t tell you how to grieve, so please show me the same courtesy.”
I’m proud of Ares for not yelling at her.
Heather, however, is still upset. “Why are you lying to me? You went to the grave.”
My stepbrother narrows his eyes. “How do you even know that? Did you follow me or something?”
Heather crosses her arms over her chest. “No. When you didn’t answer your phone and neither did your dad, Chance, Lev, or Zara, I decided to go to the cemetery by myself. I got some flowers and when I got there, it was raining and I realized I didn’t have an umbrella with me. So I went to ask the groundskeeper if he had one I could borrow. He knows me because I go to visit Atlas every week. So he told me I just missed you and your girlfriend.”
Her tone is accusatory, but Ares doesn’t flinch. “Ok, so you got me. I didn’t want to go with you. Happy now?”
“Why are you such a fucking asshole?” Heather screams.
Mom opens her mouth to intervene again, but I shake my head.
“But I’m not, Heather.” Ares argues. “I’m not doing that grieving thing with you anymore. We tried on the first anniversary of his death and spending time with you made everything worse. Hearing you talk about him, seeing you cry, made me miss him even more, and it made me more miserable. I’m sorry if that goes against whatever plan you have in your head, but I need you to respect my feelings.”
Heather ignores his request. “Who did you go with? And why didn’t you answer your door when you were clearly home?”
Ares folds his arms over his own chest, mimicking Heather’s stance. “I put my phone on silent and I didn’t answer the door because I wasn’t alone. I wanted to spend my birthday eating, drinking and fucking. I’m sorry, Kelly.” He says, looking at Mom.
“So that’s how it is?” Heather screams. “You’d rather spend such a hard day fucking some rando than with me?”
Ares speaks slowly, as if he wanted to make sure that she understood every word without the possibility of misunderstanding. “No, it wasn’t a rando. I spent the day with someone I care about.”
She doesn’t believe him. “Ha. I’ve never seen you with anyone. When I was dating your brother, I tried to set you up with so many of my girlfriends and you were never interested. If you aren’t lying, tell me who this person is so important that you would take her to visit Atlas’s grave for the first time?”
Ares’s eyes meet mine for a second. He looks like the proverbial deer caught in front of headlights.
Mom and Heather are both looking at him, and I start panicking that they might make the connection.
